Delayed environmental harms create regulatory cost-asymmetry and uncertainty

Evidence

Some environmental consequences do not occur immediately, but rather may take considerable time to manifest themselves. It may be months, years, decades, or even generations before the increasing effects resulting from human actions reach a level and form capable of normal human apprehension. As discussed earlier in the book, this ecological feature has distinct implications and challenges for lawmaking, adding to the scientific uncertainty surrounding the development of legal standards while contributing to a distributional asymmetry between regulatory costs and benefits that makes regulation exceedingly difficult to make, maintain, and enforce. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 306

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This is the structural core of the reader’s purpose: why delayed environmental harms make environmental law systematically hard to pass and keep — links directly to institutional analysis across the polyad.
• XREF: connects to: Growing awareness of irreversible environmental harms transformed law’s treatment of time — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 301; Dread of future environmental risk itself causes physical and economic harm — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 309; Precautionary ozone policy succeeded precisely by distrusting risk-assessment tools — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 135 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Short-term profit incentives override distant and slowly accumulating environmental harms #complicates (0.82)
• Environmental protection structurally requires present sacrifice for unverifiable future gain #qualifies (0.78) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 983
• Environmental policymaking systematically discounts distant-future and foreign benefits against present domestic costs #corroborates (0.75) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 562