Environomica

Fraud and Environmental Finance

2011-10-06T15:06:00.001-07:00

Environmental fraud is the intentional deception of the level of pollution emissions or other environmental issues made for financial gain. While most environmental finance operations are reliable and trustworthy, fraud can result when employees of environmental corporations game the system. Such misdeeds typically involve complex methods for falsifying emission trades, misusing pollutant calculations or misdirecting regulators, overstating emissions, understating emissions, overstating the value of emission reduction projects or underreporting the existence of other emission sources, sometimes with the cooperation of officials in other corporations.

In environmental finance, such creative accounting can amount to fraud. Once regulations covering greenhouse gases are in place, an increasing number of investigations may be launched by government oversight agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.

Unfortunately, detected fraud is often only the beginning, representing visible failures. Much abuse can be completely legal or quasi legal. It can happen with project developers, constructors, traders or investors of flippable emission reduction projects.

For example, in the domain of landfill emission reductions, there is asymmetric information between government, public, project designer and operator. An engineer has better information than other parties, making it possible to reduce the emissions of a landfill with little change of detection. The engineer can change parameters for municipal solid waste decomposition to reduce calculated emissions, and therefore delay the onset of regulatory requirements to collect and control emissions. He or she can modify the percentage of nondegradable waste to make emissions appear to be below regulatory thresholds, or simply report overly conservative (e.g. pessimistic) estimates of future emissions. Once calculated, these lower emissions appear to be at levels under the threshold of federal regulations and facilities.

The beneficiaries of this type of fraud occurs in taxes can be individuals cheating on tax returns, or at firms and facilities manipulating tax breaks, emissions or markets, both voluntary and mandatory.

There are typically very few civil or criminal enforcement risks for being too conservative in emission calculations, and without centralized information and focused review of these emission statements, it is likely that only a handful will be caught by regulators.

Rating agencies, verifiers, and stack testers have the principle agent problem. They are paid for their technical expertise, but their reputation and success depends on their performance. High performance for the end user or investor means lower costs of compliance, and more referrals for the rating agency. The best performing rating agencies can drive other technical firms to cut corners.

A reduced emission level can lower a company's cost of complying with a cap and trade program. This can represent thousands of dollars (questionably) transferred from honest emission reporters to fraudulent ones. This is an excellent bargain for the technical engineer, who will tend to benefit from developing a reputation of avoiding expensive compliance issues and giving clients what they want.

Fraud is possible when these environmental transactions have one party with more or better information than the other. The motivation is usually reduced costs or additional income for the company.

Notable Environmental Finance Activities

Company	Year	Country	Notes
Sholtz & Associates	2005	USA	Wire fraud scheme to cover lack of emission credits
Hungary	2010	Hungary	Reselling certified emission reductions
12 tax preparers from Texas and Louisiana	2009	USA	False tax credits from methane reductions at landfills
Cape May County Landfill	2008	USA	Additionality issues with credits sold at landfills with pre-existing control systems

Types of environmental fraud

Environmental fraud can include the creation of false companies, ghost facilities or "long firms.” These falsified, nonexistent facilities are used as emission offset projects to qualify for tax breaks.

Investors are deceived into thinking that they are buying legitimate emission reduction projects, counterfeit, selling counterfeit credits that are not what they claim to be, e.g., forest reductions, emission offsets, etc. In Italy, the Vatican’s carbon offset and reforestation program was shut down after reductions that were sold up front were not realized. Counterfeit reductions from the creation of false landfill projects to benefit financially from government tax breaks or benefits.

There are also sophisticated emission trading problems, as the Sholtz case, with false billing, falsified documents, and forgery of documents or signatures to cover bad emission allowance trades.

There is government fraud and tax evasion from not reporting revenue or illegally avoiding taxes. Detected tax fraud with carbon credits has reached 5 billion Euros.

Acquisition fraud with carbon taxes happens when goods are imported, Value Added Tax-free, into one European Union country from another. Once the goods are sold, the importer disappears, with the unpaid VAT as part of their profits.

