A potential federal action under §404(c) of the Clean Water Act to prohibit or restrict the disposal of mine wastes from large-scale hardrock mines like the proposed Pebble Mine in waters of the Bristol Bay Watershed, which supports the world’s largest commercial sockeye salmon fishery, calls for a takings analysis.
A new economic framework based on institutional economics is needed for the climate disruption problem. A more effective framework would change the focus of economics from the near to the long term, substitute a goal of systemic risk avoidance for economic efficiency, and favor economic dynamic analysis, a specific form of institutional economic analysis, over cost-benefit analysis. Economic dynamic analysis requires evaluation of economic incentives that takes into account bounded rationality, countervailing incentives, and uncertainty (through scenario analysis).
Regulation is the most direct and predictable mechanism for controlling environmental behavior. Strong compliance and enforcement programs that punish violators and deter violations by others are, of course, essential to any successful regulatory system. It is increasingly clear, though, that regulation cannot by itself produce the behavioral changes needed to achieve sustainable environmental outcomes.
The credibility of a human health risk assessment depends, in the first instance, on what it actually says. The facts need to be accurate, the analysis needs to be rigorous, and the conclusions need to flow rationally from the underlying facts and analysis. The credibility of a risk assessment may also depend, however, on what it does not say.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), on April 13, 2012, promulgated proposed new source performance standards (NSPS) to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new electric-generating units (EGUs) greater than 25 megawatt electric (MWe) located in the continental United States.1 The standards are based on the emissions produced by a natural gas combined- cycle (NGCC) facility.