Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

In Defense Of, Or Offensive To Farms? Hog Farming And The Changing American Agricultural Industry, Shi-Ling Hsu

Shi-Ling Hsu

American agriculture is inexorably concentrating into the hands of a small number of large conglomerates. Expanding farms pursuing scale economies would also normally have to abide by a system of environmental and other laws that would, in theory, require farms to account for negative externalities. If those laws were observed and enforced, they would help strike a balance between the greater profitability and the larger externalities of larger farms. But these laws are not widely observed and not rigorously enforced, upsetting this balance and giving large-scale farms a cost advantage while insulating them from corresponding responsibilities.

Perhaps nowhere in agriculture …

Controlling An Invasive Plant At The Edge Of Its Range: Towards A Broader Understanding Of Management Feasibility, Zdravka Tzankova

Zdravka Tzankova

Invasion biologists often think about feasibility of weed control in purely ecological terms, while land managers’ feasibility definitions are further informed by social, policy, and institutional considerations. We use the case of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) in the Eastern Sierra Nevada in California to examine the origins and practical significance of differences between scientific and managerial definitions of feasibility. A serious invasive weed and a major ecological threat to the region, cheatgrass in the Eastern Sierra still exists in the kinds of low-density patches that are technically amenable to containment through active management. Yet land managers in this region dominated by …

Risk Tradeoff Analysis, Public Opinion And Nuclear Safety: A Spanish Case Study, Xiao Recio-Blanco

Xiao Recio-Blanco

The 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant opened a heated worldwide debate over nuclear energy. Unfortunately, neither the previous nor current Spanish governments have publicized the evidence used to evaluate the merits of extending the lifespan of Spain’s own Garoña plant. This article uses the Garoña case for a twofold purpose. First, the article analyzes the accountability of Spain’s executive power decisions on potentially catastrophic industrial activities. The paper finds that the lack of appropriate information disclosure duties in Spain may allow the government to abuse its discretion on actions potentially damaging to human health and the environment. …

At War With The Environment, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

In this Article, Professor Wirth reviews the book National Defense and the Environment by Stephen Dycus, a recognized expert in both environmental and national security law. The emphasis of the book is on containing and remediating the environmental excesses of the American defense-industrial complex, with a domestic policy focus. While Professor Wirth considers Dycus’ work an intellectually rewarding and refreshing new entry into the ongoing environment-as-security colloquy, he does not consider the book to be accessible to a general audience given the book’s fundamentally legalistic nature.