Carousel fraud occurs when goods are imported VAT-free but are not sold for consumption in the home market. The goods are sold through a series of companies, each liable to VAT, before being exported, possibly even back to the original seller. The tax is pocketed and not redeemed to the tax authorities.

Other instances include taking payment for a reduction project, like reforestation, with no intention of delivering them.

Even governments have motivation to adjust nationwide emission rates in their favor. Governments can ask for leniency and compensation policies in global treaties if they have high initial baselines and overstate the threat of industrial leakage.

Initial company baselines and benchmarking levels can be overreported to obtain free allowances. After creating the baseline there is a financial incentive to underreport emissions and misstate their carbon position to present better emissions.

Emission information can be fraudulently “corrected” when conducting stack tests, stack bypassing, continuous emission monitoring, tweaking emission calculation spreadsheet, and tampering with meters or other measurement devices to arrive with readings significantly different from actual emission levels. Other emission tweaks that include the setting/calculation of net calorific value of fuel, emission factors, gas flow meter certifications, oxidation factors and density conversion factors. If there is no underlying measurement scheme, the emitting company is allowed to develop its own method in accordance with standards. Manipulating these approaches can result in intentional or accidental deception about overstated reductions of emissions.

Stack testing and continuous emission monitors that have incorrect gas flow rates will reduce or increase the total mass of emissions.

There are non-additional issues with some landfills selling offset credits, even though they may already required to control gas by federal law. Engineers can modify engineering calculations (for instance, by increasing the percentage of non-municipal solid waste in landfills), or accelerating anaerobic decomposition by recycling leachate to speed the production of more gas before regulations require the use of methane gas capture and control. Landfill operators can sell these higher up front gas flows as (voluntary) offsets, but these reductions may be non-additional if covered by federal law.

Even countries inadvertently commit fraud by double dipping. Hungary has doubled up on emission offsets by reselling the same emission credits more than once.

There are revenue manipulation and intentional round-tripping transactions related to carbon-offset projects. A round-trip transaction is one where a company sells an unused asset to a third party and agrees to buy back the same or similar asset for the same price.

Collusion occurs between an environmental finance operation and third party partners to manipulate information so individual consumers pay a higher amount than necessary, or to defraud the government and avoid taxes. Project designers also have an incentive to inflate reductions before flipping the project to long term investors (the lemon law applies to carbon finance).

Creative environmental accounting includes overstating reductions and emissions, understating emissions, overstating the value of emission reduction projects, and increasing environmental reductions. By pulling forward emission reduction estimates, landfill projects can undergo questionable practices that favorably modify their decomposition estimates.

Notable outcomes - U.S. vs. Anne Masters Sholtz

Anne Sholtz ran Automated Credit Exchange (ACE), where companies could trade and sell nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide trading credits. The exchange was used for California’s RECLAIM trading system, where Sholtz conducted outright reporting fraud, phony invoicing, falsified correspondence, and stonewalling companies to unload emissions credits. The Sholtz scandal resulted in the indictment and criminal conviction of Sholtz on July 11, 2005. The specifics of the case have not been released to the public.

Conclusion

Environmental markets need international oversight from a Securities Exchange Commission-like entity for emission banking and verification oversight. Principle agency fraud can be reduced with random verification inspections by third parties. Companies or countries should not directly fund these third party inspections.

Protection of cap integrity is important to improved credibility with stakeholders. The financial crisis has clearly damaged public trust in the financial tools used for environmental finance. An up-front approach by governments to address these issues will instill public confidence. This immunizes cap and trade by getting ahead of the potential fraud issues and explaining how to tackle them. Transparent and comparable greenhouse gas emission data will improve integrity. Simplification in design, reduced effort and costs all create greater confidence in environmental finance.

A properly designed trading system with trackable identification can limit fraudulent transactions but may drive fraud into the shadows. It is then easier to commit fraud at the project design level and in engineering calculations (for instance by using undersized flares, or another undersized control device). Any competent verification system will have to dig deep into these calculations, and it is advisable to centralize this data in a transparent form. Trading systems must use long-term contracts with companies to reduce information asymmetry, disclose true opportunity costs, problems and avoid future issues. Long-term contracts can be further reinforced with electronic reporting of real time continuous emission monitoring data. This will minimize data modification.

