Assignment #3

13) As Shepherd and Bowler and Slotterback’s articles mentioned, I think environmental policy makers should engage the public when they have limited information about the science of an environmental issue. It can be a way for realizing democratic governance although it is inevitably connected with conflicts and inefficiency during the reach of consensus among policy actors. I think several ways for increasing public involvement in the process of environmental policy-making are: some forms of public advisory committee (or panel or planning group), public hearing, informal conference, public education and information, public meetings, workshops, surveys, policy delphi, citizen information bulletin, and the like.

14) CV is enormously flexible in that it can be used to estimate the economic value of virtually anything. As Portney mentioned in his article, several environmental issues and non-environmental programs can be applied to the CV methods for estimating total economic value, including all types of non-use (or passive-use values) and use value (including existence values). The CV method is applicable to water resource management issues having multiple interests among several policy actors. In a real case in the early 1980s, Glen Canyon dam experienced the following dilemma: Operation of the dam to provide peak-load power was adversely affecting the downstream ecosystem in the Grand Canyon, and significantly reducing the quality of recreational rafting. The valuation question of concern was how much recreational rafting was worth, compared to the market value of the peak-load power supply. After EIA studies were conducted, Congress passed the Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992, which is specified in the first contingent valuation studies as part of a federally funded economic analysis. In the Exxon Valdez oil spill, as discussed in Portney and Diamond and Hausman’s articles, CV methods were also used for estimating economic damage assessments as well as other use and non-use values and costs, such as water purification costs, and economic losses such as the decrease in revenue from recreation and fisheries. The flexibility and generality of CVM’s application was the main reason why this valuation method received most of the EPA’s “demands” in the monetary assessment of the social costs and benefits associated with the new regulations on environmental policy.

15) Air pollution, such as CO2 emissions and the issue of their reduction as an environmental policy, can be one of the examples that Diamond and Hausman mentioned in their article as a case of “embedding effects” (p. 46). If people are asked for the willingness-to-pay to reduce carbon dioxide in one region (or area) and then asked to value the whole area (e.g., the whole surface in a country) to reduce CO2 levels, the amounts stated may be similar because of the lack of internal consistency. Moreover, in some cases, people’s expressed willingness to pay for something has been found to depend on where it is placed on a list of things being valued. This is referred to as the “ordering problem.” The Exxon Valdez oil spill case, by the same token, can also be used to argue the limitation of CV methods, as in Diamond and Hausman’s argument regarding the “some number is better than no number” fallacy (p. 58). According to them, assessments of lost non-use values by means of the CVM method should not be used in court because the CV is a deeply flawed methodology for measuring non-use values.