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Is Cost-Benefit Analysis Neutral?, David M. Driesen
Is Cost-Benefit Analysis Neutral?, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) owes much of its appeal to its image as a neutral principle for deciding upon the appropriate stringency of environmental, health, and safety regulation. This article examines whether CBA is neutral in effect, i.e. whether it sometimes makes regulations more stringent or regularly leads to weaker health, safety and environmental protection. It also addresses the question of whether CBA offers either an objective value-neutral method or procedural neutrality. This Article shows that CBA has almost always proven anti-environmental in practice and that, in many ways, it is anti-environmental in theory. It examines the practice of the Bush …
Distributing The Costs Of Environmental, Health, And Safety Protection: The Feasibility Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Regulatory Reform, David M. Driesen
Distributing The Costs Of Environmental, Health, And Safety Protection: The Feasibility Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Regulatory Reform, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Distributing The Costs Of Environmental, Health, And Safety Protection: The Feasability Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Regulatory Reform, David M. Driesen
Distributing The Costs Of Environmental, Health, And Safety Protection: The Feasability Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Regulatory Reform, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
This article offers a normative theory justifying the feasability principle found in many environmental statutes. It then uses this theory to shine light on the regulatory reform debate. The feasability principle precludes widespread plant shutdowns while maximizing the stringency of regulation that does not have this outcome. The feasability principle provides meaningful guidance regarding both maximum and minimum stringency and a reasonable democratically chosen response to distributional concerns. Pollution's tendency to concentrate severe harms upon randomly selected pollution victims justifies the stringency of this approach. Normally, cost concerns cannot justify failure to protect people from death, illness, and ecological destruction. …
Free Lunch Or Cheap Fix?: The Emissions Trading Idea And The Climate Change Convention, David M. Driesen
Free Lunch Or Cheap Fix?: The Emissions Trading Idea And The Climate Change Convention, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
Emissions trading has become a key component of U.S. environmental legal regimes. The U.S. has successfully lobbied to make international environmental benefit trading, an expanded form of emissions trading, a part of international efforts to address the threat of global climate change through the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol to that Convention. Legal scholars have lauded emissions trading as a "free lunch" that will encourage innovation, enhance democratic accountability, and reduce the cost of environmental cleanup. This article argues that emissions trading functions as a cheap fix, reducing short-term costs while tending to lessen innovation and …