Poorly written environmental and emission trading laws cause confusion and create loopholes. A simple environmental permitting system (with a Turbo Tax type interface) is needed, to pool together policy and regulatory information. Streamline bureaucracy and better knowledge sharing with wikis can speed verification and permitting of environmental projects while avoiding grey area issues open to fraud. Governments must recognize that overstating baseline emissions weakens the trading program, lowers costs and minimizes reduction in emissions. At the same time, understating baseline emissions makes reductions more expensive and unattractive.

A consistent technical approach will simplify verification and facilitate emission trading, while decreasing transaction costs.

Climate Change Adaptation Steps

2011-07-11T08:21:00.000-07:00

Adaptation to global warming and climate change is a response to climate change that seeks to reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems to climate change effects. Even if emissions are stabilized relatively soon, climate change and its effects will last many years, and adaptation will be necessary... The economic costs of adaptation to climate change are likely to cost billions of dollars annually for the next several decades, though the amount of money needed is unknown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation_to_global_warming

Urban Energy Systems

• Develop demand management programs to cut peak energy load, reducing carbon emission levels and simultaneously lessening stress on the system during times of heightened vulnerability.

• Capitalize on the natural replacement cycle to update power plants and energy networks to reduce their carbon intensity and simultaneously increase their resilience to flooding, storm and temperature related risks.

• Diversify local power supply sources to increase the share of renewables, thereby enhancing system resiliency and reducing carbon emissions

Water and Wastewater in Cities

• Reduce non-revenue water, which constitutes a significant fraction of supply in many urban areas, through leak detection and repair and reduction in unauthorized withdrawals;

• Review and modify surface water and groundwater sources, storage facilities, and intakes where appropriate to make supplies less vulnerable to climate induced risks such as floods and droughts;

• Implement innovative local supply augmentations where feasible through techniques such as rainwater harvesting and water reuse, as well as through improved water accounting from better observation networks and holistic modeling;

• Practice demand management through appropriate pricing (including social, environmental and economic objectives), public education on water use and conservation, improved toilet and shower codes, updated drought management plans, and targeted land use strategies; and

• Encourage the use of water-efficient processes in domestic, industrial and agricultural uses.

Urban Transportation Systems

• Integrate land use and transportation planning to increase the density of the urbanized portion of developed land, plan for mixed use development, and enhance the proximity of travelers to transit and/or to their destinations to reduce vehicle miles of travel;

• Construct transport systems with materials that are more resilient to higher temperatures and the potentially corrosive effects of increased exposure to sea water due to sea level rise and coastal flooding;

• Consider the appropriateness of rezoning as an adaptation solution, retreating from the shoreline, and building new transportation facilities farther inland on higher ground;

• Protect transport systems from increased precipitation and flash flooding through the use of larger culverts and catch basins, and replacement of impermeable road surfaces with permeable material and impermeable roof surfaces with green roofs; and

• Introduce operational measures, including traffic closures during extreme weather events; moving rolling stock to flood protected and/or wind protected locations; closing traffic on tall bridges during high winds; and using media to indicate hazardous road conditions and safer alternate transportation routes and modes

Human Health in Cities

• Expand health surveillance and early warning systems utilizing both technology and social networks, especially for the elderly, very young, and the poor;

• Reduce the size of the urban heat island effect through passive approaches such as tree planting, green and reflective roofs, and permeable pavements, thereby minimizing heat stress on all citizens.

• Emphasize water and energy system climate resilience strategies, because of the key role they play in protecting the public during and after extreme weather events; and

• Regulate settlement in flood plains to minimize exposure to coastal storms and inland flooding.

