Bruce Tonn

A Framework for Understanding and Improving Environmental Decision Making

This paper presents a framework for understanding and improving public sector environmental decision making. Within the framework, four interrelated components are discussed: (1) the environmental and cultural context-understanding this context includes understanding what people consider to be environmental problems, the goals and values that they bring to environmental problems and decision processes, specialized and common knowledge about environmental problems, and the institutional settings within which problems are addressed; (2) planning and appraisal activitiesthese activities include forecasting and monitoring exercises, evaluations of past decisions, and decisions that processes ought to be launched to solve specific environmental problems; (3) decision-making modes-these include six typical ways of conducting an environmental problem-solving process, modes which, in the framework, are called emergency action, routine procedures, analysis-centred, elite corps, conflict management and collaborative learning; (4) decision actions-these include five generic steps that are undertaken, formally or intuitively, in virtually any decision-making situation: issue familiarization; criteria setting; option construction; option assessment; and reaching a decision. In the course of describing the framework, we show a decision-making process can be adapted to incorporate sustainability concerns, including fostering sustainable environmental and social systems, meeting obligations to future generations, and searching for robust and reasonable (rather than rigidly optimal) decisions. The framework also helps to illuminate intriguing questions regarding institutional responsibility, decision process complexity and paradigms for environmental decision making.

Industrial energy efficiency decision making

Abstract This paper presents a model to describe an industrial firms energy efficiency decision making over time. The model posits seven stages, which range from no energy savings decision making to energy efficiency program implementation to steady state energy efficiency decision making. It is hypothesized that government energy-efficiency programs, such as the Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) Program funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), can accelerate the speed industrial firms move through the models seven stages. Data were collected about firms’ stages in the model before and after receiving one of the three IAC benefits: a direct energy assessment; the employ of a student alumnus of the IAC Program; or use of energy efficiency information from an IAC website. It was found that each IAC benefit is associated with a significant positive change in firms’ energy efficiency decision making within a relatively short period of time.

An equity first, risk-based framework for managing global climate change

Abstract This paper presents an alternative framework to the approach currently embodied in the Kyoto Protocol for managing global climate change post-2012. The framework has two key provisions. The first is that each person in the world would be ‘allowed’ an equal amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This is labeled the equity-first provision. The second provision focuses on incorporating risk concepts into the setting of GHG emission reductions. It is proposed that the global climate be managed as to avoid three categories of risks: (I) Substantial regional economic, political, and/or biological impacts; (II) Severe global economic, political, and/or biological impacts; and (III) Extinction of humans. Acceptable risk thresholds are suggested to be one-in-a-million, one-in-one-hundred-million, and one-in-ten-billion, respectively. This equity-first, risk-based framework overcomes many criticisms of the current Kyoto Protocol: it explicitly involves all countries on earth; it avoids several administrative issues that are anticipated to plague a global carbon emissions trading market; and it avoids several contentious issues associated with pegging carbon emission reductions to 1990 levels. Because the framework is risk-based and emissions are tied to population and not historic emission levels, the basic framework would not have to be frequently renegotiated, as will be needed for the Kyoto-style approach to take the world past that agreements 2012 endpoint.

Explaining the Performance of Mature Municipal Solid Waste Recycling Programs

This paper assesses the contextual, programmatic and decision-making factors that affect the performance of mature municipal solid waste recycling programs. Tobit models were prepared for cities with populations of less than or more than 25 000 to facilitate analysis of recycling performance. Recycling participation rates were found to be higher among cities in both groups that offered more convenient recycling programs and whose residents had a higher mean household income. The larger cities that achieved higher participation rates employed a decision-making process known as ‘collaborative learning’, imposed sanctions on improper sorting recyclable materials, and had a larger non-minority population. Among smaller cities, higher participation was attained by using variable fee pricing for solid waste collection and by mandating household participation. The study findings suggest that future research should focus on improved ways to characterize and measure the decision-making processes used to make policy changes in order to facilitate analysis of the causal and temporal relationships between decision-making processes and program performance.

