Worst Things First?

by Finkel, Adam M.; Golding, Dominic

• ISBN13: 9780915707744
• ISBN10: 0915707748
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-12-01
• Publisher: Resources for the Future

Summary

Momentum is growing to improve the haphazard way in which America's environmental priorities are determined. Influential members of Congress and federal officials, among others, are asking whether regulators actually devote their greatest attention to problems presenting the greatest ecological and health risks. Priority-setting that is more rational and dispassionate, the argument goes, would provide the way out of the "ready, fire, aim" syndrome that characterizes a crisis-of-the-month approach. Increasingly, the technique of comparative risk assessment is advanced as the key to more efficient and sensible planning. Despite its growing popularity, however, serious doubts exist about the adequacy of risk assessment for setting priorities. Worst Things First? The Debate over Risk-Based National Environmental Priorities explores the controversy over selecting an approach to set he nation's environmental priorities. Even though broad agreement exists that change is necessary, some critics feel the scientific data-collecting procedures of risk assessment constitute an intolerable delay for addressing more obvious and urgent problems; others fear its widespread use in regulatory agencies would move Congress from the center of the advocacy process, replacing public participation with expert elitism. Additional major concerns are uncertainty (do we know a "bigger" risk when we see it?), commensurability (how can we compare cancers and whales?), and "asking the wrong questions" (is ranking problems an intellectual exercise when solutions are what the country ready needs?) Resources for the Future convened a major conference in November 1992 to present a forum where EPA could describe its current and future plans for pursuing risk-based planning and hear suggestions for improving its methods, process, and implementation. Advocates of paradigms that give risk assessment little or no role were also able to present their best argument Worst Things First? contains the papers of that important three-day meeting. As the papers reveal, participants generally agreed that several different, legitimate ways exist to target the nation's resources for environmental protection. Conferees clashed over whether these different approaches are complementary or at odds. Broad acknowledgment emerged that, despite EPA's emphasis on one particular paradigm to date, the nation is not yet ready to agree on how to set environmental priorities, let alone on what the priorities themselves should be.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Should We - and Can We - Reduce the Worst Risks First?	p. 3
Rationalism and Redemocratization: Time for a Truce	p. 21
EPA's Vision for Setting National Environmental Priorities	p. 33
An Overview of Risk-Based Priority Setting at EPA	p. 47
Integrating Science, Values, and Democracy through Comparative Risk Assessment	p. 69
A Proposal to Address, Rather Than Rank, Environmental Problems	p. 87
Current Priority-Setting Methodology: Too Little Rationality or Too Much?	p. 107
Quantitative Risk Ranking: More Promise Than the Critics Suggest	p. 133
Paradigms, Process, and Politics: Risk and Regulatory Design	p. 147
Is Reducing Risk the Real Objective of Risk Management?	p. 167
State Concerns in Setting Environmental Priorities: Is the Risk-Based Paradigm the Best We Can Do?	p. 181
The States: The National Laboratory for the Risk-Based Paradigm?	p. 187
Working Group Discussions	p. 193
Pollution Prevention: Putting Comparative Risk Assessment in Its Place	p. 203
Hammers Don't Cut Wood: Why We Need Pollution Prevention and Comparative Risk Assessment	p. 229
Unequal Environmental Protection: Incorporating Environmental Justice in Decision Making	p. 237
Risk-Based Priorities and Environmental Justice	p. 267
An Innovation-Based Strategy for the Environment	p. 275
Promoting Innovation "The Easy Way"	p. 315
Summary of Closing Panel Discussion	p. 325
Recurring Themes and Points of Contention	p. 329
Afterthoughts	p. 335
Appendix: Conference Attendees	p. 345
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