Hazardous Waste Siting and Democratic Choice PDF Download

Author: Don Munton
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9780878406258
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
This volume analyzes the politics of hazardous waste siting and explores promising new strategies for siting facilities. Existing approaches to waste siting facilities have almost entirely failed, across all industrialized countries, largely because of community or NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) opposition. This volume examines a new strategy, voluntary choice siting--a process requiring mutual decisions negotiated between facility developers and the host communities. This bottom-up approach preserves democratic rights, recognizes the importance of public perceptions, and addresses issues of equity. In this collection, an interdisciplinary group of experts probes recent examples of waste facilities siting in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Japan. Both the successes and the failures presented offer practical insights into the siting process. The book includes an introductory review of the literature on facility siting and the NIMBY phenomenon as well as instructive essays on the use of voluntary processes in facilities siting. This book will be of value to policymakers, industry, and environmental groups, as well as to those working in environmental studies and engineering, political science, public health, geography, planning, and business economics.

Author: D. Huitema
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 030648059X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
where Jeremy Richardson, Albert Weale and Hugh Ward were excellent hosts at the Department of Government and Thomas Christiansen a very good roommate. Having included the UK as a country where decision processes were far less participatory (and thus ‘worse’ in my own view) than those in the Netherlands, I started doing my first interviews there, which were mainly intended to identify suitable case studies for research. But then I read a highly critical review of a book that had a similar topic as my study. The critique was that cases of hazardous waste siting cannot adequately be studied without understanding their national context. This made me decide to devote some attention to the legal context of hazardous waste siting in the three countries of interest (which is of course only a part of the national context) and its development through the years. The study of the UK system of environmental regulation and land use planning was not a simple issue, and I was warned various times (for instance by Andrew Blowers at the Open University) that the legislation was highly complex and easily misinterpreted. I felt personally touched by such warnings and decided that I should perhaps approach the UK system a bit less as an evil empire and maybe be a bit more ‘objective’ in my appraisals.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030906371X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Incineration has been used widely for waste disposal, including household, hazardous, and medical wasteâ€"but there is increasing public concern over the benefits of combusting the waste versus the health risk from pollutants emitted during combustion. Waste Incineration and Public Health informs the emerging debate with the most up-to-date information available on incineration, pollution, and human healthâ€"along with expert conclusions and recommendations for further research and improvement of such areas as risk communication. The committee provides details on: Processes involved in incineration and how contaminants are released. Environmental dynamics of contaminants and routes of human exposure. Tools and approaches for assessing possible human health effects. Scientific concerns pertinent to future regulatory actions. The book also examines some of the social, psychological, and economic factors that affect the communities where incineration takes place and addresses the problem of uncertainty and variation in predicting the health effects of incineration processes.

Author: Kate O'Neill
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263971
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
When most people think of hazardous waste trading, they think of egregious dumping by U.S. and European firms on poor countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. But over 80 percent of the waste trade takes place between industrialized nations and is legal by domestic and international standards. In Waste Trading among Rich Nations, Kate O'Neill asks why some industrialized nations voluntarily import such wastes in the absence of pressing economic need. She focuses on Britain as an importer and Germany as an exporter and also looks at France, Australia, and Japan. According to O'Neill, most important in determining whether an industrialized democracy imports waste are two aspects of its regulatory system. The first is the structure of the regulatory process—how powers and responsibilities are allocated among different agencies and levels of government—and the structure of the hazardous waste disposal industry. The second is what O'Neill calls the "style" of environmental regulation, in particular access to the policy process and mode of implementation. Hazardous waste management is in crisis in most industrialized countries and is becoming increasingly controversial in international negotiations. O'Neill not only examines waste trading empirically but also develops a theoretical model of comparative regulation that can be used to establish links between domestic and international environmental politics.

Author: Herbert Gintis
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262072526
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Moral Sentiments and Material Interests presents an innovative synthesis of research in different disciplines to argue that cooperation stems not from the stereotypical selfish agent acting out of disguised self-interest but from the presence of "strong reciprocators" in a social group. Presenting an overview of research in economics, anthropology, evolutionary and human biology, social psychology, and sociology, the book deals with both the theoretical foundations and the policy implications of this explanation for cooperation. Chapter authors in the remaining parts of the book discuss the behavioral ecology of cooperation in humans and nonhuman primates, modeling and testing strong reciprocity in economic scenarios, and reciprocity and social policy. The evidence for strong reciprocity in the book includes experiments using the famous Ultimatum Game (in which two players must agree on how to split a certain amount of money or they both get nothing.)

Author: Sheldon Kamieniecki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199397473
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 792

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Book Description
Prior to the Nixon administration, environmental policy in the United States was rudimentary at best. Since then, it has evolved into one of the primary concerns of governmental policy from the federal to the local level. As scientific expertise on the environment rapidly developed, Americans became more aware of the growing environmental crisis that surrounded them. Practical solutions for mitigating various aspects of the crisis - air pollution, water pollution, chemical waste dumping, strip mining, and later global warming - became politically popular, and the government responded by gradually erecting a vast regulatory apparatus to address the issue. Today, politicians regard environmental policy as one of the most pressing issues they face. The Obama administration has identified the renewable energy sector as a key driver of economic growth, and Congress is in the process of passing a bill to reduce global warming that will be one of the most important environmental policy acts in decades. The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Environmental Policy is a state-of-the-art work on all aspects of environmental policy in America. Over the past half century, America has been the world's leading emitter of global warming gases. However, environmental policy is not simply a national issue. It is a global issue, and the explosive growth of Asian countries like China and India mean that policy will have to be coordinated at the international level. The book therefore focuses not only on the U.S., but on the increasing importance of global policies and issues on American regulatory efforts. This is a topic that will only grow in importance in the coming years, and this handbook serves as an authoritative guide to any scholar interested in the issue.

