Cutting Green Tape

Pollutants, Environmental Regulation and the Law

Inbunden, Engelska, 1999

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Hundreds of hazardous waste sites are on the Superfund National Priority List in the United States, and thousands more could become eligible. The Superfund has spent or ordered the spending of billions of dollars, with little apparent impact on human health risks. While public perception of the real or imagined hazardous nature of consumer and industrial substances has resulted in widespread attention to the issue, lawsuits have proliferated with liability aimed at "deep pockets" instead of individual agents who may be responsible. Contributors to Cutting Green Tape carefully examine the existence and severity of the toxic harms and liability problem, the erosion of a clear tort legal system to settle disputes, and whether a clearly defined system of property rights could be developed to reduce the dangers from toxic substances.Cutting Green Tape rethinks the nature and impact of today's environmental bureaucracy. Rather than continue unworkable, cumbersome, and often contradictory regulations, Cutting Green Tape prescribes a clearer tort legal system to settle disputes and demonstrates that clearly defined environmental property rights would reduce the threat of toxic substances. Among the many topics addressed are: air toxins policy; pollution, damages, and tort law; risk assessment, insurance, and public information; protecting groundwater; regulation of carcinogens; contracting for health and safety; and toxin torts by government.The book converges on a central theme: when common law remedies, with their burden of proof and standards of evidence, are replaced by the legislatively mandated regulatory regimes described, a problem emerges. The bureaucratic "tunnel vision" described by Justice Stephen Breyer, tends to take over. The police powers of the state are given to bureaucratic decision makers who are limited only by the blunt instrument of political influence, rather than by the need to show harm or wrongdoing in an unbiased court (as the police are), or by a budget on expenditures set by the Congress (as most bureaus are). The excesses described in the chapters thus result not from incompetence in the bureaus, but from the expansive powers granted to decision makers who are tightly focused on the narrow mission they see before them.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum1999-08-31
Mått152 x 229 x undefined mm
Vikt703 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor333
FörlagTaylor & Francis Inc
ISBN9781560004295

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Miljövetenskap och miljöpolitik inom Naturvetenskap och teknik
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Ekonomisk politik inom Ekonomi och Ledarskap
Miljöteknik inom Naturvetenskap och teknik

Richard L. Stroup is professor of economics at Montana State University, senior associate at the Political Economy Research Center, and a member of the Board of Advisors of The Independent Institute. His Ph.D. in economics is from the University of Washington. Professor Stroup has served as director of the Office of Policy Analysis at the Department of the Interior and has published widely in professional journals and in popular media on the economics of resources and the environment. He has lectured on these topics throughout the U.S. and internationally to professional and general audiences. He is co-author with James Gwartney of the best-selling textbook, Economics: Private and Public Choice, now in its 9th edition, and of What Everyone Should Know About Economics and Prosperity. In addition, he is contributing co-editor with John Baden of Bureaucracy vs. the Environment, and Natural Resources: Environmental Myths and Bureaucratic Management.Roger E. Meiners is professor of law and economics at the University of Texas at Arlington and a research fellow at The Independent Institute. Having received his Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech, he has served as director of the Center for Policy Studies at Clemson University, director of the Atlanta Regional Office of the Federal Trade Commission, associate director of the Law and Economics Center at Emory University, and a member of the South Carolina Insurance Commission. He is the author or editor of fourteen books including Barriers to Corporate Growth, Economic Consequences of Liability Rules, Federal Support of Higher Education, Managing in the Legal Environment, Taking the Environment Seriously, Victim Compensation, and The Independent Institute book, Regulation and the Reagan Era.

Foreword, Introduction: The Toxic Liability Problem: Why is It Too Large? 1. Superfund and Risky Risk Reduction 2. Air Toxics Policy: Liabilities from Thin Air 3. Toxic Torts by Government 4. Common Law Approaches to Pollution and Toxic Tort Litigation 5. Rent Seeking on the Legal Frontier 6. Toxic Torts: Problems of Damages and Issues of Liability 7. Insurance, Information, and Toxic Risk 8. Contracting for Health and Safety: Risk Perception and Rational Choice 9. Regulation of Carcinogens: Are Animal Tests a Sound Foundation? 10. Protecting Groundwater and the Unintended Transport of Toxic Substances by Water 11. Improving the Reliability of Scientific Testimony in Court, Index.