Urban Land Use

• Reduce sprawl by increasing population and building densities, mixing land uses to reduce automobile traffic, and more frequent use of public transit;

• Change building codes to reduce energy use for heating and cooling;

• Restrict land use in areas subject to climate change impacts such as sea level rise and riverine flooding;

• Change building codes and land regulations to reduce damage from climate change hazards, e.g., elevating buildings in flood prone areas;

• Increase urban tree coverage and vegetation to reduce the heat island effect;

Key Factors

• Effective leadership is critical for overcoming fragmentation across neighborhoods and sectors when building consensus on the climate change agenda in cities;

• Efficient financing is a core requirement for empowered governance in cities; success to date with efforts to confront climate change challenges has been hampered due to deficient financing;

• Jurisdictional coordination across city, state, and national governments is one of the most pressing challenges common to cities worldwide; and

• Citizen participation can help in development of inclusive local government decision-making on climate change.

From First Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities (ARC3) http://www.cambridge.org/9781107004207

Fraud and Environmental Finance

2011-07-08T17:36:00.000-07:00

“We are concerned with the difficulties that EPA and other federal authorities have in preventing, investigating and/or prosecuting fraud in relatively small pollution credit trading markets, and how EPA would help ensure the integrity of a proposed cap-and-trade market that would be enormous in scale”

U.S. Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy Commerce Committee, and Greg Walden, R-Ore., ranking member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee

Fraud is possible when these environmental transactions have one party with more or better information than the other. The motivation is usually reduced costs or additional income for the company.

Notable Environmental Finance Activities

Company	Year	Country	Notes
Sholtz & Associates	2005	USA	Wire fraud scheme to cover lack of emission credits
Hungary	2010	Hungary	Reselling certified emission reductions
12 tax preparers from Texas and Louisiana	2009	USA	False tax credits from methane reductions at landfills
Cape May County Landfill	2008	USA	Additionality issues with credits sold at landfills with pre-existing control systems

Types of environmental fraud

There are also sophisticated emission trading problems, as the Sholtz case, with false billing, falsified documents, and forgery of documents or signatures to cover bad emission allowance trades.

There is government fraud and tax evasion from not reporting revenue or illegally avoiding taxes. Detected tax fraud with carbon credits has reached 5 billion Euros.

Other instances include taking payment for a reduction project, like reforestation, with no intention of delivering them.

Stack testing and continuous emission monitors that have incorrect gas flow rates will reduce or increase the total mass of emissions.

Even countries inadvertently commit fraud by double dipping. Hungary has doubled up on emission offsets by reselling the same emission credits more than once.

Notable outcomes - U.S. vs. Anne Masters Sholtz

Conclusion

A consistent technical approach will simplify verification and facilitate emission trading, while decreasing transaction costs.

Environmental Compliance Data Collection

2011-07-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

EPA’s new 1-800 number can simplify compliance assistance. Agencies like the EPA should reach out and identify who is responsible for the 1-800 numbers, and ensure that compliance assistance requests are routed to EPA. Webinquires and the HQ’s Enforcement Compliance Information Center Control Panel should be updated, and links to the databases should be added to the intranet. The closed inquires and complaints in the database should be reviewed and summarized.

Incoming calls were logged at first but were recently stopped because it was becoming very time consuming and staff no longer thought the process necessary.

In my opinion, incoming calls and citizen complaints should be reviewed and analyzed for trends that may indicate there are difficulties, training issues or problem rules. The problem is that once EPA considers citizen complaint resolved the information is not used as part of a quality improvement program. The information in the documentation of citizen complaints can help. Evaluative research can answer the following questions.

How should EPA categorize citizen questions or complaints?

Are there any trends in the types of citizen calls received by EPA?

What beneficial information can be derived from an analysis of EPA complaints?

Simply resolving citizen complaints is not enough. The valuable information obtained in complaint resolution needs to be used to improve customer service.

EPA already established a data collection program to improve analysis of complaints. (web inquiry, Enforcement compliance information center control panel). Training on documentation and complaint resolution should e provided for personnel who are assigned citizen complaints (EPA can do the training). This information should be published for the entire region to insure compliance with the goal of good compliance assistance.

Citizen complaints provide valuable feedback as to the approval level of citizen regarding the service provided by EPA. A considerable amount of effort goes into resolving citizen complaint by EPA staff. This effort generally resolves a citizen complaint but the benefit from this collection of data is not maximized. A system needs to be in place to extrapolate data from these complaints to see if changes or training is necessary.

