Understanding Environmental Policy [second edition] 9780231537681

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART I. DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK
1. UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
2. A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ISSUE
PART II. APPLYING THE FRAMEWORK
3. WHY CAN’T NYC GET A CONGESTION CHARGE?
4. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR E-WASTE AND HOW CAN WE ENSURE ITS SAFE DISPOSAL?
5. WHY IS HYDROFRACKING CONTENTIOUS?
6. HOW CAN WE ASSESS THE RISKS OF, PREPARE FOR, AND SLOW CLIMATE CHANGE?
PART III. UNDERSTANDING, DEVELOPING, AND IMPLEMENTING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
7. WHAT HAS THE FRAMEWORK TAUGHT US ABOUT THESE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY PROBLEMS AND WHAT ELSE DO WE NEED TO KNOW?
8. CONCLUSIONS: IMPROVING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
References
Notes
Index

Citation preview

U N D E R S TA N D I N G E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y

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STEVEN COHEN

U N D ER STANDI NG EN V I R O N ME NTAL P O L I CY Second Edition

Columbia University Press New York

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Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2014 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cohen, Steven, 1953 September 6– Understanding environmental policy / Steven Cohen. — Second edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-16774-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-16775-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-53768-1 (ebook) 1. Environmental policy. 2. Environmental management. I. Title. GE170.C62 2014 363.7′0561—dc23 2013047695

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book is printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cover Image: Philippe Weisbecker Cover Design: Jordan Wannemacher References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

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CONTENTS

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Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments

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PART I . D E VE LO PI N G A F R A M EWO R K 1. U N D E R S TA N D I N G E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y

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Differing Perspectives on Environmental Policy 3 Developing a Framework to Help Understand Environmental Issues 4 Applying the Framework to a Set of Environmental Issues 5 Toward an Interdisciplinary Understanding of Environmental and Sustainability Policy 10 2 . A F R A M E WO R K F O R U N D E R STA N D I N G T H E E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y I S S U E Values

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Environmental Politics

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Science, Technology, and the Environment 32 Environmental Policy Design and Economic Factors as an Influence on Damaging Corporate and Private Behaviors 36 Environmental and Sustainability Management 48 Next Steps 53

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PART I I . APPLYI N G T H E F R A M EWO R K 57

3 . W H Y C A N ’ T N YC G E T A C O N G E ST I O N C H A R G E ? The Nature of the Problem: Traffic Gridlock and Congestion Pricing in New York City 57 Congestion Pricing as an Issue of Values 75 Congestion Pricing as a Political Issue 76

Congestion Pricing as an Issue of Science and Technology 78 Congestion Pricing as a Public Policy Design Issue 78 Congestion Pricing as a Management Issue

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Summary of the Multiple Dimensions of Congestion Pricing 80 Conclusions 81 4 . W H O I S R E S P O N S I B L E F O R E-WA ST E 82

A N D H O W C A N W E E N S U R E I TS S A F E D I S P O S A L ?

The Nature of the Problem: The Case of Electronic Waste 82 E-Waste Disposal as an Issue of Values 90 E-Waste Disposal as a Political Issue 94

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E-Waste Disposal as an Issue of Science and Technology E-Waste Disposal as a Public Policy Design Issue 100 E-Waste Disposal as a Management Issue 102 Summary of the Multiple Dimensions of Electronic Waste 103 Conclusions 105 5 . W H Y I S H Y D R O F R AC K I N G C O N T E N T I O U S ?

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The Nature of the Problem: Hydraulic Fracturing 106 Hydrofracking as an Issue of Values 118 Hydrofracking as a Political Issue 120 Hydrofracking as a Public Policy Design Issue 123 Hydrofracking as a Management Issue 125

125 Summary of the Multiple Dimensions of Hydrofracking 126 Conclusions 127 Hydrofracking as an Issue of Science and Technology

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CONTENTS

6 . H O W C A N W E A S S E S S T H E R I S K S O F, P R E PA R E F O R , A N D S LO W C L I M AT E C H A N G E ?

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The Nature of the Problem of Global Climate Change 128 Global Climate Change as an Issue of Values 138 Global Climate Change as a Political Issue 140 Global Climate Change as an Issue of Science and Technology 145 Global Climate Change as an Issue of Policy Design 148 Global Climate Change as a Management Issue 150 Global Climate Change: A Summary of Its Multiple Dimensions 151 Conclusions 153

PART I I I . UN D E R STAN D I N G, D EV ELO P I N G, A N D I M PLE M E N TI N G E N VI R ON M EN TA L P O L I C Y 7. W H AT H A S T H E F R A M E WO R K TAU G H T U S A B O U T T H E S E E N V I R O N M E N TA L S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y P R O B L E M S A N D W H AT E L S E D O W E N E E D TO K N OW ?

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A Summary of the Framework 159 Applying the Framework: What Did It Tell Us? 160 Values and Environmental Policy 163 Politics and Environmental Policy 166 Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy 168 The Design of Environmental Policy and the Impact of Economics on Environmental Policy 169 Implementing Environmental Sustainability Policy 170 Limitations to the Framework and Possible Modifications

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8 . C O N C LU S I O N S : I M P R OV I N G E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y

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Accomplishments of Environmental Governance 175 Improvements Needed

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Next Steps 189

193 Notes 205

References Index

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my effort to revisit the primer that I wrote about environmental policy nearly a decade ago. I thought it was time to reexamine the framework I developed for understanding environmental policy and to apply it to some newer, more contemporary cases, to see if the analytic framework remains useful. While I am biased, I think it still provides a useful way to explore this complex policy arena. I think it makes sense to understand environmental sustainability issues by examining them as issues of values, politics, policy design, science and technology, management capacity, and as a combination of several of these factors. In the first edition I applied the framework to the following cases: HIS VO LUME R EPR E SE N TS

• New York City’s waste management system • the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program • America’s leaking underground storage tanks • global climate change

In this edition I update the climate case and apply the framework to: • congestion pricing in New York City • hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, and • electronic waste

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I’ve now applied this framework to seven cases and have found it a useful way to understand the causes and effects of these sustainability problems and their proposed solutions. Public policy and sustainability management analysts know that one cannot begin to solve a problem until it is understood. This includes measurement of the problem’s dimensions and proposed solutions. One cannot manage something without measurement. Without measures, one cannot tell if the management actions taken are making matters better or worse. Without a deep conceptual understanding of the problem, the process of developing measures of its elements cannot begin. Think of the modern economy. We collect, analyze, and report a vast array of indicators, ranging from employment to consumer confidence to gross domestic product. Even then, our management of the economy is far from 100 percent successful. The economy is the collective actions of human beings within a system designed by human beings. The environment is exponentially more complex than the economy. We have the collective actions of humans in a system bounded by rules of ecology, physics, chemistry, and biology. This integration of human-made systems within natural systems is extraordinarily intricate, and we are only at the beginning of our understanding of its dimensions. Hopefully the framework offered in this study will help policymakers and analysts to navigate through this intricate mesh of natural, political, social, and scientific systems. In our very human arrogance, we somehow think that we are further along in understanding environmental problems than we actually are. The framework proposed here is not intended as the last word on the subject— far from it. It is only a small step in a conversation that has begun in earnest over the last half century. For me, it started in 1975, in Lester Milbrath’s seminar in environmental politics at the State University of New York at Buffalo. With his teaching assistant, Shel Kamieniecki, providing muchneeded additional guidance, Milbrath introduced me to such pivotal works as the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth, by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens II, and its less pessimistic successor Mankind at the Turning Point, by Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel. At that time, the issue of the planet’s health was new to me and seemed incredibly important. I was also exposed in that seminar to

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scholars who explored the deeper meaning of the environmental issue, such as Robert Heilbroner, author of An Inquiry Into the Human Prospect and its postscript, “What Has Posterity Ever Done for Me?” I began to explore the environment as a policy issue nearly four decades ago. In almost forty years of studying, teaching, and working in and around government, I still feel incredibly ignorant about environmental policy. Despite my sense of inadequacy in the face of this enormous issue, I think that time is running short. We must begin to codify what we know and develop a true profession of environmental management. Since 2001, I have helped build graduate programs at Columbia University in environmental science, policy and management, climate and society, sustainability management, and sustainable development. Perhaps this new academic arena provides some evidence that our exploration of and base of knowledge about environment issues are expanding. However, I once read a story that makes for an interesting analogy to our present position. There came a point at the start of the twentieth century when a visit to a physician’s office actually increased rather than decreased the probability of recovery and cure. Prior to that point, one was better off without treatment. In this field, I have days when I don’t think we’ve even opened up our office for professional practice. We may not even be at the stage of bleeding our patients to effect a cure. We have managed to reduce pollution, but are we introducing more toxics than we are cleaning? We have created more wealth and material consumption than our ancestors could have imagined, but is it sustainable? And what of the billion people on the planet who are living in dire and abject poverty? Still, what choice do we have but to try to address the issue of protecting the environment? Hope for the future is hardwired into the culture I was raised in, and I believe that some knowledge and understanding is better than none. A little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but no knowledge at all is far worse. The environment may be a complicated policy issue, but let’s do what we can to increase our understanding of it and improve its current condition. This book represents my best thinking on its dimensions. This second edition revisits a work I wrote in 2005. Please, feel free to tear it apart and improve it. I know it needs work, and I invite you to help.

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Though I have been interested in many other issues professionally, such as public management, organizational innovation, homelessness, welfareto-work, and public ethics, I find myself constantly returning to issues of environmental policy. Meeting the basic human biological necessities of breathing, drinking, and eating somehow always transcends other issues in importance. In one of President Kennedy’s most enlightened speeches, he declared that the danger of nuclear war, at its most fundamental level, is an environmental issue. More than fifty years later, I still find his thoughts moving and an appropriate coda to this preface: For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal. J O H N K E N N E DY, A M E R I C A N U N I V E R S I T Y, J U N E 1 0, 1 9 6 3

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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a journey from Brooklyn, New York, where I was raised, to Buffalo, New York, where I first learned about environmental policy, to Washington, D.C., where I worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as an employee and as a consultant, to Morningside Heights in New York City, where I have worked for Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) since 1981 and for the Earth Institute since 2002. It is a journey of exciting ideas, new policy and management concepts, some amazing people and wonderful work, and four decades of learning. Along the way I have worked with and for some wonderful people and learned about public policy, politics, public management, and environmental policy. In Buffalo, my teachers included Lester Milbrath, Sheldon Kamieniecki, Harry Klodowski, Jon Czarnecki, Richard Tobin, Frank De Giovanni, Marilyn Hoskin, Tony Khater, Fred Snell, and the incomparable Marc Tipermas. In Washington, I learned from a great number of people, among them Alan Altshuler, Ronald Brand, Bonnie Casper, Michael Cook, Michael Farber, Mary Ann Froelich, Thomas Ingersoll, James Janis, Tony Khater (again), Paul Light, Sylvia Lowrance, Andrew Mank, Sammy Ng, Robert O’Connor, Charles Smith, and once again as my boss in D.C., Marc

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Tipermas. This essay grew out of a lecture I gave at the Universidad Externado de Colombia in 1998, and I thank my good friend Professor Mauricio Perez Salazar for his encouragement and hospitality. Here in New York City, the number of people I’ve learned from is too large to list, but I’ll try to acknowledge some. They include my coauthor on most of my work in public management, and my very close friend, William Eimicke; Demetrios ( Jim) Caraley, the longtime editor of Political Science Quarterly, founding director of Columbia’s MPA program, and professor of political science; and Michael Crow, now the president of Arizona State University, founder of the Earth Institute and the person who challenged me to get back into environmental policy. I wish to thank a few brilliant senior staff who did such a good job of running things and telling me what to do that I was actually able to think and write: Dorothy Chambers, Nancy Degnan, Barbara Gombach, Yasmin Williams, Alison Miller, Louise Rosen, and Courtney Small. I am grateful for the support and advice I have received from the SIPA deans I’ve worked for: Harvey Picker, Al Stepan, John Ruggie, Lisa Anderson, John Coatsworth, and Merit Janow. I also wish to thank my inspirational and brilliant boss at the Earth Institute, Jeffrey Sachs, and my colleagues on the management team at the Earth Institute: David Dvorak, Carol Pooser, George Sarrinikolaou, and Sean Solomon. I owe a great debt to the public policy faculty I’ve worked with over the years, including Howard Apsan, the late Robert W. Bailey, Tom Banker, Satyajit Bose, Larry Brown, Kathleen Callahan, Steve Cameron, Robert Cook, Mayor David Dinkins, David Downie, Mel Dubnick, Ester Fuchs, Michael Gelobter, Lewis Gilbert, Adela Gondek, Mark Gordon, Tanya Heikkila, Robert Lieberman, David Maurrasse, Eileen McGinnis, Kathleen Molz, Richard Nelson, Ralph Nunez, Dan O’Flaherty, Alex Pfaff, Anne Reisinger, Elliot Sclar, Andrea Schmitz, Glenn Sheriff, Sara Tjossem, Fred Thompson, Jacob Ukeles, Harold Watts, Gary Weiskopf, and Paula Wilson. I wish to thank several environmental scientists I have worked closely with and learned from: Mark Cane, Ruth DeFries, Klaus Lackner, Upmanu Lall, Shahid Naeem, Matthew Palmer, Stephanie Pfirman, Peter Schlosser, and Jason Smerdon.

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I would like to thank my research assistants: Madeline Silva, Ivett Ortega, London Hammar, Liza Faber, Shayna Orens, and Valerie Giapoutzis. I continue to be grateful for the love and support of my family: my wonderful wife, Donna Fishman; my daughters, Gabriella Rose and Ariel Mariah; my parents, Marvin and Shirley; my brother, Robby; and my sisters, Judith and Myra. Steven Cohen New York City

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PART I DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK

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1 UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES O N E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y Environmental and sustainability policy is a complex and multidimensional issue. As Harold Seidman observed in Politics, Position, and Power: The Dynamics of Federal Organization, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” That is, one’s position in an organization influences one’s stance and perspective on the issues encountered. Similarly, one’s take on an environmental issue or the overall issue of environmental protection and sustainable economic development varies according to one’s place in society and the nature of one’s professional training. For example, to a business manager, the environmental issue is a set of rules one needs to understand in order to stay out of trouble. For the most part, environmental policy is a nuisance, or at least an impediment to profit. It is true that the development of the field and practice of sustainability management is changing corporate understanding of environmental resources; however, many business managers still see environmental stewardship as a set of conditions that impede, rather than facilitate, the accumulation of wealth. For now, most business practitioners see a conflict between environmental protection and economic development, though this view of a trade-off is false. To an engineer, the environmental problem is essentially physical and subject

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to solution through the application of technology. Engineers tend to focus on pollution control, pollution prevention (through changes in manufacturing processes or end-of-pipeline controls), energy efficiency, closed-system production, and other technological fixes. Lawyers view the environment as an issue of property rights, contracts, and the regulations that are needed to protect them. Economists perceive the environment as a set of market failures resulting from problems of consumption or production. They search for market-driven alternatives to regulation. Some understand the importance of protecting natural resources to maintain wealth, but many do not. Political scientists see environmental policy and sustainability as a political concern. To them, it is a problem generated by conflicting interests. Finally, for philosophers, the environment is an issue of values and differing worldviews. The environment is subject to explanation and understanding through all of these disciplines and approaches. It is, in fact, a composite of the elements identified by the various disciplines and societal positions, and has dimensions that exist at the intersection points of the disciplines and social perspectives. The difficulty is that each view tends to oversimplify environmental problems, contending with only one facet of the situation. Although such problems are multidimensional, different types of environmental issues are weighted toward different conceptual orientations. One view may explain a greater or lesser share of the problem than another. For example, the problem of electronic waste is not a technical issue, because we know how to safely remove toxics from discarded electronics; the technology need not be developed anew. Neither is it a problem of economics, for many of the parts of discarded electronics can be recycled for continued use. Rather, the fact that e-waste leaks into the environment is primarily a management problem: we have not developed the standard operating procedures needed in order to collect and safely recycle or dispose of this waste.

D E V E LO P I N G A F R A M E W O R K TO H E L P U N D E R S TA N D E N V I R O N M E N TA L I S S U E S The following chapters are intended to contribute to a conversation about the problem of environmental sustainability in general, as well as some spe-

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cific areas in greater detail. The environmental problem can be defined as the set of interconnected issues that determine the sustainability of the planet Earth for continued human habitation under conditions that promote our material, social, political, and spiritual well-being. In chapter 2, I develop a framework for understanding the dimensions of the environmental problem and solutions proposed to address the problem. The framework allows us to deconstruct particular environmental issues and programs to increase our understanding of the causes and effects of these issues and programs. The framework examines environmental issues as a multifaceted equation encompassing a variety of factors, including values, politics, technology and science, public policy design, economics, and organizational management. Each aspect of the framework illuminates a specific feature of the environmental issue and at the same time clarifies all the environmental issues examined here. Each separate issue, however, tends to find its main source of explanation in a single factor.

A P P LY I N G T H E F R A M E W O R K TO A S E T O F E N V I R O N M E N TA L I S S U E S With this rough framework on the table, I’ll apply it to a set of environmental policy issues. While any number of issues could have been selected, I tried to choose issues of policy import, which varied by the level of government most involved. I also tried to select issues I had experience in analyzing. In chapter 3 we will review an environmental issue that is driven by politics: New York City’s effort to enact a congestion pricing fee. In examining congestion pricing in New York City, I will be analyzing a policy with proven success elsewhere and comparing the experience in New York City to the successful implementation of congestion pricing in London, noting the differences and the lessons learned. Chapter 4 focuses on the emerging issue of e-waste, or electronic waste: the toxics from discarded computers and cell phones. E-waste is a global issue, yet local actors across many jurisdictions affect the outcome of e-waste. In the United States, no federal regulations exist to recycle e-waste, though a number of states have passed rules regulating it. Electronic waste is a multidimensional problem

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of management, science and technology, values, and politics. We will look at emerging strategies, including producer responsibility policies and corporate recycling programs. In chapter 5 we apply the framework to the issue of hydraulic fracturing of natural gas, commonly known as hydrofracking. Under the George W. Bush administration, this practice was exempted from prevailing federal regulation, requiring states to reluctantly and slowly step into the regulatory vacuum that resulted. In chapter 6, we present the book’s final case study as we apply the framework to climate change, an impact that is more difficult to project than many other environmental issues. The complexity in addressing this issue is due to the fact that the causes are global and the impacts are mostly in the future, making it challenging to address the issue politically. In chapter 7, I compare the issues and discuss the strengths and limitations of the framework, as well as identify some possible modifications. In chapter 8, I present some suggestions for improving environmental policy and moving toward sustainability. The issue of electronic waste management is an indicator of the increasing toxicity of the waste stream. In some cases, toxic substances are used in technological devices out of habit, and little or no effort has been made to produce the electronic device without these toxic components. Waste management in the United States is mainly an issue handled by local governments. While the U.S. government does regulate solid waste and hazardous waste management at the federal level, for the most part, municipal solid waste is considered an issue of local politics and policy. In the United States, hydraulic fracturing is an issue that involves all levels of government. However, because the federal government has been hesitant to take on the issue, state and local governments have assumed regulation. Similarly, when dealing with the issue of congestion pricing, New York City cannot regulate its own highways, as they are regulated by New York State. The problem then becomes one of charging people to drive their cars into a part of the state, which creates political issues when trying to get this pricing mechanism passed at the state level. With the same impulse that drove us to landfill our garbage, we assumed that once we buried old computers and cell phones underground,

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they were gone forever. Few of us knew how toxic this waste was, and even fewer understood how the toxics in electronic waste materials were transported through the ground, water, and air. Today, engineers have developed a field called industrial ecology, which has the goal of creating products without generating waste. In the early days of the era of mass production of laptops and cell phones, engineers paid almost no attention to the use of toxics when they designed production processes—“You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.” The rush to production and to new features could not be delayed by concern about the toxicity of the product once it was discarded as waste. In fact, until Deming demonstrated that higher-quality products were made with less waste of time, materials, and labor, most operations engineers and managers spent little time or effort attempting to reduce waste or pay attention to the toxicity of its content (Deming 1986). When we learned about toxic waste contamination in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we wanted to clean up the places that had been damaged, and prevent new waste sites from being created. When we learned about electronic waste in the past decade, we had to face up to the fact that some of the products that were most important to us contained toxics. We had no idea how much damage had already been done or how expensive and difficult, if not impossible, it would be to detoxify future cell phones and laptops. How did we create such a lethal technology? How did this issue reach the policy agenda? How was it defined? What did the electronic waste issue teach us about environmental problem solving? In many respects, electronic waste is simply a continuation of the general issue of toxic waste, which three decades ago led us to define environmental protection as a policy area concerned with human health. Environmental policy no longer focused exclusively on preserving mountain streams and protecting wildlife, but was also concerned about keeping poisons out of our land and water. What was the social, political, and economic impact of this change? How did it come about? In chapter 4 we will attempt to deconstruct the electronic waste problem into its component parts. It is not difficult to understand why “fracking” became a political issue. The hunger for energy in the United States is difficult to satisfy, and much

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of the natural gas in the Northeast’s Marcellus Shale sits beneath the property of people of modest means. Some property owners are eager to lease their land for drilling operations, while some of their neighbors worry about the potential for accidents and damage to the environment and their rural lifestyle. Meanwhile, the Bush administration encouraged unregulated hydraulic fracturing by allowing corporations to keep the chemical composition of their fracking fluid secret. How did this problem emerge as an environmental problem and as a public policy issue? Why does this problem persist? What can be done to address and solve the problem? Can this gas be extracted without damaging the environment? Problems like hydraulic fracturing remind us of the fragility of some ecosystems, and the ability that humans have to cause inadvertent damage to nature. While some environmental damage is a direct and unavoidable by-product of a production process, leaking gas wells and transportation accidents are caused by human and organizational management errors. Of course, it is possible to probe further and find deeper causes of damage from fracking. These are the value choices involved in our energy-dependent lifestyles. If we ask why we need so much energy in the first place, then we need to look into the factors that generated suburban sprawl, large living spaces, and energy-intensive home and transportation technologies. These relate to our values and preferences, and are influenced by culture, history, politics, technology, and economics. The final issue we will examine is the issue of global climate change. In many respects this is the most complex environmental problem ever faced. Earth’s biosphere is an extremely complicated system that science does not fully understand. We know that the planet has experienced non-humaninduced climate changes throughout time. We do not fully understand those natural cycles, and so in the 1970s and 1980s we were not certain if some of the changes we were noticing were human-made changes or natural ones. By the turn of the twenty-first century, scientific uncertainty was fading, and it was clear that the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and other gases such as methane from landfills were causing global warming. We know that pollution in one part of the planet can have an impact on another place far away. Some of the air pollution from power plants in the

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Midwest impairs the air quality in New York City. Still, there are clear limits to the degree of global impact from air pollution. My home city doesn’t appear to get air pollution from Mexico City or Hong Kong, but some of our pollution originates in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts of Illinois. Climate change is the first environmental issue that we know about that is truly global in character. Carbon dioxide emitted from an SUV in suburban Houston contributes to raising temperatures planet-wide. This is not to say that greenhouse gas is our only global environmental problem; it is simply the first one that scientists have managed to bring to widespread public attention. While toxic waste is an issue that can be addressed at the local level, a local approach to climate change can work only if it is part of an effort coordinated throughout the world. The need for action on a global scale presents a challenge to our international system of diplomacy. Upon reflection, it appears that technology has posed at least three threats to the viability of the nation-state. The historic origin of the nation-state derives from the need for security and the ability of this form of governance to provide that security. Threat number one came with the development of the atomic bomb. Nuclear proliferation challenges the nation state’s capacity to provide security. Threat number two came from the development of the Internet, containerized and air shipping, bar codes, microcomputers and satellite communication. The technology that has made the global economy possible has had the effect of impairing national economic self-determination. Threat number three comes from the way we generate energy for electricity, climate control, and transport. That technology has resulted in excessive releases of carbon dioxide, may cause other forms of global ecological damage, and has reduced the effectiveness of national environmental policy. In chapter 6, we will analyze the origin and impact of the climate change issue. We will attempt to characterize the issue and identify its key elements. The impact of climate change is more difficult to project than is the impact of many other environmental issues. The introduction of a chemical pollutant into the environment can be tracked and its effects on human and ecological health can be measured. Climate change will cause a set of changes that are difficult to predict. Some areas may actually benefit from improved agricultural productivity that results from warmer weather and

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increased rainfall. Other areas could suffer from sea level rise, and still others could be damaged by drought. The impacts will vary in ways that are difficult to predict, and will not resemble the patterns we have seen with other environmental issues.

TO WA R D A N I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A RY U N D E R S TA N D I N G O F E N V I R O N M E N TA L A N D S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y P O L I C Y The goal of the framework presented here is to engage in a conversation across disciplines. Anyone who seriously seeks to understand environmental policy must learn a modest amount of science, engineering, political science, economics, organizational management, and some things about a variety of other fields as well. Unfortunately, the power and dominance of individual academic disciplines make it difficult for these conversations to take place with the rigor and intensity that we see within disciplines. The explicitly interdisciplinary framework I propose in this book should be seen as an invitation for those with particular disciplinary expertise to critique the framework and improve it. The goal is to develop a more powerful set of tools for understanding this complex issue. This is a theme I will return to in the concluding chapter of the book.

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E

the boundaries of sovereign states and, in the case of global climate change, affect natural systems that are worldwide in scope. The environmental problem has a great number of dimensions, all linked to the inescapable fact that human beings are biological entities, dependent on a limited number of resources for survival. As Earth’s population continues to grow, so too does the stress on finite natural systems and resources. Yet our ability to use information and technology to expand the planet’s carrying capacity also continues to grow. This book is a brief exploration into the fundamental issues of environmental policy. It presents and applies a preliminary or rough framework for a multidimensional analysis of environmental sustainability issues. The cases analyzed range from the issue of hydrofracking to the complex scientific controversy of global climate change. The cases vary by technical complexity, level of government involvement, and scope of potential impact. They are selected to illustrate the usefulness of examining them from these vantage points. Other cases could easily be selected. In this book’s first edition, I presented three other cases: underground tanks, toxic waste cleanup, and New York City’s garbage problem. The framework itself is a work in progress. It provides a method for looking at environmental issues from more than one perspective. By applying the framework to specific cases, a

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practitioner, student, or analyst is able to observe aspects of the issue that might otherwise be easily ignored. For purposes of this analysis, an environmental sustainability problem is conceptualized as: • A values issue: In what type of ecosphere do we wish to live, and how does our lifestyle affect that ecosphere? To what extent do environmental problems and the policy approaches we take reflect the way in which we value ecosystems and the value we place on material consumption? • A political issue: Which political processes can best maintain environmental quality and the economic sustainability of the planet’s resources, and what are the political dimensions of this environmental problem? How has the political system defined this problem and set the boundaries for its potential solution? • A technology and science issue: Can science and technology solve environmental problems as quickly as it creates them? Do we have the science in place to truly understand the causes and effects of this environmental problem? Does the technology exist to solve the environmental problem and/or mitigate its impacts? • A policy design and economic issue: What public policies are needed to reduce environmentally damaging behaviors? How can corporate and private behavior be influenced? What mix of incentives and disincentives seems most effective? What economic factors have caused environmental damage and stimulated particular forms of environmental policy? Economic forces are one of the major influences on the development of environmental problems and the shape of environmental policy. In this framework, we view these economic forces as part of the more general issue of policy design. While most of the causes and effects of policy are economic, some relate to other factors, such as security and political power. • A management issue: Which administrative and organizational arrangements have proven most effective at protecting the environment and promoting sustainable economic production? Do we have the organizational capacity in place to solve the environmental problem and develop a sustainable high throughput economy?

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This multifaceted framework is delineated as an explicit corrective to analysts who narrowly focus on one or two dimensions of an environmental problem. Next, there is a discussion of policy and management approaches typically used to “solve” environmental problems. The proposed framework is then applied to a set of environmental problems and solutions that demonstrate specific issues of values, politics, science and technology, policy design, economics, and organizational management. This approach owes its origin to Graham Allison’s classic work The Essence of Decision (Allison 1971; Allison and Zelikow 1999). Allison posits three models, or ways, of examining the events of the Cuban missile crisis: the rational actor, organizational process, and governmental politics. He provides different explanations for the events of the crisis depending upon which model he applies to interpret events.1 He provides an image of an analytic method that I have always found useful, that of “snapping in” an analytic lens in front of our eyes to enable us to interpret events or “facts” through the vantage point offered by that lens. In the case of the missile crisis, the “rational actor” model explains the placement of missiles in Cuba as an act of a rational, goal-seeking decision maker. The “governmental politics” model focuses on the political competition among stakeholders for power, thus explaining the placement of missiles and the U.S. response in terms of the competition for political power. Finally, the “organizational process” model highlights the impact of organizational routine and standard operating procedures in constraining the rationality of decision making. Similar to the concepts applied by Allison, the framework I propose here also calls for the application of different vantage points when assessing environmental problems, policies, and programs in order to shed light on their different dimensions. The image of snapping a lens into place, like the apparatus used by an optician to test improvements in vision gained by particular lens prescriptions, is what I borrow from Allison’s classic work and in a preliminary fashion apply to a set of environmental issues. The power of this approach is that the same facts are reinterpreted from several perspectives and different facts are brought to light by the different dimensions of the framework. One purpose of this framework is to counter analytic bias deep within the way we understand environmental problems. Economists frequently

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misunderstand the issues of environmental science, ecology, and technology; engineers often ignore the political factors affecting environmental policy; and just about everyone forgets about issues of ethics and values. Lip service to the notion that environmental problems are inherently interdisciplinary does little to amend the tendency to assume that one’s own discipline is the central one. When analyzing an environmental issue, ignoring other fields is an obstacle to improved solutions. The strength of this proposed framework is that it can be used to understand the causes of environmental problems and the way they are defined on our society’s systemic and institutional policy agenda, as well as their evolution over time. Each dimension of the framework illuminates a different aspect of the problem, and as will be demonstrated through the case studies used in later sections, the nature of each problem is weighted more toward certain dimensions than others.

VA LU E S Environmental ethics is the most important of the five dimensions we will examine. Ideas about our relationship to the ecological environment derive from our concept of property and a definition of nature as a resource to be used for human material well-being. The domination or taming of the environment has long been a theme in the development of Western politics, economics, society, and religion. In fact, it is central to the definition of what we have termed “civilization.” Civilization involves human mastery over the other species and the development of surplus wealth and leisure time needed for thought, reflection, and the transmission of learning. To the extent that we are successful, the natural environment is something that is available for our use: a set of resources to be consumed. We are more dependent on natural systems than we once thought. We now know we do not have the ability to supplant resources and simultaneously maintain a high-quality existence, as that notion is currently defined. We need ecological systems. Our technology is not sophisticated enough to do without them. The pragmatic argument is compelling, but it is not

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the only line of reasoning. For instance, according to some environmental philosophers, our very arrogance may be at the heart of the environmental problem. In order to address the root of our environmental problems, they suggest, we must redefine our relationship with the environment and stop looking at other species as resources (Leopold 1949). Although this may be true, it is unlikely that the planet’s more than seven billion people will seriously contemplate a return to nature. With more than 50 percent of our population now urban, such a return to nature is no longer feasible. Moreover, other values-based goals that we hope to achieve, such as equity, justice, family, and education, preclude a radical redefinition of our relationship to the biosphere. Given the current worldwide disparity in wealth, it is difficult to halt economic development and its associated environmental impacts. Instead, some analysts forecast that economic development will result in demographic transitions that reduce population growth and increase the public’s stake in protecting the environment (Cohen 1995:47). The idea is that increasing levels of economic development lead to decreased demand and supply of labor, and increased demand and supply of capital. Thus, while in developing nations, children (who represent added labor capacity) are perceived as essential for economic and old age survival, in developed nations children are “decorative” and an economic liability; therefore, there is less economic incentive to have children in developed nations. According to this theory, only economic development can bring population stability to the planet (Ophuls and Boyan 1992:46). The language of economic development in recent years has incorporated the notion of sustainability, which is another way of saying development with sensitivity to environmental impacts. The hope of development advocates is that a fully developed world with low population growth would prove less detrimental to environmental quality than the partially developed world in which we now live. The desire for economic development is an expression of values. A good life, as we now understand it, includes a high level of resource consumption. It is unrealistic to assume that this concept will change. Though the Western pattern of consumption may disgust some in principle, its seductiveness and appeal are demonstrated facts of modern life. What, then, is the goal

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of environmental politics and policy? I would argue that it is one that has evolved over time, since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970 to deal with the problems of degradation of the natural environment. Environmentalism in the United States has roots in late-nineteenthcentury anti-urbanism, transcendentalism, and the desire to preserve the productivity of the land for future generations (Rubin 2000:159). In the beginning, concern for the environment was an aesthetic issue and an issue of lifestyle. It included a preference for the virtues of an agrarian and/or rural way of life. Some saw cities as corrupt and evil, in contrast to green open spaces, which could cleanse the soul and stimulate virtuous living. When the EPA was created, it was primarily an anti-air-and-water-pollution agency. Nearly all of the staff in the newly created agency came from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare’s (HEW) air-and-waterpollution-control units. Dirty air and water were regarded as vaguely unhealthy, but decidedly unsightly. As the EPA’s mission expanded in the 1970s, it started to work on other issues, such as solid waste, that resulted from urban environmental problems. With the passage of the toxic waste cleanup Superfund program in 1980, the environmental issue began to be defined as a public health issue. Pollution was not just ugly; it could make you sick. This human health orientation continued throughout the 1980s. In the early 1990s, we again saw a shift as the focus turned to international environmental problems, especially global climate change. As holes in the ozone and global warming were discovered, the definition of the environmental problem expanded to include a concern for the viability of the planet itself. In the past decade, the field has continued to evolve, embracing a concern for sustainable economic growth. Environmental protection is no longer concerned exclusively with pollution created at the “end of the pipe”; it now also addresses production using renewable resources and production processes that do not degrade the environment. This “sustainability” perspective is transforming the environmental issue into one that is centrally related to economic development. In each of these definitions of the agency’s mission, the concern has been, and will remain, the protection and advancement of human well-being. We

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protect the environment in order to make sure we don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Our taste for golden eggs—that is, for economic consumption—continues to grow. The environmental ethic under which we operate requires us to maintain the biosphere for our descendants, not because we care about them, but because environmental deterioration reduces our ability to consume things we desire, such as wholesome, tasty food, fresh air, clean water, and coastal cities that are not submerged because of global warming. Some have argued that the environmental problem requires a change in the dominant social and political paradigms, and a fundamental change in how we view politics, the environment, and one another. Such dramatic shifts in paradigm are neither necessary nor feasible (Milbrath 1984:81). Instead, environmental policy has focused and will continue to focus on developing less-destructive methods of fulfilling the current consumer ethic. Today’s environmentalism results in changed consumption patterns, not a reduction of consumption. For example, compare Internet surfing to cruising around in a gas-guzzling automobile. Ultimately, it does not mean a reduction in economic consumption, and it certainly has not resulted in a reduction in this nation’s waste stream. Total production of solid waste in the United States has grown from 2.68 pounds per person per day in 1960 to 4.43 pounds per person per day in 2010 (U.S. EPA 2010b). But during that same period of time, recycling grew from 5.6 million tons per year, or less than 10 percent of total wastes, to approximately 80 million tons per year, or 34 percent of the waste stream (U.S. EPA 2010b). This is additional evidence of the changed nature of consumption and waste management patterns, while consumption continued to increase. In sum, the environmental ethic that has had the greatest impact in the last four decades, at least in the United States and other developed countries, has been a form of enlightened self-interest. In this value system, environmental protection is not traded off against the value of economic consumption. Though it is actually another form of consumerism and does not signify a break in the culture of consumerism, it has resulted in greater popular awareness of environmental issues in general.

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A P P LY I N G T H E VA L U E S D I M E N S I O N O F T H E F R A M E W O R K

When applying the framework to enhance your understanding of an environmental issue, you investigate the various dimensions in any order you choose. I like to begin with values because they seem fundamental to me. To apply this dimension, you would pose a number of questions. Some may not be answerable, but some will always be of use: • Does the issue stem from a behavior fundamental to our lifestyle? • Are issues of right and wrong and/or justice raised by the creation of the problem, or by particular proposed solutions? • Does the problem or solution require a trade-off between ecological wellbeing and human well-being? • Does the process that created the problem, and/or the proposed solution to the problem, cause conflicts with ethical and/or religious concepts or precepts? • Does the problem or its proposed solution raise fundamental issues of conflicting values? • Can the issue be addressed without facing its fundamental value conflict? Can progress still be made?

