Cost-benefit analysis narrows the questions environmental law can ask

Evidence

The most worrying danger presented by costbenefi t analysis is not that we will choose the wrong modeling assumptions, but that the full power and responsibility of our collective agency will become lost amidst the rhetorical force of an interestaggregation exercise that purports to take account of all relevant consequences of social choice. This semblance of comprehensiveness is misleading: The answers that costbenefi t analysis provides work a narrowing of the questions that environmental law asks. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 317

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘narrowing of questions’ thesis is the methodological core of the reader’s polyad claim that regulatory choices mask value judgments; connects to ch10 sub-rosa CBA claims. — connects to: Cost-benefit analysis causes the very distortions it claims to prevent — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 237; Existing environmental statutes already reject welfarist cost-benefit reasoning by design — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 618; Cost-benefit analysis’s appearance of rationality masks its insensitivity to systemic, long-term context — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 16 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Existing environmental statutes already reject welfarist cost-benefit reasoning by design #contradicts (0.90) — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 618
• Cost-benefit analysis erases the moral remainders that technology standards preserve #expands (0.90) — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 578
• Cost-benefit analysis’s appearance of rationality masks its insensitivity to systemic, long-term context #expands (0.85) — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 16
• Corporate cost-benefit analysis can explicitly price human life against repair costs #exemplifies (0.85)
• Environmental policymaking systematically discounts distant-future and foreign benefits against present domestic costs #expands (0.80) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 562
• Environmental protection structurally requires present sacrifice for unverifiable future gain #complicates (0.75) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 983
• Short-term profit incentives override distant and slowly accumulating environmental harms #complicates (0.75)