Whose Interests Count? And How Much?
This post was originally published on Legal Planet. Reprinted with permission.
Should regulators take into account harm to people in other countries? What about harm to future generations? Should we give special attention when the disadvantaged are harmed? These questions are central to climate policy and some other important environmental issues. I’ll use cost-benefit analysis as a framework for discussing these issues. You probably don’t need my help in thinking about the ethical issues, so instead I’ll focus on legal and economic considerations.
Other countries. When the Trump administration estimated the harmfulness of climate change, its answer was about a tenth of the Obama administration’s estimate. The main difference is that Trump counted only impacts within the borders of the United States. There’s been considerable discussion of this issue among academics. Generally, cost-benefit analysis of government regulations has focused on harm within the United States.
On the other hand, it’s quite common for U.S. regulators to coordinate with regulators in other countries and to take the benefits of coordination into account in issuing their own regulations. The case for doing so is especially strong regarding climate change in legal terms. The U.S …
This post was originally published on Medium.
Our research collaboration began with a brief query: ‘We are having problems with waste transfer stations in our neighborhood. Can I call you?’This short message was a private chat from Southeast Queens community leader Andrea Scarborough to CUNY Law Professor Rebecca Bratspies during the Eastern Queens Alliance’s Environmental Justice Unwrapped event in the summer of 2020.
Andrea was referring to Jamaica, Queens, where two waste transfer stations are located directly adjacent to a Black residential neighborhood and across the street from the neighborhood’s primary greenspace, the Detective Keith L. Williams Park. Across the country there are too many communities like this one in Jamaica, historically redlined Black neighborhoods that continue to experience disproportionate social, economic, and environmental injustices driven by structural racism and entrenched social inequality.
Establishing Equitable & Just Relationships to Address the Problem
Andrea’s …