Addressing some of these questions will illuminate the value dimension of the issue. It will allow you to see this aspect of the problem and place it in perspective. All policy issues have a values dimension. The analytic task is to determine how fundamental the value is, how important it is, and whether it conflicts with other closely held values. The purpose of applying the framework is to understand the environmental problem as a policy issue. The values lens can provide insight into the potential intensity of the issue’s political conflict and its saliency and importance as a political issue.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I T I C S Although the environment as a political issue has not resulted in a major shift in the dominant social and political paradigm, it has added a signifi-

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cant new set of considerations to the policy formulation process. The environmental issue has made significant demands on our political processes and institutions. Americans have called for political processes that develop a consensus about the definition of environmental quality and make decisions about methods for achieving environmental goals. In recent years, we have seen an effort to combine economic development and environmental protection under the broad rubric of sustainability management. In the past forty years, this political process has facilitated a high degree of social learning in the United States. The learning process will continue because new information on human-induced change and ecological conditions is continually becoming available. This information will need to be summarized, disseminated, and understood by decision makers and the broader public in order for policy to adapt to changing conditions. The issue of environmental politics is closely connected to the issue of economic development and worldwide income distribution. Environmental and sustainability policy is about individual and collective patterns of resource deployment, consumption, and degradation. Put simply, we must learn enough about the biosphere to make sure that in our use of it we do not irreversibly degrade or destroy it. Once we know the types of behaviors required to sustain the environment, we must organize ourselves to perform those behaviors. This learning process creates winners and losers. The assignment and distribution of benefits and costs create political conflict that both impedes and distorts social learning. People and interest groups sometimes present environmental information that is partial or misleading to serve their own particular interests (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993). Consequently, environmental and sustainability policy never appears as a seamless progression from scientific discovery to implemented public policy. Rather, it looks like a meandering series of disjointed incremental steps, very much like the type of policymaking described by David Braybrooke and Charles Lindblom (1963) in A Strategy of Decision. The decision-making strategy they described is “remedial,” “serial,” and “exploratory.” Policymakers move away from problems rather than toward solutions. Braybrooke and Lindblom (1963:104) observed that “analysis and evaluation are socially fragmented, that is they take place at a very large number of points in a society. Analysis

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of any given problem area, and of possible policies for solving the problem, are often conducted in a large number of centers.” Many environmental scientists and advocates lament the messiness of this type of policy process and believe it is inadequate to the task of addressing long-term, interconnected, large-scale problems such as protecting the environment and making the transition to a renewable economy. In this view, partial answers cannot address the root causes of environmental and sustainability problems. Many environmental advocates criticize incremental environmental policy and the pace of the transition to sustainability management, but are unable to suggest truly viable alternatives. It is not likely that people in developed nations will slow down the input of information, reduce consumption, and get back to the land. It is not realistic to eliminate pluralistic, interest-dominated politics. Certainly even a benign environmental totalitarianism is not a viable alternative form of politics. Mass participatory democracy seems equally unlikely— and might not protect the environment. Meeting the short-term needs of the mass public could pollute the planet, and as orderly as totalitarianism looks on the surface, resistance to authoritarianism is a virtual certainty. In other words, we are stuck with the messy, partial, and incremental politics that is characteristic of Western democracy. We will need to work within the current political framework if we are going to protect the environment and promote sustainable development. Even if we were able to achieve a perfect understanding of the environment and the effect of human interaction upon it, our social and political processes cannot absorb and act on the volume and complexity of that information. The exception would be a genuine crisis. Normal politics and incremental policymaking can be suspended for a time during a crisis. In the United States during World War II, for example, the government spent nearly 46 percent of the gross national product (GNP) (U.S. Department of Commerce 1994), and certain civil liberties were suspended. In the weeks after the World Trade Center was destroyed, partisan politics was replaced by an unusual degree of national unity and patriotism. However, crisis management politics and wartime mobilization cannot be sustained indefinitely. Eventually, normal politics resume. Unfortunately, the difficulty with the

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environmental problem is that if we get to a crisis point, it may be too late to solve the problem. The answer, to the extent that there is an answer, is to organize politics to accelerate the learning and decision-making process. We need a more rapid incremental political process. Environmental and sustainability management issues must be raised and discussed through the electronic media, public education programs, and active efforts to elicit citizen participation in policymaking. Worldwide environmental education has grown exponentially since 1970 (U.S. EPA 1996:3). In developed countries, young people are raised to understand facts about the biosphere that were unknown when today’s Baby Boomers were young. On the other hand, fear of environmental damage has resulted in the reflexive “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) syndrome that sometimes produces greater total environmental impacts in order to avoid lesser impacts to a more powerful or better organized local constituency. In the United States one result of increased levels of environmental concern and literacy has been a series of successful efforts to protect the environment. As EPA data indicate in figure 2.1, pollution in the United States has decreased dramatically, while population and GDP growth have continued. The irrational, nonanalytic decision making and political process in the United States has brought about a successful reduction in key pollutants. This does not mean that the environmental problem is solved or has gone away; rather it means that we are “moving away from the problem.” Although I cannot state it definitively, I believe that the problems of environmental degradation and solid-waste management in the United States are slightly less severe in 2013 than in 1993. How did we make this progress? In what type of political process did the United States engage? The environment and sustainability management, over time, achieved status on the political agenda. The definition of environmental politics has changed, but it has resisted a number of concerted attacks on its legitimacy, and now appears to be a permanent fixture on the political agenda. To understand environmental policy one must understand the agendasetting process. Why do some issues that reach the agenda get acted on

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220

GDP

200

212%

180 160

167%

Vehicle Miles Traveled

140 120 100 80

40

52% Population Energy Consumption

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32% C02 Emissions

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45%

0 -20 -40 -68%

-60 -80 1970 F IG U R E 2 .1

1995

2000

2005

Aggregate Emissions (six common pollutants)

2011

Environmental Improvements/Economic and Population Growth Source: Adapted from U.S. EPA. 2012b. “Air Quality Trends.”

while others, through a process that has been termed non-decision making, are ignored (Bachrach and Baratz 1970:44)? Issues can also be denied agenda status altogether, by denying them legitimacy. Typically, powerful interests in a society define an issue as illegitimate not by responding to it substantively but by using their control of the agenda to ensure that it is never heard. For many years, issues such as race and gender bias simply could not be heard. In their book Participation in American Politics, Roger Cobb and Charles Elder (1983) took the issue of the policy agenda even further and divided the political agenda into systemic and institutional dimensions. An issue that can be discussed obtains status on the systemic agenda as a legitimate issue. It then must “travel” to the institutional agenda, where it is seen as a legitimate object of government policymaking. Non-decision making is most effective and least visible in keeping items off of the systemic agenda. But it also can be used more overtly to keep issues off of the institutional agenda (Cobb and Elder 1983).

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The environment reached the national arena in the United States in several stages. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle (1971) popularized the concept of a global ecosphere threatened by human economic activity such as the application of pesticides and nuclear testing. After the 1968 presidential elections, the environment began to enter the national political agenda in Washington, D.C. During the 1968 campaign, Maine senator Edmund Muskie carried himself so well as a vice-presidential candidate that he was immediately considered a front-runner for the 1972 presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Muskie’s major issue was protecting the environment, and in 1969 and 1970 he pushed for the passage of an air pollution control act that would set national standards for ambient air quality ( Jones 1975:175–182). Though this idea was initially opposed by industry, President Nixon came to support a national air quality bill as a way of countering Muskie’s growing political strength. Nixon and others also saw the environment as a safer, less contentious issue than the war in Vietnam. Though some political analysts at the time viewed Nixon’s support of the environment as a way to distract people from the Vietnam War, it was an important step on the road to formalizing environmental policy and one that was introduced through the American political machine. The U.S. EPA was established during the Nixon administration through executive order, not through an act of Congress. This, along with the enactment of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the 1970 Clean Air Act (CAA), provided President Nixon with an environmental record to counter Senator Muskie’s in the 1972 campaign. In the end, Muskie failed as a presidential candidate, and with a weak challenge from George McGovern in 1972, Nixon felt confident enough to veto the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which was subsequently enacted over his veto. Despite Nixon’s action on the water bill, in the 1970s the environment was typically seen as a foolproof, popular political issue. With the exception of the early years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, environmental protection has continued to be seen as a straightforward issue for politicians. Nowadays, no politico can afford to be perceived as anti-environmental. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, conservative Republicans from the western part of the United States developed an anti-environmental ideology

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based on the issue of property rights (Layzer 2002:242). In exchange for their support of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, they were given the Department of the Interior ( James Watt) and the EPA (Anne Gorsuch, later Burford) to manage. To Reagan’s White House team, these were relatively unimportant ministries, so they did not pay a great deal of attention to the selection of the secretary of the interior or the administrator of the EPA. The appointments were used to repay political debts. Moreover, Reagan’s senior advisors assumed that popular support for the environment was diminishing. The environment was no longer appearing on the “top ten list” of issues cited by the American public as “important” in public opinion polling. Environmental interest groups recognized the threat to the gains of the 1970s and organized a campaign of opposition that culminated in the resignation of Anne Burford and her replacement by William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the EPA (Kraft and Vig 1990:3). It turned out that the Republican political leadership had misread the polling data. The environment had become a less pressing issue among voters because average Americans thought that reasonable progress was being made to clean up pollution, not because they had lost interest. When it became clear that the leaders of the EPA and the Department of the Interior were attacking some of the programs that had brought those gains, the environment’s importance rating in national polls rebounded to levels as high or higher than in the early 1970s (Mitchell 1984:56). Recognizing that it had landed on the wrong side of this issue, and with the 1984 presidential election approaching, the Reagan administration moderated its views, forced out some of the most visible right-wing environmental leaders, and allowed gradual environmental progress to resume. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, President George W. Bush also struggled with his image on environmental issues. In early 2002, the American public was not sure where President Bush stood on environmental issues. He wasn’t yet defined in the public mind as anti-environment. Christine Todd Whitman, Bush’s first EPA administrator and former governor of New Jersey, was a moderate with a reasonable environmental record. Her appointment to the EPA was an indication that the lessons of the mid-1980s had not been lost on President Bush and his political team. His

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second EPA administrator, former Utah governor Michael O. Leavitt, was also an environmental moderate. His third administrator, Stephen Johnson, was an environmental scientist and a twenty-year veteran of the EPA. However, by 2003 Bush began to slip into an anti-environmental position. Indeed, by the end of 2003, George W. Bush had become the most antienvironmental president since the creation of the EPA. At the start of his second term, this pattern continued, though he made occasional efforts to paint himself as an environmentalist. Although his administration came into office determined to avoid the mistakes that the Reagan administration had made in environmental policy and politics, they were unable to do so. From its Clear Skies legislation, which would slow down the national air cleanup to its Healthy Forests initiative, which would damage the nation’s wildlife and forest ecosystems, the Bush administration engaged in a series of subtle attacks on the rules regulating protection of the environment. Congressman Tom Allen of Maine called Clear Skies “a classic case of chutzpah, a triumph of marketing over substance, if I have ever heard of one” (2004). Sierra Club president Carl Pope commented that the Healthy Forests Restoration Act “will certainly succeed in propping up the timber industry” ( Jalonick 2003). The public relations terminology used to describe these bills, coupled with revelations in 2003 of White House efforts to tone down the EPA’s warnings about air pollution from the destruction of the World Trade Center, were examples of the administration’s lack of fervor on environmental issues. Not only did the first term of President George W. Bush witness an effort to reduce the scope of environmental law, it also reduced enforcement of existing laws. On November 5, 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency dropped investigations into fifty power plants for past violations of the Clean Air Act, a scaling back that at the time was predicted to reduce investment in cleanup equipment by between $10 billion and $20 billion. In response, New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer, along with a number of his colleagues in other northeastern states, decided to continue legal action (without the federal government) to push these utilities to clean their emissions (Barcott 2004:38). Although most Americans favored the Bush administration’s environmental stance in 2001 and 2002, support for

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its environmental leadership fell to 44 percent in April of 2003 and continued to decline, to 41 percent in 2004 and 39 percent in 2005 (Gallup Organization 2005a, b, c). The environment’s political power tends to lie dormant as long as the public perceives that leaders are serious about promoting pro-environmental policies. However, once a leader is no longer credible on the environment, the issue gains in urgency and importance, and can rise in national polls. The controversy over both Utah governor Michael Leavitt’s 2003 and Stephen Johnson’s 2005 nominations as EPA administrator was a  reflection of the president’s reduced credibility on the environment. Even though Governor Leavitt was considered an environmental moderate, and Johnson was a well-regarded environmental professional, Democrats and environmentalists delayed their appointments as a way of focusing attention on the administration’s weak environmental record (Stout 2005). The Obama administration focused less on pure environmental protection regulation and more on the transition to a sustainable, renewable economy through vehicle emissions policy, climate regulation, and funding of renewable energy projects. On January 27, 2009, President Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency to allow individual states to set stricter tailpipe emissions regulations than the federal standard. The Obama administration finalized standards in August 2012 that will increase fuel economy to the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks by model year 2025. Previous standards set by the Obama administration raised average fuel efficiency by 2016 to the equivalent of 35.5 miles per gallon. Obama signed H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, into law on February 17, 2009, which provided $54 billion in funds to encourage domestic renewable energy production, make federal buildings more energy-efficient, improve the electricity grid, repair public housing, and weatherize modest-income homes. Environmental issues do not typically decide elections because most people assume that just as all elected leaders promote security and safety, they also promote environmental protection. The need to breathe clean air and drink safe water isn’t politically controversial. Political analysts often confuse the lack of passion behind the issue with a lack of public interest

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or concern. That is a mistake. I find that more and more people born since the mid-1980s have internalized aspects of an environmental ethos, and that awareness will soon have a major impact on American politics. While Gallup continues to poll on what I consider the false trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection, even its data report growing environmental awareness, especially among young people. A recent Gallup poll reported: “For the fifth consecutive year, more Americans are interested in protecting economic growth than in protecting the environment when the two goals are at odds. This year’s 48% to 43% split represents a relatively narrow advantage for the economy, similar to last year’s reading. But the latest result contrasts with 2011, when a record-high 54% chose the economy as the higher priority.” The item is based on a false premise, asking survey respondents to react to this question: “With which one of the following statements do you most agree? Protection of the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth; or, economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.” The connection of environmental quality to economic growth, a central tenet of the concept of sustainability management, is ignored by this question. Environmental protection is not something you must sacrifice for economic growth; it is a key source of economic growth. This is a lesson that China is rapidly learning, and that some Americans learned when we spent hundreds of billions on toxic waste cleanup. When the environment suffers, it costs money when we eventually get around to cleaning up the damage. If we hadn’t damaged it in the first place, the money devoted to cleanup could have been used to do something else. Moreover, essential environmental resources such as air and water cannot be used once they are poisoned. If these resources are damaged, they must be filtered before they are used, and the cleansing process requires a lot of energy and money. The Gallup poll question treats the “environment” as if it’s a visitor from outer space, instead of the air, water, and soil that human beings require to remain alive. While short-run corporate profits can be made by exploiting natural resources, real economic growth requires high environmental quality to both attract investment and keep our food and water prices affordable.

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It is clear from the Gallup data that when the economy is doing well, more people favor breathing healthy air and drinking clean water. When the economy falters, people favor economic growth over just about anything. Until the economic crash of 2008, Americans always favored “environment” when asked this question. The trade-off choice was just as false then, but the response to the poll is certainly statistically valid and is an accurate measure of the public’s response to the question. While Americans are willing to trade off the environment for economic growth, the response to this flawed question varies significantly by age. Young people, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, favor the environment over economic growth by 49 percent to 45 percent. As Americans age, they increasingly select the economy over the environment, with the oldest Americans, those sixty-five and older, favoring economic growth by 53 percent to 37 percent. Gallup has also polled about government’s role in protecting the environment, and has found that “Americans tilt toward the view that the government is doing too little to protect the environment—at 47%—while 16% say it is doing too much. Another 35% say the government’s efforts on the environment are about right. These views have not changed much since 2010, although Americans in most years between 1992 and 2006 were more likely than they are today to say the government was doing too little to protect the environment.” While the responses still indicate that average Americans would like to see a stronger government role in protecting the environment, it is not clear if the question is measuring attitudes toward environmental protection or attitudes toward government. The poll reports that 27 percent of all Republicans believe that government is doing too much to protect the environment as compared to 2 percent of all Democrats. I suspect that this poll would find a similar gap between the parties on the role of government in many areas of public policy. In my view, the questions posed by Gallup are not tapping into the change that is under way. My sense is that many young people have a deep fear that the planet they will inherit from the rest of us may be damaged beyond repair. They do not necessarily see its repair as a function of gov-

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ernment, especially our national government. Instead, they are looking for change at the community and municipal level. The fact that young people are moving away from suburbs and back to cities is in part a rejection of a lifestyle that they suspect may not be sustainable. The cars, lawns, and costs of cooling and heating large suburban homes are replaced by biking, walking, mass transit, and smaller apartments where heating and cooling costs tend to be lower. This is not to say that young Americans are rejecting consumption—far from it—but they are looking to consume in a different way. These emerging consumption patterns reflect their concerns about environmental sustainability. The growing number of people biking to work and shopping at local green markets is an indicator of this change. The number of cities, nonprofits, and corporations engaged in sustainability initiatives is another indicator. People and institutions are thinking about their use of natural resources and energy and the impact of their consumption on the planet. That trend is most pronounced among young people, and that social change will gain momentum as they age. The generation that grew up in the first part of the twenty-first century will be coming to power in the coming decades. They have grown up with a concern about the sustainability of our economy and the health of our ecosystem. The issue of environment and sustainability has already moved from the fringe of political awareness and our policy agenda to its center. In the next decade, this will only increase as the sustainability generation comes of age. Public support for environmental protection runs deep in this country, cutting across every demographic category (Gallup Organization 2005a, b, c). Nevertheless, climate change as an issue was largely absent from the 2012 presidential election until Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast. President Obama stopped campaigning to head the federal emergency response, and Romney halted his campaign shortly after and encouraged donors to donate to the Red Cross. Though this may have become a last-minute issue during the 2012 election, the focus was more on disaster response than on environmental protection. Nonetheless, as long as the public sees good-faith progress in environmental protection, the issue does not generate much political heat beyond

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the environmental community. Issues such as police protection and education act in the same way. Key values such as education, police protection, and environmental protection are nonissues until the public perceives that they are threatened. When that happens, however, the political reaction is rapid and sweeping. An oddity of President Bush’s approach to environmental issues was that it reflected an antiquated understanding of the environment. This is the notion at the heart of the Gallup poll question trading off environmental protection against economic growth. There is a relationship between environmental quality and economic growth, but it is not a trade-off relationship. We are learning that economic growth depends on environmental quality: the return on investments in environmental quality pays off. Sound and sustainable economic development requires the maintenance or restoration of environmental quality. A study published by the Office of Management and Budget in 2012 estimated that from 2001 to 2011 we spent $23 billion to $29 billion to clean up our air, resulting in net benefits valued at between $85 billion and $565 billion for that investment (OMB 2012:12). Investments in sewage treatment have increased the value of waterfront property all over the United States. The funds given to upstate property owners to reduce pollution near New York City’s reservoirs have saved the city $6–$10 billion that it would have had to spend on a water filtration plant (Helhoski 2009). Popular support for protecting environmental quality is the basis for the issue’s political strength. The importance of environmental protection has been the subject of massive educational and propaganda efforts by scientists, advocates, the media, and professional educators. Though respect for property rights remains strong in the American political culture, especially in the western states, support for environmental protection frequently dominates concern for property rights. Interestingly, one source of political strength for environmental protection is the perception that pollution can diminish the value of private property. In this respect, high environmental quality is a form of property or wealth. This did not happen overnight and is arguably a result of the high level of economic wealth in the United States. Our wealth permits consumption of beach homes, country homes, suburban living and vacations in national parks and rural areas—“goods” that would be dimin-

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ished by environmental degradation. Maintaining that level of consumption requires the maintenance of environmental quality. Despite support for curbing the pollution of others, not all consumption patterns in the United States provide behavioral evidence of support for protecting the environment. The increased average weight of the American automobile is an example of behavior that does not promote environmental protection. Nevertheless, the popular consensus for protecting the environment is strong across regional, racial, and socioeconomic categories (Mohai and Bryant 1998:475). Clearly, this type of consensus facilitates social learning about the environment, eventually leading to effective policymaking. An important dimension of the environmental problem is its status as a political issue. This involves its presence on the political agenda as a problem appropriate to collective societal action.

A P P LY I N G T H E P O L I T I C A L D I M E N S I O N O F T H E F R A M E W O R K

As the preceding discussion indicates, an issue becomes a public policy issue only when it becomes part of a political process. How the issue is defined, how it enters the political agenda, and the views of its key stakeholders determine the issue’s definition. Once again, to apply this dimension, there are a number of questions to pose, many of which are unanswerable but essential: • What is the agenda status of this issue? • What is the issue’s degree of legitimacy? • What role has the issue played in electoral politics? • Who are the political stakeholders involved in this issue? What is the nature and style of their participation? How important is the issue to these stakeholders? • Who are the potential winners and losers in the political competition around this issue? Who have been the winners and losers to date, and how are political victory and loss defined in this issue area? • To what degree are stakeholders willing to discuss and compromise on this issue?

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• Does this issue act independently of other political issues or does it cluster with other key issues?2 • In the U.S. context, what level of government is considered primarily responsible for addressing this issue (state, federal, or local)? • What is the level of controversy and consensus around this issue? What are the areas of agreement and disagreement? • How does scientific certainty or uncertainty related to the definition of the problem or its potential solution influence the politics of this issue?

The political definition of the issue is critical in shaping how the issue is framed and ultimately addressed. For example, a nuclear power plant could be seen as a source of vital electric energy, as a terrorist target, as a source of potential contamination from a meltdown, or as a source of a difficultto-discard waste product. It could also be seen as a combination of some or all of those factors. The early part of a political controversy is often a struggle over the definition of the issue. That definition will shape the way the problem is perceived and will set the boundaries for the problem’s solution. This definition will persist, often in the face of new scientific information, changed context, and changed behavior. Understanding an environmental policy issue requires a careful and sophisticated analysis of the issue’s political dimension.

S C I E N C E , T E C H N O LO GY, A N D T H E E N V I R O N M E N T Much of the progress we have made in protecting the environment has been the result of the development and implementation of technological fixes to environmental problems. We reduce air pollution by utilizing newly developed environmental controls such as catalytic converters on autos and scrubbers on electrical power plants. We treat sewage before dumping it into waterways. In sum, we use science to fix the mess that science helped make. The question is can we solve problems as quickly as we create them? Thus far, the answer to that question is no. The question then becomes can we fix the most pressing problems fast enough to maintain a habitable en-

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vironment? Here the answer is more complicated. What do we consider to be a livable environment? Are the shantytowns and slums of developing countries livable? When is an environment so dangerous that we consider it unacceptable? If we create a technology that causes disease in some percentage of people, but we develop a cure for that disease, is our tolerance for a lethal environment expanded? To some degree, then, the environment is a problem of science and technology. We invent new products and put them to use before we project their effects on human health, the biosphere, and the local ecosystem. Until now, technologically based economic development has raised living standards and increased population around the globe. The benefits are unevenly distributed, but the results are undeniable. Can science and technology keep up? When science cannot develop remedies for new harms caused by new technologies, can we slow down the introduction of new technologies until we can figure out how to use them safely? Experience over the past several decades provides evidence on both sides of this issue. In the United States, the problem of nuclear waste and reactor safety has limited the use of nuclear power to generate electricity. In addition, a number of toxic substances, such as the insecticide commonly known as DDT, have been banned here. Chlorofluorocarbons, the refrigerants that cause damage to the ozone layer of the atmosphere, are being gradually banned and replaced. Nevertheless, some developed countries, including France, continue to rely on nuclear power for electricity, and DDT is still used as a pesticide in many developing nations where malaria is a problem. My own view is that if the harm is easily proven and a clear technical fix is in place, with strong government intervention, technological solutions can be implemented. If the price of the substitute is too high, or the technology is not fully developed, it is more difficult to eliminate a dangerous technology. For example, if fossil fuels were not relatively plentiful at the moment, the risks of nuclear power would be given less attention than its benefits. Problems caused by the impact of technological innovation on the environment are not easy to measure. Sometimes the problems take a long time to develop. Other times, a causal relationship between an environmental problem and the introduction of a specific technology is hard to establish.

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Even more difficult to assess are problems caused by the interactions of one or more technologies in varied ecological settings. Environmental impacts are unavoidable by-products of the strength and power of the scientific method. The scientific method is based on the concept of the controlled experiment. The researcher first isolates the variables, subjecting only certain specific variables to a particular test. The goal is to identify and understand causal relationships, “all things held equal.” However, in the natural ecological environment, nothing is held equal. The interactions and relationships that take place can best be understood at the system level, where controlled experiments are rare. Whereas experiments in the traditional scientific method are reductionist, attempting to reduce the test to a simple causal relationship, ecological systems are holistic and interconnected and cannot be understood through reducing reality to simple relational terms. Such understanding requires the use of models that estimate the interaction effects and account for the multiple feedback loops that characterize living systems. Technologies developed with reductionist methodologies must then be introduced to environmental impact studies that are based on a more appropriate conceptual framework and orientation. In a controlled experiment, the whole test is designed to demonstrate or rule out an effect. When an effect is discovered and verified, it becomes a fact. When a model is built, we leave the world of scientific certainty and enter one of probability statements and other unknowns. It is difficult for an environmental scientist who suspects a harmful effect to compete with the power and the certainty of a technology’s proven benefit. When an environmental modeler thinks he or she may have uncovered a destructive effect, it is initially expressed as a probability statement. In fact, the most persuasive scientific evidence of environmental damage must rely on models to develop hypotheses for relationships that are then tested in reductionist, controlled experiments. Only at that point can the factual basis for environmental damage be conclusively established. Improvements in environmental measurement technology and in environmental modeling provide some hope that we are still learning and will do a better job of detecting, understanding, and ending practices that dam-

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age the environment. However, the information provided about environmental damage is not always factored into decision making. To the degree that the public is educated about environmental threats, they can become a powerful force behind active environmental protection policy. Unfortunately, many of the threats to the environment are long term, difficult to prove, and hard to explain.

A P P LY I N G T H E S C I E N C E A N D T E C H N O L O GY D I M E N S I O N OF THE FRAMEWORK

Some environmental problems, such as the Indian Ocean tsunami in late December of 2004, are the result of natural phenomena, but most, like the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, are caused by humans. Some, like Hurricane Sandy in 2012, most likely combine both human (global warming) and natural causes. As we seek to understand an environmental issue, an important dimension to consider is the level of scientific knowledge and certainty associated with the problem and its potential solution. As we seek to understand this dimension of the problem by applying this element of the framework, we should attempt to address some of the following questions: • Is there scientific certainty about the causes and effects of the problem? • What are the principal areas of uncertainty and what is the effect of that degree of uncertainty on decision makers? • Are there cost-effective substitutes for the technologies that are causing harm? What are the prospects for developing such technologies? • Does the technological cause of the problem need to be halted in order to address the problem? • Are there “off-the-shelf,” proven technologies available to mitigate the impact of the environmental problem? What are the prospects for developing such technologies? • Are the control or mitigation technologies widely available and do we have experience with their management? • What is the monetary cost of research to address this issue, and are these funds likely to become available?

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Some environmental issues are scientifically complex and some are simple. Some lend themselves to relatively low-cost technological fixes, while others will be expensive to address. The relative scientific certainty, the complexity, and the potential cost of control or remediation technology influence the political definition of the issue. The issue of climate change, discussed later in this book, provides an excellent illustration of the role played by scientific uncertainty in defining a policy issue. In the first term of the George W. Bush administration, inaction on climate was based on a perceived lack of scientific certainty regarding the causes of global warming. As that uncertainty was reduced and scientific consensus emerged, pressure to address the issue grew. In 2005, the first year of Bush’s second term, this pressure continued to increase. The level of scientific uncertainty can therefore influence the type of policy design that is appropriate to address an environmental issue (Layzer 2002:230). Nearly all environmental issues go through an early “problem definition” phase, during which scientific research is funded to increase our understanding of the problem, thus delaying action. Water pollution and air pollution policy in the 1950s and 1960s focused on increasing our understanding of the science of the problem and potential solutions. Often, when environmental programs are established, control technology is fairly primitive. Policymakers hope that the need to comply with new environmental standards will force the development of new technology. Often new environmental rules have had that very effect.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y D E S I G N A N D E C O N O M I C FAC TO R S A S A N I N F LU E N C E O N DA M AG I N G C O R P O R AT E A N D P R I VAT E B E H AV I O R S Economic forces are the primary cause of environmental degradation and are the primary means of environmental preservation, cleanup, and pollution prevention (Schneider and Ingram 1997:99). The environment as a public policy issue should be conceptualized as a form of government regulation of corporate and individual behavior. This section deals primarily with

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the design of policies that regulate corporate behavior, since that has been the main target of environmental policy and regulation thus far. Toward the end of this section, the regulation of individual behavior and the problem of social learning are discussed. While other sections of the framework helped explain both environmental problems and solutions, this section of it focuses on understanding solutions, or environmental policies. The policy approach that we take is, of course, related to the definition of the problem. The policy approach can also influence the evolution of the problem. If progress is made, the problem may come to be seen as routine and less urgent. This section provides a catalog of the variety of policy designs that have been used to solve or address environmental problems. In the past several decades we have heard a good deal of political, popular, and academic discussion on the concept of regulation. Regulation is criticized as harming the economy by stifling entrepreneurial initiative, discouraging technological advances, and being insufficiently cost-effective. Economists criticize lawyers for being overly formalistic and for not understanding how firms behave. Policymakers criticize economists for proposals that lack political feasibility.

D E F I N I N G R E G U L AT I O N

Kenneth Meir defined regulation as “any attempt by the government to control the behavior of citizens, corporations, or sub-governments” (1985:1). Regulation is a set of rules or directives intended to induce specific behaviors in target populations. Modifying his definition slightly, substitute the word “influence” for “control.” Regulated behaviors represent tendencies and carefully augmented actions rather than goal-seeking, rationally controlled behaviors. “Control” is simply too strong a term. Organizations, for the most part, do not truly control their own actions; instead, these actions are the result of a variety of internal exchange relationships and influences evidenced by explicit and implicit bargains and the deployment of potential and actual incentives. Again, this regulated behavior is merely a tendency toward incremental actions rather than goal-seeking, rationally controlled behavior.

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The goal of regulation is to influence individual or organizational behavior. To provide a graphic example, consider the case of automobiles converging on a corner traffic light. Hopefully, the behavior of each driver is influenced by the color of the traffic light. The signal is relatively clear, and when the light turns amber, the drivers are faced with the need to make a rapid decision. Several factors affect each driver’s decision to slow down, speed up, or stop: 1. Is the signal working? 2. Does the driver see and understand the signal? 3. Is the driver willing to adhere to the signal? 4. Is the car mechanically capable of stopping and/or accelerating?

Are the regulated parties, in this case the drivers, capable of changing behavior in the desired direction, and are they willing to do so? The goal of regulation is to influence the variables that enter into a regulated party’s calculus of the costs and benefits of compliance. What are the incentives and disincentives to stopping at a red light? 1. The possibility of a collision with a fully loaded trailer truck. 2. A traffic ticket from a highway patrol officer for running the light. 3. Belief in the rule of law. 4. Pre-patterned behavior of braking for a red light. 5. A severely ill child sitting in the backseat, and an urgent need to get to the hospital (a disincentive to stop). 6. A second disincentive to stop might arise if one is in a hurry and no traffic is visible.

The goal of traffic regulation is to reinforce the incentives to comply so that they outweigh the potential motivation to pass the red light. Similarly, the goal of regulation is to influence the perceptions and behaviors of regulated parties. Therefore, each regulatory program must be based on a strategy that seeks to understand the motivations of regulated parties and to influence their behavior.

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P O L I C Y D E S I G N : H OW TO D E V E LO P A N D I M P L E M E N T A   R E G U L AT O R Y S T R AT E GY

Strategic regulatory planning is an effort by government to develop a comprehensive strategy for influencing behavior. There are two components to this plan. The first is the formal regulation itself; the second is the manner in which the regulatory plan is implemented. Extra-regulatory elements that can be manipulated to encourage compliance include funding, technical assistance, exhortation, and publicity. Since willingness and capacity to comply with regulation can vary widely within a given regulated community, it is critical to have an array of regulatory mechanisms available. It is also important to approach the task of influencing behavior without ideology or preconceptions. One might argue that it is administratively or legally not feasible to target regulation for maximum influence on specific regulated parties. The administrative argument is easy to counter. First, regulations are now individually tailored through the permit process (Rabe 2000:36–37). Second, it is possible to deal with groups of regulated parties and tailor approaches to classes of regulatory situations rather than to individual organizations. Finally, an approach focused on changing the behavior of regulated parties will tend to be less process-oriented and thereby less administratively complex. It will also utilize strategic alliances between different parties who share a similar interest in the successful implementation of the regulatory program. The issue of legal feasibility is the argument that the law cannot be adjusted to account for an organization’s willingness and capacity to conform to the law’s requirements. Regulatory enforcement through the courts, one should note, typically results in bargains that take into account what an organization is capable of and its apparent willingness to move toward compliance. We might as well acknowledge that the application of environmental rules involves these negotiations. The notion that the law is applied without consideration of feasibility is simply untrue. In fact, Cass Sunstein (1990:416) argues that when regulators are compelled to implement rules that do not allow them to consider issues of feasibility, they frequently fail

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to act. A more typical response than inaction is deal negotiation. Frequently, this involves a compliance schedule and other government concessions. A strategic approach to regulation would acknowledge the reality of the bargaining process up front and develop compliance strategies with input from the regulated community. Under these circumstances, enforcement and the threat of enforcement are reserved for recalcitrant organizations that willfully violate agreements, engage in deception, or are otherwise unwilling to change their practices.

T H E T O O L S O F S T R AT E G I C R E G U L AT I O N

“Command-and-control” describes a process in which government commands a regulated party to act in a certain way and then uses the legal system to control behaviors that are not in compliance with the rules. The traditional notion of command-and-control is a simplistic view of regulation. Regulation involves all government policies and programs deployed to influence the behavior of regulated parties. An updated definition of regulation includes command-and-control regulation, plus the use of market mechanisms and a wide variety of other techniques of influence. There is no need to choose between command-and-control and market mechanisms. Neither is necessarily better than the other. Each target of regulation must be assessed to determine what mix of incentives and disincentives will result in the desired change in behavior (Rosenbaum 2005:167). A variety of techniques of influence are available to government regulators: 1. Market solutions and economic incentives. 2. Insurance programs. 3. Self-regulation. 4. Taxes and fees. 5. Education, information disclosure, and the use of media. 6. Reporting and formal compliance tracking. 7. Licensing. 8. Permitting.

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9. Standard setting. 10. Grants, training, and compliance assistance. 11. Assessing penalties. 12. Inspections. 13. Adjudication.

These activities include both coercive and relatively noncoercive actions. In my view, policy design should favor the least-coercive methods that obtain the desired results. The following regulatory actions constitute a partial listing of activities typically available to regulators that influence the behavior of regulated parties. MARKET SOLUTIONS AND ECONOMIC INCENTIVES

Government sells firms and other private parties permits to pollute, specifying an allowable level of pollution. These permit levels can be traded to other firms, creating a market in pollution allowances. This encourages permit holders to reduce their own level of pollution and maximize the costeffectiveness of pollution control. INSURANCE PROGRAMS

Government requires private parties to carry insurance in order to clean up unanticipated releases of pollution and to compensate victims of negative environmental impacts. For example, a gas station owner might be required to carry insurance to pay for the cost of cleaning up gasoline leaks, and to pay third-party liability claims arising from such leaks. S E L F - R E G U L AT I O N

Government permits an industry to regulate itself. The use of industry codes and professional ethics are examples of such self-regulation. TA X E S A N D F E E S

Government charges regulated parties for each unit of pollution or waste created. Alternatively, raw materials that eventually cause pollution are taxed, as in the pre-1995 Superfund’s tax on oil and chemical feedstocks.

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E D U C AT I O N , I N F O R M AT I O N D I S C L O S U R E , A N D T H E U S E O F T H E M E D I A

Government informs the public about regulatory violations or about dangers, causing negative public relations for a company. An example is the warning-label requirement on cigarettes. Government may also use the media to educate about regulatory requirements and their purposes. R E P O RT I N G A N D FO R M A L CO M P L I A N C E T R AC K I N G

Government requires regulated parties to report on their compliance with rules. This is less expensive than inspections and can begin the process of creating the institutional capacity in regulated firms to comply with a rule. Whoever fills out the form must at least pay some attention to the regulation. LICENSING

Government certifies competent professionals who can assist with compliance. The best example of this method is the regulation or licensing of certified public accountants, who facilitate compliance with tax regulations. In the environmental area it might be possible to certify environmental auditors and other professionals who could help a firm reduce and prevent pollution. PERMITTING

Government requires firms to obtain a permit in order to pollute legally. A permit can call for gradual reductions in pollution. The absence of a permit can result in a judicial order to close a factory. S TA N D A R D S E T T I N G

This is the traditional command part of command-and-control regulation. There are two basic types of standards. The first type is the performance standard, which requires the accomplishment of specific goals but does not specify how one achieves those goals. A second type of standard specifies a process, technology, or practice that a regulated party must deploy to be in compliance with a rule. This simplifies compliance and oversight of regula-

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tory compliance by requiring a specific, easily measurable activity. However, it also reduces the discretion that a firm has to determine the most costeffective mode of compliance. G R A N T S , T R A I N I N G , A N D C O M P L I A N C E A S S I S TA N C E

Many of the targets of regulation are individuals and small businesses that are willing to comply but lack the capability or resources to do so. Sometimes grants, loans, or even loan guarantees can help a small business obtain the capital needed to comply with a regulation. Training and consulting services can also have a large impact, especially in areas where regulation and technologies are new. A S S E S S I N G P E N A LT I E S

Penalties are typically fines charged against violators. Penalties are particularly complex disincentives that must be used with great care. A penalty that is too low is simply absorbed into the cost of doing business. A penalty that is too high can result in extensive litigation and high transaction costs for the agency. It can also lead to illicit avoidance behavior and/or political opposition to the legitimacy of the regulation and even the regulator. Nevertheless, as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has learned by auditing celebrities and Eliot Spitzer has demonstrated by prosecuting large corporations, a well-targeted penalty with sufficient publicity can result in widespread compliance with an agency’s rules. INSPECTIONS

Visits by regulators to regulated parties to determine compliance are an important part of the traditional command-and-control model. Inspections provide evidence that regulated parties are following the rules. A more important use of inspections, especially if they are random and unannounced, is to stimulate compliant behavior due to fear of an impending inspection. How many people keep careful tax records out of fear that one day an IRS tax auditor will inspect them?

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A D J U D I C AT I O N

Formal adjudication is an administrative or judicial trial to determine if a regulated party has violated a rule. The threat of adjudication can often promote compliant behavior.

