Retaking Rationality

How Cost Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health

Richard Revesz, Michael Livermore (Autoren)

Buch | Hardcover

262 Seiten

2008
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-536857-4 (ISBN)

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That America's natural environment has been degraded and despoiled over the past 25 years is beyond dispute. Nor has there been any shortage of reasons why - short-sighted politicians, a society built on over-consumption, and the dramatic weakening of environmental regulations.

In Retaking Rationality, Richard Revesz and Michael Livermore argue convincingly that one of the least understood-and most important-causes of our failure to protect the environment has been a misguided rejection of reason. The authors show that environmentalists, labor unions, and other progressive groups have declined to participate in the key governmental proceedings concerning the cost-benefit analysis of federal regulations. As a result of this vacuum, industry groups have captured cost-benefit analysis and used it to further their anti-regulatory ends. Beginning in 1981, the federal Office of Management and Budget and the federal courts have used cost-benefit analysis extensively to determine which environmental, health, and safety regulations are approved and which are sent back to the drawing board. The resulting imbalance in political participation has profoundly affected the nation's regulatory and legal landscape. But Revesz and Livermore contend that economic analysis of regulations is necessary and that it needn't conflict with-and can in fact support-a more compassionate approach to environmental policy. Indeed, they show that we cannot give up on rationality if we truly want to protect our natural environment.

Retaking Rationality makes clear that by embracing and reforming cost-benefit analysis, and by joining reason and compassion, progressive groups can help enact strong environmental and public health regulation.

Richard Revesz is the Dean of NYU's Law School and the author of Foundations of Environmental Law and Policy (OUP, 1997); Environmental Law, the Economy, and Sustainable Development. He lives in New York. Michael Livermore is the Law Clerk to the Honorable Harry T. Edwards at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Prologue: Reason and Compassion l ; Part I Decisions Are Made by Those Who Show Up ; The Case for Cost-Benefit Analysis ; The Walls Go Up ; Missed Opportunities ; Winning the Good Fight l ; Part II Eight Fallacies of Cost-Benefit Analysis ; 1: All Unintended Consequences Are Bad Fallacy ; 2: Wealth Equals Health Fallacy ; 3: Older People Are Less Valuable Fallacy ; 4: People Cannot Adapt Fallacy ; 5: People Always Want to Put Off Bad Things Fallacy ; 6: We Are Worth More than Our Children Fallacy ; 7: People Value Only What They Use Fallacy ; 8: Industry Cannot Adapt Fallacy ; The Sum of All the Fallaciesl ; Part III Instituting Regulatory Rationality ; Regulatory Hurdles ; Shaky Foundation ; Rethinking OIRA ; Balancing the Scalesl ; Epilogue: Self-Fulfilling Propheciesl ; Acknowledgments

Erscheint lt. Verlag	26.6.2008
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	236 x 164 mm
Gewicht	499 g
Themenwelt	Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
	Recht / Steuern ► Öffentliches Recht ► Umweltrecht
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
	Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre
ISBN-10	0-19-536857-6 / 0195368576
ISBN-13	978-0-19-536857-4 / 9780195368574
Zustand	Neuware