Milton Russell

Is There a Role for Benefit-Cost Analysis in Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulation?

Benefit-cost analysis can play an important role in legislative and regulatory policy debates on protecting and improving health, safety, and the natural environment. Although formal benefit-cost analysis should not be viewed as either necessary or sufficient for designing sensible public policy, it can provide an exceptionally useful framework for consistently organizing disparate information, and in this way, it can greatly improve the process and, hence, the outcome of policy analysis. If properly done, benefit-cost analysis can be of great help to agencies participating in the development of environmental, health, and safety regulations, and it can likewise be useful in evaluating agency decision-making and in shaping statutes.

Lessons from NAPAP

NAPAP was an institutional innovation of great benefit in bringing the United States to a decision on acid precipitation control. The nations return from the

A model of regulatory agency behavior

600 000 000 investment in NAPAP will be greater still if the lessons learned in the course of its existence are put to proper use in the future. This essay concentrates on the lessons learned about the interface between science and public policy as experienced in NAPAP.

Environmental Policy's Great Dilemma

Regulatory agencies in the U.S. economy make decisions distributing and redistributing very large sums of income and wealth, and we are concerned here with such decisions. The analysis is limited to the rate-of-return on rate-base regulation of firms which provide utility services under conditions of controlled entry. These firms are engaged in such activities as the transportation and distribution (but not production) of natural gas, the provision of central station electricity, and the provision of centrally switched communications. Specific external constraints on regulatory commissions with respect to choice of results, within the range presented in the adversary proceedings, are few and ineffective. There is little threat of immediate repudiation of a decision properly taken. This regulatory discretion arises from several sources. First, there is the difficulty of knowing exactly what effect will flow from any one decision. Second, the decision follows the exercise of judgment and expertise, and in no unambiguous way flows from the facts. There is no objective standard on which to question almost any decision reached, for all cases are in some sense unique and

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in China: Institutional, legal and cultural constraints and opportunities

To the policymaker, the question {open_quotes}How clean is clean?{close_quotes} is not an abstraction. The answer will determine what action is to be taken, who is to take it, and how it should be implemented. And in a democratic society, the answer will be validated by allowing the policymaker to stay on the job. The essence of the {open_quotes}How clean is clean?{close_quotes} dilemma is that the successful policymaker must chart a course between the national interest of all of us taken together and the individual interests of some of us taken separately.

Environmental Protection for the 1990s and beyond

Abstract If the industrialized countries take steps to reduce their emissions and contribute money and technology for developing countries to do their part, China will participate in an international global warming treaty. Without these measures, the Chinese are not going to push greenhouse gas reductions on their own because they have more pressing problems. If the world wants them to move on greenhouse gas reduction, the relative incentives to the Chinese have to change in their favour, especially in light of the fact that they have not used up their share of the global commons.

Risk reduction and the privatization option: First principles

Four major changes taking place in environmental protection are: (1) a focus on toxic substances and their ecological impacts, (2) a shift from industrial to private citizen responsibility, (3) new tools and strategies among the environmental professionals, and (4) shifting roles played by various levels of government and private citizens. Following a historical review which highlights the ecological and health effects of strip mining, the author explores environmental threats and protection in terms of how humans relate to natural systems. The wide dispersal of pollution sources will require changing the behavior of individuals and trading some personal freedoms in order to reduce risks. The new approach will require a more open decision making process so that citizens and institutions become partners in the effort.

Integrated Environmental Management

The Department of Energy`s Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (EM) faces a challenging mission. To increase efficiency, EM is undertaking a number of highly innovative initiatives--two of which are of particular importance to the present study. One is the 2006 Plan, a planning and budgeting process that seeks to convert the clean-up program from a temporally and fiscally open-ended endeavor to a strictly bounded one, with firm commitments over a decade-long horizon. The second is a major overhauling of the management and contracting practices that define the relationship between the Department and the private sector, aimed at cost reduction by increasing firms` responsibilities and profit opportunities and reducing DOE`s direct participation in management practices and decisions. The goal of this paper is to provide an independent perspective on how EM should create new management practices to deal with private sector partners that are motivated by financial incentives. It seeks to ground this perspective in real world concerns--the background of the clean-up effort, the very difficult technical challenges it faces, the very real threats to environment, health and safety that have now been juxtaposed with financial drivers, and the constraints imposed by government`s unique business practices and public responsibilities. The approach is to raise issues through application of first principles. The paper is targeted at the EM policy officer who must implement the joint visions of the 2006 plan and privatization within the context of the tradeoff between terminal risk reduction and interim risk management.

Environmental policies affecting the development of newer coal technologies

Dr. Russell was the keynote speaker at the Third Symposium on Integrated Environmental Controls for Fossil-Fuel Power Plants, held In Pittsburgh on February 3-6, 1986. His address follows.

Thinking about Global Climate Change

This paper discusses some of the experiences we have had at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in searching for institutional fixes and technologies that simultaneously achieve our energy and environmental goals. It starts with some background information on coal production and its importance to our economy, and then examines the health and welfare effects of the air pollution resulting from the production and use of coal. Finally, it discusses the current and future technical and policy options for combatting these effects.