A S T R AT E G I C A P P R O A C H T O R E G U L AT I O N

The choice between command and control and market-based regulation is a false one. All regulation involves gradual, strategic calculation and bargaining. Command-and-control results in: regulations that adjust the law to reality, permits that interpret regulations in the light of real-world constraints, and judicial and administrative bargains on how permits should actually be implemented. Donald Elliott, former EPA general counsel, notes: It is important to recognize that we don’t have to have and we don’t have an all or nothing system in which we have either an incentive-based system or a health-based system of command and control regulations. Many of our environmental problems, like many of our other legal problems, involve a complex coming together of different goals and different moral norms. The system cannot simply optimize any single value like controlling the total amount of pollution at the least cost but must be responsive to multiple values. Multiple goals for hybrid systems. . . . Thus a combination of health-based standards and market-based incentives may be preferable to either standing alone. ( B R EG E R E T A L . 1 9 9 1 : 47 9 )

A broader framework is needed that provides policymakers with a menu of devices depending on what or who is being regulated. Some substances are so toxic that command-and-control is necessary. Some regulated parties are so weak that if they are not paid to comply, they will be driven out of business. In other cases a market can be created and environmental improvement can be accomplished through this mechanism (e.g., recycling, air emissions). The economic causes of environmental problems and the economic impact of proposed solutions vary according to the role the pol-

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luting business plays in the nation’s economy. The approach to policy design should be as varied as the economic forces the policy is seeking to influence. In some cases, market mechanisms can encourage compliance and avoid the legal and administrative costs of direct regulation. When regulations are necessary, government should provide subsidies, training, and consulting services for organizations that do not have the capacity to comply. On occasion, government may decide that the costs of subsidizing regulation are so high, and the benefits of regulation so important, that a business should be allowed to die in order to protect the environment. These instances should be as infrequent as possible, or the political support for protecting the environment will ultimately erode. Policy analysts often lament the fact that environmental goals are sold to the public with fear and inadequate risk assessment, and to politicians for their value as “pork.” They argue that the goals of legislation and regulation ought to be based on careful scientific consideration of risks (Landy et al. 1990:279–283). Similarly, economists frequently argue that policy designs should reflect a careful assessment of costs and benefits and seek to achieve the maximum possible bang for the minimum possible buck. These ideas seem rational and attractive, but unfortunately they are not always feasible in the messy, pluralistic, federal, divided-power political system in which we operate. Sometimes cost-benefit analysis is difficult to conduct. One problem is that the distribution of costs and benefits can be unpredictable, and distribution effects can be more politically salient than the overall economic effect. Another problem is that some costs and benefits cannot be compared without questionable assumptions about the relative weights assigned to specific cost-and-benefit factors (Layzer 2000:8). There are no shortcuts. Each regulatory program must be based on a strategy that seeks to understand the motivations of the regulated parties. Whether we decide to employ direct regulation, indirect market mechanisms, or direct subsidies, none of these approaches will work without a profound understanding of the firms being regulated. Developing the administrative capacity in government to make these assessments is far more important than making decisions on which regulatory mechanism is superior. With this knowledge in hand, environmental regulators can develop

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flexible and dynamic strategies to reduce and prevent pollution in the real world.

P O L I C Y D E S I G N T H AT R E G U L AT E S I N D I V I D U A L B E H AV I O R A N D S T I M U L AT E S S O C I A L L E A R N I N G

To some degree, regulating corporate behavior has the effect of regulating individual behavior, and if the corporation is large enough the impact can be massive. For example, by regulating the pollution produced by all cars manufactured by a single large automaker, government has the ability to change the individual behaviors of all those who drive cars made by this company. The compliance of a small number of parties representing a large number of individuals eases the administrative costs and challenges of convincing millions of people to behave in new ways. Unfortunately, not all environmental problems can be addressed through the regulation of corporations. Some environmental policies involve reaching individuals, educating them, influencing their values, and changing their behavior. For example, solid-waste reduction and recycling both require the change of individual behavior. To recycle, people need to sort their garbage within the household. Even if the technology of garbage sorting advances, public understanding of the importance of recycling is needed to ensure that government continues to sort waste for reuse. Most important is the requirement that individuals learn to value the natural environment. Although it is true that the value is expressed as a part of the consumer culture of the West, there is no requirement that people continue to consume the “economic good” of environmental quality. Living without nature may sound like science fiction, but the fact that people go camping, visit the beach, and enjoy nature is an expression of learned values. It is not a form of innate behavior. If we stop valuing environmental quality and passing that value on to our children, the environment will not generate support in the political or economic marketplace. People might decide to experience nature as a virtual rather than a physical reality. Though a world based totally on technology might have some appeal to confirmed urbanites, at this point we do not have the technology or the energy required to

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totally supplant natural systems with human-made systems. Therefore, our survival depends on the use of natural systems to generate our sustenance. The value of protecting the environment must be learned at the individual level if we are to survive. The levers to inspire this social erudition include price mechanisms and other economic incentives that guide people to learn about and value the environment (Kolstad 2000). Other tools for social learning include the curricula in our educational system as well as the mass media. All have been used and will need to be continued to reinforce the message of the importance of environmental protection.

A P P LY I N G T H E P O L I C Y D E S I G N D I M E N S I O N OF THE FRAMEWORK

A key dimension of a public policy issue is the approach taken by the polity to address the issue. The type of policy design that is considered feasible tells you something about the seriousness of the issue, its salience and importance. To understand the policy design dimension of the issue, once again there are a number of questions that can be posed. The aim is to understand the rationale for the approach taken, and how the approach has evolved. As noted above, in the early days of air pollution policy, government convened conferences of scientists and policymakers to discuss the nature of the issue. That very soft approach was suddenly and dramatically modified in the federal 1970 Clean Air Act with the development of the first national ambient air quality standards. This leads to the first policy design issue that needs to be understood: What is the degree of compulsion and coercion included in the policy design? Other key questions include: • What is the mix of incentives and disincentives used to influence behavior to reduce damaging the environment? • What are the economic costs and benefits of the policy design? • Does the policy design reflect strategic thinking, or is it based on political considerations, stakeholder compromises, or a lucky guess (what Jones referred to as “speculative augmentation”)? ( Jones 1974:438)

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• Does the regulated community understand what they are being asked to do, and are they supportive of the approach taken? • Are the regulated parties willing to comply with the policy as designed, or will they resist by pursuing noncompliant strategies such as legal challenges and pro-forma compliance? • Are there other stakeholders who are not regulated parties and do they support the policy design that has been promulgated? • What resources are available to ensure compliance with the policy design and are these resources likely to be sufficient? • What is the role of government in general and of specific governmental levels and units in implementing the policy design? • What type of progress away from the problem or toward a solution is the policy design likely to generate? Why?

The design of the policy helps analysts and practitioners understand the operational definition of the environmental problem. The proposed or adopted solution tells you what part of the problem is considered important enough to be addressed by policymakers. The operational definition of the problem is the one that the policy design seeks to address, just as the operational definition of the policy is the program that the management system actually puts into place. Let us turn to that final dimension of the framework, and discuss the issue of management.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L A N D S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y M A N AG E M E N T Once the political dust settles and a policy design is adopted, the environment becomes a management issue. For policy to become meaningful in the real world it must be translated from words to deeds. Policy and management are related. Cumbersome, complex policy designs are typically more difficult to implement than simple designs. Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky demonstrated that point in their classic work Implementation. Policy designs that exhort or mandate private action are less certain to be

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carried out than policy designs that provide concrete incentives or punishments for private actions. However, even the simplest policy designs can be wrecked through bad management or political interference. For example, take the case of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. Section 208 called for “areawide regional water quality management plans.” Section 201 provided a grant program to help local governments build sewage treatment plants. The idea was that “208 plans” would be used to determine the best place to locate sewage treatment plants, and plant siting would be based on environmental rather than political criteria. Unfortunately, President Nixon impounded the funds authorized and allocated by Congress to pay for Section 208 planning grants. Due to the lobbying efforts of local governments and construction companies, he did not succeed in impounding the funds for building sewage treatment plants. Billions of dollars were spent in the 1970s on plants that were sited without assessing their role in regional water quality management. As a result, some plants were located in inappropriate places. Some communities overbuilt capacity and needed to attract development to help pay the cost of plant operation and maintenance. Other areas found their growth and development stalled by inadequate waste treatment capacity. Despite the lack of planning and the mistakes made, the sewage treatment program was a great success. At the program’s peak in 1976, the federal government spent $9 billion annually on grants to local governments to build sewage treatment plants. This amount gradually declined to about $2  billion per year in the 1980s. At that time, the grant program was replaced by the Clean Water State Revolving Fund Program, which provided low-interest loans to cities and other governments for environmental infrastructure needs, including sewage treatment and systems to control nonpoint sources of pollution. The result of the sewage treatment program and regulation of industrial discharges of pollution is obvious and measurable. In 1974, EPA data indicated that only 40 percent of the rivers in the United States were safe for swimming and fishing. By 1998, 60 percent of the rivers were safe for fishing for recreational purposes (U.S. EPA 1998).

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How did the U.S. government organize itself to accomplish these results? First, a decentralized federal structure was put in place. The EPA helped stimulate the creation of state-level environmental organizations, and they in turn encouraged the development of local units. Early in the process of regulating industrial polluters, the EPA delegated enforcement implementation to the states. Policy was developed in Washington, but state and local governments carried out the actual monitoring and enforcement. This helped ensure that national rules were interpreted to accommodate local political realities. Although this approach may have slowed down initial efforts at pollution control, over the long run states, with occasional prodding from the EPA’s regional and headquarters offices, achieved results. In the case of municipal sewage treatment, the federal government designed specifications for the plants, recommended contractors, and reviewed their competence, as well as provided significant funding. The strategy of eliciting state and local buy-in through grants worked. Though in the long run the federal share of costs for these sewage facilities was relatively small, initially few governments could resist the “free” federal funding. Ultimately, the operation and maintenance of these facilities were more costly than the initial capital outlay. The growth of the average American homeowner’s water bill in the 1980s and 1990s was a direct result of the need to pay these ongoing costs. It is unlikely, or at least less likely, that sufficient political support for sewage treatment would have been generated if people had fully known and understood the total cost of constructing and operating sewage treatment plants (Freeman 1990:97). From a management perspective, the water pollution control program’s strategy had some useful features. First, it focused on the biggest source of pollution—municipal sewage and the pollution by large industrial facilities. Only a few actors needed to change their behavior to implement the program. The decentralized structure and use of private contractors ensured that centralized bureaucratic clearance was not required during sewage treatment plant construction. The public works approach had the advantage of visible, (excuse the pun) concrete accomplishments. For policy words to become policy deeds, goals must be clear and well understood. The tasks to be carried out must be simple. Joint actions be-

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tween organizations and even between individuals should be minimized. The technologies required to implement policy should be well developed and available on an off-the-shelf basis. If new technology is needed, not only must it be invented and then debugged for the real world, but it must also be explained to those who are expected to require it, install it, maintain it, and monitor its functioning. One difficulty with the management of environmental policy is that environmental programs tend to take a piece of a larger problem and subdivide it in order to work on a solution. For example, we use sewage treatment plants to reduce the amount of raw sewage that we dump into the water; however, the treatment plant creates a sludge that must be dumped in a landfill or in the sea or burned. Solving a problem in one environmental medium can create new problems in other media. Our hope is that by gaining a measure of control over the process of releasing the pollutant into the environment we can minimize the damage it might cause. The analysis of management effectiveness and efficiency must move beyond the performance of the organization and its narrow task, and be broadened to consider management of the entire ecological system being maintained. Measures of these environmental outcomes need to be developed and used to influence management decisions. Finally, there is the question of goals and the definition of success. The 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act set the goal of ending discharges of pollution into navigable waters by 1977. A nice thought, perhaps, but a ridiculous, unachievable goal. The 1980 Superfund toxic waste cleanup program had a similar problem in goal setting. After a decade of hard work and billions of dollars of expenditure, the press reported that fewer than a dozen toxic waste dumps had been “cleaned up.” What the media did not report was that more than 3,000 threat-removal and emergency-response actions had taken place and millions of people had been moved out of the paths of potential exposure to toxic chemicals (U.S. EPA 1992). Unfortunately, the EPA sold the Superfund program to Congress with the promise that toxic sites could be cleaned up and made usable. The goal of identifying toxic sites and removing people from harm’s way was never articulated. At the time, Superfund had no experience in cleaning up a waste site, and learning

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how to do this was an important accomplishment of its first decade. The Superfund program discovered that the full restoration of a toxic dump site was very expensive, and that often it is more cost-effective to contain the contaminants on-site than to dig them up or flush them out. The Superfund program accomplished a great deal, though advocates and the media saw it as a failure. Its only actual failure was the lack of a realistic goal. Unfortunately, the political support needed to obtain the resources required to build a program is sometimes won by exaggerating the possibility of success. When that happens, it is important for the program’s operating managers to redefine success and try to get buy-in from key players on the new, more realistic set of goals. Although one might argue for stretch targets and the importance of shooting high, in policy areas of great uncertainty, we need to be a bit more modest when defining success. We need to give ourselves time to learn more about the problem, step back from early accomplishments, examine ends and means, and reassess the choices we have made. Politics makes that task difficult, but the needs of program management make it essential.

A P P LY I N G T H E M A N A G E M E N T D I M E N S I O N OF THE FRAMEWORK

An elegant policy design is purely symbolic without organizational capacity to perform the behaviors needed to implement the design. In the final analysis, an environmental problem can be addressed only if managed organizational capacity is put into place to either control or prevent the problem. If we find that policymakers have ignored the issue of organizational capacity, in effect they have ignored the problem altogether. This tells the analyst or practitioner that the policy process had not yet gotten serious about this particular environmental problem. To apply the management dimension of the framework there are a number of questions that can be posed. While the specific questions that can be addressed will vary by issue, the following provide an indication of issues that should be addressed when applying the management dimension of the framework:

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• Does the organizational capacity exist to effectively use technology that measures the environmental problem? If so, how much is in place and does capacity exist in the same location as the problem? • Does the organizational capacity exist to directly utilize or encourage the use of technology or other strategic plan elements needed to prevent or control the environmental problem? If so, how much is in place and does capacity exist in the same location as the problem? • How much experience do we have in addressing this issue and/or issues that share its characteristics? Are standard operating procedures in place, and are they well tested and well understood? Do we know how to manage this kind of procedure or is it something we still need to learn how to do? • What resources are available to develop and maintain needed organizational capacity, and are these resources adequate? • What is the quality of the leadership in the organizations implementing this program?

The management dimension of the environmental issue is the one that tells us if the issue is considered to be important enough to actually address. While it cannot be examined without an understanding of the other dimensions of the issue, if the management dimension is ignored, it is possible to confuse a symbolic response for a real one.

NEXT STEPS The preceding discussion illustrates the complexity of the environmental problem, and, I hope, the necessity of viewing it from a variety of perspectives. The next several chapters of this book seek to apply this preliminary or rough framework to a set of environmental policy issues. In chapter 3, we will examine New York City’s attempt to pass congestion pricing. Chapter 4 will examine the national issue of e-waste. Chapter 5 will apply the framework to the issue of hydrofracking, and chapter 6 will focus on the issue of global climate change. Chapter 7 provides a comparison of these issues and a discussion of the applicability of this framework, and chapter 8 concludes

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the book with suggestions for improving environmental policy. One of the more important changes in environmental policy over the past decade has been to integrate environmental protection into the management decisions involved in ensuring sustainable economic development. This sustainability perspective has created a new definition of the environmental policy issue and moved it from the periphery to the center of the public policy agenda.

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PART II APPLYING THE FRAMEWORK

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3 WHY CAN’ T NYC GET A CONGESTION CHARGE?

T H E N AT U R E O F T H E P R O B L E M : T R A F F I C G R I D LO C K A N D C O N G E S T I O N P R I C I N G I N N E W YO R K C I T Y In 2007 New York City faced a tough road—actually a bunch of crowded roads—especially in Manhattan south of Central Park. With a growing population, as well as an aging transportation infrastructure, how would the city meet the needs of today and, looking forward, tomorrow? Roads and public transit systems needed to be updated and expanded to meet the constantly growing demand from residents. The city, however, lacked the funds to complete all the necessary projects. The projects proposed by Mayor Bloomberg would require billions in investments beyond what the city and state had already allocated. Further, there remained little, if any, space available to expand the existing road network, and highway expansion would likely result in more traffic. Given the scarcity of space on the street, the answer was to improve and expand mass transit. Mayor Bloomberg attempted to implement congestion pricing to ease traffic in Manhattan’s central business district (CBD), which runs from Fifty-ninth Street to the southern tip of the island. A fee would be charged to all motor vehicles entering the city’s central business district. The program was designed not only to reduce congestion but also to generate

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funding for mass transit. Unfortunately, the plan was met with opposition among both city and state residents and some of their elected officials. Opponents argued that it was an unfair tax on the middle class who live outside of Manhattan and have little choice but to drive into the city in private vehicles. Residents noted the lack of transportation alternatives in parts of the outer boroughs. They argued that the plan enabled those with more financial resources to have greater access to roads and the comfort of the private car. Ultimately, the plan, which was personally championed by the powerful and influential mayor, died in Albany without receiving state approval.

CONGESTION

As a city central to the nation’s economy, New York attracts many people who commute daily for business and leisure. Though the residential population is 1.6 million, “this island, measuring just 22.96 square miles, serves approximately 4 million people on a typical weekday, 2.9 million on a weekend day, and a weekday night population of 2.05 million” (Moss and Qing 2012:1). On a given workday, the Manhattan central business district accommodates nearly 2 million workers from around the region, hundreds of thousands of tourists, and several hundred thousand residents. “Workers traveling to Manhattan from Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx account for the nation’s three largest county-to-county commuting flows” (McKenzie et al. 2010:5). Though only 4.6 percent of New Yorkers commute to Manhattan by car, average commute times are among the worst in the United States (New York 2007a:76). Across New York City, 55 percent of New Yorkers take the subway, bus, or railroad to get to work (New York 2011b:91). A 2011 American Community Survey (ACS) found that commuters in the New York City metro region spent the longest average commute time, at 34.9 minutes—well above the national average of 25.5 minutes (McKenzie 2013:2). Another study reported that of the 231 counties with populations of 250,000 or more covered by the survey, Queens (41.7 minutes), Richmond (41.3 minutes), the Bronx (40.8 minutes), and Kings (39.7 minutes)—four of the five counties that constitute New York City—experienced the longest average commute-to-work times (U.S. Census Bureau 2005). This in turn

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Work at Home 4%

Other 13%

Drive Alone 23%

Carpool 5% Subway or Railroad 12%

FI G URE 3.1

Bus 12%

How New Yorkers Get to Work

Source: City of New York. 2011b. “PlaNYC—A Greener, Greater New York: Update April 2011,” 91.

affects bus travel times, which slowed 11 percent between 1996 and 2006, to 8 miles per hour, one of the slowest on average in the country (Giles 2011:5). New York’s public transit and subway system is one of the most extensive in the world, and public transit is used by the majority of commuters. In 2012 the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) moved close to 8 million people on an average weekday through its subway, bus, and bus company services (MTA 2013). “In 2006, ridership on our subways soared to the highest levels since 1952—but during that time the subway network actually shrank by eight route miles” (New York 2007a:76). The lack of expansion has resulted in the subway system’s underserving the east side of Manhattan and whole areas of the outer boroughs. People living in the boroughs outside of Manhattan are much more dependent on private automobiles than Manhattanites. For example, the MTA estimates that around 26 percent of people living in Queens and as low as 8 percent of Staten Island residents use public transport (Giles 2011:10). “If those boroughs’ expected population increases come to pass,

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then by 2030 that will translate into 113,960 new car trips in Queens and 105,800 new car trips in Staten Island” (Giles 2011:10). These New Yorkers could easily expand their use of public transit, but in order to do that the mass transit system needs to add capacity, coverage, and comfort. The design of New York City’s highway system does not lend itself to reduced congestion. Robert Moses, a powerful appointed official who influenced much of New York’s development from the 1930s to the 1960s, designed much of the city’s highway system. Moses’s design allowed New York to compete with the more automobile-oriented cities that developed in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. These highways and bridges allowed residents to live farther away from the center of the city, in the suburbs of Long Island, New Jersey, and Westchester. Moses’s vision “was less one of neighborhoods and brownstones than one of soaring towers, open parks, highways and beaches—not the sidewalks of New York but the American dream of the open road” (Goldberger 1981). Today, the highways Moses built are at capacity and will not be able to cope with the growth that New York City and the surrounding area expect over the next twenty years. The roads that were built have brought more cars and the cars have brought congestion. Building more roads would likely invite more decentralized development, which inevitably leads to more cars and, subsequently, even worse traffic. The city is projected to grow by nearly 1 million people by 2030, adding 20 million tourists per year and 750,000 new jobs in Manhattan’s central business district (New York 2007a:6). With the transit infrastructure already stretched and commute time among the worst in the nation, the city faces a problem in dealing with the growth over the next twenty years. More people moving to New York will mean more people riding the trains and more people driving their cars. Today, congestion is costing the New York region more than $13 billion a year in lost productivity from time spent in traffic jams, wasted fuel, higher operating costs, and vehicle maintenance (New York 2011b:90). Time and productivity are not the only negative effects of congestion, as time spent with engines idling creates steady streams of pollution, which contributes to negative health issues.

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E N V I R O N M E N TA L H E A LT H C O N C E R N S

New York City’s cars and trucks are responsible for 20 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions and most of the ozone in the city (New York 2011b:151). With leading scientists saying we must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by significant amounts in the early part of this century, Mayor Bloomberg committed New York to reducing emissions by 30 percent by 2030 (New York 2007a:9). The emission of ozone is a direct health hazard for the residents of the city and the immediate area. Ozone is a pollutant created when the exhaust of motor vehicles interacts with sunlight. It results in problems for people with respiratory or heart problems. Science has long demonstrated the negative health effects of air polluted by motor vehicles. What’s new is that over the last decade, scientists have looked more closely at street-level exposure and found a high-risk zone of about 500 to 1,500 feet. If you live within that range of a heavily trafficked road, you face much greater risks than someone who lives farther away. The soot and fumes from cars, trucks, and buses are linked to asthma, lung and heart disease, and cancer (American Cancer Society 2013). The NYC Health Department estimates that fine particulate matter “pollution in New York City is responsible, annually, for 3,200 premature deaths, 1,200 hospitalizations for respiratory conditions, 900 cardiovascular hospitalizations, and 2,400 child and 3,600 adult emergency department visits for asthma. Ozone levels are responsible, annually, for approximately 400 early deaths, 400 respiratory hospitalizations, 450 admissions for asthma, 1,800 child and 2,900 adult emergency department visits for asthma” (New York 2011a). Some progress has already been made toward reducing these harmful emissions. A New York City Community Air Survey report explained that air pollution in the city is predominantly caused by vehicle traffic and buildings burning high-sulfur heating oils (New York 2011b). One of the worstaffected areas was Times Square. But Mayor Bloomberg’s initiative to introduce a pedestrian plaza and limit through-traffic at Times Square has brought about a significant and immediate reduction in pollution: “Nitrogen oxide pollution levels in Times Square went down by 63 percent while,

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nitrogen dioxide levels went down by 41 percent” (New York 2011a). A 2008 report by U.S. PIRG Education Fund found that in 2006, “New York state led the way in reducing global warming emissions, avoiding 11.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution” through oil savings due to its high rates of public transport use (Baxandall, Dutzik, and Hoen 2008:23). However, much of Midtown still suffers from unhealthy levels of toxic fumes from motor vehicles.

AT T E M P T S AT T R A F F I C R E D U C T I O N T H R O U G H T O L L S

The heart of the opposition to congestion pricing is opposition to tolling bridges over the East River. Many New Yorkers consider those bridges to be an extension of Manhattan’s street grid into Queens and Brooklyn. New York has made a few attempts to introduce tolls on these bridges (Chan 2007). Brooklyn Bridge once charged horse-drawn carriages a nickel toll. East River tolls were ended in 1911 by Mayor William Jay Gaynor. Tolls have been proposed on numerous occasions, most recently in 1973 by Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson Rockefeller (Naparstek 2006). Later there were two attempts by Mayor Ed Koch in 1980 and 1987. In 1973, Lindsay and Rockefeller approved a plan for a 50-cent toll on the East River bridges (Naparstek 2006). However, as Brian Ketcham of the Lindsay administration explained, “The taxi industry hated me. The trucking industry, at that time Mafia-controlled, was threatening me. Everybody was angry. It was a lot of agony” (Naparstek 2006). Eventually the city would decide against the tolls and New York decided to increase investment in mass transit—a decision that was delayed by the city’s near bankruptcy in 1974. Finally, Mayor Koch attempted one toll for single-passenger cars traveling over the bridges in response to a transit strike. However, the Automobile Club and parking garage owners sued to stop the city on the grounds that only the state could impose a toll on the bridges. The city lost and, just days before the toll was set to be implemented, the plan was abandoned. Koch’s second try, in 1987, was “killed by a coalition of borough presidents, hotels, theaters, and hospitals” (Naparstek 2007). Today the bridges over

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the East River have no tolls and drivers from Brooklyn and Queens do not have to pay any fees or congestion charges to enter Manhattan. The Queens Midtown Tunnel and the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel (formerly the BrooklynBattery Tunnel) require tolls, so drivers crossing the East River have the option to pay for a less-congested route to the city.

WILLIAM VICKERY AND THE IDEA OF CONGESTION CHARGING

In 1952 Columbia University professor William Vickery had an idea that would prove to be almost four decades ahead of its time—congestion pricing. “He first proposed it in 1952, for the New York City subway system, recommending that fares be increased in peak times and in high-traffic sections and be lowered in others” (Columbia University Record 1997). The same idea could apply to pricing tolls for roads. As more people drive onto a road the price increases. The increased price, for either subway or road use, would encourage people to use alternatives. The use of pricing would help to smooth the flow between rush-hour and non-rush-hour traffic. A Columbia University press release from the early 1970s described a possible system for collecting road tolls: “One possible detection and billing method would use electronic identifier units carried in each vehicle, which would activate recording devices in or on the road. Computers would sort the information and determine charges; motorists would be billed monthly” (Columbia University Record 1997). Twenty-five years later this system would be implemented in New York’s E-ZPass system. On October 8, 1996, Vickery was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in economics. Tragically, he died just days later. The problem is that there are too many people moving at the same time in too small a space. When someone decides to drive to work, part of the cost is borne by society, in terms of pollution and use of the roads. The fact that the individual driver is not forced to pay for these costs to society alters his or her decision of whether or not to drive. The result of people receiving something for free is overuse of the resource. In theory, the solution is to charge for the use of roads. When people are forced to pay each

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time they use the road, their calculation of the personal cost of driving will change. People who benefit more from driving than the cost of the congestion charge will continue to drive. Those who benefit less from driving will use alternatives. The degree of congestion can be controlled by the level of the fee. Some drivers will decide they still need or want to drive, while others will use alternatives; as a result, use of roadways will be more efficient. An argument against congestion pricing is that it enables those with more financial resources to have greater access to roads and the comfort of the private automobile. Why shouldn’t someone who performs a public service and is not paid very much be given as much of an opportunity to drive as a corporate executive who makes a lot of money? A possible solution to this issue is to add a progressive element to the congestion price that is charged. C O M P A R AT I V E P L A N S

Vickery’s solution to combat congestion has been adopted in London, Stockholm, and Singapore, among other places, to help ameliorate both traffic and environmental concerns. Each program has operated without major problems and has reduced traffic and encouraged the use of mass transit (Schaller Consulting 2007). Cost-benefit analyses for the London and Stockholm initiatives have found that the “combined benefits to motorists, public transport users, and the environment exceed system setup and operating costs” (Anas and Lindsey 2011:82). While each situation is unique, there is every reason to believe that congestion pricing should work in New York. Most notably, each of these cities already had considerable public transit options before implementing the charge, which aided in the ability of public transportation to support the increased demand for service generated by congestion charges. In 1975, Singapore became the first city to adopt Vickery’s congestion charge (Transportation Alternatives 2013). It was designed to reduce rushhour traffic into the central business district, and included exemptions for special vehicles (ambulances, fire trucks, etc.) as well as for cars carrying four or more passengers (Anas and Lindsey 2011:73). Since then the charge has been expanded and modified and today uses a system similar to E-ZPass to collect fees for driving in the various areas of the city that are

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tolled. According to Singapore’s Land Transport Authority, the fees have been designed to charge people in a fair way. “Charges are based on usage—those who contribute more to the congestion pay more, while those who use the roads less frequently or who travel during non-ERP (Electric Road Pricing) hours will pay less or not need to pay at all” (Singapore Land Transport Authority). Transportation Alternatives, a transportation advocacy organization in New York City, believes that the charges have been successful in reducing traffic and the number of single-passenger cars on the roads. “Singapore’s Congestion Zone has seen a 13% reduction of traffic during charging period. It has also led to a reduction of 24,700 cars driving during peak and a 22% rise of traffic speeds” (Transportation Alternatives 2013). While no comprehensive cost-benefit analysis has been conducted of the Singapore program, the benefits of the charge are generally considered to outweigh the operational and setup costs for the system. London followed Singapore’s example in 2003 when Mayor Ken Livingstone implemented a charge for driving into London’s central business district. London charges a flat fee to enter the specified zone, in contrast to some other usage-based systems. The fee, originally set at £5, was raised in a series of increases, first in 2005, to a price in 2013 of £10 (Transport for London). Unlike Singapore, which was equipped with an E-ZPass-like system to assess and pay the fee, the London program is based on cameras at entrances and exits to the zonal area. Images of license plates taken of cars entering and exiting the zone are compared to a database containing exemptions and other rules, and users are issued fee notices, which can be paid online (Transport for London). The charge, at first highly controversial, reduced travel times in Central London and reduced emissions of air pollutants. The congestion charge was introduced along with a package of other transportation policies, including many improvements to public bus transportation, such as “increased service, increase the length of bus lanes, the introduction of out-of-bus ticket sales (and banning of ticket sales by drivers, to reduce waiting time at stops), the introduction of a smart-card, and investment in robust schedules” (Givoni 2011). Since the charge was introduced along with the other policies, the package as a whole was able to generate political support. “London raised hundreds of millions of dollars in

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new revenue, which it invested in better transit such as new buses, delivering immediate benefits to affected commuters. Bus ridership rose dramatically, and use of bicycles also increased. Initial public skepticism turned into support, and London’s Mayor Ken Livingston enjoyed popular re-election after adopting the charge” (Transportation Alternatives 2013). Traffic speeds in London increased significantly, while congestion decreased. With less road congestion buses are able to move faster and serve their routes more efficiently, subsequently making them a more desirable mode of transport (Transportation Alternatives 2013). Stockholm faced a situation to similar that of London in that the public was initially opposed to congestion charging. The government began the program by implementing a trial congestion charge for the first six months of 2006. Like London, Stockholm saw reductions in car trips and adjustments in routes and modes of transport. Additionally, and importantly to the program’s success, improvements to the bus system were made before the pilot charging period began. This enabled residents and commuters to prepare for transportation adjustments in anticipation of the charge. The pilot was considered highly successful in achieving its goals of reducing traffic and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The public came to enjoy its benefits and passed a referendum in 2007 to make the program permanent. Today the charge has broad political and public support. While New York clearly has the best public transit system in the United States, and one of the best in the world, residents do not use the system as much as residents of major Asian and European cities use their public transit systems. Cities like London, Singapore, and Tokyo have recognized that providing more mass transit options creates a cleaner, healthier, more efficient urban environment. While the political situations in each of these three cities vary, each of the governments was insulated enough from public opinion to impose the congestion charge without significant fear of public retribution. In Singapore, the congestion charge was implemented without question and proved to be a success. In London, Mayor Livingston implemented the charge on his own authority despite objections from other city politicians and political groups. As the London charge proved successful, opposition faded. In

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Stockholm, the government used a trial period to test the public response. After the trial, a referendum was held in Stockholm to approve the charge. The government said it would abide by the result of the Stockholm vote. Municipalities surrounding Stockholm also decided to hold a vote on the issue, since their residents were the ones likely to be paying the charge. While the surrounding area voted a strong “No” to the charge, called a tax in Sweden, the measure was approved by the national government. Studies have found that in London, Stockholm, and other cities, public support for congestion pricing grew after the programs were implemented. Anas and Lindsey note that people have a more favorable attitude toward the charges after they are able to experience the benefits themselves, and suggest that referenda on these types of programs are more likely to succeed following a pilot program, rather than before implementation of a charging scheme (2011:81). New York mayor Michael Bloomberg does not enjoy the same kind of autonomy that some of his counterparts do. The political situation in New York is different from that in Singapore, London, or Stockholm. The mayor cannot impose a three-year trial period for a congestion charge; he must seek approval from both the New York City Council and the state government in Albany. In Singapore, London, Stockholm, and other cities, like Oslo and Durham, congestion charging has been shown to reduce traffic, reduce pollution, and increase funding for public transportation. The negative economic impacts that opponents feared in London were never realized, and areas outside the congestion zones did not become “parking lots.”

THE PLAN: CONGESTION PRICING

In 2007 Mayor Michael Bloomberg began proposing a plan of transit-based initiatives through his long-term sustainability initiative, PlaNYC 2030. His proposals for congestion pricing faced political and financial hurdles at the state and federal levels. Mayor Bloomberg’s carbon emission reduction plan included congestion pricing as a means of both combating heavy traffic and reducing associated emissions in downtown Manhattan. The proposal was to charge any passenger vehicle $8 per day to enter the central business

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district (CBD) of Manhattan between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, and trucks would be charged $21 to enter the CBD (New York 2007:89). Tolls would be paid through the existing E-ZPass electronic tolling system or through payment options at retail locations, by telephone, or online (New York 2007:89). Drivers who lived within the CBD would be charged only $4 for trips within the district (New York 2007:89). Emergency vehicles, taxis, cars with handicapped license plates, and for-hire vehicles would be exempt from the charge (Schaller 2010:8). The original congestion pricing proposal planned to charge vehicles traveling in Manhattan’s most congested areas. Initially, this was defined as Manhattan south of Eighty-sixth Street, but was later changed to the area south of Sixtieth Street, and would exclude the two north-south highways that pass through the district: the West Side Highway (including West Street) and FDR Drive. The revenue from the charge would be managed by a newly created authority that would be responsible for funding some of the region’s transit initiatives. Mayor Bloomberg played an important role in planning the congestion pricing proposal. He needed to overcome opposition within the City Council and also in the New York state legislature, since the proposal required the approval of both of those governing bodies. Some city council members from Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island and state senators and assembly representatives from the “outer boroughs” and suburbs voiced opposition to the plan. The MTA, the State Department of Transportation, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were all involved in either planning or seeing the congestion pricing through. M O V I N G S L O W LY I N N E W YO R K ’ S S TAT E C A P I TA L

In April 2007, when Mayor Bloomberg’s plan was first released, it initially encountered opposition from New York City residents, mostly from those in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Congestion charging was being billed as an unfair tax on the middle class who live outside of Manhattan and have little choice but to drive into the city. Residents and politicians argued, and Bloomberg acknowledged, that there are few transportation alternatives in parts of the outer boroughs.

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In the early deliberations, New York State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver kept his own counsel on the proposal. A powerful Democrat from Lower Manhattan, Silver raised numerous concerns about Bloomberg’s plan, questioning the health, environmental, and congestion benefits that the mayor predicted would occur. Silver argued that areas north of Eightysixth Street would become “parking lots” for commuters looking to avoid the charge and that areas that had suffered the harshest environmental and health effects of New York’s development would be no better off under this plan—and could possibly even be made worse off. Silver also believed the environmental benefits of instituting the congestion charge could be achieved by other means. Further, he argued that there were problems with the boundaries of the central business district as defined by Bloomberg’s plan. Silver questioned the selection of Eighty-sixth Street as a boundary and why parts of downtown were included when they are primarily residential and do not have bad traffic “by New York standards.” Opponents raised questions about the way the money from the congestion charge would be used. Some Assembly members questioned the creation of a new entity to control the funds. The Bloomberg-proposed Sustainable Mobility and Regional Transportation (SMART) Financing Authority would derive its power from the city and not the state. Assembly members preferred that the revenue from the charge go to the statecontrolled MTA. In 2007 the MTA was projecting major structural deficits due to a high level of debt financing of infrastructure. There was fear that the MTA would simply absorb the congestion fees to pay for existing transit projects instead of using the funds to develop new facilities. Given Silver’s questions, he decided to stall the measure and did not take the issue up before the legislature recessed for the summer in June 2007. Despite the support of the state senate majority leader, Joe Bruno, the senate also failed to take action on the mayor’s plan before the summer recess. Traditionally the Republicans have been the mayor’s allies and at that time the mayor was a major campaign donor to Republican candidates. The senate, in fact, had been more supportive than Silver. Despite these delays, Bloomberg’s congestion plan garnered the support of the Bush administration and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary

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Peters. Secretary Peters made clear to state officials that New York could receive up to $500 million in funding for the congestion program if it was approved by July 16, 2007. Bloomberg said the money would be used to implement the system, and the remaining funds (about half ) would then be allocated to improve mass transit. The transit improvements would be put in place before the congestion charge, so commuters who previously did not have alternatives to driving would have them before being required to pay the fees. In spring 2007, Governor Eliot Spitzer came out in support of the plan, arguing that it would be good for New York and that the legislature should act quickly to ensure that the federal funds were awarded to New York. The governor said he would likely call a special session of the legislature over the summer to consider the issue, a move that was supported by Silver. State lawmakers believed that they may have been able to approve a plan without details to ensure that the money from the federal government was awarded to New York. Bloomberg’s frustration with the lack of action in the state capital and with Silver was evident as he questioned why a special session was needed. According to the mayor, there would be no new information over the summer, so why delay action and put the federal money at risk? As the July deadline for approving the plan approached, Silver continued to stall, unwilling to compromise with Governor Spitzer, senate majority leader Bruno, or Mayor Bloomberg. On Monday July 16, the deadline to approve the plan with the opportunity to receive federal funds, the senate met in Albany to discuss the matter. Silver refused to call a meeting of the assembly in Albany, instead meeting with fellow members in his Lower Manhattan office, even though the assembly can hold a vote only in Albany. With Mayor Bloomberg in Albany on the day of the deadline, pressing for passage of a bill that supported the plan, the situation was tense. In the end, majority leader Bruno was unable to deliver the promised passage of a bill in the senate after the Democrats decided to withdraw their support for the plan. Governor Spitzer was unable to force a vote in either the assembly or the senate. Some Democratic members even questioned the mayor’s motives. The mayor had recently announced that he had changed his political affiliation

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and was no longer a Republican, garnering national media attention and speculation about him running for president in 2008 as an independent. Democrats in the senate were also angry at the mayor’s support for their Republican counterparts and his claims that he was not political. In the end, neither chamber held a vote on a congestion fee. Silver offered to sign a letter stating that he would consider forming a commission to study the congestion in New York City and possible solutions, including a congestion fee. In response to Silver’s offer Mayor Bloomberg responded, “We will continue to press for real solutions, not interminable study groups whose only real purpose is to avoid accountability and results” (New York 2007b). Bloomberg called the Assembly and Silver’s actions in not passing a bill and missing a federal deadline “a terrible setback for clean air and to our critical commitment to fight climate change” (New York 2007b). In the end, while Bloomberg was a significant champion of the proposal and succeeded in winning many skeptics over, it was not enough. The mayor of New York City is an enormously powerful elected official, but he needs the approval of the state government to generate revenues and he does not control the mass transit system. During the fiscal crisis of the 1970s the state government took over the bus and subway system, merging it with the commuter rail system and forming the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Most new taxes on city residents and visitors must be approved by the state government. While New York’s mayor controlled a budget of nearly $60 billion in 2007, and is the most powerful local elected official in the United States, there are limits to his authority. R E V I VA L O F T H E P L A N

Unable to pass in either the assembly or the senate, the mayor’s plan looked to be dead and the federal money lost. Despite the setbacks, negotiations continued past the Monday deadline. On July 19, 2007, New York’s leaders announced that, along with a raft of other proposals, congestion pricing would move forward. The federal government made an exception for New York and allowed a draft of the legislation and an agreement to be sent to Washington that day to allow New York to stay in the running for federal funding.

