Fears about potentially detrimental impacts of pollution control costs on the economic development are often used as an argument to abstain from effective measures. However, worldwide air quality data show that, once nations reach a certain level of economic development, they manage to control their emissions and, thus, effectively improve local and regional pollution. While such a trend reversal is evident for air pollution, there is still little indication of a similar tendency for greenhouse gases that have impacts on global climate.

Among the reasons that might contribute to the hesitation to embark on greenhouse gas mitigation, two appear as most relevant:

• Mitigation costs are often believed to seriously compromise economic development, and
• concrete environmental benefits from such measures are less obvious, because they do not occur at the spatial and temporal scales people are most concerned about.

In contrast, air pollution control has now become widely accepted, inter alia because carefully chosen control measures are seen to be compatible with economic development and because it is understood that such measures can effectively safeguard acceptable living conditions for the immediate environment.