Complaints can be the easiest least costly and most efficient ways to obtain information about regulations and governmental issues. The number and type of complaints clearly indicate the existent of problems. Complaints can indicate the need for improved training; uncover problem industries or potential sources of future problems. By taking corrective action, and posting frequently asked questions, the quality of service can improve.
Staff should be proud that citizens have the confidence in our ability to fix anything. You should take the opportunity that have given you and rise to the occasion.

When complaints are tracked as part of an information management system, trends may be measured, like changes in the values of the community, regulatory changes or growing dissatisfaction with performance. It is not important how many complaints are received, but rather, how the information about the complaints is used.

EPA can use complaints as fuel to strengthen operation and improve compliance assistance. They use them as part of their training a development. They scrutinize them about what customers might expect in the future. They use complaints to stay connected to the customer.

Break down the category by issues related to policy, political agenda, laws governing EPA activity, and items outside the general control of the EPA. Subcategories can be developed based on their frequency of occurrence. The subcategories can include inspections, state rules and new regulations. Also include can be complaints about another agencies, situation where EPA is misidentified, and issues involving policy or political agendas. Any other category can cover situations that are difficult to define.

If a problem is resolved, or clearly explained in a frequently asked question list, it can affect he governments cost of doing business, and therefore, its citizens taxes to support this activity.

When a complaint is properly resolved, hopefully EPA has now showed that the feedback regarding service the complainant provided was appreciated. Staff wants to do a good job. They also need to know what they are doing is right or wrong. Staff needs to be trained to understand that complaint afford them an opportunity to improve the quality of the serves we provide.

By crating subcategories based on frequency of occurrence, trends can be developed (like open fires in the summer, wood stove complaints in the fall and winter). Trends about a particular industrial sectors performance (hydrofracking), policy issues or the overall mindset presented by the department’s supervisor.

EPA should develop a data collection program to improve on the analysis of the information obtained in resolving complaints. The data in this program should include the date and time of the activity generating the complaint, address, the rules involved, media, the name of the complainant, the unit s involved and the companies implicated. Additional information necessary should include the type of complaint, the type of the original call, and the incident mummer. Each citizen complaint is assigned a tracking number. A computerized system is already in place to search for multiple occurrences of the same information within the program. However, it needs an update. This should also include information to search both phones (EPA’s new 1-800 number) and web inquires, and sort by rule, media. Pollutant and location.

Additional training can help personnel assigned to resolve complaint. This training would include instructions on the benefits of complaints, the proper collection of information relating to complaints, and the approach necessary to resolve complaints professionally. Supervisors also need to know how to categorize complaints to insure that trends can be identified. The training should also include methods to access the computer program to review or add to the computerized data.

A small committee should review complaints quarterly to search for trends and the means to improve service in EPA. When trends or problems are identified, recommendations for change would be initiated. The recommendations may include changes in the EPA website, compliance assistance mailings or training.

Finally, a semiannual report should be provided to the entire region to insure personnel are aware o the types of complaints EPA receives. Personnel are generally only aware of complaints about themselves or their service. A published report would provide direction for the entire region on possibly changing activities.

The serial, or oxford, comma in government regulations

2011-07-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

The lack of the serial, or oxford, comma in government regulations leads to confusion. It is unclear if the GCCS map needs labels, or if the wells themselves need to be labels.

(d) Except as provided in §60.752(b)(2)(i)(B), each owner or operator subject to the provisions of this subpart shall keep for the life of the collection system an up-to-date, readily accessible plot map showing each existing and planned collector in the system and providing a unique identification location label for each collector.

There, you really do not know whether the label goes on the plot map or on the collector. You do not know how many labels you're talking about.

Here is the NPR story:

Suppose that instead of the list of men our bachelorette met above, things went differently. Without the serial comma, she might say: "The best available men are the two tall guys, George and Pete." There, you really don't know whether George and Pete are the tall guys, or whether there are two tall guys in addition to George and Pete. You literally don't know how many men you're talking about, and while that level of confusion as to elementary facts seems like something that might actually happen on The Bachelorette, it is unfortunate in other settings. If, on the other hand, you use the serial comma, then you would write that sentence only if you meant that George and Pete were the tall guys, and if you didn't, you'd say, "I met two tall guys, George, and Pete."

