The Ethics and Politics of Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis

The Ethics and Politics of Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis PDF Author: Karine Nyborg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136304738
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
Putting a price tag on the environment is controversial. This book discusses ethical and political aspects of environmental cost-benefit analysis: why controversies must be expected, why they should be taken seriously, and how they can be handled in practice. Cost-benefit analysis is commonly thought of as a method for ranking projects according to their contributions to social welfare. The starting point of the present book is different. Rather than providing a final ranking, the purpose of a project analysis is to enable participants in a democratic decision-making process to make their own well-founded rankings of projects, according to their own normative views. Since ethical and political views differ, the analysis should be useful as factual background for any reasonable social welfare judgement. This purpose faces the analyst with quite different challenges than the purpose of ranking projects. The argument of the book is based on economic theory, but with a strong emphasis on readability and applicability. It is aimed at those – economists and non-economists alike – who use or are faced with cost-benefit analysis and environmental valuation in their work: politicians, employees of ministries and regulatory agencies, students, journalists, consultants and researchers. No particular prior knowledge of economics is required.

The Ethics and Politics of Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis

The Ethics and Politics of Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis PDF Author: Karine Nyborg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136304738
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 135

Get Book

Book Description
Putting a price tag on the environment is controversial. This book discusses ethical and political aspects of environmental cost-benefit analysis: why controversies must be expected, why they should be taken seriously, and how they can be handled in practice. Cost-benefit analysis is commonly thought of as a method for ranking projects according to their contributions to social welfare. The starting point of the present book is different. Rather than providing a final ranking, the purpose of a project analysis is to enable participants in a democratic decision-making process to make their own well-founded rankings of projects, according to their own normative views. Since ethical and political views differ, the analysis should be useful as factual background for any reasonable social welfare judgement. This purpose faces the analyst with quite different challenges than the purpose of ranking projects. The argument of the book is based on economic theory, but with a strong emphasis on readability and applicability. It is aimed at those – economists and non-economists alike – who use or are faced with cost-benefit analysis and environmental valuation in their work: politicians, employees of ministries and regulatory agencies, students, journalists, consultants and researchers. No particular prior knowledge of economics is required.

Cost-benefit Analysis and Environmental Regulations

Cost-benefit Analysis and Environmental Regulations PDF Author: Daniel Swartzman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description


The Ethics and Politics of Environmental Cost-benefit Analysis

The Ethics and Politics of Environmental Cost-benefit Analysis PDF Author: Karine Nyborg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041558650X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Putting a price tag on the environment is controversial. The aim of this book is to discuss some of the ethical and political issues arising in the context of applied cost-benefit analysis and environmental valuation - and to do so using economic analysis, but in a language accessible to non-specialists. In particular, the author emphasizes the fundamental, but surprisingly often poorly understood distinction between normative and positive analysis, and the implications of this distinction for practical use of cost-benefit analyses.

Science Policy, Ethics, and Economic Methodology

Science Policy, Ethics, and Economic Methodology PDF Author: Kristin Shrader-Frechette
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400964498
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
If indeed scientists and technologists, especially economists, set much of the agenda by which the future is played out, and I think they do, then the student of scientific methodology and public ethics has at least three options. He can embrace certain scientific methods and the value they hold for social decisionmaking, much as Milton Friedman has accepted neoclassical econom ics. Or, he can condemn them, regardless of their value, much as Stuart Hampshire has rejected risk-cost-benefit analysis (RCBA). Finally, he can critically assess these scientific methods and attempt to provide solutions to the problems he has uncovered. As a philosopher of science seeking the middle path between uncritical acceptance and extremist rejection of the economic methods used in policy analysis, I have tried to avoid the charge of being "anti science". Fred Hapgood, in response to my presentation at a recent Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, said that my arguments "felt like" a call for rejection of the methods of risk-cost-benefit analysis. Not so, as Chapter Two of this volume should make eminently clear. All my criticisms are construc tive ones, and the flaws in economic methodology which I address are uncovered for the purpose of suggesting means of making good techniques better. Likewise, although I criticize the economic methodology by which many technology assessments (TA's) and environmental-impact analyses (EIA's) have been used to justify public projects, it is wrong to conclude that I am anti-technology.

Just Results

Just Results PDF Author: Ralph D. Ellis
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9780878406678
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
In Just Results, Ralph E. Ellis provides an authoritative solution to one of the major problems in the field of public policy. Until now, analysts and planners have had no practical or accurate means of incorporating qualitative social concerns into the traditional quantitative formulas used in policymaking. By introducing a justice factor--a quantitative measure for social values--Ellis opens the door for more balanced policy decisions. Using concrete, real-world examples, Ellis shows how policy analysts can better account for the use value--or practical measurable utility--of universally agreed-upon social benefits such as life, health, safety, and environmental preservation when making cost-benefit analyses. In this way, policymakers, and by extension, society as a whole, can avoid making unjust tradeoffs between important social values and comparatively frivolous economic benefits. Drawing on philosophical works on justice from Kant through John Rawls, this book is informed by a theoretical defense of distributive justice that emphasizes diminishing marginal utility, thus favoring the poor. Just Results is a stimulating and highly applicable book that will be of great interest to philosophers, political scientists, policy analysts and planners.

Values and Planning

Values and Planning PDF Author: Huw Thomas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351876171
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book brings together a group of distinguished international authors to analyze and comment upon the various roles of evaluation and valued ideas, in planning and education of planners. Topics covered include the nature of aesthetic judgement and of practical judgement, the implications for planning of various theories of environmental ethics, and the significance of key concepts such as heritage, justice, professional ethics and the public interest in orienting planning practice. Contributors relate their ideas about planning to a wide range of philosophical and social theories and debates, including feminist writings, discussions of post modernism, critical theory and the work of Anglo-American analytical philosophers. These essays will prove stimulating not only to planning theorists and practitioners, but to anyone interested in the way evaluations and key concepts contained in them can and should influence public policy.

Retaking Rationality

Retaking Rationality PDF Author: Richard L. Revesz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195368576
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
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 L. Revesz and Michael A. 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.

Cost-benefit Analysis and the Environment

Cost-benefit Analysis and the Environment PDF Author: Nick Hanley
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This lucid, up-to-date book takes a fresh look at the application of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to environmental problems ranging from wildlife protection to global warming. Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment is structured into two parts. Part one provides a critical up-to-date account of the theory and practice of CBA as applied to the environment. Part two focuses on a number of specific case studies, in particular ozone damage to agricultural crops, wilderness land use, recreation and nitrate pollution. The application of CBA to the greenhouse effect is used to illustrate the limitations of the method. The book summarizes the major problems CBA faces in environmental application. This book will be highly relevant for the growing number of undergraduate and post-graduate courses in environmental economics and management, as well as being of interest both to academics researching in these areas, and to other professionals concerned with project appraisal and the environment.

Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment Recent Developments

Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment Recent Developments PDF Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 926401005X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
An in-depth assessment of the most recent conceptual and methodological developments in cost-benefit analysis and the environment.

Environmental Ethics

Environmental Ethics PDF Author: Andrew Kernohan
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1770483527
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This book explains the basic concepts of environmental ethics and applies them to global environmental problems. The author concisely introduces basic moral theories, discusses how these theories can be extended to consider the non-human world, and examines how environmental ethics interacts with modern society’s economic approach to the environment. Online multiple-choice questions encourage the reader’s active learning.