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The state legislature created the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, a seventeen-member commission, to review and revise the mayor’s proposal. The mayor, the governor, the city council, the state senate majority leader and the state assembly Speaker each appointed three members to the commission; the senate and assembly minority leaders each appointed one member to the commission. The commission was tasked to look for other ways in which the city could reduce traffic without implementing charges. In order to be considered, any alternative plan had to reduce traffic by as much as the mayor’s plan did. The plan put forward by the commission needed to be approved by the mayor, the city council, and the legislature, and then signed by the governor by March 31, 2008, and would be contingent upon receiving a minimum $200 million in federal grants for the program. The mayor was confident that the commission would approve his plan for congestion pricing largely intact and saw the agreement as a great success despite comments earlier in the same week deriding Speaker Silver’s suggestion of a similar plan. In August 2007, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that it would award $354 million to New York City under the Urban Partnership Program, contingent upon the city council’s and the state legislature’s approving the plan, including the new fee on drivers, by March 2008. This federal support was beneficial to the mayor’s plan, though it still left him looking for funding for “the centerpiece of the plan,” the revenues generated by fees on drivers in the central business district. In its application to the U.S. Department of Transportation for funding, New York had requested $179 million to install the technology needed to monitor traffic and charge the fee to drivers in the central business district. However, the federal grant only provided $10 million for that initiative. The grant earmarked $326 million for improving and expanding bus service and other mass transit, and an additional $15.8 million was included for expanded ferry service. Mayor Bloomberg said that rather than dwelling on the lack of funding for congestion pricing, New York City should “look at the money we did get.” However, opponents of the mayor’s congestion pricing plan viewed this as a setback to his plan (Neuman 2007). Also that month, a new poll found that 89 percent of New York City voters agreed that congestion was a “very serious” or “somewhat serious”

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problem but 57 percent opposed congestion pricing (Chan 2007). In particular, New York City residents outside Manhattan were opposed to the Mayor’s congestion plan. According to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted that month, “Manhattan voters support the idea of charging traffic fees by a margin of 54 percent to 36 percent. But voters in every other borough opposed the plan, by margins of 61 percent to 30 percent in Queens; 60 percent to 34 percent in Brooklyn; 74 percent to 21 percent in the Bronx; 56 percent to 39 percent in Staten Island” (Chan 2007). Throughout the fall of 2007 and into January 2008, the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission held fourteen public hearings on the plan and its alternatives. By the end of January 2008, the commission recommended a modified version of the congestion pricing plan. The plan was modified to remove Upper East and West Side neighborhoods from the pricing zone, eliminated outbound fees, replaced the intra-zonal fees with taxes and surcharges on parking garages and taxi trips, and recommended that a residential parking permit be available for residents of the central business district. The revised plan was adopted by a vote of 13–2. Both of the votes against the modified plan were by members of the commission who has been appointed by state assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The next step in the process depended on the dysfunctional state legislature in Albany to take up the issue. However, there was still opposition to congestion pricing from suburbanites and the outer boroughs, where many of the drivers who would pay the traffic fees lived. State assembly members from those areas, such as Congressman Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from Queens, voiced continuing opposition. Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester County, said, “We are for the first time deciding that there will be an entry fee into public space. It is an extraordinary change” (Neuman 2008). In mid-March, the new governor, David Paterson, came out in favor of the plan to charge drivers for entering New York’s central business district during the workday. He joined City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno in support of the bill. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver had yet to emerge. Midnight on April 7, 2008, was the deadline for the New York State Legislature to approve the plan for

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congestion pricing. On that day, Democratic members of the assembly, who were in the majority, held a meeting to decide whether or not they would support the mayor’s plan. After the meeting, Speaker Silver announced that the Democrats did not support the plan and would not put it to a vote on the floor of the assembly. Governor Paterson held an emergency meeting with legislative leaders to try to revive the plan, but was unsuccessful— the congestion pricing plan was defeated. Mayor Bloomberg expressed his disappointment with the legislature’s decision, saying that it was “a sad day for New Yorkers and a sad day for New York City” (Confessore 2008). F U T U R E O F C O N G E S T I O N P R I C I N G I N N YC

The funding gap for service improvements was exacerbated by the 2008– 2011 recession, because “payroll tax revenue fell short of forecast and resulted in shortfalls that the MTA filled through cost saving, including reductions in bus and subway service” (New York 2011b:91). Meanwhile, fares continued to increase. In March 2013 the rates for subway and buses increased by a quarter, to $2.50 per ride, and the thirty-day MetroCard increased by $8, to $112. This increase was the fourth in five years (Flegenheimer 2012). The PlaNYC report of April 2011 expressed frustration with the failure of the congestion pricing proposal. Referring to the failure to enact congestion pricing, the report stated: “We cannot afford to wait for others to act. We will take action in a variety of incremental ways to enhance our transportation network and mobility options for New Yorkers” (New York 2011b:91). These incremental changes included pilot pricing initiatives. The city introduced PARK Smart, a program to increase turnover of parking spaces by charging higher rates during peak hours and reduce double parking and traffic associated with cars searching for on-street parking. A new Intelligent Transportation Systems program was introduced to improve traffic light timing and reduce associated congestion in targeted areas of the city. The city increased taxi service in the outer boroughs, and implemented new parking regulations that encouraged drivers to park for shorter periods. The city has also helped businesses voluntarily switch their delivery hours to evenings and nights, reducing the amount of congestion that delivery trucks face and cause.

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Congestion pricing remains a key solution for Manhattan’s traffic woes, and in my view will eventually be reintroduced. Bridge tolls and business taxes have historically been used to subsidize mass transit, but these revenues cannot cover the costs of running and restoring the aging system. The logic behind the plan is that people driving cars into Manhattan should offset the environmental, social, and economic costs of driving by subsidizing the cost of mass transit. In addition, businesses that rely on large labor forces and customer bases should help with those transportation costs. People driving in Lower Manhattan would receive the benefit of less traffic, and mass transit riders would benefit from better service. Thus far the fiscal and environmental problems associated with NYC’s traffic congestion remain unresolved. The plan has been a victim of political process and the influence of a small but vocal group of auto users who believed the tax would affect them more than others.

C O N G E S T I O N P R I C I N G A S A N I S S U E O F VA LU E S There are two dimensions to this analysis: Why do we have traffic congestion? And why couldn’t a tax on auto traffic in Lower Manhattan be implemented? First, the value of mobility and the freedom to go wherever you wish are deeply ingrained elements of American culture and values. In the United States, mobility is almost synonymous with freedom. We have developed a transportation infrastructure that supports individual rather than mass transport. The difficulty in implementing a congestion fee and the fact of congestion itself reflect those values. Traffic is caused by too many people exercising their belief that it is better to use private transport than to use mass transit when traveling into the central business district. Opposition to the fee is based on the value that the freedom to drive wherever you’d like should not be limited. A second element of the value of freedom of mobility is a little more subtle. Contrast toll roads and bridges to congestion pricing. Congestion pricing is charging you for bringing your vehicle to a particular place or geographic location. A road or bridge toll is charging you for going to that place in a particular way. If you don’t want to pay the charge for the turnpike,

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you can take local roads for free. If you don’t want to pay for the Midtown Tunnel or Battery Tunnel, you can take the free Brooklyn Bridge. In some cases there is no choice and you must pay the toll to get somewhere, but in many cases there is a choice. With congestion pricing there is no choice. That can be translated into an absence of freedom. The underlying value issue that creates motor vehicle congestion is our modern lifestyle, which places most of us in a complex interconnected economy where very few of us engage in the production of food, clothing, and shelter. This typically involves separating of work from home, and commuting from work to home in order to earn the income needed to provide the basics and luxuries that we depend on. Living in or near a city and working in the central business district, as in New York City, is a lifestyle choice that is based on a set of values and choices made by each individual. These are not unconstrained choices, but they are choices that reflect our value system. A growing number of people have begun to telecommute, and with advances in the technology of communication, we can expect to see more of this in the future. Despite this trend, we see no sign of reduction in auto traffic, as population and economic activity continue to increase. Even with advances in communication technology, people need to gather together at key times in most work processes. The way we choose to live and work is based on the values that we hold. Congestion is caused by these values. Opposition to congestion fees arises from some of the same value constructs.

CONGESTION PRICING AS A P OLITICAL ISSUE When government sets a price on an activity or a public good, that price is typically defined as a fee or a tax. It is always controversial when something that has been free is suddenly “sold” for a price. Whether it is water out of a New Yorker’s tap or road space in Midtown Manhattan, the effort to generate revenue from scarce resources like these generates political controversy. I can think of no effort by government to generate revenue that does not generate some degree of political controversy.

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In addition to the taxation issue, the congestion charge became defined as a charge levied on residents of the outer boroughs to drive into Manhattan. This characterization of it played into outer-borough resentment of wealthy and “arrogant” Manhattanites. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, we referred to Manhattan as “the city,” even though Brooklyn was very much a part of New York City. As I noted earlier, many residents of Brooklyn and Queens consider the East River bridges simple extensions of the street grid from borough to borough. In many respects, the issue became politicized for symbolic reasons. The outer-borough/Manhattan rift was one source of tension. Another was the public persona of the city’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg. His advocacy of congestion pricing may have harmed its chances of success because it is obvious to everyone that it has been a long time since any kind of tax had a real impact on Mike Bloomberg’s lifestyle. Resentment reinforced the impression that this was an elitist policy being pushed by some wealthy guy from Boston. The final political factor was the competition between Democratic assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Mayor Bloomberg. Silver was a longtime power broker in the state and someone who represented the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He may very well have been looking for a way to demonstrate to Bloomberg that he was important and could not be taken for granted. More likely, he simply carefully calculated the political gains and losses posed by congestion pricing and decided that the costs outweighed the benefits. In most respects, congestion pricing must be seen as a political issue. The technology exists to levy this tax efficiently and effectively. The management capacity could be easily developed. The policy design had been proven in several other large cities. Most of the people who were strongly against the tax had little economic stake in the issue. For the most part, people from the outer boroughs rarely drive into Manhattan during the workday. They had little to lose from the fee, and if it improved mass transit (the main way they came to “the city”) they would have benefited from the tax with new and better subway service.

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CONGESTION PRICING AS AN ISSUE O F S C I E N C E A N D T E C H N O LO GY The invention of the motor vehicle is of course one of the main causes of our modern congestion problem. It permitted people to live farther from their place of work. When that mobility was coupled with the invention of the modern skyscraper, resulting density of workplaces could overwhelm any system of individual transit you can imagine. Those densities could not have been achieved in New York City without the series of technological innovations that led to the New York City subway system: These include electrification of tracks, electric train engines, a mechanical and increasingly electrical system of switches and traffic controls, and of course the development of tunneling technology. Paradoxically, it was the development of the technology of mass transit that permitted the increased densities in Manhattan, which in turn led to the congestion of people and vehicles on the surface. The problem of congestion is mainly caused by the technology of mass transit, motor vehicles, and building construction. The solution to this problem is facilitated by a series of analytic and technological breakthroughs. The analytic breakthrough was the development of the economic theory of congestion pricing by William Vickery in the 1950s. Simply put, he explained how scarce commodities, such as space on a street, could be rationed by variable pricing. As congestion increases, the charge increases until congestion peaks and finally diminishes. As congestion decreases, the fee is reduced and even eliminated. The technological breakthrough was the development of transponder technology such as the E-ZPass, coupled with cellular communications and the Internet, which allowed for low cost and rapid assessment of fees.

CONGESTION PRICING AS A PUBLIC P OLICY DESIGN ISSUE There are a variety of policy mechanisms that can be used to reduce congestion. Pricing is one method. In some places, such as Bogotá, Colombia, the

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numbers on the auto’s license plate are used to regulate traffic. If the last number of the plate is odd, its use is restricted for certain peak congestion hours on odd days of the month, if that number is even, it is restricted on even days of the month (Preston 2013). Restrictions on parking can also reduce auto traffic. Congestion itself can discourage driving, as drivers decide that the time it takes to travel by car is too long. Charging tolls on bridges, roads, or for entry to a particular location can also reduce traffic. Building new and wider roads can reduce congestion, but only for a time. After a while, the faster commute time encourages more drivers, eventually worsening congestion. I am certain that there are other methods to reduce congestion as well, such as improving the quality of mass transit while reducing its price. The difficulty with congestion pricing as a policy design is equity. If public space is to be rationed on the basis of price, then typically rich individuals and institutions will be able to use it. Why should a public good, such as space on the street, be rationed on the basis of ability to pay? Aren’t there good reasons for people without wealth to drive to the central business district? That is what led to alternative designs such as rationing by license plate numbers. Of course, wealthy people can afford to own more than one auto and can easily have one with an odd-numbered plate and another with an even-numbered plate. The priority placed on personal transport, the settlement patterns that reinforce that, and the preference for the automobile as the primary means of transportation all contribute to creating congestion in dense areas like New York City. We are also seeing increased congestion throughout America and the world as population and the use of automobiles increase. The economic and environmental costs of congestion are high, and therefore it may be possible to ration space on the street by price and compensate those without access with free passes (for example, for medical appointments), mass transit enhancements, and other payments. While the policy design issue is difficult, the options range from command-and-control rules, to price, to enhanced mass transit alternatives. New York City’s congestion policy design included all of these elements, it nevertheless was unable to receive political approval. Still, given the success of congestion pricing in other cities, it is difficult to argue that policy design is a key impediment.

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C O N G E S T I O N P R I C I N G A S A M A N AG E M E N T I S S U E The cause of congestion is less the behavior of organizations than the behavior of individuals in a mass social setting. Therefore, it is difficult to consider organizational dysfunction or failure as a cause of the sustainability problem of traffic congestion. Since New York City has never received the authorization to implement a congestion charge, we do not know if New York has the organizational capacity to implement such a program. While the technology of tolling and electronically tagging vehicles for toll charges is advancing, it is easy to see the opportunities for errors or even corruption in managing such a program. Are there any ways to electronically disable toll-taking machines, or to hide a car from the toll-taking technology? How many entrances to the central business district must be equipped with machines to record tolls? On the other hand, our system of traffic lights, parking meters, and roadway tolls has not generated significant organizational failures, and so we can expect that New York’s government has the capacity needed to manage this technology. Overall, the management dimensions of congestion and a policy on pricing are relatively slight.

S U M M A RY O F T H E M U LT I P L E D I M E N S I O N S OF CONGESTION PRICING When all of these factors are combined, the failure of congestion pricing in New York City should be seen as largely a function of politics. The politics is based on values such as equity, freedom, and mobility; but in the end all of those issues could have been addressed if the political dynamic had been different. Sheldon Silver, to enhance his political power, reinforced the opposition to congestion pricing and killed it. Michael Bloomberg’s combination of political power and personal wealth created a political force not seen in New York since the days of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Clearly Silver and others wanted to demonstrate to Bloomberg the limits of his power.

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Implementing congestion pricing does not require any breakthrough technologies. Nevertheless, the entire reason we have traffic congestion was the invention of technologies that have allowed work and home to be separated by greater distances than were once possible. Population increases and economic growth, also partly a function of technological innovation, have increased the number of people with autos, while the size of some central business districts, such as New York’s, has not expanded. Other parts of the United States, built later than New York City, were designed around the automobile. These places are more spread out and allocate more space to roads and parking. While the causes of the problem of congestion are largely value driven and technological, the failure of New York City’s effort to implement congestion pricing must be seen as primarily a political failure. Mayor Bloomberg and his allies were unable to outmaneuver their political opponents in a battle that had more to do with political power than public policy.

C O N C LU S I O N S My own view is that someday a form of traffic congestion policy will come to New York City’s central business district. The city’s economy and population are growing, and the amount of space devoted to motor vehicles is being reduced. During Mayor Bloomberg’s term of office, space for motor vehicles was redistributed to pedestrians, with the creation of plazas such as the one in Times Square and to bike riders with bike lanes and additional space for bike parking and sharing. As congestion gets worse, the need to reduce it will become even more urgent, and we can expect to see the political dynamic change. Mayor Bloomberg’s departure from office in 2014 removes his power as a factor in this debate, and the economic needs of the city for faster movement on the streets will eventually come to dominate the politics of this discussion.

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4 WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR E-WASTE AND HOW CAN WE ENSURE ITS SAFE DISPOSAL?

T H E N AT U R E O F T H E P R O B L E M : T H E C A S E O F E L E C T R O N I C WA S T E Electronics have become a necessity in the global economy—critical for work, communication, and entertainment. However, used, discarded, broken, or obsolete electronic equipment and devices—known as electronic waste, or e-waste—is a growing global problem. E-waste includes computers, office equipment, cellular phones, tablets, televisions, video game or entertainment devices, and other electronic devices used at home or at work. These waste products contain toxic materials that require special collection and disposal, and can lead to serious environmental and health problems if not disposed of properly. The original products are also resource- and energy-intensive to manufacture, often requiring scarce natural resources. However, because e-waste is a relatively recent phenomenon, and much of it is discarded in small quantities from households, it is typically exempt from hazardous waste regulation in the United States. The question governments are now asking is how can e-waste be classified, collected, recycled or reused, and disposed of safely? E-waste is a global environmental problem that requires rules and regulations to address. Though some policies have attempted to regulate electronic waste disposal, most efforts have been voluntary.

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In our culture of consumerism and planned obsolescence, consumer products companies are increasingly able to manufacture new products faster and cheaper, creating an environment in which devices are replaced often, typically well before they are obsolete. In 2011 the Consumer Electronics Association found that the average American household owns approximately twenty-four electronic units (Consumer Electronics Association 2011). Increasing sales and shorter life spans compound the accumulation of electronics in our environment. Electronic product sales doubled from 1997 to 2009, driven significantly by cell phone sales (U.S. EPA and ICF International 2011:8). Take televisions as an example: it used to be common for households to keep a TV set for a decade or longer; today we assume a five-to-seven-year replacement cycle—which is still nearly double the PC replacement cycle of three to four years (Grobart 2011). In 2012 the volume of electronic waste in the United States was estimated at more than 400 million items per year (Sthiannopkao and Wong 2012). According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), by 2008, Americans owned roughly three billion electronic products (U.S. EPA 2008a). The rate of growth is rapid: e-waste volume increases 5 to 10 percent annually (Sthiannopkao and Wong 2012). In the United States in 2009, “2.37  million tons of electronics were ready for some kind of end-of-life management—an increase of more than 120% from 1999.” Only 25 percent of that waste was collected to be recycled (U.S. EPA 2012g). The problem is not limited to developed countries. A 2010 study by the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that by 2020 e-waste from computers will increase by more than 500 percent from 2007 levels in India, and by 200– 400 percent in South Africa and China, and e-waste from discarded cell phones will be 7 times higher in China and 18 times higher in India (UN 2010). Because of the composition and toxicity of these products, they need to be properly managed or recycled to prevent toxins from damaging ecosystems. Components of these electronics, when left to sit in landfills, can degrade and release toxins, ultimately affecting the environment and human health. Common e-waste contains lead, cadmium, mercury, and other hazardous wastes (UNEP 2006a). A computer, for example, contains lead in cathode ray tubes (CRTs), arsenic in older CRTs, selenium in circuit boards, polybrominated flame retardants in plastic casings, cadmium in

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semiconductors, chromium, cobalt, and mercury (Texas Senate Research Center 2006:4). Scientists are still working to understand the impacts of these chemicals on human health. The major sources of known hazards in electronics are in the CRTs, which are a major source of lead in municipal solid waste streams (Musson et al. 2000:4376). Newer technologies—flat-panel monitors and televisions—do not use CRTs and thus do not contribute to lead waste, but do have significant levels of mercury (Urbina 2013). Mercury exposure is most dangerous to fetuses and small children, impairing neurological development and cognitive abilities (U.S. EPA 2012e). Much of the e-waste from the United States and other developed nations ends up exported to developing countries that often have lessstringent environmental, health, and safety laws and enforcement mechanisms. Guiyu—a group of small villages in southern China—is an example of such a place. It made headlines in the early 2000s as “the global toxic e-waste dump.” E-waste recyclers in the region collect deposited e-waste trash from these sites for pieces and components that can be reused and sold, including burning wires for the copper and using acid baths to extract gold from microchips—and thereby causing toxic releases to the environment (Moskvitch 2012).

B E N E F I T S O F E L E C T R O N I C S R E C YC L I N G

Recycling or reusing e-waste has important environmental and financial benefits. Precious metals and other basic components like plastic can be diverted from the waste cycle and reused. “For every million cell phones recycled, 35 thousand pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium can be recovered” (U.S. EPA 2013c). Substantial amounts of energy and water are used when miners extract the precious metals and manufacturers produce electronics. Recovering these materials through recycling saves energy and reduces carbon emissions. According to the EPA, “Recycling one million laptops saves the energy equivalent to the electricity used by more than 3,500 US homes in a year” (U.S. EPA 2013c). Recycling these products and sourcing materials from e-waste is more ef-

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ficient than mining for these resources and creating the product directly. According to a UN report, “recovering 10 kilograms of aluminum via recycling, for example, uses no more than 10% of the energy required for primary production, preventing the creation of 13 kilograms of bauxite residue, 20 kilograms of CO2, and 0.11 kilograms of sulfur dioxide emissions” (UN University 2009). A few years ago, China restricted its exports of rare earth elements to Japan, requiring Japan to turn to “urban mining” for a variety of minerals. In fact, it is estimated that roughly 6,800 tons of gold (or 16 percent of the world’s reserves) lie in discarded electronics in Japan alone (Tabuchi 2010).

S TAT E - A N D L O C A L - L E V E L R E G U L AT I O N

Currently, most of the U.S. regulation of e-waste occurs at the state level, primarily through mandated recycling programs. Massachusetts was the first state to pass an e-waste law, in 2000, though it regulates only CRTs; California followed in 2003. As of 2012, 28 states have put in place some type of e-waste law. These laws include producer responsibility laws, ARF (advance recovery fees, where consumers pay for the recycling), landfill disposal fees, and disposal bans (Baruch College 2013). In most of these cases, excluding California and Utah, the rules utilize the “producer responsibility” approach, where the manufacturers must pay for recycling, removing the cost burden from households or entities with the e-waste (Electronics TakeBack Coalition 2011). According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “State regulatory requirements for e-waste can be more stringent than the Federal requirements, and vary from state to state” (U.S. EPA 2012c). Successful state regulations could serve as models for other states or for national regulation. For example, California considers televisions and computer monitors to be hazardous waste and bans them from landfills. Other states, such as Massachusetts and Florida, aim to streamline hazardous waste regulations for CRTs by reducing special handling requirements if these products are directed to recycling (U.S. EPA 2012c). Since 2011, New York State’s Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act has required manufacturers of certain electronic equipment to establish

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recycling programs. These include takeback and reuse programs by large retailers like Best Buy and Staples. New York’s residents and businesses are encouraged to dispose of electronics through these types of retailer or manufacturer recycling programs. Beginning in 2015, New Yorkers will be banned from discarding their computers, televisions, and other selected electronic equipment with household trash. Today, only rechargeable batteries are prevented from being disposed of by individuals and households. However, government agencies, schools, businesses, and nonprofit institutions are required by state law to recycle their electronics (New York 2013b). Local municipal governments, where waste collection and disposal are managed, also have opportunities to influence the e-waste stream and regulate individual and organizational behavior. Local governments have an incentive to ensure that toxic substances are kept out of local landfills. Some municipal governments are taking steps to encourage recycling and reuse of electronic waste. Partnering with a manufacturer-funded e-waste recycler, the City of New York is implementing a new program that will provide apartment buildings with a free service for collection and recycling of electronics. The city expects the convenience of the program to increase voluntary e-recycling (New York 2013a). While state-level action is one step in addressing electronic waste, there are problems with this method. One problem with a state-by-state method is that national manufacturers must confront fifty sets of rules. When different rules apply to different states, national or multinational electronic producers and retail chains have to adjust their practices accordingly, which makes management of the products and waste more difficult. Further, state laws do not limit the international movement of e-waste, even though an estimated 50 to 80 percent of American e-waste is exported to China, India, or Pakistan (Sthiannopkao and Wong 2012). A federal approach would simplify compliance and could regulate hazardous e-waste exports.

U. S . F E D E R A L AC T I O N

Though about half of U.S. states regulate e-waste disposal or recycling, federal regulation is absent. Federal action on the issue has been primar-

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ily limited to individual hazards, elements of concern, or specific electronic components. While specific federal legislation regulating e-waste does not yet exist, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), initially enacted in 1976, has been used to set national e-waste policy since it regulates the disposal of solid and hazardous waste. Some e-waste items are classified as hazardous waste, while others are not (Chancerel 2010:28). The executive branch of the federal government continues to work on managing its own electronic waste. In 2012 the General Services Administration enacted new rules that banned federal agencies from disposing of electronic waste in landfills. The guidelines also encourage the agencies to reuse electronics to the maximum extent possible and to direct e-waste to certified e-waste recyclers (U.S. GSA 2012). The federal government is exerting its significant purchasing power to influence industry change in this area. “The federal government, which is among the world’s largest producers of electronic waste, disposes more than 10,000 computers a week on average” (Urbina 2013). The new policy will also improve transparency and accountability, requiring agencies to track the volume and destination of e-waste. This will be available online on Data.gov (U.S. GSA 2012). This is significant because in 2011, the Government Accountability Office found that large amounts of e-waste from federal agencies were not sufficiently tracked, and were still disposed of through public or online auctions, which can lead to the most toxic components being sold to subcontractors, who may end up dumping the waste illegally in developing countries (Urbina 2013).

I N T E R N AT I O N A L E L E C T R O N I C S WA S T E P O L I C Y

The only wide-reaching treaty covering waste disposal is the United Nations’ Basel Convention, which prohibits transfer of hazardous waste to other countries. The convention was signed in 1989 and implemented in 1992. Although about 180 countries are parties, the United States has not ratified the treaty (Basel 1992). The EPA explains that “the US signed the Basel Convention in 1990 and the Senate gave its advice and consent to

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ratification in 1992, but before the President can ratify the treaty, implementing legislation is required. The US supports ratification of the Convention, but to date no implementing legislation has been enacted” (U.S. EPA 2012d). The United Nations attempted to fill this policy gap in 2003 with StEP (Solving the E-Waste Problem) (StEP 2013). This program focuses on the environmental and economic impacts of e-waste disposal and includes pilot projects designed to help eliminate illegal disposal of e-waste and promote safe and efficient practices. The U.S. EPA and StEP signed a cooperative agreement in November 2010, and are working together to track and manage e-waste globally (U.S. EPA 2013b). Other nations, particularly industrialized countries, are starting to enhance their own e-waste regulations. In 2012, the European Union implemented new rules to reduce e-waste and to combat illegal export of electronic waste. The rules improve collection programs to increase reuse and recycling. They establish targets for collection across the member states, expand the categories of waste covered by these regulations, and impose new requirements on illegal exporters (UNEP 2012). China is also beginning to address the issue. Not only is it the end point for exported e-waste, but its rapid industrialization and modernization have made its own consumption of electronics a domestic issue: China’s domestic market is booming and a [United Nations University Institute for Sustainability and Peace] study revealed that demand for major home appliances grew exponentially from 1995–2011. In 2011, Chinese consumers purchased a whopping 56.6 million televisions, 58.1 million refrigerators, 53.0 million washing machines, 94.8 million air conditioners and 73.9 million computers, in addition to 250 million mobile phones. In the same year 3.62 million tons of these same products were discarded domestically in China. ( P OW E L L 2 0 1 3 )

While China banned e-waste imports in 2000, loopholes enable e-waste to enter legally through Hong Kong, and the ban does not address the domestic waste. To address its domestic e-waste, it implemented a rebate pro-

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gram from 2009 to 2011 that gave discounts to purchasers of new equipment if they disposed of old electronics with the government e-waste collectors. This attempt to support the formal collection system was successful: more than 80 percent of the appliances collected and treated in China in 2011 were collected through this program (Powell 2013). Additional regulation and guidance from the Chinese government over the past few years have helped address China’s e-waste problem; however, much depends on enforcement mechanisms and customs control.

V O L U N TA R Y P R O G R A M S

In place of a set of stringent, enforced global or national rules, some stakeholders, including nonprofit organizations and private companies, are taking the lead to ensure that e-waste is managed properly in the United States. For example, the Basel Action Network, a nonprofit formed in Seattle, Washington, oversees the e-Stewards Initiative, which provides certification by accredited independent bodies ensuring best practices for recycling e-waste, including “no disposal in landfills or incinerators, no prison labor, and no export to poor communities.” More than forty electronics recyclers in one hundred locations nationally met this pledge (e-Stewards 2013). Voluntary compliance programs can help develop industry consensus, enhance a company’s image, and influence the public policy process. Manufacturer takeback programs or producer responsibility programs allow for industries to come together and create recycling programs that best fit their supply chain and industry needs. For e-waste, manufacturer takeback programs take a variety of forms, including the following: • Partnerships with big-box and other chain stores that facilitate the takeback. • Mail-back programs. • Direct trade-in. • Trade-in using a third-party source.

Some corporations offer free shipping or stipends for returning their products, while others charge the returner an acceptance fee and/or a

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shipping fee (Electronics TakeBack Coalition 2013). The Consumer Electronics Association, in partnership with the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, announced a technical challenge in April 2013 to “identify financially viable, environmentally conscious proposals for using recycled cathode ray tube (CRT) glass,” citing that “more than two billion pounds, or a million tons, of legacy CRT TVs and monitors are expected to enter the recycling stream” as one of the primary reasons behind this initiative (Consumer Electronics Association 2013).

E -WA S T E D I S P O S A L A S A N I S S U E O F VA LU E S There are a number of value dimensions to the issue of electronic waste. It begins with the value we place on the stimulation and convenience we receive from electronic devices such as computers, smartphones, televisions, microwave ovens, and hundreds of other appliances and gadgets common to modern life. When we purchase these items, we know that they will not last forever; eventually they will either break or need to be replaced by an updated product. Companies know we are addicted to “new” gadgets, and so these products are designed to become obsolete. Why did we create this problem? In what respect does the development of the electronic waste problem reflect our individual and collective values? Why did we allow businesses to create products that are harmful when they are discarded? Why were we not aware that e-waste was dangerous? We can begin to answer some of these questions by examining the value system that underlies our response to the wastes produced by our system of production and consumption. Deep in American culture and myth is the importance of private property, privacy, and individual freedom. Americans tend to regard any attempt to interfere with their use of their property as an unacceptable infringement of their rights. We speak of the sanctity of private property and of the need to limit government’s role in telling us how to use our property (Echeverria and Eby 1995:2). Our view of land as private property is a part of this mindset. We are told that Native Americans, with a different set of values, didn’t

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originally have a concept of land as property and learned only gradually and painfully of the impact of this concept. The early popularizers of the environmental movement, Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner, focused a great deal of attention on the need to demonstrate that what we think of as discrete “pieces” of property are in fact interdependent components of ecological systems. Carson demonstrated the movement of toxics through the biosphere, and Commoner succinctly noted, “Everything is connected to everything.” Our property laws recognize that if a neighbor’s house fire spreads to your house, your neighbor is responsible for compensating you for damages. But what if damage is caused by an air pollutant created five hundred miles away? What if it was a chemical from a bunch of TVs buried a mile away and carried into your backyard by an aquifer or underground stream? The freedom to act as you wish on your own property assumes that the impact of your behavior will be limited to your property. The problem of electronic toxic waste is not only the damage caused on the land under the place where the e-waste was dumped; it is also the damage caused when toxics migrate off-site. The concept of “private property” being truly private, never absolute in Western law, is significantly compromised by our dependence on and awareness of ecology. The importance of ecology is something we recently came to understand and are integrating into our value system. This began in the late twentieth century and is gaining momentum in the twenty-first. Before that time, however, the values of ownership and private property dominated, and it was not generally understood that toxic chemicals released on one person’s property could have dangerous impacts outside that property. Thus it was not regarded as a problem if private activities included depositing electronic waste on the ground or in the water, as long as the dumping ground legally belonged to the dumper. Unquestionably, some of the scientists working for companies that were creating these electronic products knew that such materials could be hazardous. But most people were ignorant of the toxicity and mobility of these substances. Belief in the principles of free enterprise and capitalism represent a second, but related set of values. According to this ideology, free enterprise

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creates wealth, which in turn creates a higher quality of life. Private enterprise is built on individual initiative, and government intervention only slows individual and collective progress toward greater wealth. In this view, the government that governs least governs best. Collective community action is reserved for soccer leagues and bake sales to buy new computers for a local school. The police function is reserved for individual misbehavior, and under this value system we assume that corporations are motivated by the wholesome and creative desire to make profits. I will digress for a moment here to note that I favor free enterprise, and I think that, in the long run, it is compatible with environmental protection. The capitalist system has generated a material way of life in developed nations that has facilitated human comfort and intellectual and social progress. Home ownership is one example of the power of free enterprise in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 65 percent of Americans live in private homes (U.S. Census Bureau 2013). Through their sweat equity, people make improvements in their homes, and because of their pride of ownership, they build a stake in the society and its political and social stability. However, this great unleashing of private ownership would never have happened without the innovation of the guaranteed or government-insured mortgage. Before this type of government intervention, down payments were too high for the average person to afford. Without a strong government role, it is unlikely any private firm would have taken the risk to loan 90 percent of the value of a house with the house itself as collateral. It is not the job of private firms to risk their capital in that way. But by taking such a risk, the U.S. government helped foster the transformation of a nation of renters into a nation of owners. The pursuit of profit by corporations builds effectively on human motivation and has generated far more positive than negative outcomes. All I ask for here is an element of realism. If we take the value of individualism to an extreme, we would need to say that it’s okay to be the schoolyard bully. I do not think that bullying behavior is acceptable, but I do not expect the bully to police himself. I expect corporations to seek to maximize profits, and I expect that government should set rules for acceptable behavior for corporate competition. I do not expect self-regulation to work, and I do not

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believe the capitalist system expects or requires us to depend on the goodwill of corporations for environmental protection. When environmental protection helps a company maximize profits or market share, companies will tend to protect the environment. Otherwise, we need a system of effective, enforceable rules to govern what companies do. Toxic waste from electronic products is a natural by-product of an unregulated, technologically oriented capitalism. If we want a less lethal environment, we must have a system of law and regulation to influence corporate behavior. The combination of ignorance of ecological connections and the glorification of private enterprise and consumption is the value underpinning of the e-waste problem. What values allowed it to become a political issue? In some respects it was the dissonance of two sectors of society pursuing the same values—the values of maintaining and utilizing private property. One of the reasons that electronic waste is emerging as a political issue is that the people who love electronic devices tend to be the same people who are concerned about a sustainable planet. This brings me to the third value dimension of the electronic toxic waste problem: the protection of private health and well-being from external threats. Toxic waste isn’t like an invasion of termites—it doesn’t just destroy the frame of your house. It can poison your children or your pregnant spouse. Therefore, you are not only protecting your property, but if you are a parent, you are protecting your children. Here we are operating at a level that may be deeper than values or cultural norms, that of emotional behavior that is fundamental to human behavior. Protection of offspring is a biologically driven imperative that, as near as we can tell, is universal to our species. As we will discuss later, there are few policy issues with more intense politics than those that are perceived as threats to the health of children. Another value dimension derives from our attraction to information and the entertainment obtained from these electronic technologies. Our society is changing as the stimulation gained from the use of these technologies replaces other forms of learning and emotional gratification. Entertainment that once required a theater or an arcade can now be obtained on a smartphone, computer, or home entertainment center. Interaction that once required physical presence can now be achieved through a wide variety of

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communication devices. Our choices of interpersonal or consumer behavior are derived from our cultural norms and values. While these choices may be manipulated by advertising, peer pressure, and other factors, they remain values-based choices. Finally, there is the idea of “disposal,” or waste itself. We think of many material possessions as having a limited “lifetime” of utility. We value utility, and when a good is less effective or efficient than we want it to be, we discard it. The treatment of material goods as obsolete and as waste has a value dimension. Contrast that to a fine watch, piece of jewelry, or work of art. Those material goods are valued for their emotional resonance or aesthetic properties and are not discarded as they get older, but in fact are treasured and seen sometimes to increase in attraction. The worth we attach to these material possessions is a function of our value system. While biological waste is discarded for reasons of sanitation and health, these other items are discarded because our value system assigns low worth to them.

E -WA S T E D I S P O S A L A S A P O L I T I C A L I S S U E Since electronic waste is a form of household hazardous waste, it can be subsumed under the general politics of hazardous waste that we see here in the United States. Exposure to hazardous waste can impair public health, and if uncontrolled, can contaminate soil and water and make an area unsuitable for a number of important functions. This generates public support for regulation and infrastructure investment to protect people from exposure to toxic waste. In general, the public likes to think that solving the issue of pollution from electronic waste is a matter of regulating the behavior of companies. That leads to policy proposals such as “producer responsibility.” Under “producer responsibility,” manufacturers are responsible for “taking back” the goods they have produced when those goods are ready to be discarded. Waste politics in general, and e-waste in particular, is also subject to NIMBY: the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. No one wants a solid or hazardous waste repository sited near his or her home or in some cases anywhere

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in the community. This creates a range of problems when a waste treatment, storage, or disposal site is proposed. If e-waste is defined as a siting issue, it is likely to generate local opposition. If, on the other hand, the focus is on recycling, remanufacturing, or waste reduction, its politics may be defined as an attack by government on business—the old “job-killing regulation” argument. In this sense, we may see a traditional “liberal-conservative” or “capitalism-communism” political conflict with all the symbolic silliness we sometimes see in that outmoded twentieth-century political paradigm. NIMBY is opposition to development of any kind in a given locality and includes resistance to building everything from a sewage treatment plant or an incinerator to a new high school. The politics of refusal is powerful and is one of the reasons for the intense focus on “cleanup” in the politics of toxic waste sites. The idea is the same one that motivates NIMBY—the desire to maintain the status quo, or in the case of cleanup politics, a return to what we thought was the status quo (Mazmanian and Morell 1990:234–235). Preventing the production of toxics by controlling what a private firm produces is a difficult argument to make in the political culture of the United States. On the other hand, mitigating the damage to private property that was caused by toxics is a far stronger argument, as it involves an assertion of private property rights. The development of the American suburbs and now exurbs is based on a desire to escape the perceived negative impacts of industrial development. The problem, of course, is that the development has simply followed people from urban areas to areas that used to be rural. People will say, “When I moved here that place where the mall is located used to be a forest that we hiked in.” The trend line is always toward more development and less “natural” space. People see the natural amenities that they value disappearing and respond by arguing passionately against additional development. When a formerly “pristine” area has been polluted by toxic waste, including electronic waste, we see a very powerful desire to clean up the mess and restore the area to health. The desire to return such an area to its prior state has a basis in the protection of property rights, but it is also motivated by a sense of social, cultural, and emotional attachment to a way of life that in the popular imagination is associated with places that are rela-

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tively untouched by humans. These associations add a level of intensity to e-waste and toxic waste politics that elected leaders have found difficult to resist. In many ways, the disposal of electronic toxic waste is custom-made for the U.S. political system. This is a system that is designed to maximize representation of geographic districts. It is a federal system, with specific powers reserved to state governments. Frequently, such power is delegated from states to local jurisdictions (Lowry 1998:748). It features single-member districts and winner-take-all representation. This means that there is no benefit to a political party’s receiving 20 percent of the votes in every district, because in all likelihood that will result in no representatives from that party. Even our presidential elections require candidates to consider geography, because of the Electoral College. As Al Gore could tell you, it is not enough to win the most popular votes nationwide; you must concentrate your pluralities in specific locations in order to win the all-important state electoral votes. The late Tip O’Neill, a longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives, once said, “All politics is local.” What he meant is that all American politics is local. The absence of proportional representation in our political system discourages extreme positions and favors moderate candidates who can appeal to the broadest possible constituency. Coupled with the geographic bias, environmental political issues often find their way to the political agenda as demands that someone’s private property or family’s health be left undamaged. The general issue of ecological well-being, or protecting nature, is not raised, since it lacks the political potency of protecting one’s family or property. Electronic toxic waste is not like climate change or air pollution. It is not caused by something far away and difficult to see. Its origin is visible and local. The closer you are to its source, the stronger its impact tends to be. The political force that generated programs such as RCRA and Superfund to address toxic waste would become a permanent part of U.S politics in the 1980s, 1990s, and into the twenty-first century. When hazardous waste hit the American political agenda in the 1970s and 1980s, we did not focus on the cause of the pollution. In fact, the liability provisions of the Superfund toxic cleanup statute called for joint, strict, and several liability.

