The Shaky Legal and Policy Foundations of Cost-Benefit Orthodoxy in Environmental Law
This post was originally published on LPE Blog and is part of a symposium on the future of cost-benefit analysis. Reprinted with permission.
In the actual work of crafting the regulatory safeguards that protect our environment and health, cost-benefit analysis has been largely ineffectual and irrelevant. Indeed, its ineffectiveness has been so profound as to prompt even its most ardent practitioners and proponents to question whether it has any impact on agency decisions at all. Meanwhile, it plays at best a minor role in the legal standards that actually govern agency decision-making. Despite all this, a certain cost-benefit orthodoxy has become remarkably entrenched in environmental policy circles. Especially in an era when so many progressive ideas are in ascendance, why does the idea of regulatory review based on CBA, first brought to us half a century ago by the two Ronalds—Ronald Coase and Ronald Reagan—have such staying power?
Decades ago, political scientist Charles Lindblom observed that proponents of what he called “the synoptic ideal”—the idea that we can comprehensively assess the pros and cons of every conceivable alternative and choose the optimum—inevitably talk as though this approach is the only rational decision-making process. That tendency is …
This post is part of a series of essays from the Environmental Law Collaborative on the theme "Environmental Law. Disrupted." It was originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog.
How much do presidents really matter to the United States' participation in international environmental law?
Fairly obviously, presidential turnovers in the United States are absolutely critical to how the United States conducts its international relations. President George W. Bush's pursuit of Middle Eastern terrorists in the wake of 9/11, including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, represents a far different engagement with the rest of the world regarding international terrorism than President Obama's reliance on drones and attempts to bring American troops back home. In turn, President Obama's engagement with the rest of the world on climate change, including committing the United States to the Paris Accord, represents a radically different path than the one President Trump …
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