The role of the consumer has changed from seeking the most satisfaction from goods and services to reconciling consumption with active citizenship, which links consumption to modern social issues such as environmental protection, sound business ethics, and fair working conditions. Understanding consumers -- the way they buy products, the way they relate to questions of environmental importance, and the way they participate in public policy formulation processes –is of vital importance to modern society. In this book, eminent researchers examine contemporary issues related to the field of consumers, policy, and the environment.
The past twenty-five years have seen a significant evolution in environmental policy, with new environmental legislation and substantive amendments to earlier laws, significant advances in environmental science, and changes in the treatment of science (and scientific uncertainty) by the courts. This book offers a detailed discussion of the important issues in environmental law, policy, and economics, tracing their development over the past few decades through an examination of environmental law cases and commentaries by leading scholars. The authors focus on pollution, addressing both pollution control and prevention, but also emphasize the evaluation, design, and use of the law to stimulate technical change and industrial transformation, arguing that there is a need to address broader issues of sustainable development. Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics,which grew out of courses taught by the authors at MIT, treats the traditional topics covered in most classes in environmental law and policy, including common law and administrative law concepts and the primary federal legislation. But it goes beyond these to address topics not often found in a single volume: the information-based obligations of industry, enforcement of environmental law, market-based and voluntary alternatives to traditional regulation, risk assessment, environmental economics, and technological innovation and diffusion. Countering arguments found in other texts that government should play a reduced role in environmental protection, this book argues that clear, stringent legal requirements--coupled with flexible means for meeting them--and meaningful stakeholder participation are necessary for bringing about environmental improvements and technologicial transformations.
This book examines how markets have evolved and provides insights for improved consumer policy making. It explores, for the first time, how what we have learned through the study of behavioural economics is changing the way policy makers are addressing problems.
Health, safety, and environmental regulations have been traditionally perceived as distinct entities from trade policy, yet today they have become intertwined on a global scale. In this pioneering work, David Vogel integrates environmental, consumer, and trade policy, and explicitly challenges the conventional wisdom that trade liberalization and agreements to promote free trade invariably undermine national health, safety, and environmental standards. Vogel demonstrates that liberal trade policies often produce precisely the opposite effect: that of strengthening regulatory standards. The most comprehensive account of trade and regulation on a global scale, this book analyzes the regulatory dimensions of all major international and regional trade agreements and treaties, including GATT, NAFTA, the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States, and the treaties that created the European Community and Union. He explores in depth some of the most important trade and regulatory conflicts, including the GATT tuna-dolphin dispute, the EC's beef hormone ban, the Danish bottle case, and the debate in the United States over the regulatory implications of both NAFTA and GATT. This timely book unravels the increasingly important and contentious relationship between trade and environmental, health, and safety standards, paying particular attention to the politics that underlie trade and regulatory linkages. Trading Up is essential reading for the business community, policymakers, environmentalists, consumer interest groups, political scientists, lawyers, and economists.
The role of the consumer has changed from seeking the most satisfaction from goods and services to reconciling consumption with active citizenship, which links consumption to modern social issues such as environmental protection, sound business ethics, and fair working conditions. Understanding consumers -- the way they buy products, the way they relate to questions of environmental importance, and the way they participate in public policy formulation processes –is of vital importance to modern society. In this book, eminent researchers examine contemporary issues related to the field of consumers, policy, and the environment.
Authoritative and trusted, Environmental Policy once again brings together top scholars to evaluate the changes and continuities in American environmental policy since the late 1960s and their implications for the twenty-first century. Students will learn to decipher the underlying trends, institutional constraints, and policy dilemmas that shape today’s environmental politics. The Tenth Edition examines how policy has changed within federal institutions and state and local governments, as well as how environmental governance affects private sector policies and practices. The book provides in-depth examinations of public policy dilemmas including fracking, food production, urban sustainability, and the viability of using market solutions to address policy challenges. Students will also develop a deeper understanding of global issues such as climate change governance, the implications of the Paris Agreement, and the role of environmental policy in the developing world. Students walk away with a measured yet hopeful evaluation of the future challenges policymakers will confront as the American environmental movement continues to affect the political process.
While overconsumption by the developed world's roughly one billion inhabitants is an abiding problem, another one billion increasingly affluent "new consumers" in developing countries will place additional strains on the earth's resources, argue authors Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent in this important new book. The New Consumers examines the environmental impacts of this increased consumption, with particular focus on two commodities -- cars and meat -- that stand to have the most far-reaching effects. It analyzes consumption patterns in a number of different countries, with special emphasis on China and India (whose surging economies, as well as their large populations, are likely to account for exceptional growth in humanity's ecological footprint), and surveys big-picture issues such as the globalization of economies, consumer goods, and lifestyles. Ultimately, according to the orman Myers and Jennifer Kent, the challenge will be for all of humanity to transition to sustainable levels of consumption, for it is unrealistic to expect "new" consumers not to aspire to be like the "old" ones. Cogent in its analysis, The New Consumers issues a timely warning of a major and developing environmental trend, and suggests valuable strategies for ameliorating its effects.
An updated investigation of alternate pathways for American environmental policymaking made necessary by legislative gridlock. The “golden era” of American environmental lawmaking in the 1960s and 1970s saw twenty-two pieces of major environmental legislation (including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act) passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by presidents of both parties. But since then partisanship, the dramatic movement of Republicans to the right, and political brinksmanship have led to legislative gridlock on environmental issues. In this book, Christopher Klyza and David Sousa argue that the longstanding legislative stalemate at the national level has forced environmental policymaking onto other pathways. Klyza and Sousa identify and analyze five alternative policy paths, which they illustrate with case studies from 1990 to the present: “appropriations politics” in Congress; executive authority; the role of the courts; “next-generation” collaborative experiments; and policymaking at the state and local levels. This updated edition features a new chapter discussing environmental policy developments from 2006 to 2012, including intensifying partisanship on the environment, the failure of Congress to pass climate legislation, the ramifications of Massachusetts v. EPA, and other Obama administration executive actions (some of which have reversed Bush administration executive actions). Yet, they argue, despite legislative gridlock, the legacy of 1960s and 1970s policies has created an enduring “green state” rooted in statutes, bureaucratic routines, and public expectations.
