How much can you pay for a healthy environment?

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"For example, CBA (Cost-Benefit Analysis) proponents do not ask how much would a company have to pay a victim to get her to agree to die of cancer contracted after breathing in the fumes from the company's plant. Rather, they asked how much would a potential victim pay the factory to avoid a risk."

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is often touted by the administration and conservative think tanks as a neutral tool in policymaking, but recent studies by legal scholars show that CBA is inherently political and may even advise against what we consider our most immutable public protections. <snip>

Advocates of cost-benefit analysis claim that regulation is irrational and that cost-benefit analysis is necessary to rein in costly, burdensome measures. Yet as Richard Parker points out in "Is Cost Benefit Analysis Irrational?," the arguments of CBA's biggest supporters are themselves irrational, relying on fuzzy numbers and misguided assumptions to prove the case for this weak policy tool.

Some of the most compelling cases for the necessity of cost-benefit analysis is necessary in policy-making have come from John Morrall, an economist at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and Robert Hahn, of AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. Both have argued, after applying cost-benefit analysis to the totality of government regulation, that the costs of federal regulation far outweigh the benefits, proving, they assert, that government regulation is fundamentally irrational and overzealous. They point to what appear to be egregious examples of overly-cautious regulations, citing cases in which regulation costs up to $72 billion for every life saved. Yet, as Parker easily points out, their arguments are based on shaky assumptions that fail to take into account the full range of considerations necessary for an agency to make a rational policy decision.

http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/2749/1/134?TopicID=3

This Cost-Benefit Analysis is the basis for which the Republicans are destroying our environment. Unfortunately the health of us, our children and grandchildren is worth very little to the CBA people - with John Graham leading the way.

"Quick: What's the dollar value of a human life? Of a river? John D. Graham says he knows. As the White House point man who weighs every health and environmental rule to decide if it's worth the cost, he's a bureaucrat with power over life and death."

http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/03spr/graham1.asp?r


If we were all billionaires - Bill Gates or the Waltons - I expect we would pay quite a lot to have a healthy environment for ourselves and our future - billions even.

If the Costs and Benefits were up to me... there is not a price high enough that a company could pay to get out of pollution controls. Some industries might not be worth existing for the price of their pollution.

[KT2000]

1. It is my understanding

that cost/benefit applies to business - not the people affected. I am afraid that most people think that the cost benefit is figured on the basis of consumer experience.

If a toxic product that is superfluous to the survival of the human race makes huge money for corporations and employs lots of people - it is a benefit. If regulations are imposed that would reduce profits and/or reduce employment it is a cost.

If consumers are injured and made ill by the product - that is of no consequence. As in the case of the corporation that makes a pesticide suspected of causing cancer, they increase their benefit by purchasing pharmaceutical companies that make chemo drugs. Regulations inpingign on the profitability of either of those two products is a cost.

[bloom]

2. From what I have been reading...

...the new regulations that have been instituted on behalf of industry do so on the basis of what they say the health costs are in relation to the costs to industry to implement the controls/regulations. The links I posted go into more detail.

And not only that - they like to ignore the studies which show how severe the health costs are.

The main guy - John Graham considers himself quite a debater. I would like to see Paul Krugman take him on. Heck - I would debate him myself.

"Recently, OIRA has been asking EPA to include an "alternative estimate" for the dollar benefits of some rules, using lower figures for the value society places on a single human life. EPA uses $6.1 million as its basic figure for one "statistical life." The alternative figures, drawn from certain economists' studies of how people value risk, start at $3.7 million."

http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/03spr/graham1.asp?r=n

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3371733&mesg_id=3372229&page=

EPA Ignores Cost-Benefit Analysis on Mercury Rule
From the Washington Post:

When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff.

What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion.

That analysis estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public documents, said a staff member who helped develop the rule. Acknowledging the Harvard study would have forced the agency to consider more stringent controls, said environmentalists and the study's author.

http://www.ombwatch.org/article/blogs/entry/611/19



"People acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about." - FDR

[Deja Q]

3. If you were a Gates or a Walton, you'd find ways to bypass tax laws.

Everyone wants to work within the system. Our system has proven that the pursuit of money is ultimately more detrimental to the fabric of not only society; but the entire planet - which we're rather stuck on, aren't we?

[bloom]

4. The idea was that

the Cost-Benefit people like to put a value on our health and environment based on our ability to pay. If we had the money of Microsoft or Walmart - we would be able to spend a lot more on the environment - so it would be a "fairer game" we are playing.


I think most people are expecting their taxes and/or industries to pay the costs of keeping the environment clean - as a business cost - they dirty it - they clean it - with the idea that if they don't then our taxes do.



Maybe people do think about how they are paying the cost of living in a polluted world when they buy bottled water - when they buy organic foods.

I know I consciously chose to live away from the city - whatever the costs ended up being for that decision - partly for the air quality.




"People acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about." - FDR