Two men have just been created by that comma out of whole cloth. Boom! We've created life! Don't you feel like Dr. Frankenstein?

Cheat at golf, cheat at work ---a survey of golfers that exposed how their approach to the game correlated to the way they worked.

2010-02-03T06:44:00.000-08:00

Cheat at golf, cheat at work ---a survey of golfers that exposed how their approach to the game correlated to the way they worked.

... I think cheating in golf is kind of a good example for how we think about day-to-day tasks. The fact that people can take a mulligan or how they can cheat on golf, I think tells us that's there a lot of corner bending that we see in the business world. And what I worry about is that once we start in this path of immorality, even with small bending of rules and cutting corners here and there, that this tendency could become bigger and bigger and really a part of the collective understanding of how business is actually done.-ARIELY

A special report on social networking -Yammering away at the office -A distraction or a bonus? The Economist

2010-02-03T06:43:00.000-08:00

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15350928

...as people become increasingly used to sharing and collaborating outside the workplace, they are coming to expect firms to be more open and collaborative places too. Many companies are organised into strictly separate regional, product-line and functional “silos”, making it hard for people to share information beyond their immediate colleagues. And the rise of vast, globe-spanning corporate empires with hundreds of thousands of employees has left many folk isolated in small work groups run by managers who care only about their particular fiefs. As a result, efforts are duplicated and valuable information ends up being hoarded, not shared. ...

New employees vs. existing staff dynamics

2010-02-03T06:37:00.001-08:00

It's easy to supply more high quality Climate Change management - create a new branch and hire some unemployed carbon market employees and private industry greenhouse gas advisors. But the insiders-the employed EPA staff in other divisions and branches- will object, and instead, the usual norm here is to shift staff around. When one environmental problem needs more coverage, EPA typically moves staff from another area to another. Again, staff quantity can rise, but not quality.

EPA's AFS Modernization Plans (or Junker Database Maintenace)

2009-12-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

It is kind of too bad that all these databases that EPA is really close to abandoning, these terrible legacy software programs, with code that was written in the 1980's (hell, maybe the '70s?), are going to get life support (or Modernization). This is a federally sponsored lifetime extension for old-fashioned software. You get this fixed chunk of money for a few years, your fixed costs are paid for, and the rest is gravy. Just ask the database users how lousy it is. AFS is a total junker, a beater, a lemon of a database, and it is forced down the throats of all the states environmental agencies. Why oh why can't we have a system that's _only_ 10 years old? Something with online permit applications, online hosting of permits, real-time reporting of monitoring data, online certification and emission reporting, a user friendly interface?

"Friends" does a game theory analysis of Copenhagen.

2009-12-11T12:22:00.000-08:00

Look to old episodes of "Friends" to do a game theory analysis of Copenhagen. What?!? There’s a great episode in which the gang goes out for dinner at a fancy restaurant and Monica, Ross and Chandler— gainfully employed, all— order with abandon while Rachel, Phoebe and Joey who are, shall we say, underemployed, order fa...r more modestly. The food represents greenhouse gas emissions, the employed are developed countries (and want to split the bill equally), and Rachel can be Inda, Phoebe is China, and Joey is Africa.

Green the GATT, or Getting to Yes? Inertia in multilateral environmental negotiation

2009-11-19T11:01:00.000-08:00

Global environmental governance[1] is needed to address the collective action problem and global interdependence on environmental issues. We need a collaborative response to internalize externalities with a market providing a clear price signal (with tax or tradable emission allowances). However, it is too easy to dress up protectionism as an environmental issue, and treaties must keep trade and the environment separate. The near term solution is to run a system with pollution pricing, permit sales or tax on wealth.

The problem we have is how to break the logjam holding back multilateral agreements. De Mesquita does not expect nations to sign costly environmental agreements, saying, “Do not expect Governments throw themselves on hand grenades” [2]. Game theory modeling ofCopenhagen paints a bleak picture with negotiations to create an expensive regulatory scheme occurring during a global economic slowdown.