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In operational terms, this meant that if a private party was responsible for any part of the site’s contamination that party could be held responsible for cleaning up the entire site. It would become the “responsible party’s” task to find other responsible parties and then sue them to recover their share of the cost of cleanup (Hird 1994:17). The government needed to find only one culprit. This bill had the direct effect of focusing the policy agenda on cleaning up the site rather than assessing the cause of the damage, and the indirect effect of focusing the volatile local politics of toxic waste on cleanup rather than prevention. In the case of electronic waste, the issues of where the waste comes from and preventing the waste from being created in the first place are central to the political definition of the issue. Prevention of toxic waste requires a fundamental reexamination of our economic way of life. Think of the regulatory regime that surrounds the introduction of new drugs. Before a new drug can be brought to market, it must first be tested and proven safe for humans. An examination of the drug’s main effects and its side effects is required. This is called the “precautionary principle.” No such requirements exist for new technologies or products that are not designed to be ingested. As a result, government regulators must play catch-up with the companies that are making the new substances, and regulation is not permitted until harm is proven. In this respect, we are all the proverbial canary in the coal mine testing for toxicity: if a product or technology makes us sick, a remedial response is required; otherwise, business carries on as usual. If the policy issue had been defined as the need to eliminate the use of toxic substances, rather than to clean up mishandled toxic waste, economic interests might have been fundamentally threatened. In a similar way, during the early days of the clean air debate in 1970, there was discussion in Congress about banning the internal combustion engine. When this discussion got serious, the auto companies started seeing the merit of national ambient air quality standards. The fundamental issue of toxic waste reduction and elimination has reached the political agenda with the discussion of e-waste. In some respects this is a further evolution of the toxic waste issue as a defining element of the overall issue of environmental quality. In the 1980s, the political dimension of the toxic waste problem helped create a new definition of

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environmental politics in the United States. It raised the stakes and visibility of environmental politics by adding a health dimension and vastly intensifying the heat of local environmental politics. The initial objective of the Superfund program was to remove people from harm’s way and ensure that they were not exposed to toxic chemicals. Politics expanded this objective to include something we did not know how to do—site cleanup (Mazmanian and Morell 1988:82–84). Now it has been further defined in the sustainability era as pollution prevention and resource reuse. By pushing manufacturers to reduce toxics in their electronic products, by asking them to design these products for reuse, and by placing the issue of producer responsibility on the political agenda, the issue of e-waste could redefine the nature of environmental politics. It could move that politics from remediation and damage control to prevention.

E -WA S T E D I S P O S A L A S A N I S S U E O F S C I E N C E A N D T E C H N O LO GY If manufacturers are able to develop a way to remanufacture, or “mine” old electronic devices for expensive materials, the issue might become more of an issue of science and technology. The question here is how do we reduce the toxicity of electronic devices, and how do we engineer-in a designed reuse for the materials used in electronic products—especially those materials that are toxic. Similarly, a design parameter for electronics could focus on disposal, possibly even attempting to make biodegradable electronic products. Science and technology could solve the e-waste problem by making e-waste more like the organic elements of the existing waste stream. Similarly, technology that enables us to detoxify dangerous waste could also eliminate e-waste as a policy problem. The toxic substances that are used to make electronic products that end up at toxic waste sites or in the bodies of children in the developing world are the by-products of the lifestyle we enjoy in the developed world. The plastic keyboard I am typing on to write this book resulted in toxic waste when it was produced. The computer itself includes toxic substances. What does “toxic” mean in this

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context? “Toxic,” in this sense, refers to materials that can cause harm to human or to ecological health. The technology that allows us great mobility, comfort, entertainment, out-of-season produce, and a wide variety of other benefits also creates such toxics within products and hazardous waste. Just as technology creates toxic substances, so too can it be used to reduce the amount and degree of negative effects of toxics. Technology can be used to develop uses for these by-products that reduce their potential for doing harm. Medical technology can be used to mitigate the health effects of toxics. One of the biggest problems with hazardous waste is that when it is dumped onto the ground or buried, we lose control of its interactions with other chemicals and with natural ecosystems. If one product’s waste stream can be used as a raw material for another product, the end use of the toxic chemical may be beneficial instead of harmful. Today, engineers consider waste reduction and closed-system engineering to be a desirable and feasible goal (Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins 1999). In management systems such as Total Quality Management, the reduction of waste in time, labor, and materials is a primary tool for lowering production costs and raising product quality (Cohen and Brand 1993:xii; Deming 2000). From the beginning of the industrial age until the 1980s, waste was considered to be part of the cost of production: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.” It took a generation of teaching about ecology and the threat of the costs of liability of damages from toxic waste to change the engineering paradigm to focus on waste reduction (Blackman 2001:197–199). This has achieved an even higher degree of visibility in the discussions of electronic products as they are used and once they are discarded. The data in the developed world clearly indicate that over the past three decades we have seen a significant overall reduction in the amount of toxic waste created and disposed, but a dramatic increase in the amount of electronic waste. While the volume of e-waste is small, its increase does run counter to the overall trend. Some problems with toxic materials will inevitably persist, because production processes will continue to produce chemicals whose effects are not understood. The technological advancements that have historically contributed to the production of toxic by-products will not go away. We may believe that a chemical can be safely handled in a certain

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way only to learn later that we did not understand the dangers it poses. While we are far more careful now than in the past about managing hazardous materials, we still do not possess perfect knowledge of the technologies we are using (Davies and Mazurek 1998). While the problems associated with managing hazardous materials get more complicated over time, two types of technological fixes are possible. One is to develop methods to detoxify the toxics when they are a waste disposed into water, air, or near people. The other is to develop methods of reducing the health effects of exposure. It is true that many of the hazardous chemicals are carcinogenic. If medicine ever develops a cure for cancer, those substances may come to be seen as less toxic than we see them today. The development of medical technologies to mitigate the physiological effects of environmental toxins may prove to be an effective means of addressing the problem of hazardous materials. It is the case that despite the increased toxicity of our planet over the past fifty years, people in the developed world are leading longer and healthier lives than they used to. For the time being, the health benefits of science are exceeding the costs of its hazardous by-products. Toxic material creation and cleanup are certainly issues that have a strong basis in science and technology. It is a problem caused in part by a lack of understanding of technological “by-products” and one that we count on technological solutions to fix. It is unlikely that the past damage of inadequate hazardous material management will ever be amenable to single or simple technological solutions. The hazardous materials and the environment into which they are released vary quite widely

E -WA S T E D I S P O S A L A S A P U B L I C POLICY DESIGN ISSUE The potential program design of an electronic waste policy includes both a regulatory dimension and a possible tax-based inducement to encourage producer responsibility. The regulatory side involves adding regulations in Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) and the Resource

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Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) on the transport, storage, and disposal of electronic waste. This would require ending the exemption of smallquantity generators of hazardous waste that is now in effect. Superfund also includes regulations related to cleanup. These rules collectively govern when a waste site is cleaned up, what type and what degree of cleanup is required of a private party for a particular waste site that includes electronic (and other) toxic waste. Regulations related to the transport, storage, and disposal of waste are traditional command-and-control regulations. Private companies must receive permits from the EPA to handle and dispose of waste. Inspections are conducted to determine adherence to the permits. If violations are detected, the EPA and the courts seek to impose penalties. In most cases, administration of the regulatory program has been delegated to state governments. This type of system has a number of problems. First, the expense of administration and inspection is high and must be borne by the government. Second, other than fear of getting caught, there is little disincentive for “midnight dumping” or other forms of illegal waste transport, storage, or disposal. This aspect of the program certainly calls out for some creative policy design work. What is needed is a mechanism whereby there is a profit incentive for private parties to properly dispose of waste. Examples might include a tax benefit for demonstrated waste reductions, or a requirement to insure waste for safe and verified receipt at an approved waste disposal facility. In the case of electronic waste, it might be possible to include a tax benefit for programs that collect electronic devices at the end of their product life. There could also be a tax benefit for products that are designed to be easily reused or mined for materials at the end of their use. Economists often think that the need for government regulation arises as a result of market failure (Nakamura and Church 2003:15). In this framework, consumers of the environment (i.e., people) are theoretically willing to pay for maintaining their environment in a non-lethal state. When the production process includes actions taken to reduce negative environmental impacts of either the product or the production by-products, the price of environmental protection is borne by producers, who recoup the cost by raising the price of their product. Consumers who have a high willingness

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to pay for environmental protection will, theoretically, respond by paying more to purchase a product that is less harmful to the environment. According to this model, a market system, created through the provision of incentives or the imposition of disincentives, offers an effective and efficient means of achieving the intended policy goal of environmental protection. Command-and-control regulation, on the other hand, is seen as an expensive and inefficient way to implement public policy. The toxicity of some of the chemicals in electronic waste is high and, at times, not well understood. One great advantage of command-and-control is that it establishes a principle of law and allows an initially unambiguous definition of correct and incorrect behavior. I would argue that, for the most part, commandand-control is a necessary first step in a new area of regulation. There are some market failures that cannot be corrected, and some for which the costs of correction are higher than those of using other regulatory devices. In the case of disposal of e-waste, the difficulty is that small-quantity generators of hazardous waste and household waste are both exempt from U.S. federal regulations. Some form of command-and-control rule will probably need to be designed to make disposal of these toxics illegal. However, in the case of pollution prevention, a system of incentives could be put in place to encourage manufacturers to take back old products and remanufacture or recycle them. For example a $10 deposit could be charged on a cell phone, and then refunded to the consumer when the phone is returned to the store.

E -WA S T E D I S P O S A L A S A M A N AG E M E N T I S S U E The issue of organizational capacity is important in each definition of electronic waste as a policy issue. If the issue is defined as controlling and containing the waste once it is in the waste stream and already discarded, then the issue centers on the capacity of local governments to separate electronic waste and recycle or deposit it correctly. This may involve implementation networks that include private retailers, nonprofit groups, and other contractors.

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If the issue is defined as prevention or reduction of electronic waste, it becomes an issue of developing and utilizing the technology needed to reduce the use of toxics in electronic products. Not only must the engineering and scientific capacity be made available, but the design parameter of reduced toxics must be fully integrated into the product design and development cycle. Similarly, if the issue is reclaiming obsolete electronics for remanufacture as new equipment, that too requires developing the organizational capacity to design products that enable components to be easily reused. In the case of a “takeback” system, the organizational capacity must be developed to collect obsolete equipment from consumers and perhaps retailers. It is easy to imagine business arrangements that could facilitate collection and reuse. Copy machines and printers that are leased can simply be collected and replaced. For that matter, a discount on new products could be offered with the “trade-in” of useful old products. Since cell phones typically are accompanied by service plans and phone discount replacement cycles, those trade-ins can also be arranged quite easily. These arrangements can serve as models for other electronic product recovery efforts. While the organizational capacity to reduce and eliminate toxics in electronic waste may take time to develop and could be difficult for some organizations, the capacity to collect obsolete equipment is already in place. So too is the capacity to collect and separate electronic waste in the waste stream. Overall, organizational capacity is not a central issue in electronic waste.

S U M M A RY O F T H E M U LT I P L E D I M E N S I O N S O F E L E C T R O N I C WA S T E Electronic and other forms of toxic waste are complex issues that introduce a number of unpredictable variables. It is not always clear what was buried decades ago at a toxic waste site. We also do not know where all the electronic products we have made over time have ended up. Some are in dumps, some have been burned, and some are sitting in basements and closets. One problem is a capacity problem of simply identifying all the places where e-waste exists.

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To the extent that it is a management problem, it is a problem of managing a new and unproven set of technologies. In the case of toxic e-waste cleanup, the political and value dimensions are fairly intertwined. The politics of cleanup can be intense, because the values of defending one’s property and protecting one’s family are deeply held in this culture. Siting a waste treatment, transfer, or disposal facility in a large city is an inherent hot button political issue, but so too is siting a school or a big-box discount store. When the issue is the potential for being poisoned, the politics gets even more heated. When the politics of solid waste gets really intense, it is often about the perceived toxic elements of household waste handling. In the case of toxic electronic waste, the waste is always a poison. Issues involving perceived threats to public health always arouse high levels of emotional intensity. It is this intensity that shapes the way these issues are defined when they reach the policy agenda. The problem also retains a strong basis in science and technology, as the toxics are created as a by-product of highly valued electronic technologies that are central to our lifestyles. If and when science develops more-effective methods for building electronics that are not toxic or for detoxifying land, the political potency of this issue may be reduced dramatically. However, the management of new cleanup techniques will remain a challenge. As new cleanup methods are developed, staff will need to be trained to use these new methods and the organization will need to develop the capacity to recruit, train, and deploy staff to do this new work. Overall, I find e-waste essentially an issue that has its deep origin in the values of our consumer society, but its more immediate cause and effect relate to science and technology along with management. If the technology can be adjusted to make nontoxic electronics, then the issue disappears. If it can be adjusted to ensure that existing toxics can be pulled out of the waste stream and used again, then it is essentially an issue of management. Can we develop the organizational routines needed to collect and reuse parts of old electronic products? If we continue to use toxics in electronics, then the technological issue of improving waste site cleanup comes into play along with the management issues involved in deploying that cleanup technology in the real world.

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C O N C LU S I O N S Electronic waste is a complex issue that seems an almost perfect illustration of the challenges of sustainability management in the twenty-first century. Manufacturers create these highly valued goods that are central to the lifestyle that many of us enjoy. The technologies advance rapidly and the planned obsolescence of these goods is well known and clearly understood. What is only now becoming clearer to consumers is the toxicity of these technologies. As that has become more widely known, the demand has grown for producers and consumers to find a solution for this problem and for government to ensure the effectiveness of the solution. Successful management of this issue will be an excellent indicator of our ability to sustainably manage our economy.

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5 WHY IS HYDROFRACKING CONTENTIOUS?

T H E N AT U R E O F T H E P R O B L E M : H Y D R AU L I C F R AC T U R I N G Hydraulic fracturing, or popularly, hydrofracking, is an increasingly important environmental policy issue in the United States. Hydrofracking is the practice of extracting natural gas or oil from geological shale rock formations. Hydrofracking has been a method of gas and oil extraction for decades, but recent technological developments have allowed energy companies to extract unconventional, or previously unattainable, deposits of this abundant energy source. Extracting unconventional shale gas requires injecting water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure into rock thousands of feet deep to break open the shale formation and release the natural gas trapped inside. First a well is drilled vertically, which can extend 1,000 to 8,000 feet from the surface. Once the well has reached this depth, extraction teams drill horizontally, extending the well up to several thousand feet to extract previously unreachable gas (U.S. EPA 2010a:1). With vast untapped quantities of shale gas, the Marcellus Shale formation that lies beneath upstate New York and parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia has become a recent target for hydrofracking. In 2012 the

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U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimated that there are 482 trillion cubic feet (tcf ) of shale gas potential in the United States (Urbina 2012). At the current natural consumption rate of 25.46 tcf of natural gas per year, this could fuel the United States for close to two decades (U.S. EIA 2013c). Currently, the United States produces 7.85 tcf of shale-sourced gas annually— about 34 percent of U.S. natural gas (U.S. EIA 2013c). In 2010, before fully tapping these vast resources, the United States was the largest producer of natural gas in the world, with Russia a close second (U.S. CIA 2013). The Marcellus Shale alone holds reserves estimated at 141 trillion cubic feet of gas that could provide the United States with enough energy to consume at its current rate for nearly six years (Urbina 2012). While these estimates are noteworthy, there is no scientific consensus on U.S. shale gas reserves; estimates from different research groups vary greatly. In fact, the latest EIA estimates were reduced from earlier reports by 40 percent for the U.S. total and 66 percent for the Marcellus Shale (Urbina 2012). Further, the concept of “reserve” implies access, which is also uncertain. Nevertheless, we witnessed enhanced development of existing and new oil reserves as oil extraction technology improved, and we should expect a similar progression of our understanding of natural gas reserves as the technology of hydrofracking improves and expands. Fracking, as a general practice, has been utilized for decades but mostly through vertical wells tapping into limestone and sandstone; roughly one million hydrofracking wells have been drilled since the 1940s. Only since the 1990s have companies developed the technology to retrieve the gas from horizontal drilling and from shale sources (Brantley and Meyendorff 2013). This innovation has caused a substantial increase in natural gas production and in some parts of the country has led to “gold rush” or oil boom–like increases in economic activity. A study by IHS Global Insight estimates that “the shale gas contribution to the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) was more than $76.9 billion in 2010; in 2015 it will be $118.2 billion and will triple to $231.1 billion in 2035.” The study also finds that the shale gas industry will support 870,000 jobs by 2015 and generate more than $933 billion in tax revenues for local, state, and the federal governments over the next twenty-five years (IHS 2011).

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In addition to the economic boost brought by the shale gas industry, the United States has become increasingly reliant on natural gas as a primary source of energy. In February 2013, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that 26 percent of our primary energy consumption in 2011 was supplied by natural gas, making it the second-largest source of the nation’s energy (U.S. EIA 2011). Because natural gas is produced within the United States, it is often praised for its ability to enhance energy independence and create jobs. The natural gas boom has caused some to assert that the United States could displace Saudi Arabia as the biggest net exporter of energy. As oil extraction becomes more expensive and increasingly risky, and nuclear power plants become more difficult to build, natural gas, a cheaper and “greener” alternative, becomes more attractive to energy planners and businesses. The boom in natural gas has brought short-term economic benefits to some depressed areas, since local businesses respond to industry needs and local landowners may lease their land to gas companies. However, as fracking becomes more visible, it also faces greater public scrutiny. Currently, we lack federal rules governing this practice, although a number of organizations are conducting studies to determine the impact of hydrofracking.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L C O N C E R N S

Hydrofracking for natural gas is a technically complex, and potentially dangerous, practice. The proximity of shale gas to drinking water is one of the main concerns due to the chemicals in the fracking fluids, which include benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, among others, many of which are known to cause health problems, including cancer, in high enough doses (U.S. EPA 2013a). “With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of waste water that is often laced with corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium” (Urbina 2011). It is critical that this wastewater is properly removed and stored so that the chemicals, salt, sand, and methane do not mix with drinking water. However, some energy companies assert that the drilling takes place so far below the water tables from which we procure drinking water that the practice should

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cause little concern. Some consider the possibility that the toxic chemicals would reach the water table to be remote. “Fracturing in shale beds typically takes place at 7,500 to 10,000 feet, which is 1.5 to 2 miles below the surface, while the water table is typically only 500 to 1,000 feet down. In between are multiple layers of rock and clay, some of which are highly impermeable” (Merrill and Schizer 2013:23–24). Spillage, methane gas release, and wastewater disposal are, however, serious issues that must be considered when assessing the environmental impact of hydrofracking. Another issue with increasing our reliance on natural gas is simply the amount of waste that fracking produces, both directly through the process of fracking and indirectly through the supply chain necessary to facilitate it. The water required to fracture a well can range from two to four million gallons (Ground Water Protection Council 2009:ES-4). A 2013 study by Ceres found that “65.8 billion gallons of water was used in hydraulic fracturing in the U.S. from January 2011 through September 2012, representing the water use of 2.5 million Americans for a year. Nearly half (47 percent) of the wells were developed in water basins with high or extremely high water stress” (Freyman and Salmon 2013:3). While these are significant amounts, water and fracking fluid are being increasingly recycled by energy companies—up to 80 percent of it in some areas (Bell 2012). Despite these efforts at water recycling, it remains limited; and the amount of truck traffic required to provide a well with water creates additional local concerns due to resulting noise, vehicle emissions, and traffic congestion. One method of disposing this wastewater, injecting it deep into the ground, may be correlated with minor earthquakes in several areas of fracking; however, conclusive studies have not been undertaken to date (Fountain 2011). Additionally, the spacing of the plots of these drill wells can significantly change the aesthetics of previously residential or rural areas. The chemicals used in the fracking fluid serve a variety of purposes: killing bacteria that cause corrosive by-products, keeping the level of viscosity high enough to suspend the sand, preventing the mixture from losing its viscosity under pressure and heat, reducing friction, preventing swelling of the formation clays, and adjusting the pH level of the fluid (Hammer and VanBriesen 2012:2; NYS DEC 2012). Public health concerns arise around

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the potential toxicity of the chemicals used in the fluid. Still, fracking companies consider many of the chemicals used to be trade secrets; and they are not legally required to reveal those chemicals to the public. Fracking opponents worry that the fluids used to create fissures in the shale formation will contaminate underground aquifers. Any number of issues—inadequate well casing, poor cementing, fluid tank ruptures, accidents during fluid transport, failure to address surface water issues, and operational errors—could result in the release of fracking fluid into the immediate environment. Floodwater and storm water surges could also result in fracking fluid runoff if proper containment measures are not in place. In addition to concerns about the fluids used in fracking, further issues emerge with regard to the process of extraction, which releases large amounts of methane gas, the main component of natural gas. That release has two primary negative effects: (1) if methane gas reaches the water supply, that water would be unsafe to drink; and (2) methane gas is a potent greenhouse gas that can be released into the atmosphere through drilling or from pipeline leaks. Although the processing of natural gas is essentially confined from the well to sales, methane may be released as a fugitive emission from gas-processing equipment (Ground Water Protection Council 2009:74). A study conducted by faculty at Cornell University found that, due to venting and well leaks, between 3.6 and 7.9 percent of the methane escapes into the atmosphere during shale-gas production over the course of a well’s lifetime, which is more than 30 percent higher than the amount released during conventional natural gas production (Howarth et al. 2011:679). Other estimates put the leakage figures much lower; the EPA estimated 2.4 percent leakage for total natural gas production in 2009 (Tollefson 2013). However, because leaks like this are money lost to the extraction company, it is likely that technology will develop to reduce losses and enhance efficiency. In addition to methane leaks from wells, the diesel and natural gas used to power the equipment such as compressors, drilling rigs, and pumps emit harmful gases. While hydrofracking can have economic benefits, it can also have an adverse effect on a rural community, partly because of rapid socioeconomic changes in a given area. One report found that the arrival of natural gas workers led to an increase in crime in surrounding areas, and another report found that Pennsylvania, which has recently been facing the rapid entry

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of hydraulic fracturing, has experienced an increase in domestic and housing problems (National Association of County and City Health Officials 2013:2–3): Incoming industries, such as natural gas, can cause stress in communities from social changes, including uncertainty, isolation, inadequate housing and infrastructure, and substandard services. Poor respiratory health, both independently and in combination with exposure to air pollution, [has] been linked to chronic psychological stress. Therefore, the accumulation of social stressors, as caused by natural gas drilling, may have a significant negative impact on an individual’s emotional and psychological well-being that may be difficult to quantify. (2013:3)

When natural gas is burned, it produces less pollution and carbon emissions than coal or oil, but it is not totally free of pollution. In fact, another Cornell University study suggests that exposure to fracking chemicals can cause illness, reproductive issues, and death to animals (Ramanujan 2012). Cancer and other chronic illnesses are attributed to exposure to these chemicals. Understanding of the science and technology of this issue is critical to knowing how to properly regulate and manage it. At this point, we see conflicting scientific analyses presented by the companies that generate revenue from the practice and environmental groups that want to see the practice banned.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L B E N E F I T S : N AT U R A L G A S AS A BRIDGE FUEL

Due to the current global dependence on fossil fuels for energy, natural gas is often referred to as a “bridge” or “transition” fuel, meaning that it is both abundant enough to displace other fossil fuels and relatively cleaner than other, more carbon-intensive fuel sources. Natural gas emits only half as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as coal and approximately 30 percent less than fuel oil (Ground Water Protection Council 2009:5). Since CO2 makes up a large part of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the role of natural

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gas in the U.S. energy supply relative to other fossil fuels would lower our greenhouse gas emissions. Natural gas is seen as having an advantage over other fossil fuels, since it burns cleaner and produces fewer environmental pollutants than coal or oil because of its simpler chemical structure (Tertzakian 2006). Natural gas still produces 117 pounds of CO2 per million Btu of energy burned, a large quantity of greenhouse gases compared to the negligible emissions from renewable or nuclear energy. But, in comparison to coal, which produces in the low 200s pounds of CO2 per million Btu of energy, or diesel fuel and heating oil, at 161 pounds of CO2 per million Btu of energy, natural gas is cleaner (U.S. EIA 2013a). Additionally, natural gas is less expensive to develop, which gives it a market advantage over renewables (U.S. EIA 2010). Natural gas currently produces electricity at nearly the same retail cost per kilowatt-hour as coal, while still being less expensive than nuclear, solar, or wind power (Mellquist 2011:32). Consequently, natural gas is a relatively inexpensive way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and pollution. However, these benefits should be balanced against potential environmental and public health impacts of hydrofracking.

B A L A N C I N G T H E R I S K S A N D B E N E F I TS I N T H E P O L I T I C A L A R E N A

As outlined above, to many, hydrofracking represents an opportunity for the United States to meet its energy and economic needs, but could also put vital resources—and health—at risk. Partisans on both sides of the argument appear unwavering in their positions. Clearly, economic benefits and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive, though proponents and opponents seem to believe so. I hope that additional research on these impacts will clarify the costs and benefits of this source of energy.

F E D E R A L R E G U L AT I O N

Hydraulic fracturing can be regulated at all levels of government (federal, state, and local) in the United States. The level of regulation surrounding fracking varies from state to state, and there is no effective regulation at the national level. President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of

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2005, which included exemptions for extractive companies from complying with existing regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act; the Clean Water Act; the Clean Air Act; the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act; and the National Environmental Policy Act (Brady and Crannell 2012:3–4; NYS DEC 2013b). Commonly known as the “Halliburton loophole,” proposed by former vice president and Halliburton CEO Richard Cheney, the exemption from the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was granted under the argument that requiring companies with hydrofracking patents to comply with the environmental regulations would force them to disclose which chemicals they used in the hydrofracking process, and thus reveal their trade secrets to competitors (Vekshin 2013). These exemptions meant that hydrofracking companies no longer had to meet the strict air and water regulations that protect the environment. These exemptions have serious implications for drinking water, air, and health. Other types of industrial activity are regulated under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. The audacity of Cheney’s conflict of interest here was quite staggering, but beyond the scope of this volume: perhaps it will be a subject for a scholar of public ethics during the Bush years. In 2011 the U.S. Congress proposed the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (the FRAC Act), which would have required disclosure of fracking chemicals and revoked these exemptions, but it was not enacted. In 2012 President Obama used his executive authority to form an interagency group to encourage hydrofracking, stating: Its production creates jobs and provides economics benefits to the entire domestic production supply chain . . . with appropriate safeguards, natural gas can provide a cleaner source of energy than other fossil fuels. . . . To formalize and promote ongoing interagency coordination, this order establishes a high-level interagency working group that will facilitate coordinated Administration policy efforts to support safe and responsible unconventional natural gas development. ( U. S . W H I T E H O U S E 2 0 1 2 A )

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Acknowledging the role that natural gas plays as a necessary bridge fuel and a strategic boost to the economy, the executive order importantly notes the need for interagency oversight and disclosure of chemicals. In addition to President Obama’s executive order, his 2012 State of the Union address stated that companies engaged in hydrofracking on public lands would be required to disclose the chemicals used in their fracking liquids (U.S. White House 2012c). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently studying the impact on drinking water supply and is expected to release a final report in 2014 (U.S. EPA 2013e). Federal regulation also addresses another concern: the methane emissions from drilling or pipeline leaks. The U.S. EPA finalized rules in April 2012 that require energy companies to capture or burn methane and other fugitive emissions when released during the process (U.S. EPA 2012a). In addition, the U.S. EPA regulates volatile organic compounds (VOCs), in the new oil and gas rules, stating: “A key component of the final rules is expected to yield a nearly 95 percent reduction in VOCs emitted from more than 11,000 new hydraulically fractured gas wells each year. This significant reduction would be accomplished primarily through the use of a proven process—known as a ‘reduced emissions completion’ or ‘green completion’—to capture natural gas that currently escapes to the air. . . . The gas and hydrocarbons can then be treated and sold” (U.S. EPA 2012f:1).

S TAT E R E G U L AT I O N

The absence of effective federal regulation of fracking has created a policy vacuum that some states have moved to fill. Shale is readily available across the country, and states are taking varying approaches to the practice as well as to aspects of the process. “All states have departments of transportation regulating the use of local roads by trucks. EPA has regulatory authority over air pollution risks, and all states have systems for dealing with competing claims to groundwater” (Merrill and Schizer 2013:22). Pennsylvania and Texas are welcoming the hydraulic fracturing through flexible regulations, while New York has resisted fracking with former governor Paterson and current governor Cuomo’s moratorium on the practice. A brief survey of

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state regulatory action demonstrates the array of policies governing fracking in 2013. OHIO

In June 2012 Governor John Kasich signed State Senate Bill 315, which supporters claim is one of the most stringent hydrofracking regulations in the country (Kovac 2012). However, opponents noted that it is not perfect—the bill prevents owners and interested parties from appealing drilling permit approval, with sole authority given to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The bill also prevents doctors from sharing information about the chemicals used in the fluids—potentially impacting public health ( Jackson Kelly PLLC 2012). TEXAS

In 2011 Governor Rick Perry signed a bill requiring extractive companies to list the volume of water and chemicals used in the fracking process. However, there are some drawbacks to these attempts at safety precautions: “One, the law came into effect after tens of thousands of wells were fracked; the number being fracked now is small. The law is not retroactive. So the overwhelmingly [sic] majority of wells in North Texas will never have information disclosed. Two, the law does require public notice of the use of fracking chemicals but only after the work is done. Three, the law allows drilling companies to keep some information secret as confidential business information” (Loftis 2012). P E N N S Y LVA N I A

Unconventional wells are currently allowed in thirty-seven counties in Pennsylvania. In February 2012 Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett signed Act 13, which imposes a new fee system for “unconventional wells” in the state (Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission 2013). But the law protects extractive companies in two important ways: (1) if a chemical is deemed to be a “trade secret,” the company can withhold the composition of the chemical; and (2) even if a health service provider attributes a medical emergency to that “trademarked” chemical composition, that provider will be required to sign a confidentiality statement (Hond 2012:16, 18).

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N E W YO R K

Since 2010, New York has been cautious on hydrofracking. Governor Paterson vetoed a bill that banned hydrofracking in the state and simultaneously ordered a one-year moratorium on the practice. Since then, Governor Cuomo has faced pressure to either ban fracking altogether or lift the moratorium. In 2011 Governor Cuomo had the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issue a report on the environmental impacts of hydrofracking. The proposal included the following restrictions on fracking: • High-volume fracturing would be prohibited in the New York City and Syracuse watersheds, including a buffer zone. • Drilling would be prohibited within primary aquifers and within 500 feet of their boundaries. • Surface drilling would be prohibited on state-owned land including parks, forest areas and wildlife management areas. • High-volume fracturing will be permitted on privately held lands under rigorous and effective controls. ( N YS D EC 2 0 1 1 )

The DEC planned to issue regulations to codify these recommendations into state law, but has already missed the previous deadlines of November 2012, February 2013, and May 2013. The recent delays were at the request of the health department, which needed more time for its health impact study. The 2011 DEC review recommended “rigorous control” over fracking by ensuring the following: • Protecting drinking water through well water protection, additional well casing, spill control, storm water control and water withdrawal management. • Properly handling flowback water and its disposal. • Working with local governments for permitting and zoning compliance. • Identifying fracking chemicals and chemical alternative evaluations.

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• Protecting the air through required air pollution controls on engines and limiting flaring gas. • Conserving forestland and grassland by requiring best management practices.

Even under these restrictions, the DEC asserts that 85 percent of the Marcellus Shale is still available for natural gas extraction. The department argues that this is a good balance of regulation and room for economic growth (NYS DEC 2011). In 2012, the New York State Senate proposed SB 6892, which eventually died in committee. Through this bill, the Department of Environmental Conservation would store and maintain data on waste tracking and provide accessibility to the general public. New York already currently tracks hazardous waste, but it is not used in the hydrofracking industry yet, through a “chain of custody” form used to “track the generation, transportation, and receipt of hazardous waste”; however, this does not apply to hydraulic fracturing waste (NYS DEC 2013a).

I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E G U L AT I O N

The potential for shale gas also spans international borders, with large reserves in Russia, Argentina, Poland, China, and other countries. All permit fracking and have varying levels of regulation with regard to the practice. In Argentina, water regulation related to shale gas is carried out at the provincial level, which has made it difficult to make progress in developing more-stringent regulations. Currently, disclosure of details in fracking fluid is not mandatory (Stark et al. 2012:23). In Poland, “additives used in hydraulic fracturing are public information and have to be approved by the State Mining Authority” (Stark et al. 2012:24). Though China does not have regulations specific to shale gas, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has set standards for wastewater discharge and stresses the important of wastewater recycling. China’s National Development and Reform Commission developed a shale gas development plan that provides leading practices on

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fracking water recycling, drilling activities, and monitoring for wastewater discharge (Stark et al. 2012:23). Alternatively, France became the first country in 2011 to ban the practice altogether. Noting the “environmental damage, earthquakes, aquifer pollution, heavy metal contamination, increased truck traffic and damage to the countryside,” the environmental and energy minister, Delphine Batho, supports the ban against business interests looking to reopen the debate (Patel 2013).

H Y D R O F R AC K I N G A S A N I S S U E O F VA LU E S At the core of the issue of fracking is our addiction to energy. In New York, we learned about the depth of that addiction after Hurricane Sandy. People lost access to the Internet, heat, light, cable TV, refrigeration, and other elements of daily life. Many moved into hotels and friends’ homes until power was restored. Many reported a sense of dislocation and even depression due to their disconnection from social media and the Internet. Many young people spend much of their time communicating in virtual space, and will not interact in real space without substantial preparation in the electronic world. These preferences are not preordained; they are an expression of contemporary values. Life without energy and life off the grid is unimaginable. Sitting in your home and reading a book by candlelight is no longer acceptable. A second value is the one we place on free enterprise. In the American value system, “if I own land and want to drill a gas well on it, I should be allowed to do that.” The problem with adhering to this value is that the free use of one person’s land can damage another person’s land. More importantly, damage could be extended to collective goods such as groundwater resources. Another expression of the value we place on free enterprise is the effort to define the chemical composition of fracking fluid as “proprietary.” It is difficult to understand and effectively police an industrial process if you do not understand the chemicals that are used in that process. This focus on “proprietary” fluids is an indicator of the importance of this value in many

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locations. The freedom to pursue enterprise is given a higher priority than other rights and values, such as ecosystem preservation and even public health. An analysis of the value basis of fracking provides an indication of how deeply embedded energy is in our way of life. It is energy that has enabled technology to replace human labor with mechanical labor and freed most people in the developed world from the daily struggle for food, water, and shelter. This freedom has enabled many people to work in professions that develop a wide range of human potential: in science, literature, the media, the arts, and hundreds of new and emerging professions ranging from web design to events management to energy efficiency consulting. We could reduce our consumption of energy resources and pursue more-traditional forms of work, but our value system leads us to prefer to continue to develop the post-industrial, brain-based economy. Many of us do this, despite our awareness of the ecological and climate impact of that consumption. The environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing may worry us, but not enough that we will stop doing it. The energy is too central to our lifestyle to forgo its use. Another element of our value system at play here is our focus on the short term and the way we weight immediate benefits over long-term costs. We need the fossil fuels now, and the long-term impact of it on our planet or on our descendants is not fully integrated into our decision-making process. In his famous essay “What Has Posterity Ever Done for Me?” Robert Heilbroner asks the question directly: Will mankind survive? Who knows? The question I want to put is more searching: Who cares? It is clear that most of us today do not care—or at least do not care enough. How many of us would be willing to give up some minor convenience—say, the use of aerosol, in the hope that this might extend the life of man on earth by a hundred years? . . . Would we care enough for posterity to pay the price of its survival? I doubt it. A thousand years is unimaginably distant. A century far exceeds our powers of empathetic imagination. . . . Why should I lift a finger to affect events that will have no more meaning for me seventy-five years after my death

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than those that happened seventy-five years before I was born? . . . There is no rational answer to that terrible question. No argument based on reason will lead me to care for posterity or to lift a finger on its behalf. Indeed, by every rational consideration, precisely the opposite answer is thrust upon us with irresistible force. (1975)

In the end, Heilbroner must argue that in the future, humankind, faced with the limits of the planet and our needs as a living species, will come to understand the importance of the future and the need for what we have come to call “sustainability.” The argument is based on morality and the value of protecting the future, which may not adhere to the logic of rational utility maximizing self-interest, but which may still be a useful basis for a decision.