Impacts of the use of e-mail and the internet on personal trip-making behavior

This article presents the results of a web survey of 118 residents in the Knoxville, Tennessee, metropolitan region to explore the impacts of the use of e-mail and the Internet on personal trip-making behavior. Respondents were required to be active drivers and users of e-mail and/or the Internet. Approximately 40% reported that their use of these information technologies has led to less driving overall, and 18% reported less rush hour driving. Although use of the Internet has led to both trip reduction and new trip generation, overall, weekly trips appear to be reduced by 8% from the national average of almost 28 person trips per week in 2001. The number of places respondents have access to e-mail and the Internet is highly related to trip reduction and new trip generation. Education and income were positively related to new trip generation.

Judgment heuristics and medical decisions

Abstract The literature of social psychology and cognitive science is reviewed to examine possible effects on medical decisions of common judgment heuristics or intuitive decision rules and biases. Prior expectations, the availability bias, false consensus, and illusory correlations are reviewed for their effect on the recognition and reporting of signs and symptoms. Physicians desire to avoid risk, representativeness, and adjustment or anchoring heuristics are reviewed for possible effects on diagnostic strategy. The perception of risk, regret, framing effects, and illusions of control are examined for effects on the selection of treatment options. The implications of these heuristics and biases for medical education, provider-patient communications, and informed consent are also discussed.

Non-energy benefits of the US Weatherization Assistance Program: a summary of their scope and magnitude

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the findings reported recently in the literature on non-energy benefits attributable to the weatherizing of low-income homes. Non-energy benefits are divided into three major categories: (1) ratepayer benefits; (2) household benefits; and (3) societal benefits. The ratepayer benefits can be divided into two main subcategories: payment-related benefits and service-provision benefits. Similarly, there are two key types of household benefits: those associated with affordable housing and those related to safety, health and comfort. Societal benefits can be classified as either environmental, social, or economic. Our study found the total lifetime value for all non-energy benefit-categories to be

Distant futures and the environment

3346 (in 2001 dollars) per household, which is slightly greater than the average value of energy savings for houses heated by natural gas, and substantially higher than the total cost per low-income weatherization. Societal benefits were much larger than either ratepayer or household benefits.

Community networks or networked communities

Abstract This paper develops guidelines for long-term environmental policy and an environmental ethical framework that addresses the distant future. It is assumed that humans have an obligation to maintain Earth-life into the distant future, even past the time when the Earth will become uninhabitable. To achieve the goal of maintaining Earth-life into the distant future requires intelligence. Presently, it can be argued that only humans possibly possess the intelligence required to achieve this goal. It is further assumed that if humans become extinct, the chances are poor that Earth-life with the requisite intelligence to achieve this goal will emerge through evolution. It is also assumed that a catastrophic die-off of species on this planet will lead to the extinction of the human species. Taking these assumptions together, then, it is argued that it is imperative that catastrophic die-off of species must be prevented. Several environmental threats to such an event are described and suggestions to overcome the threats are presented. It is argued that the central premise and associated policies and actions represent a unique environmental ethical framework. To ground the discussions, the Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere (SAMAB) region in the Southeastern United States is used for context, background, and transference of general principles to specific environmental policies.

500-Year Planning: A Speculative Provocation

The article provides an overview of the state of the art in community networks. Forty community networks were reviewed. A protocol was developed to guide the evaluation of each site. The protocol covered the types of information currently provided and whether the network contributes to the social capital of the community. It was found that communities are now served by several types of Web sites: nonprofit community networks, those administered by local governments, and various commercial sites. It does not appear that either individually or in combination the Web sites are working to strengthen the social capital of the communities they serve. It is recommended that a community’s information networking organizations work together to provide integrated resources and programs that foster community dialogue and help people better meet their citizenship responsibilities, as well as up-to-date information on community events and real-time information about traffic, weather, and the like.