Strict environmental regulations discourage prospective members or encourage lies. Shifting international attention to externalities is like as the battle of ideology between Marxism, socialism and free market capitalism in the first half of the twentieth century. The green movement has alienated industry and conservative groups, but must include them now to widen its support base.

There must be concerted push outside of international negotiations to create markets for externalities, without relying on regulation and mandates. This is what we need now, not pipe dreams.

The green movement must also stop yelling fire. Climate change did not cause Hurricane Katrina and movies like “The Day After Tomorrow” serve to discredit science. Existing interest groups are unable to update their policies because they are protecting their turf, for fear of alienating their donor base (see the NRDC’s resistance to nuclear power, or the Sierra Clubs resistance to municipal incinerators). New, non-polarizing leaders can frame and tell the story better. The creative destruction of historical non-profits may break the logjam and move the environmental regulatory agenda forward[3].

Perform ideological judo by renaming the Environmentalism Movement the Development, or Progress, Movement [4]. Analyze the work of ideologues like Newt Gingrich[5] and Rush Limbaugh[6], to foster new conservative groups with goals compatible with environmentalism. Create multiple “X Prizes” to reward the popularizing of environmental economics and systems analysis, game theory of multilateral negotiation. This information exists in academia, but must be translated to reach the public (primarily conservatives). Study the logic for conservative groups opposing environmental regulations, and create conservative arguments that shift opinion. Appeal to conservative groups that dislike government waste by identifying agricultural programs, tax breaks that lead to suburban sprawl, and externalities as inefficient subsidies to polluters. Make these costs as visible as the calorie counts at a NYC fast food franchise. Televise environmental and sustainable development debates.

If the leaders of developing countries do not support climate change regulation, offer their children free tuition at the Earth Institute. Better yet, open a branch of the school in Bangalore.

The ethical and moral issues of the developing world and environmental damage are too academic. Seed the logic of Washington DCthink tanks with environmental economics.

Develop turnkey programs to create Green GDP and pollution markets and ways to funnel money into new technologies to reduce emissions. Make environmental issues mainstream by finding authors to write the “Uncle Toms Cabin” of the environmental movement, and counter books like “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton. Neither Al Gore (too liberal) nor Rachel Carson (too dead) can help here. Perhaps JK Rowling can be pulled out of retirement to write Harry Potter and the Business Case for Sustainable Development.

Use game theory with negotiations. The ultimatum game has two players (rich and poor countries). The first group knows how to divide the commons, while the second (poor) can accept or reject the offer. Select issues that force the first player to choose the best regulatory payoff. Find win-win options to grow the support base for effective and realistic environmental regulation.

Negotiations must follow realist logic and have a superpower willing to throw its weight around to force global agreement, as the US did during the WTO/GATT talks. Do not push for binding regulation without the support of a superpower (the US, or wait 40 years for China). If the US market is not for regulation, expect no action of consequence.

The environmental movement today exists in a vacuum separate from the economy. In addition, the US is functioning without externality pricing, similar to the Soviet Union (which collapsed without the invisible hand of the market allocating resources). Price externalities and combine economics with environmental economics and science. Green GDP calculations can nudge individual nations into an international environmental regime[7].

Cut corners and you end up with today’s UNEP – ineffective, isolated and out of touch. Time is short.

[1] Rethinking Global Environmental Governance to Deal with Climate Change: The Multiple Logics of Global Collective Action, Daniel C. Esty, American Economic Review, 2008, vol. 98, issue 2, pages 116-21

[2] Recipe for Failure -Why Copenhagen will be a bust, and other prophecies from the foreign-policy world's leading predictioneer; Bruce Bueno De Mesquita; Foreign Policy, November 2009

[3] Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on Climate Change, 16 Nov 2009, By Ted Nordhaus And Michael Shellenberger, Yale Environment 360

[4] Opponents of the estate tax use the pejorative term "death tax." Follow their lead.