H Y D R O F R AC K I N G A S A P O L I T I C A L I S S U E Opponents of fracking projects are careful to avoid discussing the benefits and use of energy; instead they focus on local environmental impacts. Some raise issues of climate change as well. All of these efforts to stop energy projects are essentially rearguard actions that have little impact in reducing the massive tidal wave of fossil fuel extraction efforts that is under way throughout the world. Perhaps fracking is discouraged in New York, but just over the border in Pennsylvania it is alive and well. The need and market for fossil fuels is worldwide. The addiction to energy and the seductiveness of energy-based technology are contagious. Billions of people in the developing world are starting to see what the developed world has and they want it. The increased visibility of the developed world’s lifestyle is partly due to the use of more than five billion cell phones worldwide. All of this is creating political pressure for energy development. It comes from those of us in the developed world who are addicted to all this stuff and determined to keep it and from people in the developing world who see it and want it. Taking these energy technologies away from

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those who already have them and denying them to those who want them would destabilize world politics in fundamental and frightening ways. When this demand-side pressure is combined with the aggressive political posture of energy companies and their elected allies, it creates a political force of almost overwhelming impact. The energy companies and their allies have waged an extensive propaganda war against the renewable energy industry, focusing attention on subsidies and failures such as Solyndra’s bankruptcy while ignoring tax expenditures such as the oil depletion allowance and failures like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The disinformation campaign includes a massive effort to deny the facts and analysis of climate scientists. In many respects fracking must be seen as a political issue with clear winners and losers. Those drilling for gas and making money from it benefit. People who lease their land for drilling may very well make more money from drilling the land than from farming it or even selling it. Other winners are workers who operate fracking sites and the local businesses that sell to those workers. The losers are people who live near fracking sites and must endure pollution, traffic, and other disruptions. If water supplies are contaminated, the list of losers could grow exponentially. The politics of fracking is the way that the winners and losers either express their dominance or protest their domination. Losers will hope to expand the scope of conflict and change the power equation. Winners will hope to contract the scope of conflict and maintain control. The issue of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas was a major dilemma for New York governor Andrew Cuomo during his first years in office as he tried to decide if the state should lift the ban on fracking that had been put into place by Governor David Paterson. The issue resulted in loud protests, lobbying, and a divided public. The lack of consensus was made clear in a poll that was taken January 27–31, 2013, by the Siena College Research Institute (Greenberg 2013:3). The detailed poll measured the attitudes of New York state residents toward hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. Siena pollster Steven Greenberg reported that all New Yorkers as well as residents of the state’s gas-rich southern tier were nearly evenly split between opponents and supporters of fracking. Forty percent of New Yorkers favored lifting

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the moratorium, and an equal number opposed it, with 20 percent saying that they did not have enough information to make a judgment (Greenberg 2013:4). Greenberg’s polling indicated that the opponents of fracking held to their views more intensely than did the supporters of fracking. If fracking were permitted, 88 percent of its opponents reported that they would be upset, 54 percent of them very upset. By contrast, a continued ban would have upset 59 percent of fracking supporters, with only 20 percent reporting that they would be very upset (Greenberg 2013:2). The polling data indicated that if fracking were carefully regulated, a small number of fracking opponents might be willing to give it a try. However, the intensity of the opponents’ views virtually ensured that this issue would present difficult choices to the governor. Most of the public understood the potential economic benefit of permitting gas drilling, but they also understood the environmental dangers presented by the practice. The intensity of the issue and its profound symbolism virtually ensured the absence of rational discourse. Based on the polling data, from a purely political perspective, it would be expedient to allow opponents to have their way and to continue the state’s moratorium on fracking. Adding to the political nature of fracking is the historic memory of the OPEC oil embargo and the resulting emphasis on energy independence. In the current global economy there is no such thing as energy independence; an OPEC-style embargo would be impossible today. Energy is a commodity in a global economy that is driven by price and not by politics. Some U.S. energy resources are exported and some of our energy needs are met through imports. The global economy was small in the mid-1970s compared to today. Nevertheless, the national goal of energy independence continues to have a high degree of political salience—even though it is an irrelevant fantasy. There is little question that hydrofracking, and virtually all fossil fuel extraction in the United States has a political dimension. Removal of mountaintops to mine coal, deep-sea drilling to pump oil, and hydraulic fracturing are relatively new technologies for obtaining these fuels. All put our ecosystems at some risk, and the process of extracting these fuels creates

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winners and losers who turn to the political battlefield and expand the scope of conflict if they are on the losing side of the battle.

H Y D R O F R AC K I N G A S A P U B L I C P O L I C Y D E S I G N I S S U E The burning of natural gas requires air pollution and greenhouse gas regulation that is similar to the process of regulating other fossil fuels such as oil and coal. However, the extraction of the gas using this relatively new technology creates a new class of policy design issues that must be addressed. In order to regulate hydraulic fracturing we need to know the answers to several questions: • After the gas is released, what happens to the high-pressure liquid that is injected into the ground? Is the environment damaged in any way by this process? • How do we make sure that liquid is collected and detoxified before it is released back into the environment? How do we assure the safe storage, transport, and disposal of fracking waste? • Who pays for the monitoring and inspection of gas extraction processes and the costs of any infrastructure or equipment required to keep the process from causing environmental damage? What environmental risks are incurred by accidents and incompetence in the extraction process?

Because of the intense emotion around the fracking issue, it has been very difficult to conduct research and develop an effective method of policing this process. In my view it is very unfortunate that Vice President Cheney was able to exempt fracking from environmental rules. Citing the urgency of the “energy crisis,” Bush administration policy argued that the need for energy outweighed the need to protect the environment. Businesspeople argued that fracking was safe and did not require rules, an argument that, of course, is absurd. Driving is relatively safe too, but not if there are no speed limits, DWI laws, and police setting speed traps. The rules are needed

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to weed out unscrupulous operators and protect legitimate ones. They reduce the probability of accidents and provide a defense for competent and honest operators when mistakes happen. Because the federal government abandoned its responsibility to regulate this practice, state and local governments have been forced to fill the gap. The result is a patchwork of inconsistent rules that requires large national operators to adhere to many different regulations rather than a single, consistent national rule. This virtually ensures that the issue of program design will have to be revisited over the course of the extraction process. A key factor that will influence the success of a system of regulation is the profit margin on the gas obtained through fracking. If the market for natural gas gets glutted, the price will go down. On the other hand, assuming that profits are reasonably strong, there should be sufficient money to fund best practices in drilling and waste disposal as well as inspection and enforcement. One of the easiest steps the U.S. federal government could take would be to end fracking’s exemption from federal environmental rules. Its wastes could be regulated by federal hazardous waste rules and the process of drilling and extracting gas could be subject to the Clean Water Act, NEPA, and a variety of other federal rules. The disclosure of fracking fluid could probably be required under the Safe Drinking Water Act. It would make sense to take a fresh look at the entire practice and develop rules governing the entire process of hydraulic fracturing. Only roughly one-third of the fluid injected in the ground to extract gas is returned to the surface as waste (and less according to some studies); it would make sense to conduct some basic research on the fate of the remaining fluids. While the injection of fluid is deep enough that ecological damage seems unlikely, we still should understand where the liquid ends up and what impact it has. A policy design that brought hydraulic fracturing under effective regulatory control might convince people who are already biased on this issue to support a policed form of fracking. In this case, policy design could have an impact on the level of political heat generated by the fracking issue. One of the greatest contributors to the fight is the argument by proponents that there are no risks posed by hydraulic fracturing and government rules are

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not needed. This view is patently absurd. There are risks posed by pedestrians crossing a city street. That is the reason for the existence of crosswalks and walk/don’t walk signs, along with rules against jaywalking. How can drilling, installing a pipe, and injecting a toxic mix into the ground be considered safer than crossing a street? The absence of a policy design has had the effect of exacerbating the intensity of political conflict and has to some degree set the parameters for the fracking issue on the political agenda.

H Y D R O F R AC K I N G A S A M A N AG E M E N T I S S U E One of the causes of the emergence of the fracking issue has been the mismanagement of the fracking process by marginally competent and inadequately financed gas drilling firms. The technology of fracking is well established, but any mining operation involves complex site preparation, drilling, manufacturing, pumping, transport, and waste management operations. That capacity is available, but not every company possesses it. The temptation for a quick and dirty drilling operation and a killing in the marketplace is always present. And so while the management capacity to do this work is available, it is not always utilized. The organizational capacity needed to inspect and police a fracking facility could be built on existing state-level environmental regulatory organizations, but would require significant incremental resources. Still, the overall capacity to do this work well is available or could be developed quickly. A well-regulated industry would have the effect of driving out marginal organizations and eliminating management as a problem in this arena.

H Y D R O F R AC K I N G A S A N I S S U E O F S C I E N C E A N D T E C H N O LO GY Our addiction to energy is caused by the many inventions that require energy. From climate control to automobiles, from the Internet to cable highdefinition TV—all use energy, and the use of energy around the world

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continues to grow. We would not be trying to extract natural gas at our current rate were it not for the technologies around which we have built our lifestyle. The problem of hydrofracking is that it is a new technology of fuel extraction that is required because of our dependence on other energybased technologies we rely on. In general, we have the technology to extract gas through hydrofracking, and we probably also have the technology needed to safely transport, store, and dispose of waste from the process. One issue, however, is that we do not know the long-term impact of the mini earthquakes created to release this gas, nor do we understand the impact of the fracking fluid that is not returned to the surface as a waste. Additional study of these geologic issues is required to build this understanding, but very little research of this kind is now under way. Like other aspects of the energy issue, hydraulic fracturing is a problem caused by science and technology that requires science and technology if it is to be successfully addressed. The scientific issues are straightforward: What impact does the extraction process have on the local ecosystems and what efforts could be undertaken to mitigate or remedy those impacts?

S U M M A RY O F T H E M U LT I P L E D I M E N S I O N S O F H Y D R O F R AC K I N G The environmental sustainability policy issue of hydraulic fracturing is as multidimensional an issue as you could find. It has critical elements in each component of our framework. It begins as a value issue related to our desire for convenience and our addiction to energy. Its value dimension continues with strong roots in individual property rights and the American veneration of free enterprise. The issue’s strong geographic base leads directly to “not in my backyard” politics. The move by then vice president Cheney to exempt fracking from federal environmental rules has set up a contentious, wholly unnecessary, and confused debate over policy design, with industry struggling to maintain freedom from policing and communities eager to assert control over what many have viewed as an intrusive and destructive process.

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Most companies involved in fracking have the organizational capacity to successfully mine gas and bring it safely to market. However, the rules on waste management are unclear, and unscrupulous operators have clearly cut corners and damaged both the environment and the reputation of morereputable operators. Those with the capacity and the will to operate responsibly have only themselves to blame for the lack of rules that allowed incapable and unscrupulous firms to become involved in fracking. While the technology likely exists to safely extract the gas and keep its waste from damaging local ecosystems, the absence of regulation makes it likely that the costs of deploying this technology will not be incurred. Further, the basic research undertaken so far on the impacts of the process shows that we do not really know what we are doing. In that respect, the science of fracking is not yet fully developed. This interconnected and multidimensional policy issue will require effective regulatory design, political dialogue, and basic science if it is to be addressed. The motivation for undertaking that work lies in our need for energy and the advantages of natural gas as a bridge fuel to a fossil fuel economy.

C O N C LU S I O N S The emergence of hydraulic fracturing as a public policy issue has clearly been the result of a series of miscalculations by industry and a policy vacuum created by the federal government. The movie Gasland popularized the issue and made it visible to the public, and opponents of fracking have skillfully generated NIMBY sentiments and, particularly in New York, created a political dilemma for state government. The need for energy and the hunger for local sources will fuel this controversy for the foreseeable future. A major accident causing widespread contamination of an important water source could slow development. An effective regulatory process that resulted in a good track record of little damage could speed development and remove the issue from the political agenda.

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6 HOW CAN WE ASSESS THE RISKS OF, PREPARE FOR, AND SLOW CLIMATE CHANGE?

T H E N AT U R E O F T H E P R O B L E M O F G LO B A L C L I M AT E C H A N G E Earth’s climate is an extremely complex system, making it difficult to identify trends and their causes. In the last three decades, scientists have become increasingly certain that global temperatures are rising. However, temperature records and other data reveal that Earth’s temperature has always fluctuated. Separating natural fluctuations from anthropogenic, or humaninduced, change is a major challenge faced by scientists working to interpret recent changes in global average temperatures. The impact of human activities on climate has long been a subject of study. In 1970 Helmut Landsberg, who was one of the first scientists to identify and quantify such changes, published an article on the “heat island effect,” a phenomenon of urban areas retaining more heat than less urbanized areas (Landsberg 1970:1270). According to the American Institute of Physics, Center for the History of Physics: It had long been recognized that the central parts of cities were distinctly warmer than the surrounding countryside. In urban areas the absorption of solar energy by smog, black roads and roofs, along with direct outpour-

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ing of heat from furnaces and other energy sources, created a “heat island” effect, the most striking of all human modifications of local climate. It could be snowing in the suburbs and raining downtown.  .  .  . Some pushed ahead to suggest that as human civilization used ever more energy, in a century or so the direct output of heat could be great enough to disturb the entire global climate. (AIP 2003)

In the 1970s, scientists were not sure if the planet was getting colder or warmer. In 1975 Wallace Broecker of Columbia University’s LamontDoherty Earth Observatory posited that some of the cooling tendencies in Earth’s climate cycle were masking heat effects caused by carbon dioxide (CO2 ) (Broecker 1975:460–463): “He [Broecker] suspected that there was indeed a natural cycle responsible for the cooling in recent decades, perhaps originating in cyclical changes on the Sun. If so, it was only temporarily canceling the greenhouse warming. Within a few decades that would climb past any natural cycle. ‘Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?’ he asked” (AIP 2003). Rising global temperatures have been attributed largely to an atmospheric process known as the “greenhouse effect.” Normally, molecules of certain atmospheric gases trap heat like the windowpanes of a greenhouse. This natural greenhouse effect is responsible for keeping Earth’s temperature warm enough to support life as we know it on this planet. Human activities have introduced massive quantities of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 , into the atmosphere, increasing its heat-trapping capacity. The principal goal of global climate policy is to address the climate impacts caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. In 1981 a team led by NASA and Columbia University scientist James Hansen predicted that the dangerously heightened levels of CO2 would cause global warming by the end of the twentieth century (Hansen et al. 1981:957–966). Hansen’s team observed: Any greenhouse warming had been masked by chance fluctuations in solar activity, pulses of volcanic aerosols, and increased haze from pol-

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lution. Furthermore, as a few scientists pointed out, the upper layer of the oceans must have been absorbing heat. These effects could only delay atmospheric warming by a few decades, however. Hansen’s group boldly predicted that considering how fast CO2 was accumulating, by the end of the 20th century “carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climatic variability.” Around the same time, a few other scientists using somewhat different calculations came to the same conclusion—the warming would show itself clearly sometime around 2000. (AIP 2003)

W H I T E H O U S E P O L I C Y O N C L I M AT E C H A N G E

Although there is disagreement about what to do about global warming, the U.S. government and its Environmental Protection Agency accept the fact of rising global temperatures. According to the EPA, “Since 1901, the average surface temperature across the contiguous 48 states has risen at an average rate of 0.13°F per decade (1.3°F per century). Average temperatures have risen more quickly since the late 1970s (0.31 to 0.45°F per decade). Worldwide, 2001–2010 was the warmest decade on record since thermometerbased observations began. Global average surface temperature has risen at an average rate of 0.14°F per decade since 1901” (U.S. EPA 2012h:25). Since the first edition of this book was published, the EPA has become more definitive on the effects of climate change and its existence. Both President Bush and President Obama considered climate change certain enough to maintain a policy of controlling greenhouse gas emissions. The policy of the Bush White House in 2002 was to cut “greenhouse gas intensity” by 18 percent from 2002 to 2012. Greenhouse gas intensity is the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output. The goal of the Bush administration was to lower the rate of emissions in the United States from an estimated 183 metric tons per $1 million of GDP in 2002 to 151 metric tons per $1 million of GDP in 2012 (White House 2002). Under this policy, greenhouse gas emission reductions or increases were a function of the rate of GDP

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growth. The Obama administration has taken a more aggressive approach, declaring in 2010, a Federal Government–wide target of a 28 percent reduction by 2020 in direct GHG emissions, such as those from fuels and building energy use, and a target 13 percent reduction by 2020 in indirect GHG emissions, such as those from employee commuting and landfill waste. Combined, these two goals could result in a cumulative reduction of 101 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, equivalent to the emissions from 235 million barrels of oil. Meeting Federal agency GHG pollution reduction targets is estimated to result in a cumulative $8 billion to $11 billion in avoided energy costs through 2020. ( U. S . W H I T E H O U S E 2 0 1 3 )

Though not entirely prescriptive, initiatives like this are an indication that the U.S. federal government considers climate change to be a policy problem worthy of government action.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L A C T I O N

Most scientists believe that the current warming trend is at least partly a result of human activities, particularly fossil fuel combustion. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that the warming of the last fifty years cannot be explained by natural causes alone (IPCC 2001). The primary causes of global warming are changes in land use and the increased use of fossil fuels by the world’s seven billion people. The United States alone emits more than 19 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, making it one of the most significant contributors to the problem of anthropogenic climate change (U.S. EPA 2008b). Though this is significantly reduced from the first edition of this book in 2006, when the United States was responsible for 25 percent of global emissions, this shift can be attributed to a global recession, continued outsourcing of manufacturing to other countries, and economic growth in China and India. It is important

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to recognize that shifting emissions from one country to another is not an absolute reduction. Just as e-waste cleanup was an issue custom-made for the U.S. federal political system, climate change is the quintessential international issue. It cannot be addressed by one nation. As scientific uncertainty has been reduced and the issue has become clearer, international discussions have resulted in policy development. Climate change has emerged as an important item on the international institutional agenda. Attempts to initiate international governance of climate change began in earnest when in 1988 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) established an intergovernmental working group to prepare for treaty negotiations (IUCC 1993). In 1990 the United Nations General Assembly established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC/FCCC). Diplomats from more than 150 nations met six times between February 1991 and May 1992 and adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in May 1992. In June 1992, at the United Nations Rio Earth Summit, the convention was signed by 155 nations. This agreement set the general parameters for an international agreement on climate change. To accomplish the goal of stabilizing greenhouse gases, the framework established six guiding principles: 1. Common, but differentiated, responsibilities. Countries would be asked to  contribute to emissions reductions according to their level of development. 2. Equity of requirements, particularly between poor and rich countries. Such equity would be critical to achieving an international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions and reductions. Interpretations of what would constitute equity vary widely. 3. Precautionary principle. It is better to be safe than sorry. Complete scientific certainty is not needed to act on climate change. 4. Cost-effectiveness. The policies adopted to reduce emissions should bring the most benefit for the smallest possible cost. 5. Sustainable development. Each nation has the right to pursue sustainable development.

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6. Open international economic system. This is a reiteration of the principle of free trade.

The framework also imposed three basic obligations, principally on developed nations: 1. A gradual return to 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions. 2. Provision of financial resources and technology to developing countries in order to promote sustainable development. 3. Provision of data on emissions and mitigation efforts.

In December 1997, the third meeting on the Framework Convention on Climate Change was held in Kyoto, Japan, where the parties adopted the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement specifying emission reduction targets for different countries. The targets were designed to allow for international progress toward the goals of the framework. For countries ratifying the protocol, emissions targets would become binding. Greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 (UNFCCC 2002). Under the Clinton administration, the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, but the treaty was never introduced to the U.S. Senate for ratification. Instead, by a 95–0 vote, the Senate passed  the ByrdHagel Amendment in July 1997, which expressly requested that the United States not enter into any treaty requiring reductions that could prove damaging to the economy or would not hold developing nations to the same commitment schedule as developed nations. Despite this setback, hopes for Kyoto remained. However, with the election of George W. Bush, these hopes were dashed, as Bush announced his intention to wholly abandon the treaty shortly after taking office. Notwithstanding the U.S. stance on Kyoto, it was ratified by Russia in November 2004, allowing the treaty to come into effect in February 2005.

L A C K O F U . S . C L I M AT E L E A D E R S H I P

As noted earlier, the policy of the 2002 Bush administration on climate change called for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions relative to GDP

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growth. The program did not mandate any specific reductions but proposed the following actions aimed at reducing emissions (White House 2002): • Substantially improve the emission reduction registry. • Protect and provide transferable credits for emissions reduction. • Review progress toward goal and take additional action if necessary. • Increase funding for America’s commitment to climate change. • Implement a comprehensive range of new and expanded domestic policies, including tax incentives for renewable energy and cogeneration, and carbon sequestration.

This collection of policies and programs seemed more like a public relations initiative designed to placate critics of U.S. climate policy than a coherent effort to reduce greenhouse emissions. U.S. policy remained unchanged at the start of President Bush’s second term as he continued to resist the type of policy design that would encourage industry to reduce CO2 emissions or develop means of sequestering CO2. It was clear that the Bush administration saw a trade-off between reducing global warming and economic growth. The refusal to regulate was based on the lobbying power of the energy industry and the argument that reduction of fossil fuel use would reduce economic growth (Moroney 1998). The right wing of the Republican Party, over the last decade, has succeeded in the climate change debate primarily by questioning climate science and opposing the idea of regulation as a solution. Rhetoric aside, the U.S. policy on climate change during the Bush administration was to avoid requiring American businesses to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. The clear hope was that research on new technologies would generate alternatives that would allow the United States to continue its pattern of consumption with less of an impact on the environment. These new technologies are part of the Obama administration’s energy strategy. In the second term of Obama’s presidency, the administration’s “all of the above” strategy incorporates expanded extraction of domestic fossil fuel sources while also providing incentives for nuclear, solar, and wind and other renewables. While this is better than opposing renewable energy, an “all-you-can-eat buffet” should not be confused with a strategy.

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U . S . F E D E R A L C L I M AT E A C T I O N

The problem of climate change extends beyond the nation-state and requires a high degree of international cooperation. By mid-2004 there was a clear international consensus on the need to reduce CO2 emissions in order to begin slowing the process of human-induced climate change (Betsill 2005:118). The clearest expression of this consensus in the United States at that time was the bipartisan Climate Stewardship Act proposal from Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. Although the proposal was defeated in late 2003, it continued to set the policy agenda in Washington on the issue of climate change for the remainder of the Bush administration. The legislation proposed to set limits on releases of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, and it also proposed the creation of a market where firms or industries that could not meet reduction goals could purchase “credits” from those that managed to exceed them. The bill called for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2016. While less ambitious than the Kyoto Protocol, it would commit the United States to a specific, mandated timetable. Since then, the only federal legislation to gain some traction on climate policy in the United States has been the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Waxman-Markey). In 2010 it became the first nationwide cap-and-trade bill to pass in the House of Representatives. The measures in the bill aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 83 percent compared to 2005 levels by 2050 (U.S. Congress H.R. 2454). That bill was defeated in the Senate. At the time, Senator Harry Reid reported that the Senate would instead focus on responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and tightening energy efficiency standards (Hulse and Herszenhorn 2010). The Obama administration, lacking support from Congress, focused its climate change policy efforts on specific mitigation strategies under control of the executive branch, notably through vehicle emissions policies and through the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. In 2009 Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency to allow individual states to set stricter tailpipe emissions regulations than the federal standard. The Obama administration finalized standards in August 2012

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that will increase fuel efficiency to the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks by model year 2025. Previous standards set by the Obama administration raised average fuel efficiency by 2016 to the equivalent of 35.5 miles per gallon. These new standards can deliver a substantial reduction in greenhouse gases from U.S. vehicles over the next few decades. The EPA under the Obama administration is moving forward with efforts to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, an idea rejected by the Bush administration. In 2007, in its landmark decision Massachusetts v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the EPA has the authority— and the obligation—to regulate greenhouse gases and instructed the agency to ascertain whether greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. In 2009 the EPA formally declared that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are pollutants that threaten public health and welfare. The agency then moved ahead with regulation, despite harsh criticism from some conservatives in Congress. In May 2010 the agency issued the nation’s first regulations for greenhouse gases: rules for passenger vehicles. A large number of legal suits against the EPA, as well as legislation seeking to halt greenhouse gas regulation, slowed the EPA’s work, and in 2013 the agency announced that it would delay the issuance of a new rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants. When the regulation is finally promulgated, it will be the first federal greenhouse gas restriction on the power sector. As of this writing, in June 2013, the regulation remains unissued. Once it is in effect, it will effectively prevent any new coal-fired power plants from being built, since they cannot meet the proposed requirements with existing technology. “An E.P.A. spokeswoman said the agency had received more than two million comments on the proposed rule” (Broder 2013). Unfortunately, the new plant rule must be completed before rules for existing plants can be developed. Hopefully, by the time you read these words, the regulation will finally be in effect. In addition to these executive actions, Congress enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, on February 17, 2009, which provided $54 billion in funds to encourage domestic renewable energy production, make federal buildings more energy-efficient, improve the electricity grid, repair public housing, and weatherize modest-income

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homes. While these initiatives support mitigation and adaptation strategies, they of course cannot be considered a comprehensive national climate change policy. The investments and credits from the Recovery Act have since ended, and there is no guarantee that investment in clean technology and renewable energy, or even basic research and development, will be adequately funded. Further, these policies do not set specific reduction targets and fail to confront the issue of greenhouse gas generation in the developing world.

T H E F U T U R E O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L C L I M AT E N E G O T I AT I O N S

Due to the global economy, the issue of climate change reaches far beyond the United States. Thirty-seven industrialized countries and the European Union supported the Kyoto Protocol and committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels. The European Union members at that time, the United States (even though not committed to the protocol), Canada, Poland, Hungary, Japan, and Croatia all reduced their emissions by at least the original target over the first commitment period, between 2005 and 2013. For the second commitment period, outlined in the 2012 Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, parties committed to reduce emissions by at least 18 percent below 1990 levels in the eight-year period from 2013 to 2020 (UN 2006b). The United States has been heavily criticized internationally for its approach to international negotiations around climate change. However, given the apparent inability of Congress to craft and pass climate legislation, a U.S. decision to sign a binding international agreement seems unlikely. The partisan standoff that prevents meaningful climate and energy policy at the national level seriously limits the ability of American negotiators to influence the international conversation and to join future agreements. The fundamental policy problem in international relations is that it is difficult to compel sovereign nation-states to comply with rules established at the international level. Still, it is not impossible. International treaties constrain the behavior of powerful sovereign states. A culture of global norms can create effective taboos—such as the one that has discouraged the

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use of weapons of mass destruction. The potential for catastrophic failure can make the development of the taboo more likely, but also more necessary. The reduction of greenhouse gases is likely to require large-scale, gradual change. This can and should be monitored and encouraged internationally. However, if the largest emitter of CO2 refuses to participate in such reduction efforts, it undermines the rule’s legitimacy. The international nature of this problem creates governance issues that are inherently difficult to address.

G LO B A L C L I M AT E C H A N G E A S A N I S S U E O F VA LU E S As in all of the other environmental issues we have discussed, one cause of climate change is our lifestyle choices. These choices are value-based. The behaviors based on these values have resulted in population growth and extensive use of fossil fuels. The extreme present-mindedness of our culture limits our interest, as a society, in addressing climate change. The real dangers of global warming will arise in the future. The impacts are not precisely predictable and therefore seem somewhat removed from current reality. The public responds far more quickly to environmental problems that have an immediate impact at the personal, individual level. We can smell air pollution, taste water pollution, and immediately feel the health impact of some toxic substances; these issues therefore provoke faster and more active responses than does climate change. The effects of global climate change are complex and more difficult to see. Many of these effects will not become apparent for several decades. Social learning is required if climate change is to achieve status on the systemic and institutional policy agenda. We have to imagine ourselves alive in the future and experiencing the negative impact of global warming. Analysts who have examined the solvency of the social security system face the same challenge—most of the people who will be harmed if the system goes broke have more immediate financial worries to pay attention to, and so the system’s solvency cannot secure a place on the policy agenda. An interesting

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development in recent years has been the connection of extreme weather events with climate change. Many attributed the destructive impact of Hurricane Sandy to climate change. This may alter the time-frame perspective of climate change to some degree (excuse the pun). Another value dimension of the issue stems from the question of equity. Do people in the developed world have an unlimited right to burn fossil fuels to maintain their lifestyles while denying that same right to people in developing countries who are aspiring to a more consumptive lifestyle? A second equity issue is the greater vulnerability of poor people to the effects of climate change. Very often a wealthy nation can defend its settlements and food supplies against the negative impact of an extreme climate event. For example, the effects of droughts can be mitigated by irrigation, and the damage from floods can be fixed if massive amounts of capital are available to pay the costs of reconstruction. Poorer nations, on the other hand, lack the resources required for these kinds of responses. In his book American Heat, Donald A. Brown (2002) takes the position that because global warming has had and will have a disproportionately large negative impact on poorer countries, reductions in emissions are a moral imperative. To Brown, the question that remains is how much reduction is needed, and, in his view, “no matter which ethical rule is followed on deciding on an atmospheric stabilization goal, the status quo on global warming emissions is ethically reprehensible” (2002:232). I do not agree that the ethical dimensions of climate change are as stark as Brown believes, but the problem clearly has an ethical dimension. Because the science of climate change is somewhat uncertain, and since much of the actual impact of climate change will be revealed in the future, I find the ethical dimension of this issue a little ambiguous. The root ethical problem posed by climate change is the likelihood of disproportionate impacts on poor nations and people. Climate change is likely to worsen many of the environmental, social, and economic problems that lead to extreme poverty. It is clear that greenhouse gas emissions are harmful, but it might be possible to reduce emissions while doing nothing about poverty. It seems to me that the root ethical issue here is poverty alleviation, not reduction of

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greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, there is an ethical obligation to the most vulnerable as well as to future generations. Some of the political potency of the climate change issue is rooted in its ethical dimensions.

G LO B A L C L I M AT E C H A N G E A S A P O L I T I C A L I S S U E The industries that stand to lose the most from limits on greenhouse gas emissions are those of oil and energy production (Levy and Newell 2005: 194). The George W. Bush administration evidenced extremely close ties to both industries, particularly oil. One of the most powerful forces that motivated the Bush administration to question the science of global climate change was the financial and political power of the American oil industry. As President Bush was the former governor of a major oil state, with a large base of campaign contributors in the oil industry, it was not surprising to see him take the perspective of the oil industry on global climate change in spite of campaign promises in 2000 to act on climate change. The fundamental logic behind this position was that reducing greenhouse emissions will cost money that might otherwise have been spent directly by consumers on goods or services or by government on services or infrastructure that would bring elected leaders political credit from constituents. The other side of the political equation is that emission reduction policies would provide political credit for elected leaders with environmentalists. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and similar weather events, we are seeing the start of climate impacts that are clearly evident and significant in the present day. If these events increase in frequency and intensity, we may see a different political calculus start to emerge. More recently, although President Obama campaigned on eliminating subsidies for oil companies in order to invest in cleaner sources of energy, under his administration, oil and gas companies are still given tax preferences in many areas, including allowing extraction companies to deduct a percentage of gross income from their production costs, deduct exploration and development costs of aspects of the extraction process, and amortize expenditures, capital gains, and royalties (Tax Policy Center 2013). Presi-

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dent Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy includes promoting fossil fuel development and renewable energy (domestic oil drilling, natural gas extraction, clean coal, nuclear, and solar, wind, and biofuels). Additionally, the lengthy public debate over the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and the on-again/off-again environmental leadership from President Obama cast doubt on the depth of his commitment to renewable energy development and his climate change mitigation pledges. Despite this inaction, in 2012, when the Northeast was damaged by Hurricane Sandy, climate change came back to the political agenda briefly during the final days of the 2012 election. At that time we began to see a new focus on climate change adaptation and resiliency. President Obama vowed in his 2013 State of the Union message to address climate change through executive action if Congress failed to act. However, this brief momentum was quickly overshadowed by other pressing issues, like the economy’s slow recovery and gun control. Climate is more an issue of science and technology than a political issue. No one is in favor of global warming, but those opposed to strong measures to reduce CO2 emissions tend not to be convinced that the benefits of these measures outweigh the costs. While the costs and benefits may not be positive for specific businesses, overall it appears that higher environmental standards have had the indirect effect of forcing the modernization of American industry, and creating wealth by creating cleaner environments. Sewage treatment plants, for example, not only have cleaned rivers but have also made waterfront land more buildable and valuable. Policies that reduce greenhouse emissions could well make some cities more livable during the summer and could thus encourage factories to invest in overall plant modernization. Such investments could in turn make businesses more competitive. If spending on measures to mitigate climate change turned out to be a good investment, elected leaders supporting such policies could also stand to benefit politically. On the other hand, if these policies caused companies to shut plants in the United States and/or move to developing countries with less-stringent greenhouse gas regulations, supporters could suffer political damage. Global warming acts as a symbolic issue that helps identify an elected leader’s degree of environmentalism. There is a large environmentalist

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constituency, and an active interest-group community engages in national and international environmental issues. Global warming did not (if you’ll excuse yet another bad pun) generate much political heat in the United States until 2001, when President Bush came out against the Kyoto Protocol. The paradox is that Bush’s opposition may have taken a relatively boring and low-intensity international issue and given it domestic political currency in the United States. He may have had the same inadvertent impact on the issue’s standing in the international community. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Bush’s position on climate change was part of a set of issues that environmentalists cited as evidence of his anti-environmental stance. Republican opposition to climate policy is best evidenced by the party’s 2012 presidential primary candidates. Many Republican candidates were climate change deniers, and though some had acknowledged the validity of the issue in the past, they retreated from their positions for fear of alienating conservative primary voters at the base of their political party. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman seized on this issue as a way to delineate their own brand of moderate, mainstream environmentalism— and possibly to tweak a president for whom neither had any great fondness. The energy industry and other businesses that opposed emission limits lobbied against the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, and the Senate defeated the bill in late 2003 by a 55–43 vote. Opposition from the political right was also fairly intense. Writing about McCain-Lieberman in the conservative magazine National Review on October 29, 2003, Marlon Lewis, Jr., observed that the bill would impose a cap on CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide is the inescapable byproduct of the carbon-based fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—that supply 86 percent of all the energy Americans use. U.S. energy consumption is expected to increase by 34 percent between 2001 and 2020, and carbonbased fuels are expected to supply about 90 percent of the increase. Enacting any variant of [McCain-Lieberman]… would be tantamount to issuing a congressional declaration of war on the fuels that power the U.S. economy. Worse, it would establish the institutional framework for a succession of legislative, regulatory, and litigation assaults on carbon-based energy.

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After the failure of the McCain-Lieberman bill, the rhetorical heat continued to increase, particularly as the EPA ramped up its efforts to regulate carbon emissions. Members of Congress tried—but failed—to legislate a halt to the agency’s efforts, attempting to “starve the beast” by cutting the agency’s budget. The Republican right has pursued an aggressive public perception campaign turning the once bipartisan, market-based policy of “cap and trade” into “cap and tax.” The intense partisan divide of the last few years has made the climate debate more polarized even as climate science has become more definitive. The smear campaign against climate science and climate policies seems endless, as fossil fuel dollars pour into the offices of Washington lobbyists and national advertising agencies. Despite strong language on both sides of the issue, climate policy lacks the kind of grassroots support generated by environmental issues with sustained and visible local impacts. Climate change politics is an issue primarily inside the Beltway and in the rarefied world of international diplomacy. The lack of a geographic focus reduces its salience on the American political agenda. It suffers from the fact that it cannot be localized like a toxic waste site. This may be changing as the public begins to see the impacts of climate change affecting their lives—persistent droughts, extended heat waves, tornados, and storms like Hurricane Sandy. We may be seeing the beginning of a change in the way Americans think about and understand climate. Still, for the most part it remains an abstract issue. Moreover, while the issue is driven by scientific analysis, political perspectives have influenced the way the science of climate change is interpreted. In that respect, the intersection of science and politics helps define this issue. Politics will also help define which emission control, energy source, and carbon sequestration technologies will be used to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The political dimension of the issue is partially derived from one’s overall attitude toward the role of government. Left on its own to engage in profit-maximizing behavior without restriction, industry has no reason to think long-term solutions and reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases. Those who believe that regulation is to be avoided, and that the free market alone is best at delivering a high quality of life, will resist regulations that impose greenhouse gas reductions. Free-market advocates might favor the use of the tax code to induce good behavior, but overall they are

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not certain about the seriousness of the problem and they worry that global warming is just an excuse to revitalize command-and-control regulation (Victor 2004:31). On the other hand, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency may be supported due to the multiple benefits of wasting less energy. The politics of climate change has domestic variants, as we have seen in the United States, but it also includes a strong element of political relations between sovereign nations. The world of international relations is an elite politics that reflects the economic interests of nation-states. With globalization, corporations have gained influence over the behavior of multiple nation-states (Levy and Newell 2005:4). National sovereignty remains a powerful force, but international regimes (or sets of governing rules and norms) have grown dramatically in the past half century. In part, this growth emerged to facilitate international economics and the flow of trade and capital across national borders. It is not clear whether the strength of such global corporations would enable them to dominate a competition with a strong nation-state such as the United States, Japan, or China. I think that the people who control armies and police will still tend to dominate those who control the cash, but this conflict is largely theoretical. For the most part we see these two sets of powerful entities—multinational corporations and nation-states—acting in concert. Elite politics involves players who move between the public and private sectors or, at a minimum, have strong business and political alliances in addition to social relations across the public and private spheres. Former vice president Richard Cheney is a good example of this type of individual, having served as a cabinet official as well as the CEO of Halliburton, the Texas-based construction and engineering firm that serves as a contractor for oil companies and the U.S. government. These “elites” operate under the assumption that national and corporate interests are either inherently compatible or can and should be brought into alignment. The issue of global climate change has gained status on the international political agenda as the world’s political and economic elite have slowly come to accept that climate change is a real problem that could affect the business environment. For example, Swiss Re is one of six financial institutions that

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have adopted the Climate Group’s climate principles for environmentally responsible investment. Under these guidelines, the company can demonstrate that its products provide a net benefit to the climate. In 2003, Swiss Re launched its Greenhouse Neutral Programme, aiming to reduce emissions by 15 percent per employee by 2013 and to offset remaining emissions by purchasing high-quality carbon credits. It achieved this goal in 2007, six years early. By 2010, it had achieved a total reduction of more than 50 percent (Climate Group 2012). The European Union’s stance on climate change and the U.S. government’s growing recognition of the problem illustrate the impact of these financial facts on international and domestic climate politics. Poor people will not be the only ones to suffer from the effects of climate change; the entire global economy could be destabilized. When comparing the costs of reducing climate change to the potential loss of economic activity that might result from global warming, the trade-off seems rather straightforward. In the end, global warming is a worldwide political issue with large potential impact and one that has gained a growing elite consensus about the need to control rapid climate change. Hopefully this urgency will serve to reduce political conflict surrounding this environmental issue and focus our attention on technology and management issues. In sum, the political dimension of the issue will continue with some intensity for a few more years, but likely will result in substantive policy to reduce emissions.