Author: Daniel P. Aldrich
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226012891
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The factor that makes some communities rebound quickly from disasters while others fall apart: “A fascinating book on an important topic.”—E.L. Hirsch, in Choice Each year, natural disasters threaten the strength and stability of communities worldwide. Yet responses to the challenges of recovery vary greatly and in ways that aren’t explained by the magnitude of the catastrophe or the amount of aid provided by national governments or the international community. The difference between resilience and disrepair, as Daniel P. Aldrich shows, lies in the depth of communities’ social capital. Building Resilience highlights the critical role of social capital in the ability of a community to withstand disaster and rebuild both the infrastructure and the ties that are at the foundation of any community. Aldrich examines the post-disaster responses of four distinct communities—Tokyo following the 1923 earthquake, Kobe after the 1995 earthquake, Tamil Nadu after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and New Orleans post-Katrina—and finds that those with robust social networks were better able to coordinate recovery. In addition to quickly disseminating information and financial and physical assistance, communities with an abundance of social capital were able to minimize the migration of people and valuable resources out of the area. With governments increasingly overstretched and natural disasters likely to increase in frequency and intensity, a thorough understanding of what contributes to efficient reconstruction is more important than ever. Building Resilience underscores a critical component of an effective response.

Author: Daniel J. Sherman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136522069
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
In 1979, provoked by the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, governors of states hosting disposal facilities for low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) refused to accept additional shipments. The resulting shortage of disposal sites for wastes spurred Congress to devolve responsibility for establishing new, geographically diffuse LLRW disposal sites to states and regional compacts, with siting authorities often employing socio-economic and political data to target communities that would give little resistance to their plans. The communities, however, were far from compliant, organizing nearly 1000 opposition events that ended up blocking the implementation of any new disposal sites. Sherman provides comprehensive coverage of this opposition, testing hypotheses regarding movement mobilization and opposition strategy by analyzing the frequency and disruptive qualities of activism. In the process, he bridges applied policy questions about hazardous waste disposal with broader questions about the dynamics of social movements and the intergovernmental politics of policy implementation. The issues raised in this book are sure to be renewed as interest grows in nuclear power and the disposal of the resulting waste remains uncertain.

Author: Michael E. Kraft
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131543704X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
Covering global threats such as climate change, population growth, and loss of biodiversity, as well as national, state, and local problems of environmental pollution, energy use, and natural resource use and conservation, Environmental Policy and Politics provides a comprehensive overview of U.S. policymaking processes, the legislative and administrative settings for policy decisions, the role of interest groups and public opinion in environmental politics, and the public policies that result. It helps readers understand modern environmental policy and its implications, including the need for a comprehensive and integrated approach to problem-solving. New to the Seventh Edition Each chapter includes the latest information about environmental challenges and governmental responses to them, with extensive citation of sources and websites that allow students to find the most recent studies and reports. Each chapter covers key political and policy decisions through early 2017, including presidential appointments, budgetary decisions, major legislative initiatives, and congressional actions. Each chapter introduction includes new statements about learning objectives to facilitate student understanding of key concepts and their applications, arguments advanced over environmental challenges and policies, and the goals and methods of environmental policy analysis. Chapters compare decisions about major environmental, energy, and natural resource policies among the presidential administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, to the extent possible. Each chapter’s case studies have been changed or updated to include the latest developments and examples that should improve their appeal to students. These include controversies over the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and new fuel economy standards, new policies on toxic chemicals, the role of environmental and energy policies in the 2016 elections, changes in the nation’s reliance on energy resources, standards for evaluating environmental and resource policies, and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Summaries of scientific studies, government reports, and policy analyses have been updated throughout the text to reflect the most current research and information in the field. All chapters include revised discussion questions and new suggested readings. The writing and flow of material have been improved throughout to make the chapters more accessible and useful to students.

Author: Robert C. Ellickson
Publisher: Aspen Publishing
ISBN: 1543820786
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 922

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Book Description
Land Use Controls: Cases and Materialsemphasizes an interdisciplinary approach that weaves historical, social, and economic causes and effects of legal doctrine. The casebook also brings out the functional relationships between formally unrelated routes of law—statutes, ordinances, constitutional doctrines, and common law—by focusing on their practical deployment, developers, neighbors, planners, politicians, and their empirical effects on outcomes like neighborhood quality, housing supply, racial segregation, and tax burdens. A thematic framework illuminates the connections among multiple topics under land law and gives attention to the factual and political context of the cases and aftermath of decisions. Dynamic pedagogy features original introductory text, cases, notes, excerpts from law review articles, and visual aids (maps, charts, graphs) throughout. New to the Fifth Edition: A focus on affordability and the new conflicts over urban zoning A fully updated treatment of local administrative law Recent constitutional rulings, including up-to-date Supreme Court decisions on exactions and regulatory takings Thoroughly updated notes, with recent cases, law review literature, and empirical studies Professors and students will benefit from: Distinguished authorship by respected scholars and professors with a range of expertise An interdisciplinary approach combining historical, social, political, and economic perspectives and offering dynamic opportunities for analysis along with broad legal coverage Concise but comprehensive treatment of the legal issues in private and public regulation of land development, including environmental justice, building codes and subdivision regulations, and the federal role in urban development A thematic framework illuminating connections among multiple discrete topics under land law and the factual and political context of cases and aftermath of decisions Excellent coverage and dynamic pedagogy