The Polluters
The Polluters

Author: Benjamin Ross

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-09-02

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 0199752974

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The chemical pollution that irrevocably damages today's environment is, although many would like us to believe otherwise, the legacy of conscious choices made long ago. During the years before and just after World War II, discoveries like leaded gasoline and DDT came to market, creating new hazards even as the expansion and mechanization of industry exacerbated old ones. Dangers still felt today--smog, pesticides, lead, chromium, chlorinated solvents, asbestos, even global warming--were already recognized by chemists, engineers, doctors, and business managers of that era. A few courageous individuals spoke out without compromise, but still more ignored scientific truth in pursuit of money and prestige. The Polluters reveals at last the crucial decisions that allowed environmental issues to be trumped by political agendas. It spotlights the leaders of the chemical industry and describes how they applied their economic and political power to prevent the creation of an effective system of environmental regulation. Research was slanted, unwelcome discoveries were suppressed, and friendly experts were placed in positions of influence, as science was subverted to serve the interests of business. The story of The Polluters is one that needs to be told, an unflinching depiction of the onslaught of chemical pollution and the chemical industry's unwillingness to face up to its devastating effects.

Super Polluters
Super Polluters

Author: Don Grant

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2020-11-17

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 0231549695

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Power plants are essential to achieving the standard of living that modern societies demand and the social and economic infrastructure on which they depend. Yet their indispensability has allowed them to evade responsibility for their vast carbon emissions. Fossil-fueled power plants are the single largest sites of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, making them one of the greatest threats to our planet’s climate. Significant as they are, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the social causes that enable power plant emissions and continue to delay their reduction. Super Polluters offers a groundbreaking global analysis of carbon pollution caused by the generation of electricity, pinpointing who bears the most responsibility for the energy sector’s vast emissions and what can be done about them. The sociologists Don Grant, Andrew Jorgenson, and Wesley Longhofer analyze a novel dataset on the carbon dioxide emissions and structural attributes of thousands of fossil-fueled power plants around the world, identifying which plants discharge the most carbon. They investigate the global, organizational, and political conditions that explain these hyper-emitting facilities’ behavior and call into question the claim that improvements in technical efficiency will always reduce emissions. Grant, Jorgenson, and Longhofer demonstrate which energy and climate policies are most effective at abating power-plant pollution, emphasizing how mobilized citizen activism shapes those outcomes. A comprehensive account of who bears the blame for our warming planet, Super Polluters points to more feasible and effective emission reduction strategies that target the world’s most profligate polluters.

Regulating the Polluters
Regulating the Polluters

Author: Alexander Ovodenko

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0190677724

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Why have national governments created different international rules and institutions to address global environmental issues? Alexander Ovodenko argues that this variation can be explained by looking to a dynamic that has been thus far downplayed by the literature on global environmental governance: the structures of industries regulated by environmental rules. Regulating the Polluters inverts the literature on regulatory capture and collective action by presenting empirical evidence of the irony of market power in global environmental politics.

Regulating the Polluters
Regulating the Polluters

Author: Alexander Ovodenko

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0190677732

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National governments and private stakeholders have long recognized that protecting the global environment requires international cooperation. Climate change, tropical deforestation, biodiversity loss, ozone depletion, hazardous wastes, and ocean pollution are among several issues that have brought national governments together in common purpose. As they have worked to mitigate these global problems, governments have developed a wide variety of environmental regime designs. Some global environmental regimes are more institutionally integrated than others. Some regimes impose legally binding obligations on countries while others involve non-binding commitments. And some regimes involve global standards and rules while others leave national commitments up to countries' discretion. What explains the pattern of regime design in global environmental governance? Alexander Ovodenko demonstrates that national governments have developed different institutional responses to global issues because the markets producing environmental pollution impose varying constraints and create varying opportunities for governments. Contrary to the prevailing literature, governments are more inclined to impose stringent rules and regulations on oligopolistic industries than on competitive ones. The capital resources and innovation potential of oligopolistic businesses make them more cost-effective and economical in reducing pollution and meeting global standards than businesses in competitive industries. In global governance, oligopolistic businesses face a "double-edged sword" arising from their wealth and market concentrations. Regulating the Polluters inverts the literature on regulatory capture and collective action by presenting empirical evidence of the irony of market power in global environmental politics.

