Political Intervention: The White House Doctors Mercury Conclusions
Materials on the Environmental Protection Agency's Web site – buried deep inside hundreds of pages of internal documents – reveal the extent to which the White House was willing to override expert scientific conclusions to justify a weak proposal to control mercury emissions from power plants. Federal agencies are required to obtain approval for all major regulatory proposals from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (led by the president's regulatory czar John Graham) within the White House Office of Management and Budget. In flyspecking EPA's mercury proposal, OMB economists and White House officials systematically downplayed scientific conclusions that methyl-mercury exposure causes brain damage in children.
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Author(s): Rena Steinzor, Lisa Heinzerling
A Perfect Storm: Mercury and the Bush Administration
For the Bush administration, mercury contamination is the regulatory equivalent of the perfect storm. Four separate fields - science, law, economics, and justice - have combined to demand strict and timely controls on the intolerable hazards mercury poses for public health and the environment. While many expected the Bush administration to search for escape routes that favor its friends in the chemical and energy industries - which produce the lion's share of mercury - none were prepared for its headlong plunge into the tallest waves. Just as the doomed fishermen of the Andrea Gail sailed into the storm despite clear warnings, the administration is likewise proceeding with business as usual. This means no requirements for industrial plants to reduce pollution at the smokestack and no expectation that the oldest, dirtiest plants install modern pollution controls. Meanwhile, the clear and present danger posed by mercury is being ignored.
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Author(s): Lisa Heinzerling, Rena Steinzor
Balancing Lives Against Lucre
Balancing Lives Against Lucre, op-ed by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling
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Author(s): Frank Ackerman, Lisa Heinzerling
Robert R.M. Verchick's February 25, 2004, testimony on OMB's 2004 Draft report to Congress on regulation
Robert R.M. Verchick's February 25, 2004, testimony to the Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs on OMB's 2004 Draft report to Congress on the costs and benefits of regulation
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Author(s): Robert Verchick
Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing
As absurd as it sounds to express the value of human lives, the environment, or conservation in dollars and cents, cost-benefit analysis requires it. Embraced by a growing number of politicians, economic analysts and conservative pundits as the most reasonable way to make decisions on proposed regulations, cost-benefit analysis attempts to convert all relevant factors into monetary terms. Written by economist CPR Member Scholars Frank Ackerman, economist at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, and Lisa Heinzerling, professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, Priceless is a combative, no-holds-barred debunking of cost-benefit analysis and the derelict logic used to defend it.
Author(s): Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman
Data Quality Or Scientific Censorship?
Data Quality Or Scientific Censorship?, op-ed by John Applegate, Don Hornstein, Thomas O. McGarity, Sid Shapiro, RenaSteinzor, and Wendy Wagner, published in Risk Policy Report
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Author(s): Donald Hornstein, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, Wendy Wagner
September 16, 2003: CPR's Steinzor Raps EPA for Enforcement Failures; Steinzor: 'EPA's Enforcement Program is Falling Apart'
CPR's Steinzor Raps EPA for Enforcement Failures; Steinzor: 'EPA's Enforcement Program is Falling Apart'
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CPR Perspective: Cost-Benefit Analysis: Pricing the Priceless: Cost-Benefit Analysis of Health, Safety, and Environmental Protection
CPR Perspective: Cost-Benefit Analysis by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling. CPR's Perspectives Series is a set of monographs by CPR Member Scholars on timely and important health, safety, and environmental topics. Each Perspective provides a thumbnail sketch of the competing arguments concerning a substantive or procedural principle for developing appropriate health, safety and environmental policies, and closes with the Member Scholar-author's proposed approach to the issue.
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Author(s): Frank Ackerman, Lisa Heinzerling