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The article examines sustainable development as a core component of environmental policy-making. It is posited that sustainable development fosters performance efficiencies, targets pollution penalties to the primary offenders, reduces economic disparity, and enhances the democratic process.

Throughout the past 30 years there has been a perception of tension between social equity objectives and the agenda of environmental politics. This tension has arisen in many forms and [...]

International Management of the Environment: Pollution Control in North America. By Emmett N. Lombard. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. l98p. $59.95. Lombard presents a timely and generally competent review of post-NAFTA [...]

In sharp contrast with its international reputation and self-image as a leading national advocate of environmental protection initiatives, Canada has, in the 1990s, reduced its environmental expenditures and initiatives. The [...]

Robert Paehlke, Trent University This book offers a series of articles about environmental organizations that are characterized as 'radical and popular' across virtually the whole of the planet. How organizations [...]

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This article focuses on the criteria of net benefit in relation to society. Collective risk aversion has contemporary political appeal. At some level of societal wealth, additional gains are less urgent and exciting. Successful environmental/health politics involve considerable sensitivity about what costs are reasonable, when, and for whom. That sensitivity, as well as the wealth achieved as a society, are why such politics have not declined in the 1980s, as did the more traditional forms of progressivism. On the contrary, there are few stronger or more consistent advocates of economic decentralization and enhanced democratic participation. Cost-benefit analysis has many problems. First, are not the costs of environmental protection also in several ways benefits to the economy as a whole? Quality abatement technology has a world market. Second, how does one put a price on natural beauty, on human health, or on a sense of comfort regarding future generations? Third, who counts and who sets the price on a typical life? The how should one deal in a world with uncertain and/or irreversible large-scale risks? The author suggests to ignore the risks and the likelihood that the human species is slowly and inexorably crowding every other species off the planet. Never risk prosperity. Do not forego prosperity to preserve health because less wealth may cost net health.