G LO B A L C L I M AT E C H A N G E A S A N I S S U E O F S C I E N C E A N D T E C H N O LO GY The use of carbon-based fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation has changed how most humans live. These technologies have changed where we live and work, what we eat, how much leisure time we have, and what we do during our leisure time and our work time. Our way of life is so closely tied to the use of fossil fuels that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to phase them out. In recognition of this reality, some proposals for reducing atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases focus on removing the gases

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from emissions and storing them, rather than reducing the use of emissionproducing fuels. This process of removal and storage is called “sequestration.” According to Klaus Lackner, Climate change concerns may soon force drastic reductions in CO2 emissions. In response to this challenge, it may prove necessary to render fossil fuels environmentally acceptable by capturing and sequestering CO2 until other inexpensive, clean, and plentiful technologies are available. . . . Storage time and capacity constraints render many sequestration methods—such as biomass sequestration and CO2 utilization—irrelevant or marginal for balancing the carbon budget of the 21st century. Even the ocean’s capacity for absorbing carbonic acid is limited relative to fossil carbon resources. Moreover, with natural ocean turnover times of centuries, storage times are comparatively short. Generally, sequestration in environmentally active carbon pools (such as the oceans) seems ill advised because it may trade one environmental problem for another. . . . Underground injection is probably the easiest route to sequestration. It is a proven technology suitable for large-scale sequestration. Injecting CO2 into reservoirs in which it displaces and mobilizes oil or gas could create economic gains that partly offset sequestration costs. ( L AC K N E R 2 0 0 3 : 1 6 7 7 – 1 6 78 )

This approach is to use fossil fuels until we can reduce their use by moving to solar or hydrogen-based sources of energy. In all likelihood we will see a combination of techniques used to increase energy availability while reducing the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is clear that the development and use of technologies that contribute to global warming is an important dimension of this issue. Humans have employed the energy of combustion since the discovery of fire. In the preindustrial era, our primary fuel for heating and cooking was wood. Wood was replaced by coal, which was also used to run turbines that generated electricity. Coal was largely, but not completely, replaced by oil and natural gas, and for a time, many thought that these fuels would be replaced by nuclear energy. If nuclear power had not created a dangerous waste and

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security issue, it very well might have replaced oil and gas and we would all be living in the all-electric houses that were predicted in the 1950s. In the early 2000s, the United States saw a “nuclear renaissance” when several new plants were planned. However, after the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, nuclear power was quickly taken off the table again. Unless a technical solution is developed for CO2 reduction, emission reductions could result in a reduction in economic growth and possibly an increase in world poverty. It is likely that if the need for emission reductions became an urgent crisis, powerful nations would impose these reductions on less-powerful nations—regardless of treaty obligations. Their own political stability would not survive drastic reductions in living standards. The likely result would be no reduction of emission, or reductions disproportionately borne by weak and poor nations. It is possible that global climate change is simply a precursor of other global environmental issues that will result from the large-scale change induced by the fact that the planet is absorbing the impact of more than seven billion people and their technology. In their classic work Energy Basis for Man and Nature (1981), Howard and Elisabeth Odum project the policy impact of the laws of thermodynamics, focusing specifically on the idea that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Earth’s ecosystems are a closed and interconnected system. When energy is used to perform work, the form of energy degrades and has an impact elsewhere in the system. With global warming, it is apparent that human technology and the level of energy use are resulting in negative global impacts. We should not assume that this is the only effect of our growing population and use of energy; it is simply the first effect we have had the ability to detect. What will be next? Can we develop the technology needed to measure and mitigate these global impacts? The technological complexity of dealing with the planet’s warming makes one long for simple problems such as electronic waste or reducing pollution from gas drilling. The difficulty with global-scale problems is that we do not have accurate measures of global environmental conditions, and we have never engineered anything on a global scale. If we design something that fails to mitigate such an environmental effect and if it has an

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unanticipated impact, the consequences could be catastrophic. Perhaps this is unlikely, but the fact is that we really don’t know if we can develop technological fixes for global problems. Nevertheless, we have no practical alternative but to try. Energy consumption and our definition of quality of life are inextricably intertwined. What we think of as social, cultural, and economic development relies on the availability of energy. The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back in. Remove the material well-being we are all used to, and the result would be political instability that could easily result in the use of weapons of mass destruction. The effect of those weapons on the planet would be far more damaging than anything that might be caused by global climate change. In essence, this becomes an argument for treating global warming as primarily an issue of science and technology. I recognize that it has a number of other dimensions. For example, we certainly need to use politics and regulation to slow the rate of warming and give technology more time to develop. We also need to invest in research and technology at scales similar to the investment in science made in the United States during the Cold War. However, global warming was caused by technology, and it is a problem that requires the development of new technology if it is to be solved.

G LO B A L C L I M AT E C H A N G E A S A N ISSUE OF POLICY DESIGN There are many ways to reduce greenhouse emissions. If we destroyed our modern way of life and its technology, we would probably reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other chemicals we release into the atmosphere. We could also use the blunt instrument of command-and-control regulation, requiring massive reductions immediately. Continuing in an equally unrealistic direction, we could allow developed nations to maintain current levels of emissions and not allow developing countries to increase their use of fossil fuels. Obviously, climate change could be more easily in-

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fluenced, with fewer unwanted impacts, if the policies designed would allow for cost-effective, gradual, and equitable reductions. Policy designs typically address some problems while causing others. The interstate highway system in the United States is a good example. It allowed for faster and safer travel, but also encouraged and indirectly subsidized suburban sprawl. One of the goals in any policy design is to attempt to project the direct and indirect impacts of the proposed policy. Despite economists’ “assumptions” of certainty, it is difficult to predict individual and collective human behavior. One advantage of a decentralized, federal political system is that we can experiment with small-scale pilot projects and see if a policy works as expected. When faced with an urgent worldwide problem like global warming, there isn’t a great deal of time or means to allow for experimentation. Nevertheless, different approaches can be attempted simultaneously in a variety of locations. Without experimental policy designs, we may end up betting on a single solution when it would be far better to hedge our bets and see what approach works best. Building on the success of U.S. acid rain policy, both the McCainLieberman 2003 cap-and-trade proposal and the 2010 Waxman-Markey proposal attempted to limit emissions through financial incentive. Under cap and trade, an overall emission limit is set (the cap), and those who manage to emit less than the cap permits can sell (or trade) their “pollution rights” to those who cannot easily reduce emissions. Such a policy helps to ensure the most reduction for the least expenditure (Victor 2004:32–33). This approach can cost much less than pure command-and-control permits for certain levels of emissions. In addition to those two approaches, the following policy designs could be pursued: 1. Tax credits or deductions for businesses that can demonstrate reduced emissions. 2. Tax credits or deductions for fuel-efficient or non–fossil fuel vehicles. 3. A crash research-and-development initiative to develop carbon sequestration technologies, reduced-emission or no-emission fuels, and other technologies that could mitigate the effect of greenhouse gases.

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The international dimension of the issue requires the use of different design elements for nations at varied stages of economic development, as well as an enforcement mechanism for noncompliant states. As noted earlier, when one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases and the most powerful nation in the world refuses to participate in an international governance scheme, it has the effect of undermining the attempt at policymaking. No amount of policy design finesse and creativity can overcome the political problem caused by the rejection of Kyoto by the United States. The Kyoto Protocol incorporates some of the design elements that are needed to ensure equity and impact. At this writing, in the short run we are lacking the national political will in the United States to try again at such a policy process. Moreover, we do not know if the reductions that can be achieved without economic disruption will be sufficient to solve the problem of global warming. A technological fix that would allow continued economic growth without environmental damage seems the key to addressing the issue of global climate change. Increasingly, I believe that the solution is to develop the technology of solar receptors and electric batteries, along with smart-grid technology and distributed energy. The climate problem was caused by science and technology, and we need a policy design that encourages the development and eventual commercialization of these new technologies.

G LO B A L C L I M AT E C H A N G E A S A M A N AG E M E N T I S S U E If the heart of the issue is the need for new technology, the management element of the climate issue involves the development of the capacity to invent and then deploy such technology. If carbon sequestration is attempted, the organizational capacity required would be similar to the order of magnitude of NASA’s moon project in the 1960s. A shift from fossil fuels to other forms of energy will require considerable organizational and social learning. Therefore, at some point in the future, the climate issue will be dominated by management considerations. We are not yet at the stage of policy,

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program, or technological development to label this problem as dominantly a management issue. Currently, organizational capacity is needed to continue research and scientific development on the dimensions of the climate issue, to work with nation-states in developing strategies to reduce greenhouse emissions, to monitor corporate behavior, and to encourage emission reductions. At this stage of policy development, organizational learning is a high priority. We need to get better at understanding the dimensions of this problem and at stimulating the behaviors that lead to reduced emissions. We have many models to draw on for building institutions that promote organizational learning and the development of science and technology. In some respects, this is the easy part. Once we learn what we need to do to reduce global warming, we will then need to build the nation-specific and global institutions that will implement those solutions. That is likely to be a difficult, unprecedented task.

G LO B A L C L I M AT E C H A N G E : A S U M M A RY O F I T S M U LT I P L E D I M E N S I O N S As environmental policy evolves, we find ourselves dealing with ever more complex problems. With climate change, we face the first truly global environmental issue. Climate change challenges our political institutions—institutions that are largely designed to deal with local problems that lack a strong set of cross-national and international governance mechanisms. One of the principle objectives of government is maintenance of the public’s security, sustenance, and safety. Historically, as threats to security, sustenance, and safety came from wider geographical areas, governments grew to represent larger areas of land. The creation of the United States of America and the European Union are examples of this phenomenon. If threats to our security are global in nature, history tells us that governmental institutions of global scale cannot be far behind. While it is difficult to envision a world government, the emergence of a global economy and global-level

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environmental problems may be the start of a set of demands that could one day lead to such a political structure. Our capacity for self-destruction may necessitate the creation of new types of global political institutions. The evolution of political institutions, processes, and practices is difficult to predict, but problems on the scale of global warming are without precedent. If nation-states and global corporations can meet these threats without developing new forms of governance, then new institutions will not develop. Those institutions currently in power have every incentive to try to respond to these new demands, since a new institutional arrangement could threaten their power and position. However, enlightened self-interest is considered enlightened because most of the time, those in power define their self-interest in narrow and conservative terms and don’t see the need for change until it’s too late. Franklin Roosevelt’s welfare state helped respond to the Great Depression and may very well have preserved the power structure in the United States. FDR, however, was not your typical governing elite. Those in power today will help ensure that they remain in charge by making sure that they implement the principles of sustainable development—protect the environment, and reduce global poverty. Can they rise to this challenge? At the heart of the climate problem is the impact of science and technology on our lives. Technology has allowed us to feed more people, live longer, move around the planet at greater speeds and distances, and reproduce in greater numbers. We have built a culture and a value system stressing individual freedom, mobility, and material consumption. The infrastructure that satisfies this value system depends upon high levels of fossil fuel consumption. Such consumption, in turn, generates greenhouse gases that threaten the stability of the planet’s climate. Science is the enabler of this technology and lifestyle, and we are now looking to science for help in designing a technology to mitigate the negative impacts of our own lifestyle behaviors. As noted earlier, the world’s political and economic elite have gradually accepted the facts of global warming. That acceptance will be transformed into resources to develop other technologies—technologies that will enable us to maintain our current lifestyles without generating more greenhouse gases. Can this be done? We don’t know. If you are a technological optimist,

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your answer is yes. If you are a pessimist, you are skeptical and perhaps predict catastrophe. The record from the past is limited, but leads me to believe that we may be able to invent ourselves out of our current predicament. In a sense, we are back to Malthus and the need to project the future based on trends. Malthus thought we would overpopulate the planet and be unable to produce enough food for everyone. He failed to account for technological innovation in producing and distributing food. It is uncertain whether science will come to our rescue and “solve” the climate issue. However, in using this proposed framework for understanding environmental issues, it becomes clearer that the issue of global warming is primarily one of science and technology. Can we develop a technological fix for this problem? The jury is out. But if history is a guide, I’d put my money on human ingenuity. Or, as then Senator Obama used to say, “Yes, we can”.

C O N C LU S I O N S Climate change is an indication of the power of our technology and the difficulty of controlling its impact. As a society we are utterly dependent on technology and continue to be entranced by its magic. The question that remains is, How far do we wish to go? How much more technological do we wish to make our world? When I was a child, I watched a cartoon show called The Jetsons. It featured a family in the future that lived in a totally technological world. The dog took a walk on a treadmill, cars flew through the air, and the maid was a robot. There was no “natural” world. Everyone lived in the sky and food came from dispensers on the wall. When I first studied environmental policy and environmental values in the mid-1970s, I thought back to that show and wondered what had happened to Earth below. On The Jetsons we never saw a tree, a river, a mountain, or the ocean. George Jetson had to work only three hours a day, and material comfort was assumed. Is that the kind of world we want? Is that the kind of world we are capable of creating? When Ed Bass created Biosphere 2 in Arizona, one purpose for the experiment was to see if we could create an ecosystem that could

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sustain itself. While it was only one experiment, it appears that we did not have the technology needed to operate our own ecology or biosphere. It turns out that we still need Biosphere 1—planet Earth. We have not developed enough technology to live like the Jetsons. More than forty years after the conception of the Jetsons’ technological world, we still did not have the science/technology needed to build such a world. While we have not created the world of the Jetsons, in the United States we have created a lifestyle that is an energy-dependent, technological marvel. Go to a southwestern suburb in the United States. Take your threethousand-pound air-conditioned sport utility vehicle on an eight-lane interstate highway to your four-thousand-square-foot climate-controlled home that features a kitchen laden with modern appliances (from a SubZero freezer to an automatic icemaker). Walk into your den, where you have a computer and a World Wide Web–based entertainment system that records entertainment for viewing whenever you like. Use water pumped from a mountain range more than a thousand miles away to fill your climate-controlled swimming pool or to water your garden. We don’t have the technology of the Jetsons cartoons or the Star Wars movies yet, but we certainly have dreamlike technology. We also still have parks, forests, oceans, and other natural environments to relax in, play on, and marvel at. But technology comes at a price. We are starting to affect the planet’s temperature and possibly other natural systems as well. With global warming, the bill for this technology is starting to come due. The other environmental problems discussed in previous chapters were difficult issues and certainly presented challenges, but they did not raise the fundamental questions that global warming raises. My own view is that the climate problem will be solved when a lowcost, convenient, renewable energy technology is developed that will simply out-compete fossil fuels. If there was a solar cell the size of a window and a battery the size of your laptop that could power your house and car, there would no reason to use fossil fuels any longer. While I haven’t seen that stuff on Amazon.com yet, who would have predicted that we would now have five billion cell phones on the planet or that we could buy a computer that

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fits in your hand? The climate problem is a problem caused by technology and it will need to be solved by technology. At this point, we must leave behind this brief survey of a sample of environmental problems and return to a consideration of the preliminary framework for understanding environmental policy issues presented at the start of this book. Has the framework added to our ability to understand the environmental issues presented here? Do we have a more thorough, multidimensional understanding of these environmental issues? We will explore that question in the next section of the book, “Critiquing the Framework.”

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PART III UNDERSTANDING, DEVELOPING, AND IMPLEMENTING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

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7 WHAT HAS THE FRAMEWORK TAUGHT US ABOUT THESE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY PROBLEMS AND WHAT ELSE DO WE NEED TO KNOW?

A S U M M A RY O F T H E F R A M E W O R K The previous sections of the book examined a set of environmental issues through a framework that provided a common set of questions: • What is the value basis of this problem? • What is it about our way of life that led to this problem? Can the problem be solved by changing the way we live? Can we change the way we live, or are these behaviors too central to our culture and value system to be changed? • What type of political issue does this environmental problem pose, and how did it get on the political agenda? What political, economic, and social forces created this problem? What political and institutional arrangements might help solve the problem? How did the issue’s definition on the political agenda influence the shape of the program designed to solve the problem? Is there political consensus behind the definition of and proposed solutions to the problem? • Was the problem caused by the development and use of new technology? Can developing additional technologies to control negative impacts solve the problem?

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• Can we develop effective methods for inspiring corporate and private behavior to reduce or mitigate environmental damage? Have such proposals been developed and achieved status on the political agenda? What needs to happen in order to promote effective policy designs? • Do we have the organizational capacity to solve this problem, or must such capacity be developed?

In addressing these questions, we highlight elements of the issues and provide a more nuanced description of each problem. We are not attempting to develop an objective description of the environmental problem; rather, our objective is to understand it as a policy issue. This requires an effort to see how the problem has been defined by the political process. Which aspect of the problem dominates? Why is the problem seen in one way and not another? What is the relationship of proposed solutions to the nature of the problem? Which part of the problem is being targeted for response or solution? Why? What is the relationship of the proposed solution to existing or potential organizational capacity? Do we know how to do this work? Does anyone else? Does it require new technology or can we use stuff “off the shelf ”? The framework explicitly deconstructs the environmental sustainability issues into component parts and examines aspects of the issue serially. In that exercise, an analysis of each of the elements related to a given problem can help illuminate its most important features. One issue related to the framework that will be discussed later is its need to handle interactive effects and the impact of one element upon another.

A P P LY I N G T H E F R A M E W O R K : W H AT D I D I T T E L L U S ? The framework helps us to identify the main element of each environmental problem, which will hopefully help us allocate the appropriate resources and energy to the channels needed to solve the problem. New York City’s congestion pricing problem, for example, need not be solved by new technology or management capacity—it is largely a political issue that could very well change with new leadership, a different political environment, or a

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different approach to communicating the plan. E-waste, on the other hand, appears to be essentially a policy design and management issue. The example of hydrofracking featured important dimensions of each element of our framework. Climate change is even more complex. Both are complex issues with a fairly balanced multidimensional definition. In fact, each element of the framework sheds some light on a problem’s definition and proposed solution. In some cases, one element of the framework dominates. In others, no single element seems to be most important. For a problem to become a public policy problem, it must by definition have political dimensions. It certainly seems as if all environmental problems share a common origin in the values that have led to our resourceconsumptive lifestyle. The disciplinary basis of our expertise leads us to focus on particular aspects of an issue and assume we have analyzed the entire issue. People who do not understand the policy process make ridiculous assumptions about what that process is capable of producing. Environmental scientists examine the science of an environmental problem, identify cause and effect and possible solutions, and then lament the messiness and irrationality of the policy process for acting incrementally and in half steps. Economists apply their often elegant but all too imperfect models of individual and collective human behavior to these same problems and identify neat and tidy policy designs that would solve the problem—if only “those foolish public servants making policy could just understand and carry out these designs.” Policy formulation and policy implementation are complicated, messy, and unpredictable human activities. This framework provides detail on the differences in the process due to a variety of factors. When assessing policy processes, we cannot view any particular human activity in isolation from other activities. Context matters. Geography matters. Culture matters. It is possible to design a policy to charge a fee for entry into the central business district in London—where they successfully launched supplementary public transit lines to cater to those who would be negatively affected by the charge. A similar policy design would be difficult to implement in New York City, because the MTA, a state agency, must maintain and enhance existing lines before thinking about building new ones. Even though I believe that congestion pricing is an efficient way to reduce traffic and greenhouse

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gas emissions from cars in New York, in that city it might not be the most politically viable solution to the problem. In other words, politics, management, values, and technology matter. Policy is complicated because human beings and their needs and interests are complicated. The framework proposed in this book allows us to examine some of the complexities of these four issues. The sections in chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 summarizing the framework’s multiple dimensions serve as a recognition of the need to deal with interactive effects within the framework. For example, the management dimension is influenced by the nature of the technology and the corresponding risk being managed. If hydrofracking byproducts, fluid and methane gas, were less toxic, the organizational capacity needed to handle these by-products could be less sophisticated. On the other hand, if we were trying to handle reactor fuel for a nuclear power plant, it would be more toxic and far more difficult to manage than hydrofracking fluid. The framework presented here leads the analyst to consider a broad range of critical issues. It also allows for a rough prioritization among issues. If I had to, I could express a highest-priority-issue dimension for each of the environmental problems we examined: • For New York City’s congestion pricing issue, the dominant element is politics. • For e-waste, the problem is largely one of policy design and organizational capacity. • Hydrofracking has a variety of important dimensions, but since we still run the risk of contaminating the land and air with harmful chemical byproducts of hydrofracking, in my view, the need for new science and technology dominates the other dimensions of this problem. In this sense, fracking must be seen as one element of the overall problem of fossil fuels. That problem will be resolved only by a technological fix. • Similarly, even if we could muster the political will and institutional arrangements to reduce or sequester emissions of greenhouse gases, we still need to develop the technology at market-scale to really address these problems.

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Perhaps this review suggests that there is an identifiable sequence to formulating and addressing environmental issues. In the first instance, we need to learn what the problem is and the science needed to develop enough knowledge to measure the dimensions of the problem. The cause of the problem is typically a function of our values, while the definition of the problem is a function of the politics surrounding such an issue. Values, such as our attraction to freedom, the myth of energy independence, and mobility, create the problems that lead to “solutions” such as congestion pricing and hydrofracking. The aspect of the problem that we choose to focus on— for example, toxic waste cleanup rather than control of the creation of toxic substances—is a social construction. Our definition of the policy problem is a reflection of what we consider important enough to focus on. Our understanding of the issue depends on the scientific paradigm or worldview that shapes our choices of problems and potential solutions. Political forces shape the issue’s ability to reach the institutional agenda and the way it reaches the agenda. Next, we need to develop technology to reduce, eliminate, or clean up the damage. This technology development process may require political will to address the problem at hand. However, it is possible that the process of technology development could be organized wholly within the private sector, thus reducing the need for political support. If the public sector develops the technology to address the problem, we will then need political approval to obtain the resources needed to implement the technology. If and when political approval is secured, we then need to develop the organizational capacity to manage the technology. Applying the framework to these environmental problems helps us more precisely define and understand them. This perspective allows a realistic assessment of what remedial policies might be possible and at what speed they might be developed and implemented.

VA LU E S A N D E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y While all of the dimensions of the framework are relevant to most policy issues, the role of values seems, in some respects, most fundamental to

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environmental problems. The root cause of all four of the issues examined earlier is our collective lifestyle and the consumption required to maintain it. Applying the framework reinforces the centrality of the issue of values. This brings me back to the very beginning of my own training in the field of environmental policy and the work of my dissertation chair, Lester Milbrath, on environmental perceptions and values. Milbrath’s concept was very straightforward. The cause of environmental problems is our system of values. This “dominant social paradigm” (DSP) relies on technology to solve environmental problems and is based on the belief that humans should dominate the earth and use and consume its resources for their own gratification. Writing in the early 1980s, Milbrath described a new environmental paradigm (NEP) that “does not . . . renounce all technology, all industrial production, all growth, or all material goods . . . [Instead, it advocates] thoughtful consideration of where we are going, careful and subdued production and consumption, conservation of resources, protection of the environment, and the basic values of compassion, justice and quality of life” (Milbrath 1984:14). In Milbrath’s view, to change values and transform society from the dominant social paradigm to the new environmental paradigm, one needed first to understand these value systems in great detail. You could obtain this knowledge by studying people’s environmental perceptions. Once you understood this, you could educate people to understand how the earth’s finite resources and fragile ecosystems doomed the dominant social paradigm and required the rapid adoption of a new environmental paradigm. The problem with Milbrath’s formulation is not his analysis of the problem, but rather the proposed solution. Those with the power to continue their level of consumption are not about to change their behavior just because it is not sustainable. While Milbrath’s proposed solution may have been unrealistic, his analysis of the root cause of the problem was persuasive. The notion that a deeper understanding of people’s perceptions of the environment could lead to a better understanding of environmental values is also true. Such perceptions and values do lead to the behaviors, like driving an SUV, or legal principles that allow people to store toxic waste on their private property that create environmental problems.

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To Milbrath, without large-scale change in worldview to a new “softpath” paradigm, the planet would simply cease to produce the materials needed to sustain human life. Small-scale, remedial, serial, and incremental policy change would result in too little environmental policy, too late. Several decades later, elements of environmental awareness are certainly more widespread, as is support for environmental and sustainability policy goals. However, the Western style of material consumption has not been replaced by a more environmentally oriented paradigm. People all over the world are striving to achieve the consumer-oriented lifestyle we see in the West and in Japan. The economic interests that use advertising to shape these values and turn them into wants and needs have only grown stronger in the past several decades. Moreover, the creations of satellite television, thousands of cable channels and the Internet have given these corporations many more avenues for disseminating their messages than were available in the 1980s. Environmental quality itself has become a consumer good. Ecotourism, second homes, camping, hiking, and other travel-related activities have brought more and more people into environments that are more and more fragile. We value the environment more than ever, and we want to make sure we can benefit from clean air, water, mountains, and other natural settings. NIMBY is, in part, a reflection of the popular desire to keep environmental insults away. The framework presented in chapter 1 constantly brings us back to this fundamental yet extremely challenging issue. Every environmental policy issue we face has a basis in our values and our views on how the world works. The capacity of economic interests to drive and manipulate the shape of environmental values over the past forty years has been impressive and irrefutable. Our need to “get around” this basic fact is another part of my motivation to develop a multifaceted framework for understanding environmental policy. If we cannot change the fundamental values and beliefs that create environmental problems, perhaps there are other levers that can be used to provide policies sufficient to develop remedies that do not require us to change our fundamental beliefs and lifestyles. If our goal is to develop effective environmental policy that reduces pollution and leads to sustainable development, we must assess and understand

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the current political reality and the power held by vested economic interests. Those interests will oppose fundamental change that threatens their hold on power. Given that fact, it is important to search for alternatives to the massive paradigm shift discussed by Milbrath. Shifts in values are very slow to develop, and social science has not yet obtained enough knowledge to understand what stimulates them and what impact they will have. Incremental change, as Milbrath argued, may be too slow to solve the rapidly developing environmental problems we face. But just as solutions develop slowly when policy is made incrementally, so too do mistakes. It is probably a good idea to avoid catastrophic mistakes, even if the price is slower progress than we might like to see. There is no question that technology and its impacts develop more quickly than public policy. It may be that environmental policy and a more sustainable economy will develop too slowly to solve our problems, and therefore we may witness the slow or even rapid deterioration of the planet that sustains us. Unfortunately, these are the constraints under which we operate. In the final chapter, I will discuss some approaches to dealing with this fundamental issue. I simply wish to make the point that while I acknowledge the issues raised by Milbrath, I do not see fundamental value change and paradigm shift as a realistic solution to environmental problems. Understanding the value basis of environmental problems is important to a complete understanding of the cause of these problems. However, this knowledge does not lead me to believe that value change can be attacked head-on. Instead, we will need to develop policy approaches that acknowledge the deep roots of our behavior and the need to solve our problems without a fundamental change in the way we live. That is the appeal of sustainability management. We apply our technology and management skills to create a high-throughput economy that maintains the quality of the ecological resources that we depend on.

P O L I T I C S A N D E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y First, we have learned that environmental problems do not all share equal levels of political saliency, do not all occupy the same spot on the political

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agenda, and do not all generate the same degree of political conflict. There is a great deal of symbolism in environmental politics. As the United States has become deindustrialized, environmentalism has shed some of its anti– blue collar image. There is very little political cost in being labeled an environmentalist. Rather, such labeling can be seen as a political boon. Yet some elected leaders continue to cling to the trade-off between economic development and environmental quality. At the same time, an increasing number of leaders understand that the trade-off choices that must be made are more complex than a pure one-to-one choice between economic growth and environmental protection. Moreover, support for environmental protection cuts across all shades of the political spectrum. For example, the largest environmental group in the United States, the National Wildlife Federation, includes a large number of conservative hunters. Polls indicate strong support for environmental protection among liberals and conservatives. By looking at the political dimensions of these four cases, we also see that politics is increasingly being used to address environmental issues. More and more environmental issues are reaching the political agenda. In the past half century, institutional structures have been created to address environmental issues at all levels and in all branches of government in the United States. Some issues that were mediagenic, hot-button issues have become routinized. Many issues, such as underground tanks and sewage treatment, started as local issues, became visible, and made it to the national political agenda for a time, then returned to the local level for routine county- and municipal-level action—although they now had federal regulatory standards and grant funds attached. During the George W. Bush administration, we found a renewed politicization of environmental issues due to the administration’s intense ideological fervor. The Obama administration, however, resisted this dichotomy between economic growth and environmental protection, even in the face of the 2008 recession and the subsequent slow recovery. Simultaneously with this development, we saw the political center and many large corporations become intensely pro-environment. Sustainability has become an indicator of high-quality corporate management. This evolution meant that, in the long run, some of the controversy associated with environmental politics would likely evaporate. Environmentalism has been replaced

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by sustainability: the idea that there is no trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth, but that economic growth requires a healthy and productive ecosphere. The trade-off seen in earlier years was a false one. Eventually, we pay the costs of degrading the environment. We pay for it in health care, cleanup bills, or declining productivity. The U.S. political system’s center-oriented dynamic is starting to drive anti-environmentalism to the political extremes. Issues such as climate change and toxic waste are difficult to solve, but very few people think they can be ignored. In the future, I expect that our increased experience with environmental issues in the policy process, and the likely creation and discovery of new environmental problems, will result in a continuing flow of new and redefined environmental issues onto the political agenda. The contentiousness of this policy process will vary depending on the complexity and danger posed by the issues, as well as the resources needed to address the problem. Increased resources are being allocated to environmental protection, and this resource base causes the politics of environment to be viewed by the public and the ruling elite as governing the decision processes of a routine public administrative function. Waste management, toxic waste cleanup, water filtration and supply, sewage treatment, and air pollution control are now part of the routine cost of doing business. Just as governments build roads, schools, and hospitals—services that maintain a standard level of public well-being—so too they keep the environment safe. These cases show a pattern of political issues’ taking the normal path through the issueattention cycle, from crisis and extraordinary politics to the routine of consensus-oriented day-to-day political dialogue. Even the newest issue, global climate change, shows signs of waning public interest, reduced conflict, and growing consensus.

S C I E N C E , T E C H N O LO GY, A N D E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y Each of the issues discussed in the previous chapters is both exacerbated by and potentially solved by technology. Many of the technologies that can be employed as solutions to such issues are already well developed and acces-

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sible. Electronic waste management and fracking do not present technical challenges. For the past thirty-five years, promising technological advancements have been achieved in toxic waste cleanup. The technology to safely extract fossil fuels is not an issue. Ineffective management of that technology, however, can create problems. Global climate change is the newest issue, and it therefore has had the least time to develop technical fixes. To a considerable degree the contentiousness of environmental politics is a function of the cost and complexity of the technology available to solve the problem. Moreover, the environment is a policy subject that requires a high degree of scientific literacy if we are to comprehend it correctly. An understanding of the relationship between pollution and its effect on ecosystem and human health requires scientific knowledge of chemistry and biology as well as ecology. Engineering principles must also be understood if we are to comprehend cleanup strategies, techniques, and devices. Understanding climate change requires at least a rudimentary understanding of mathematical modeling. I have observed from my personal experience with environmental decision makers that, like me, most have very little scientific training. In my view, this lack of formal scientific training and understanding substantially reduces our ability, as policymakers, to effectively address environmental problems. Our environmental leaders—people who now are predominantly trained in business, law, and public policy—will need more knowledge of science if they are to be truly effective. One clear lesson of the application of this framework is that all environmental issues are issues of science and technology.

T H E D E S I G N O F E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y A N D T H E I M PAC T O F E C O N O M I C S O N E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y Environmental policy has benefited from being a relatively new area of regulation. While the initial clean air, water pollution, and hazardous waste laws featured pure command-and-control regulation, most subsequent laws have benefited from creative policy designs. Most of these designs have been based on modern economic concepts, and have consequently provided more cost-effective means of changing behaviors that damage the environment.

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We have learned of the limits to design and the need to factor in realworld constraints when creating elegant policy designs. For example, “capand-trade” policies have been used to reduce the sulfur dioxide pollution that causes acid rain. The way that sulfur dioxide is transported through the air makes it possible to allow higher concentrations in one geographic area to be offset by lower concentrations in another location. Similar proposals for mercury are not feasible, however, because of the way that mercury is transported, as well as its tendency to concentrate in “hot spots” (Barnhardt et al. 2004). Economists sometimes use the phrase “all things being equal” as a way of assuming away variation that might interfere with the functioning of a model they are proposing. With regard to ecological systems and chemical contamination, however, all things are rarely equal, and such assumptions can lead to dangerous conclusions. As Walter Rosenbaum has observed, “The impact of environmental policy on the economy is a constant preoccupation of environmental regulators and the regulated” (Rosenbaum 2005:101–102). Environmental policy design is always focused on minimizing economic costs and maximizing economic and environmental benefits. In the United States, the move from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-and-information-based economy has changed the input side of the design equation and reduced the economic costs of some environmental policies (Rosenbaum 2005:101–102). Still, the search for creative and imaginative policy designs should not be halted due to the difficulty of the task. Just as engineers and scientists can invent new technologies, so too social scientists can develop new and creative ways of organizing and influencing individual, corporate and social behaviors. We need to be modest in the way we approach these design tasks, since we can create the same types of unanticipated impacts our scientist colleagues face.

I M P L E M E N T I N G E N V I R O N M E N TA L S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y P O L I C Y In the final analysis, the implementation of public policy requires specific behaviors by specific people. These behaviors are typically coordinated ac-

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tions by groups of people in organizations. No matter how elegant the policy design, no matter how many incentives are in place to encourage these behaviors, if people don’t perform the tasks, nothing happens. As one of my students told me a while back, “You know, people are always, well, so human!” He went on to say that “people are unpredictable, difficult to understand and sometimes unmanageable.” Effective management seems simple, is often assumed to be in place, and is frequently the missing piece of the policy puzzle. This is not to say that the most typical organizational behavior is no behavior. In fact, for every story of people on two-hour coffee breaks there are dozens of stories of individuals and groups performing at extraordinary levels. In New York we saw it after the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy. First responders saved many lives, and nurses and doctors carried patients down darkened stairwells to enable them to be transported to safety. Subway service, electricity, gas delivery, food delivery, phone and Internet service, and other essential services were restored quickly and efficiently. Driven by their emotion and sense of duty, people worked harder, better, and longer. Management is a critical dimension of environmental protection and a necessary factor in understanding environmental policy. All of the cases presented here required effective management for programs to be successfully implemented. E-waste could be brought to the wrong disposal site. Fracking-fluid pipes could be poorly installed. Congestion fees could be incorrectly administered. Understanding environmental policy and sustainability management requires one to look at what parts of the policy actually become real. We must understand organizational inputs—the authority, funding, people, skills, and experience that organizations use to perform their work. We must understand the organizational routines (SOPs), actual work processes, typical mistakes, process improvements, and coordination of effort that form the behaviors we call work. We need to understand the outputs that organizations produce and the impacts or outcomes of those outputs. It is true that we issue an effluent discharge permit, but how much effluent is actually coming out of that pipe? Is the permit working? Do we need to do something else? One can’t manage an activity unless it can be measured. Without measuring the outcomes of a policy, it is impossible to determine whether

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the changes in organizational behavior are making things better or worse (Cohen and Eimicke 2002:179–183). The cases reviewed here reinforce the finding that management is critical. Where management is not yet an issue, as in global climate change today, we do not yet have real, functioning public policy. Once we have a program in place, the global nature of climate change policy will likely require lessons and SOPs from multinational corporations and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Coordinating and verifying behaviors from multiple nations is likely to be complicated in ways that we can barely imagine.

L I M I TAT I O N S TO T H E F R A M E W O R K A N D P O S S I B L E M O D I F I C AT I O N S Is there such a thing as environmental policy that is distinctive from other policy areas—or is there only a class of policy issues grouped together because the subjects seem related, despite the fact that they really don’t act in similar ways? Obviously, this framework is based on the assumption that environmental problems are related and share common properties. Institutions concerned with the environment, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its counterpart agencies at the state and local levels, are also built on the notion that these issues are connected. However, the sustainability perspective and its inclusion in environmental policy are starting to add an economic and urban development element to this policy arena. The framework poses a set of questions that adds to our understanding of the issue but is less systematic about the interactive effects. One could more explicitly combine elements of the framework. For example, we could combine science and technology and management issues, since the degree of technological complexity creates demands on organizational capacity. Similarly, value issues are often reflected in political dynamics, and these two elements could also be combined. Of course, it would be an option to chart every possible combination of causal pathways, further deconstructing the issue area by explicitly examining every potential interaction among the

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elements of the framework. There would obviously be a number of cells in that matrix that would be useless or even silly, but such an analysis would be more comprehensive, and probably more boring, than the explorations presented here. Another possible modification could be to add entire elements, or further disaggregate the already identified framework elements into narrower subfields. I would not argue against any of these steps if they illuminated and did not confuse aspects of the policy problem. The areas included in this framework relate to my understanding of the sources of environmental problems and the factors that contribute to the way we define and work toward resolving the problems. My main concern here is that the inquiry be broad enough to address these underlying questions: • What is the definition of the problem? • What are the human activities that create or exacerbate the problem? • How is the problem understood by the political and economic elite and by the broad public? Do the decision makers understand the problem and its impact? • Do we know how to solve the problem? • Assuming that we do know how to solve the problem, what are the constraints on implementing a solution?

In using this framework, the goal is ultimately to understand as much as we can about the problem being addressed and the approach being taken to solve it. The reason for asking these questions is not dispassionate, objective inquiry. We seek to understand environmental policy in order to improve it. The final chapter of this volume discusses possible methods that can encourage the development of more-effective environmental policy and bring about the transition to a sustainably managed economy and ecosphere.

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O

to improve environmental and sustainability policy. My saying that we want to do a better job should not be read to imply that I think we are doing a bad job. Quite the contrary. I think that our environmental agencies have made impressive progress in addressing environmental issues and are often unjustly criticized. I think our cities are starting to include a sustainability perspective in their economic development plans and our best-managed corporations are also starting to do this. I think that our society, academic community, government, and private institutions have learned an enormous amount about our environmental problems in the past thirty years. Each of the cases in this book describing the evolution of various environmental issues demonstrates the centrality of social learning and institution building in developing effective environmental policy—even if it is often a matter of two steps forward followed by one step back. Despite this progress, the broader questions we need to address are these: Are we adding people and pollution faster than policy can create and implement ways to control the impact on the planet? What can be done to develop a policy response to our growing set of environmental issues?

