Existing environmental statutes already reject welfarist cost-benefit reasoning by design

Evidence

If, in the costbenefi t state, important deontological and other nonwelfarist considerations are to be found only in the Constitution, then we cannot understand much of the environmental law we already have. For instance, we cannot understand the NEPA’s overriding command that we consider the rationality of our actions not just in terms of the consequences that they generate but in terms of the procedures that determine them. We cannot understand the healthbased mandate of the CAA, which requires the EPA and the states to ensure an ample margin of protection from air pollution and which trucks no consideration of economic cost in doing so. We cannot understand the ESA, the MMPA, the Wilderness Act, and numerous other legislative steps to cordon off certain lifeforms and natural resources from the market’s— and by extension welfarism’s— demand that their worth constantly be demonstrated in order to avoid being transformed into just another factor of production. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 618

Categorization

• XREF: Direct bridge to LGST civil procedure and statutory-interpretation material; the CAA, NEPA, ESA examples give concrete legal grounding for the soundscape course’s ‘listening-as-method’ theme. — connects to: Cost-benefit analysis causes the very distortions it claims to prevent — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 237; Cost-benefit analysis narrows the questions environmental law can ask — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 317; Cost-benefit analysis erases the moral remainders that technology standards preserve — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 578
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Cost-benefit analysis erases the moral remainders that technology standards preserve #corroborates (0.85) — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 578