Carbon Captured
Carbon Captured

Author: Matto Mildenberger

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0262357283

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A comparative examination of domestic climate politics that offers a theory for cross-national differences in domestic climate policymaking. Climate change threatens the planet, and yet policy responses have varied widely across nations. Some countries have undertaken ambitious programs to stave off climate disaster, others have done little, and still others have passed policies that were later rolled back. In this book, Matto Mildenberger opens the “black box” of domestic climate politics, examining policy making trajectories in several countries and offering a theoretical explanation for national differences in the climate policy process. Mildenberger introduces the concept of double representation—when carbon polluters enjoy political representation on both the left (through industrial unions fearful of job loss) and the right (through industrial business associations fighting policy costs)—and argues that different climate policy approaches can be explained by the interaction of climate policy preferences and domestic institutions. He illustrates his theory with detailed histories of climate politics in Norway, the United States, and Australia, along with briefer discussions of policies in in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada. He shows that Norway systematically shielded politically connected industrial polluters from costs beginning with its pioneering carbon tax; the United States, after the failure of carbon reduction legislation, finally acted on climate reform through a series of Obama administration executive actions; and Australia's Labor and Green parties enacted an emissions trading scheme, which was subsequently repealed by a conservative Liberal party government. Ultimately, Mildenberger argues for the importance of political considerations in understanding the climate policymaking process and discusses possible future policy directions.

The Coal Truth
The Coal Truth

Author: David Ritter

Publisher: University of Western Australia Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781742589824

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Since 2012, the fight to stop the opening of the vast Galilee coal basin has emerged as an iconic pivot of the Australian climate and environment movement. The Coal Truth provides a timely and colourful contribution to one of the most important struggles in our national history - over the future of the coal industry. Written by an environmental insider with an eye on the world his daughters will inherit, The Coal Truth is told with wit and verve, drawing in other specialist voices to bring to life the contours of a contest that the people of Australia can't afford to lose. Contributors include: Adrian Burragubba, Tara Moss and Berndt Sellheim, Lesley Hughes, John Quiggin, Hilary Bambrick, Ruchira Talukdar and Geoffrey Cousins. This book will be of interest of anyone interested in environmental studies, activism, politics, and Australian studies.

Struggling for Air
Struggling for Air

Author: Richard L. Revesz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0190233117

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Since the beginning of the Obama Administration, conservative politicians have railed against the President's "War on Coal." As evidence of this supposed siege, they point to a series of rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency that aim to slash air pollution from the nation's power sector . Because coal produces far more pollution than any other major energy source, these rules are expected to further reduce its already shrinking share of the electricity market in favor of cleaner options like natural gas and solar power. But the EPA's policies are hardly the "unprecedented regulatory assault " that opponents make them out to be. Instead, they are merely the latest chapter in a multi-decade struggle to overcome a tragic flaw in our nation's most important environmental law. In 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, which had the remarkably ambitious goal of eliminating essentially all air pollution that posed a threat to public health or welfare. But there was a problem: for some of the most common pollutants, Congress empowered the EPA to set emission limits only for newly constructed industrial facilities, most notably power plants. Existing plants, by contrast, would be largely exempt from direct federal regulation-a regulatory practice known as "grandfathering." What lawmakers didn't anticipate was that imposing costly requirements on new plants while giving existing ones a pass would simply encourage those old plants to stay in business much longer than originally planned. Since 1970, the core problems of U.S. environmental policy have flowed inexorably from the smokestacks of these coal-fired clunkers, which continue to pollute at far higher rates than their younger peers. In Struggling for Air, Richard L. Revesz and Jack Lienke chronicle the political compromises that gave rise to grandfathering, its deadly consequences, and the repeated attempts-by presidential administrations of both parties-to make things right.