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AC C O M P L I S H M E N T S O F E N V I R O N M E N TA L G OV E R N A N C E Decades of incremental progress add up. As noted in chapter 1, in the United States, GDP growth has been decoupled from pollution growth. In some places our rivers, streams, bays, and oceans are cleaner than they were in 1970. The growth of waterfront development is an indicator of that progress and has created a strong pro-environment interest group of waterfront residents. At the same time, such development has also created a population that is vulnerable to natural disasters because of the location of their homes in fragile ecosystems; a population that poses a threat to the local environment. Still, air pollution is less toxic in some places than it used to be, and we have managed to detoxify some hazardous waste sites. We are also seeing people start to connect their economic well-being with the effective and sustainable management of our planet’s finite and sometimes fragile resources. Most important has been not these specific program accomplishments, but the general increase in environmental awareness and knowledge in the United States and throughout the developed world. While this increased awareness has not always resulted in effective environmental policy, it is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for the development of such policy. People know that the environment is threatened. They see it in their daily lives, and they support policies and programs to improve environmental quality. Some observers believe the reason we do not have effective environmental policy is that entrenched interests, protecting their wealth and power, prevent environmental issues from reaching the agenda and block certain policy approaches to environmental protection (Rosenbaum 2005:34–38). We damage the environment as a result of the creation of wants in the mass public through messages sent via electronic media. Some believe that these mass demands are stimulated by economic elites that profit from this consumption. I am not certain that this is the case. I do not think that the mass consumer society is wholly created by advertising. I think people like this

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lifestyle, and that one’s choice of lifestyle is not so easily subject to media manipulation. Air-conditioning on a hot day feels pretty good. A ride in a luxury car is more comfortable than a ride in a compact car, and over long distances riding is easier than walking. We don’t need to be told that we like large, comfortable personal spaces; we can figure that out on our own. The shape of our consumption is manipulated, but material goods are seductive. In other words, we do a good job of convincing ourselves to consume material goods; we don’t need advertising to inspire us. What is changing in the West is that this desire to consume is increasingly coupled with a basic understanding of ecological fragility and limits. Consumption continues to increase, but so too does environmental awareness. This increased environmental awareness is the result of decades of work by scientists, policymakers, educators, and the media. This is a very important accomplishment, and all other achievements in this field are derived from this one. People think about the environment, even if they don’t always act as if they care about it. A second major accomplishment has been the development of organizational capacity in the public and private sectors to protect the environment. When the EPA was formed, it had about 3,000 staff people. Today, the EPA employs more than 17,000 people, and its budget has grown from $2.2 billion in 1970 to $8.5 billion in 2012 (U.S. EPA 2013d).1 Much of the additional funding has paid for contract staff, and thus the actual growth in staffing is much greater than the 620 percent increase indicated by EPA personnel data. A third major accomplishment has been to institutionalize thinking and sometimes action about environmental protection in government and business. The National Environmental Policy Act’s requirement of environmental impact statements in large-scale development is often viewed as ritualistic and frustrating, but it has forced people to think about the environmental impacts of development. Lynton Caldwell, founder of the field of environmental politics and the principal author of the environmental impact statement requirement in the act (1969) stated in the late 1990s that he considered NEPA largely unimplemented. In his book The National Environmental Policy Act: An Agenda for the Future, Caldwell observed that the full institutionalization of NEPA needed to be seen only as a hope for the

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future (Caldwell 1998a). Caldwell testified before Congress about NEPA’s impact after thirty years and stated: Few statutes of the United States are intrinsically more important and less understood than is the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. This comprehensive legislation, the first of its kind to be adopted by any national government, and now widely emulated throughout the world, has achieved notable results, yet its basic intent has yet to be fully achieved. Its purpose and declared principles have not yet been thoroughly internalized in the assumptions and practices of American government. . . . Through the judicially enforceable process of impact analysis, NEPA has significantly modified the environmental behavior of Federal agencies, and indirectly of State and local governments and private undertakings. Relative to many other statutory policies NEPA must be accounted an important success. But implementation of the substantive principles of national policy declared in NEPA requires a degree of political will, not yet evident in the Congress or the White House. . . . Three decades since 1969 is a very short time for a new aspect of public policy—the environment—to attain the importance and priority accorded such century-old concerns as taxation, defense, education, civil liberties, and the economy. The goals declared in NEPA are as valid today as they were in 1969. . . . The most important and least appreciated provision of NEPA is the congressional declaration of national policy under Title I, Section 101: “that it is the continuing policy of the Federal government . . . to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.” ( C A L DW E L L , 1 9 9 8 B )

To Caldwell, the environmental “policy glass” may be half empty. But while he laments the lack of attention paid to environmental policy, he acknowledges that environmental impact analysis has affected the behavior of governments and changed the way they assess the costs and benefits of development projects.

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Sitting here in New York City, where the powerful public official Robert Moses once built highways that destroyed neighborhoods and ecosystems with impunity, I think Caldwell does not give himself enough credit for an institutional innovation that has changed how governments and industry do business. While sometimes it is lip service, and some of the people building roads, bridges, factories, and housing don’t really care about environmental quality, nothing large is built in the United States today without an assessment of its effect on the environment. This is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition of sustainable development. Without an impact analysis, we can’t even have a conversation about the costs and benefits of development. A more detailed examination of the state of environmental policy in the United States was presented by Daniel Mazmanian and Michael Kraft (1999) in their analysis of the evolution of environmental policy since the 1970s. In their assessment of forty years of environmental policy development, they identified the following “three epochs of the environmental movement”: • Regulating for environmental protection (1970–1990): D.C.-based commandand-control regulation of “end of the pipeline pollution” with a focus on air and water pollution • Efficiency-based regulatory reform and flexibility (1980–1990s): State- and local-oriented use of markets and cost-effective analysis to encourage companies to internalize pollution control with an added emphasis on toxic chemicals • Toward sustainable communities (1990–on): “Bringing into harmony human and natural systems” (MAZMANIAN AND KRAFT 1999:10)

The objective is a locally oriented effort to ensure that our actions are environmentally sustainable. Furthermore, Mazmanian and Kraft observed that “the concern of the third epoch goes well beyond prescribing regulations for cleaning up pollution or conventional cost-benefit analysis of their effects. What is being

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asked for is a method of gauging the multiple ramifications of an action— rule, regulation activity—within a large and complex array of possible effects, in the near term and far into the future. The level of scientific and technical data, understanding of ecological processes, and analytical capability needed for this kind of assessment is greater than ever before” (28). This description of the three epochs can be contrasted with the three approaches to environmental policy presented in chapter 1 here: the environment as (1) an aesthetic issue, (2) a human health issue, and (3) an issue of the health of the biosphere. Those who have participated in and thought about environmental governance since the 1970s tend to see an evolution of policy objectives, processes, organization, and outcomes. The observed evolution has been toward increased effectiveness, greater efficiency, and a broader scope of environmental policies. In some respects, that expansion is one of the major accomplishments of these first years of environmental governance. As Caldwell observed, we seem to be in the process of adding the function of environmental protection to the set of traditional government services. We are in the process of learning what policies and programs seem to work and at the same time evolving new institutional forms as the scope of the problem changes and expands. Mazmanian and Kraft’s focus on community-based environmental governance is echoed by Edward P. Weber in Bringing Society Back In: Grassroots Ecosystems Management, Accountability, and Sustainable Communities (2003). Weber examines efforts in the rural western United States to develop local means of resolving conflicts over the use and protection of natural resources. This “grassroots ecosystem management” (GREM) approach is an attempt to bring environmentalists, developers, loggers, business leaders, and government officials together to develop compromises that allow for both environmental protection and business use of natural resources. Weber focuses considerable attention on the need to reconcile this new form of governance with the requirements of democratic accountability. The “place-based” advisory groups formed under GREM have no formal authority, and yet they have enormous legitimacy and influence at the local level. He effectively demonstrates that these negotiations at the local level do not pose a threat to representative democracy and may in fact be a healthy corrective to the

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tendency for general principles established at the national level to be distorted and misapplied at the local level. Weber’s work details the need for place-based mechanisms for interaction and negotiation to augment and complement national rule making. This local form of environmental governance is not taking place simply in rural communities. Community-based environmental nonprofits are growing in cities throughout the United States, as have more participatory local land use planning processes. As local elected leaders have faced NIMBY and term limits, they have increasingly sought to consult with local communities on economic and real estate development projects. They do this for political survival, not for altruistic reasons. Efforts to mitigate community and environmental impacts have become a routine part of business operations. Typically, developers set aside between 5 and 10 percent of the project cost for amenities for local communities. A striking example of this practice is Riverbank State Park, which was built on top of the North River sewage treatment plant in the West Harlem–Washington Heights area of New York City. This park features an indoor swimming pool, an ice skating rink, community meeting rooms, and a soccer field. If the state had not agreed to this “side payment” to the community, the political opposition to siting the plant might have prevented its development. These new local community-based institutions are only in their infancy, but they show signs of development and maturation. Use of the Internet has reduced the cost of communication between neighbors in urban areas and among developers, elected leaders, and communities. Thus groups can meet both “virtually” and in person, providing real-time input during the development process. I do not mean to argue that these groups work perfectly, or that the forces of economic development do not try to use their power to force change on reluctant communities. Rather, my point is that the days are long gone when a Robert Moses, or his counterparts in other cities, could simply brush aside community concerns and build at will. I mention this because there was a time when development was seen as inherently positive. Herb Gans’s Urban Villagers (1962) and Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities (1962) were seminal works that identified the negative impact of development on communities and their cul-

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ture. Today, the burden of proof for development has been reversed in many locations. In the 1960s the opponents of development had to prove that a project might cause harm. Today, developers must often convince a skeptical community that the benefits of a project outweigh its costs. This is a sea change, and its political impact should not be underestimated. Nearly half a century of environmental institution building, social learning, and policy development has had a significant effect on the United States and its communities. However, technology and economic development and population growth continue, and the questions that cannot be answered are: Are we doing enough quickly enough? Will we be able to give our children a sustainable and non-lethal world? In one respect, this is a question without an answer, since none of us can predict the future. I would be satisfied with a trend line indicating that our ability to address environmental problems is keeping pace with the introduction of new problems. What is most promising is that we have started to recognize the connection between economic growth and a sustainable ecosphere.

I M P R OV E M E N T S N E E D E D Today, more than a decade into the twenty-first century, we must consider what is needed to improve environmental policy. A sample of such needs can be categorized into the following areas: • Improved information about environmental conditions. • Improved communication and understanding of environmental data. • Improved education of sustainability professionals. • Development and analysis of economic policies that lead to sustainable development. • Further development of environmental analysis, pollution prevention, and mitigation capacity in government and industry. • Further development of community-based organizations and local institutions of government to operationally define and implement sustainable development strategies.

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I M P R O V E D I N F O R M AT I O N A B O U T E N V I R O N M E N TA L   C O N D I T I O N S

Currently, our society still does not know enough about the status of our planet’s environment. In general, economic data are more systematically collected than are data about ecology. We need to establish a global observatory and take periodic systematic readings on environmental indicators. We also need to develop our modeling capacity to the point that we can project the impact of new technology and chemicals on human and ecological health. To do this, the U.S. government must invest substantial resources in developing the scientific knowledge and technical capacity to collect and analyze these measures. A global network should be created to connect government labs with universities, museums, and other organizations that have the capacity to contribute to this effort. This network will cost a great deal of money, but it is essential to our survival.

I M P R O V E D C O M M U N I C AT I O N A N D U N D E R S TA N D I N G O F E N V I R O N M E N TA L D ATA

Once the information is collected, we need to analyze it, project its impact, and communicate it throughout the world. The political use of science in the climate change dispute should be seen as a warning. It took a very long time to develop a consensus on data that were far from ambiguous. Information is always used this way in politics. Economic data and program evaluation data are always subject to spin. To the extent possible, we need to reduce this tendency when we are interpreting environmental data. Like firefighters in a burning building, our lives may depend on this information, and to the extent possible it needs to be objective and verifiable. Those who collect baseline environmental data must make a special effort to simplify it, analyze its probable effect, and then communicate it to a wide audience. The environment is an issue with many complex scientific elements. It is not enough to simply collect and analyze data; the information must be presented in a form that is appropriate for policy decision making. The scientists who work with this information should not be expected to be

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capable of communicating it to non-scientists. Communication experts and policy analysts must be assigned the task of translating this information to the general public and for policymakers.

I M P R O V E D E D U C AT I O N O F S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y PROFESSIONALS

This “translation” function is not performed well today because very few people know enough science, enough policy, and enough about communication to do this very well. We need to increase the number of people who are trained to work in this field in a variety of areas. Environmental engineering, chemistry, climatology, toxicology, ecology, policy, finance, and sustainability management are part of a larger group of disciplines that require additional emphasis. One way to educate people in these disciplines for work as practicing professionals is to place them in educational experiences that bring cross-disciplinary teams together to do environmental problem solving. We also need to develop a “generalist” sustainability professional to play the same role that an MBA plays in business and an MPA plays in the public sector. Over the past several years I have been involved in an effort to adapt the MPA degree to create a public sector environmental professional, and to create a new management degree for sustainability management. This new type of professional is trained in science, policy analysis, political analysis, management analysis, finance, and communication. Many of us are now working to develop a new field—the field of sustainability management— to train professionals in all sectors to understand the physical dimensions of sustainability, the policies that govern these organizations, and the management tools to implement environmental sustainability. We are adding the physical dimensions of sustainability to standard management education. The environmental problem is solved only by a thorough understanding of Earth’s systems and the macro-level thinking required to manage those systems. This requires an understanding of ecological and planetary sciences and an understanding of organizational and network management. Organizational management increasingly requires the coordination of networks of

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organizations rather than the command of vertically integrated hierarchies. The system-level thinking that is needed to understand ecological interactions is also needed to manage organizational networks devoted to environmental protection. A profession is characterized by a shared view of how the world works, or a shared paradigm. Members of a profession possess a common definition of problems and have a standard skill set designed to understand problems and build solutions. Sustainability professionals must be able to integrate specific small-scale projects with a broader understanding of how the world works. René Dubos was correct when he identified the need to think globally and act locally. Sustainability professionals must also think systemically and act pragmatically. They must be able to move away from problems in the manner permitted by our incremental policy process, but at the same time seek to ensure that the solution to one problem is not the cause of a more serious second problem. Sustainability professionals must be capable of developing innovative approaches to problem solving based on field-level empirical data with a profound understanding of the functions and interactions of Earth systems. For the most part, the physical and natural sciences operate on different principles from the social and policy sciences. It is true that some social scientists have made an effort to imitate physical and natural science methodologies in their work, and these social scientists share the worldview of natural and physical scientists. However, many social scientists and policy analysts see the world in different terms than scientists who study Earth systems and ecology. Earth systems professionals must internalize both sets of norms and be able to translate from one to the other. They must be capable of understanding ecological science and be able to explain it to managers and policymakers. They must be capable of explaining policy processes, management, and politics to ecological and other physical and natural scientists. Their role is one of analyst, manager, translator, and interdisciplinary facilitator. The creation of this new profession is in its infancy, but its establishment is a prerequisite for successfully addressing environmental problems.

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D E V E L O P M E N T A N D A N A LY S I S O F E C O N O M I C P O L I C I E S T H AT L E A D T O S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T

The idea that ecological well-being is a necessary component of economic development, rather than an obstacle to economic growth, has not yet been fully accepted by the American public or its elected leaders. In addition to the term “sustainability,” these actions are representative of the environmental principle known as “ecological modernization.” Ecological modernization holds that environmental protection and conservation can be achieved by technological advances that yield increased efficiency. In order for this concept to gain wider currency, we need to demonstrate its realism and efficacy. A wide variety of program initiatives, ranging from green architecture that conserves energy and saves on utility bills to sustainable and less-polluting agricultural practices, needs to be established, evaluated, and publicized. The problem with the politics of sustainability management is that the benefits of ecologically sound economic development are societal in nature. An individual company may find it profitable to factor environmental issues into its business practices, but it may find that it can make more money in the short-term by ignoring the environment. Business profit-and-loss statements are reported quarterly, and corporate governance tends to be oriented toward short-term results and immediate gratification. Standard business practice allows for long-term investment through capital expenditures, and most business professionals understand that it takes a while to pay off some investments. The challenge is to develop organizational routines that foster investment in development that is ecologically sound and sustainable (Sachs 2005:367). We have begun this process, but still have a long way to go before environmentally sound business practices are commonplace.

F U R T H E R D E V E L O P M E N T O F E N V I R O N M E N TA L A N A LY S I S , P O L L U T I O N P R E V E N T I O N , A N D M I T I G AT I O N C A PA C I T Y I N G OV E R N M E N T A N D I N D U ST RY

The reason we need to test these sustainable development policy ideas and train more sustainability professionals is that we need to increase

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organizational capacity to protect the environment while growing the economy. In 2005 the U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce estimated that $5,907.8 million was spent on pollution abatement and control capital expenditures and $20,677.6 million was spent on pollution abatement operating costs (U.S. Census Bureau 2008). No plans for future surveys are yet in place. We certainly need to spend more of our gross domestic product on environmental protection and sustainable development. In order to establish the appropriate funding level, it is necessary to conduct new analyses of how much of our GDP is being spent on environmental protection. Increased resource allocation for environmental protection is needed at all levels of government and in organizations that are not conventionally thought of as environmental organizations. Just as accountants are found in the financial divisions of most organizations and lawyers are found in an agency’s counsel’s office, a place must be found in every organization for professionals whose job it is to ensure that best environmental management practices are implemented. Government rules create the demand for these professionals. Without tax laws and the Security and Exchange Commission’s regulation of financial markets, accountants and audited financial statements would not exist. The predictability and comparability of corporate behavior has created capital markets that are far larger and more dynamic than they would have been without regulation. The financial markets of the 1920s showed the potential of a mass capital market, and the crash of 1929 demonstrated the logical conclusion of “free” capitalism without the rule of law. The rules on capital markets and corporate financial reporting have not destroyed corporate capital finance—quite the contrary, in fact. Deregulation of the financial industry in the 1990s contributed to the too-big-to-fail banks that caused the 2008 financial crisis, demonstrating again the value of financial rules. Can this be a model for the development of a class of environmental and sustainability professionals in our private and public economy? Unlike capital finance, environmental protection is not a function that corporations see as vital to their fundamental health. The possibility of liability charges stemming from victim lawsuits provides a negative rationale for paying attention to environmental damage from corporate operations. On the posi-

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tive side, there are considerable public relations benefits that stem from a “clean” environmental image. It is also the case that energy, water, and material efficiency can increase profits. Finally, corporate ethics and citizenship could contribute to the development of environmentalism as an element of a corporation’s culture. This combination of regulation, fear of liability, public relations, and corporate ethics provides a compelling rationale for developing sustainability professionalism. We need more of this capacity than we currently have in place. While this group of professionals is growing rapidly, we have no way of knowing if the growth rate is fast enough to build a sustainable economy. The capacity we need will only be generated through the development of this group of professionals. In my view, the maintenance and expansion of environmental regulation and public sustainability incentives are the only ways to ensure that this capacity is expanded. The greatest threats to its development lie in the political extremes of our society. On the one hand, we have the very shortsighted anti-regulation fervor present in the American political right wing and in parts of corporate America. On the other, we have environmental extremists who consider all economic activity destructive, and all corporations evil. While it is clear that some environmental rules have been heavy-handed and counterproductive, and that some corporations are run by criminals, for the most part the rules work and private firms are not in business to poison people. Our goal should be to develop and maintain a mature, sophisticated, and flexible environmental regulatory regime. This will result in the development of enhanced capacity to protect the environment.

F U R T H E R D E V E L O P M E N T O F C O M M U N I T Y- B A S E D O R G A N I Z AT I O N S A N D L O C A L I N S T I T U T I O N S O F G O V E R N M E N T T O O P E R AT I O N A L LY D E F I N E A N D I M P L E M E N T   S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T S T R AT E G I E S

The behaviors that protect or damage the environment happen in specific, local places. While many policy battles that influence local politics take place in Washington, D.C., without concurrence at the local level, policy

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decisions made in Washington are only partially, if at all, implemented. A physical and political disconnect seems to exist when environmental policies are made at a distance from the regions affected by such policies. In 2004, for example, the decision to withdraw rules to protect road-less areas in wilderness areas in the western part of the United States was advocated by governors who believed that their constituents favored reduced regulation. Pressure on those governors from the local level would be more important than action in Washington to change this decision and the political calculation it is based on. Even the Department of Energy’s $60 billion nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada—clearly an issue of national importance—may find itself subjected to what must be seen as a local veto. In the United States, as I noted earlier, Tip O’Neill’s famous truism that “all politics is local” means that the most important arena for improving environmental policy is local. As Mazmanian and Kraft (1999) and Weber (2003) indicated, we need to pay attention to local organizations and the development of environmental institutions at the local level. Advocacy groups and the federal government in Washington, D.C., as well as their counterparts at the state level, play a role in environmental protection, but the behaviors that they are trying to influence take place at the community level. If we are to truly institutionalize environmental protection, we need eyes and ears on the ground to keep track of the work done in environmental programs and the environmental impact of the work being done by government, private firms, and individuals. The siting and expansion of businesses, transportation infrastructure, and other human-made development initiatives take place at the local level, and their shape can best be influenced at that level. National rules are needed to ensure that communities cannot compete against each other by giving away pollution rights. The development of institutional capacity at the local level will not be easy. Though our society’s increased environmental literacy should allow some expertise to be deployed at that level, the resources to pay for this expertise are likely to be scarce. Voluntary organizations can fill this type of

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gap, as environmental professionals help to assess local impacts on a volunteer basis in their home communities. While local voluntary organizations cycle in and out of life and cannot be depended on, they do tend to arise in response to specific development projects, and may be an effective form of institution in some localities. The alternative to voluntary organizations would be the creation of a unit of county, city, or town government. This local sustainable development agency of government could evolve out of the local unit that makes zoning decisions and/or issues building permits. In some places this has already happened. An enlightened federal policy could provide funding for the first five to ten years of local environmental analysis and citizen participation. If the work done by this group proved essential and if it built a local constituency for its work, it could attract a long-term source of local funding. In fact, a local revenue stream from taxing developers could be used to support this function over the long term.

NEXT STEPS The United States has been improving its environmental policy for more than forty years, and an issue that did not exist in 1950 is now a potent political and economic force in our world. This chapter has identified, in broad strokes, some of the accomplishments since the establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. I have also discussed the improvements I believe we need in environmental and sustainability policymaking if we are to continue to make progress. The complexity of the environmental problem can be daunting. It is easy to get discouraged and overwhelmed. We need to work on the environmental problems that come from our daily lifestyle, and we also need to think about ecoterrorism as political extremists seek to gain attention or harm their foes through the use of typically toxic weapons of mass destruction. Predictions of the future are never easy and are often inaccurate. We don’t know what new technologies will be invented or what type of evil

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might come to power in some nation. We do not understand the effect of our current actions on our environment, and so who would dare to predict events that have not even taken place? When looking at the changes in policymaking that I believe are essential, I must confess that I search in vain for the motor—the mechanism to inspire people to devote more time and energy to protecting the environment. In the past, great change has often followed great crises. Most of what we know about environmental change is that it is slow and steady. Rarely is environmental change rapid and dramatic. Worse still, most of the benefits of activities that damage the environment are immediate and short term, while most of the costs are over the long term. The key element missing in the equation here in the United States has been presidential leadership. The closest we ever came to a president who understood the environment was Vice President Al Gore. For President Clinton, the overriding focus was “the economy, stupid!” For the two George Bushes, the issue of foreign policy seemed to dominate. Jimmy Carter understood the problem but had other priorities, and Nixon, Ford, and Reagan thought about the issue only in political terms. While the Obama administration seems to understand that environmental protection and economic prosperity are inherently linked, the administration has been haunted by the slow economic recovery and has not always disputed the supposed trade-off widely enough. To many of our presidents the environment represented an interest group to mollify, not a national problem to address. For the environment to become a higher priority, we need presidential leadership and the political courage that typically accompanies strong leadership. Because the current electoral process features a campaign finance system that is totally out of control, it is unlikely that a president in the near term will get out ahead of the moneyed interests that fund political campaigns. As long as our legal system considers donating funds to campaigns to be a form of speech, the power of economic interests will dominate. One wonders whether the enlightened self-interest of the New Deal leadership of Franklin Roosevelt could ever have happened in the current system. While presidential leadership would accelerate the process, in the end the sustainability issue comes down to faith in humanity. Are we willing

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to do the work that is necessary to give this world to our children with a reasonable possibility of survival? I started this book with a quote from John Kennedy stating that this planet and its environment is what we all have in common. Kennedy recognized our mortality, and I think his view was that we cherish our children’s future because we love them and because in some small way they are our hedge against our inevitable demise. Can our love for our children prevail over our own selfishness and self-centered behavior? I like to think it can. I certainly hope it will. I suspect that the long-term survival of our species depends on it.

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NOTES

CHAPTER 2: A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ISSUE 1. In a recent revision of the book he modifies his theories and adds new facts to interpret, but the basic method of analysis remains similar. 2. This is particularly important when viewing a class of issues such as environmental policy. Typically, an environmental issue is seen as one of a group of connected issues that “environmentalists” will perceive and act on as a single issue.

CONCLUSIONS 1. These figures are presented in constant dollars. In actual 1970 dollars the budget of the EPA was about $1 billion when it was founded.

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INDEX

Air Pollution Control Act, 23 Air pollution, 8–9, 25, 32, 61, 65, 91, 111, 138, 168, 175; emissions, 44; National Ambient Air Quality Standards, 47, 97; policy, 23, 36, 47, 114, 117, 123; tradable allowances, 41 American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, 135 American Community Survey, 58 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), 26, 136 Aquifers, 91, 110, 116, 118 ARRA. See American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Basel Convention, 87 Biosphere II, 153 Bloomberg, Michael R., 57, 61, 69–81 BP oil spill, 121, 135 Brodsky, Richard L., 73 Broecker, Wallace, 129 Bruno, Joseph, 69, 70, 73 Burford, Ann, 24 Bush, George W., 6, 8, 24–25, 30, 36, 69, 112–113, 123,130, 133–136, 140, 142, 167, 190 Byrd-Hagel Amendment, 133

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CAA. See Clean Air Act of 1970 Caldwell, Lynton K., 176–177, 178 “Cap and trade” policy, 135, 143, 149, 170 Carbon dioxide (CO2), 8–9, 61, 85, 111–112, 129–130, 131, 134, 135–136, 138, 141, 142, 146, 147, 148 Carson, Rachel, 23, 91 Cathode ray tubes (CRTs), 83–84, 85, 90 CBD. See Central business district Central business district (CBD), 57–58, 60, 64–65, 67–69, 72–73, 75–76, 79–81, 161 Cheney, Richard, B., 113, 123, 126, 144 China, 27, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88–89, 117, 131, 144 Chlorofluorocarbons, 33 Clean Air Act of 1970 (CAA), 23, 25, 47, 113, 135, 136 Clean Water Act, 113, 124 Clean Water State Revolving Fund Program, 49 Clear Skies legislation, 25 Clinton, William J., 133, 190 Closed-system engineering, 4, 99 Closing Circle, The (Commoner), 23 CO2. See Carbon dioxide

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INDEX

Columbia University, xi, 63, 129; Earth Institute, xiii, xiv; Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, 129; School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), xiii Commoner, Barry, 23, 91 Compliance, 38, 39–41, 42–43, 45, 46, 48, 86, 89, 116 Congestion pricing, ix, 5, 6, 53, 57–58, 62, 67–68, 71–75, 80–81, 160–163; E-ZPass 63, 64, 65, 68, 78; and health, 61–62; and London, 5, 64–67, 161; and Singapore, 64–65, 66–67; and Stockholm, 64, 66–67 Consumer Electronics Association, 83, 90 Consumption, xii, 4, 12, 15, 17, 19, 20, 29–31, 88, 90, 93, 107–108, 119, 134, 142, 148, 152, 164–165, 175–176 CRTs. See Cathode ray tubes Cuomo, Andrew, 114, 116, 121 DDT, 33 Death and Life of Great American Cities ( Jacobs), 180 DEC. See Department of Environmental Conservation Deming, William Edwards, 7 Demographic transitions, 15 Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), 116–117 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), 16 Department of the Interior, 24 Dominant social paradigm (DSP), 164 DSP. See Dominant social paradigm The Earth Institute. See under Columbia University Ecological modernization, 185 EIA. See U.S. Energy Information Agency Electronic waste, ix, 4, 5, 6, 7, 53, 82–84, 94, 96–97, 102–103, 105, 132, 147, 161, 162, 169, 171; and China, 83–85, 86, 88, 89; and recycling, 82, 83, 84–86, 88, 89–90, 95, 102; and regulation, 85–89, 93–95, 97, 100–102;

and toxics, 82, 83–84, 86, 87, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97–98, 99, 100, 102–103 Elliot, Donald, 44 End-of-pipeline controls, 4 Energy Basis for Man and Nature, The (Odum), 147 Energy Policy Act of 2005, 112–113 Environmental politics, 16, 18–21, 166–168, 169, 176; and e-waste, 94–98; and hydrofracking, 120–123; and global climate change, 140–145 EPA. See United States Environmental Protection Agency Essence of Decision, The (Allison), 13 E-waste. See Electronic waste E-ZPass. See under Congestion pricing Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. See under Water pollution Fossil fuels. See under Global warming Fracking. See Hydraulic fracturing Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, 113 Fuel efficiency, 26, 136, 149 Gallup, 27–28, 30 GDP. See Gross Domestic Product General Services Administration, 87 Global climate change, ix, 6, 8–9, 11, 16, 29, 36, 53, 96, 120, 128–130, 138–140, 151–155, 161, 168, 169, 182; adaptation, 137, 141; heat island effect, 128–129; Helmut Landsberg, 128; management, 150–151; mitigation, 135, 137, 139, 141, 147, 149, 152; and policy, 71, 130–133, 135–137, 140–145, 148–150, 172; resiliency, 141; Swiss Re, 144–145; and technology, 143, 146–148, 153 Global warming, 8, 16, 17, 35, 36, 129–130, 131, 134, 138, 141–142, 145–148, 149, 152–154; and developing nations, 133, 139, 141, 148; emissions reduction, 61–62, 66, 84, 111–112, 114, 130–135, 137, 139, 140, 141, 143–145, 148, 151; fossil fuels, 8, 33, 111–113, 119–120, 122–

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123, 127, 131, 134, 138–139, 141, 143, 145–146, 148–150, 152, 154, 162, 169; greenhouse gases, 9, 61, 66, 110, 111–112, 123, 129–134, 135–137, 138–140, 141, 143–144, 145, 149, 150, 152, 162 GNP. See Gross National Product Gore, Albert A. Jr., 96, 190 Gorsuch, Ann. See Ann Burford Grassroots Ecosystem Management (GREM), 179 Greenhouse gases. See under Global warming Gross Domestic Product (GDP), x, 21–22, 107, 130, 133, 175, 186 Gross National Product (GNP), 20 Groundwater, 114, 118 Halliburton loophole, 113 Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA), 100 Hazardous waste. See Toxic waste Healthy Forests initiative, 25 Heat island effect. See under Global climate change HEW. See Department of Health, Education and Welfare HSWA. See Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments Hurricane Sandy, 29, 35, 118, 139, 140, 141, 143, 171 Hydraulic fracturing, ix, 6, 8, 11, 53, 106–109, 112, 126–127, 161–163, 169, 171; and New York, 106, 114, 116–117, 118, 120, 121–122, 127; and Ohio, 106, 115; and Pennsylvania, 106, 110, 114, 115, 120; and regulation, 111, 112–118, 122–124, 127; and technology, 107, 111, 123, 125–126, 127; and Texas, 115; and waste, 108–109, 117–118, 123, 124, 125, 126–127; and West Virginia, 106 Hydrofracking. See Hydraulic fracturing Implementation (Pressman and Wildavsky), 48 INC/FCCC. See Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change

Indian Ocean tsunami, 35 Industrial ecology, 7 Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC/FCCC), 132 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 131 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 43 IPCC. See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IRS. See Internal Revenue Service Johnson, Stephen, 25–26 Kamieniecki, Sheldon, x, xiii Kennedy, John, xii, 191 Keystone XL pipeline, 141 Koch, Edward, 62 Kyoto Protocol. See under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. See under Columbia University Landsburg, Helmut. See under Global climate change Lead, 83–84 Leavitt, Michael O., 25–26 Lieberman, Joseph I., 135, 142, 143, 149 Lindsay, John, 62 Livingston, Ken, 65–66 Marcellus shale, 8, 106–107, 117 Massachusetts v. EPA, 136 McCain, John S. III, 135, 142, 143, 149 McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, 142–143, 149 Media, 30, 40, 42, 47; and electronic, 21, 175–176; and reporting, 51–52 Meir, Kenneth, 37 Mercury, 83–84, 170 Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), 59, 68, 69, 74, 161

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Milbrath, Lester, x, xiii, 164–165, 166 Moses, Robert, 60, 178, 180 MTA. See Metropolitan Transit Authority Muskie, Edward S., 23

44, 49, 50, 61, 114, 117, 168, 178; and effects, 8–9, 16, 60, 111, 118, 138, 169; and policy, 36, 47, 49, 51, 165, 170, 174, 178; and prevention, 4, 30, 36, 42, 46, 67, 94, 98, 102, 112, 181, 185–186; and rights, 149, 188 Population growth, 15, 22, 138, 181 Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, 68 Precautionary principle, 97, 132 Producer responsibility, 6, 85, 89, 94, 98, 100 Public health, 7, 16, 60, 61–62, 69, 83–84, 93, 94, 98, 99, 104, 109, 100, 104, 108, 109–111, 112–113, 115, 119, 136, 179

National Ambient Air Quality Standards. See under Air pollution National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), 23, 113, 124, 176–177 National Environmental Policy Act: An Agenda for the Future, The (Caldwell), 176–177 National Review, 142 National Wildlife Federation, 167 NEP. See New Environmental Paradigm NEPA. See National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 New Environmental Paradigm (NEP), 164 New York State Department of Transportation, 68 New York State’s Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act, 85–86 NIMBY. See “Not in My Backyard” Syndrome Nixon, Richard M., 23, 49, 190 “Not in My Backyard” Syndrome (NIMBY), 21, 94, 95, 126, 127, 165, 180 Nuclear power, 33; and plants, 32, 108, 162; and waste, 33, 146–147

Queens Midtown Tunnel, 63, 76 Quinn, Christine, 73

Obama, Barack, 26, 29, 113–114, 130–131, 134–136, 140–141, 153, 167, 190 Office of Management and Budget (OMB), 30 O’Neill, Thomas P. Jr., 96, 188 Ozone, 16, 33, 61

RCRA. See Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 Reagan, Ronald W., 23–25, 190 Recession, 74, 131, 167 Recycling, 6, 17, 44, 46, 84–85, 89, 95, 109, 117 Regulation, 4, 5, 6, 26, 36–38, 39, 40–45, 46, 49, 74, 82, 85, 169, 178–179, 186, 187–188; command-and-control, 40, 42, 43, 44, 79, 101, 102, 144, 148, 149, 169; market mechanisms, 40, 45; permit process, 39, 42 Renewable energy, 26, 112, 121, 134, 141, 154; and funding, 26, 134, 136–137 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), 87, 96, 100–101, 113 Rockefeller, Nelson, 62, 80 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 152, 190 Ruckelshaus, William, 24

Participation in American Politics (Cobb), 22 Paterson, David, 73–74, 114, 116, 121 Peters, Mary, 70 PlaNYC 2030, 67, 74 Political Science Quarterly, xiv Pollution, xi, 16, 21, 24, 25, 31, 62, 63, 96, 121, 123, 131, 147, 175, 178; and control, 4, 16, 23, 32, 41,

Safe Drinking Water Act, 113, 124 School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). See under Columbia University Sequestration (carbon), 134, 143, 146, 149–150 Sewage treatment, 30, 32, 167–168; and plants, 49–51, 95, 141, 180 Sierra Club, 25

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Silent Spring (Carson), 23 Silver, Sheldon, 69–74, 77, 80 SIPA. See under Columbia University Solid waste, 6, 16–17, 21, 46, 84, 100, 104 Solving the E-Waste Problem (StEP), 88 Solyndra, 121 SOP. See Standard Operating Procedures Spitzer, Eliot, 25, 43, 70 Sports Utility Vehicle, 9, 164 Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), 4, 13, 53 State University of New York (SUNY), x Strategic Regulatory Planning. See Regulation Strategy of Decision, A (Braybrooke), 19–20 Suburban sprawl, 8, 149 SUNY. See State University of New York Superfund, 16, 41, 51–52, 96, 98, 101 Sustainability management, x, xi, 3, 19, 20, 21, 27, 48–53, 105, 166, 171, 183–184, 185 Sustainable development, xi, 20, 132, 133, 152, 165, 178, 181, 185–186, 187–189 SUV. See Sports utility vehicle Swiss Re. See under Global climate change

UNEP. See United Nations Environment Programme UNFCCC. See United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 83, 132 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 132; Kyoto Protocol, 133, 135, 137, 142, 150 United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), xiii, 16, 23, 51, 87–88, 101, 114, 172, 176, 189; and climate, 25, 26, 130, 135–136, 143; and data and statistics, 21, 49, 83, 84, 110, 130; and leadership of, 24–26, 44; and state agencies, 26, 50, 85 Urban Partnership Program, 72 Urban Villagers (Gans), 180 Value Systems, 17, 76, 159, 164; and congestion pricing, 75–76; and e-waste, 90–94; and global climate change, 152–153; and hydrofracking, 118–120 Vickery, William, 63–64, 78 Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 114

Times Square, 61, 81 Tolls, 62–63, 65, 68, 75–76, 79, 80 Total Quality Management, 99 Toxic waste, ix, 7, 9, 83, 93, 103, 117, 164; and cleanup, 7, 11, 16, 27, 51, 95, 163, 168–169; and contamination, 91, 93, 99; and health, 16, 93, 95, 99; and politics, 94–98, 168; and regulation, 6, 82, 85, 87, 94, 101–102, 124, 169; and sites, 143, 175; and technology, 98 Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, 72–73

Waste management, x, 6, 17, 21, 125, 127, 168 Water pollution, 16, 138; Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972, 23, 49–51; and policy, 36, 169, 178 Waxman-Markey, 149 Weiner, Anthony, 73 Whitman, Christine Todd, 24 World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 132 World Trade Center, 20, 25 World War II, 20

U.S. Department of Transportation, 72 U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), 107, 108

Yucca Mountain, 188

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