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Summary
Summary
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 overconsumption, 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. They have opted instead for the moral high ground, preferring to criticize the technique--as being inherently unfair and heartless--rather than to engage in its development. 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.
Author Notes
Richard Revesz is Dean and Lawrence King Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He graduated summa cum laude in Civil Engineering and Public Affairs from Princeton University, received an M.S. in Civil Engineering from MIT, and was awarded his J.D. by Yale Law School, where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. Following judicial clerkships with Chief Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the United States Court of Appeals for theSecond Circuit, and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court of the United States, Dean Revesz joined the NYU Law faculty in 1985, received tenure in 1990, and was appointed dean in 2002. He has published morethan 50 articles and books on environmental and administrative law. His work on issues of federalism and environmental regulation, the valuation of human life and the use of cost-benefit analysis, and the design of liability rules for environmental protection has set the agenda for environmental law scholars for the past decade. He was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Michael A. Livermore is currently a law clerk to the Honorable Harry T. Edwards at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He graduated magna cum laude from New York University School of Law, where he was a managing editor of the NYU Law Review. Between 1995 and 2002, Livermore worked for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) where he was a leading voice of the state's environmental community and helped pass one of the strongest Superfund/Brownfieldlaws in the country. He has published several pieces of legal scholarship on topics including environmental regulation and international food safety standards. In 2006-2007 Livermore was the postdoctoral fellow at NYULaw's Center for Environmental and Land Use Law.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
Lawyers Revesz (dean, New York Univ. School of Law) and Livermore (law clerk, US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit) argue that cost-benefit analysis has been implemented in a biased manner to squash government regulations, especially environmental laws. Part 1 tells the story of how cost-benefit analysis became a mandatory hurdle for regulators on their way to doing good things for the American public. Initially, environmentalists wanted nothing to do with applying economic analysis to regulation, which they viewed as a tainted way of looking at things. This gave market proponents an open field to rig the process in their favor. Part 2 delineates all the ways in which cost-benefit analysis is biased against environmental, health, and safety regulations. The debate over the details of cost-benefit analysis brings out the ideological differences between those who favor government intervention and those who do not. The US Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is treated especially harshly for its role in stonewalling allegedly beneficial rules and regulations. In addition, the authors contend the federal regulatory structure harbors an institutional bias against regulation. The book urges pro-regulatory proponents to become informed about, and dispute, the details of cost-benefit analysis that work against them. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections. E. Kacapyr Ithaca College
Table of Contents
Prologue: Reason and Compassion | p. 1 |
Part I Decisions Are Made by Those Who Show Up | |
The Case for Cost-Benefit Analysis | p. 9 |
The Walls Go Up | p. 21 |
Missed Opportunities | p. 31 |
Winning the Good Fight (Sometimes) | p. 47 |
Part II Eight Fallacies of Cost-Benefit Analysis | |
Fallacy 1 All Unintended Consequences Are Bad | p. 55 |
Fallacy 2 Wealth Equals Health | p. 67 |
Fallacy 3 Older People Are Less Valuable | p. 77 |
Fallacy 4 People Cannot Adapt | p. 85 |
Fallacy 5 People Always Want to Put Off Bad Things | p. 95 |
Fallacy 6 We Are Worth More than Our Children | p. 107 |
Fallacy 7 People Value Only What They Use | p. 119 |
Fallacy 8 Industry Cannot Adapt | p. 131 |
The Sum of All the Fallacies | p. 145 |
Part III Instituting Regulatory Rationality | |
Regulatory Hurdles | p. 151 |
Shaky Foundation | p. 163 |
Rethinking OIRA | p. 171 |
Balancing the Scales | p. 185 |
Epilogue: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies | p. 191 |
Acknowledgments | p. 195 |
Notes | p. 197 |
Index | p. 237 |