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News & Analysis | REG•WATCH Blog | Press Room
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Lacking the Information We Need to Protect the Public
Information gaps put us all at risk, and there are perverse incentives in current law and policy that exacerbate this problem, argues this new law review article. From the abstract:
One of the most significant problems facing environmental law is the dearth of scientific information available to assess the impact of industrial activities on public health and the environment. After documenting the significant gaps in existing information, this Article argues that existing laws both exacerbate and perpetuate this problem. By failing to require actors to assess the potential harm from their activities, and by penalizing them with additional regulation when they do, existing laws fail to counteract actors' natural inclination to remain silent about the harms that they might be causing. Both theory and practice confirm that when the stakes are high, actors not only will resist producing potentially incriminating information but will invest in discrediting public research that suggests their activities are harmful. The Article concludes with specific recommendations about how these perverse incentives for ignorance can be reversed.
Commons Ignorance: The Failure of Environmental Law to Provide the Information Needed to Protect Public Health and the Environment
Duke Law Journal, Vol. 53, No. 6, p. 1619, April 2004
Wendy E. Wagner
Posted by Robert Shull
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