[5] A Contract with the Earth: Newt Gingrich and Terry Maple; John Hopkins; 2007

[6] The Cash for Clunkers Boondoggle, Rush Limbaugh, www.rushlimbaugh.com , August 3, 2009

[7] Revolutionizing China’s Environmental Protection, Jianguo Liu and Jared Diamond, Science Magazine, January 4, 2008

EnvironmentalWiki at EPA

2009-06-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

EnvironmentalWiki is an encyclopedia of environmental knowledges and process information to be used as an Agency resource for all to communicate, share, and collaborate their information on environmental and Agency business matters. Our goal for our EnvironmentalWiki encyclopedia is a comprehensive written compendium that holds information from either all branches of Agency knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Encyclopedias are divided into articles with one article on each subject covered, starting with, but not inclusive of EPA's Taxonomy and Terminology. EnvironmentalWiki is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the agency; anyone can edit it.

Visitors do not need specialized qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge. This means that all staff of all Program Offices, Laboratories, and Regions can write articles on EnvironmentalWiki. Most of the articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Agency extranet or intranet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. Anyone is welcome to add information, cross-references, or citations, as long as they do so within our editing policies and to an appropriate standard. Substandard or disputed information is subject to removal. Users need not worry about accidentally damaging EnvironmentalWiki when adding or improving information, as other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, and wiki software is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Because EnvironmentalWiki is an ongoing work to which, in principle, anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles more frequently contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation that has been recently added and not yet removed.

EPA spends considerable resources investing in the education and professional development of its workforce, it does not have a formal process for capturing key information and knowledge that could be useful for other EPA employees to communicate, share, and collaborate among the Staff information on environmental or agency matters. It is evident that when an experienced staff retires, leaves the region, or moves to a new role within the Region, we risk losing valuable intellectual capital, institutional memory, experience, and expertise unless we invest in a strategy to capture and transform it into reusable knowledge which is accessible to the people who need it. In addition, when new employee needs to search, obtain information it is difficult to obtain these information readily in one place. We hope that we may use EnvironmentalWiki to fill these gaps and provide an information resource where we all could use.

Implementation of Four of the Five Pillars of EnviroCentral

EnviroCentral is an environmental related encyclopedia/ knowledge base incorporating elements of general encyclopedias, glossary of subjects, specialized encyclopedias, and almanacs. All articles must be referenced and supported with facts or follows on original research, policy, and guidelines and strive for accuracy. EnviroCentral is not the place to insert personal opinions, issues, or arguments. In addition will facilitate context aggregated dynamic search on intelinked Web 2.0 LAMP based Applications on the proposed Environmental wiki.
EnviroCentral has a neutral point of view, along with programmatic regulations and guidances in accordance to environmental laws and judicial decree mandated by U.S. Congress and courts, respectfully. This means, we strive for articles that advocate single point of Agency view, but with different dimensions in accordance to the respective programs dictated by their respective environmental laws and judicial decree mandated by U.S. Congress and courts. We recognized the different view, facilitate and hope to see asa blackboard with series of dimensional sub-blackboards (foot notes, discussion and comments) showing the differences of the programmatic views and help to communicate and understand different programmatic issues across the Agency and stakeholders. Sometimes this requires representing multiple points of view; presenting each point of view accurately; providing context for any given point of view, so that readers understand whose view the point it represents; and presenting not one point of view as "the truth" or "the best view". It means citing verifiable, authoritative sources whenever possible, especially on controversial topics. When a conflict arises as to which version is the most neutral, declare a cool-down period and tag the article as disputed; hammer out details on the talk page and follow dispute resolution.
EnviroCentral works by building consensus and collaboration through competent and authorized contributors with Wikis and Blogs. Consensus is an inherent part of the wiki process by collaborating and integrating different points and expertise knowledge toward a subject article. Each part of the article may be linked as a gateway portal to other parts, referenced links, web sites, blogs, Third Party links or widgets i.e. flickrs, YouTube and others, wikis, bookmarks, RSS feeds, emails, documents, or publications and other EnviroCentral topic area.
EnviroCentral will serve as a knowledge encyclopedia to communicate, collaborate, and share information. While there are many cross-divisional teams and workgroups within various Offices and Regions, the divisions operate independently of one another in many respects and there is currently no central repository for sharing information on a broader scale. The Knowledge Exchange will fill this gap and act as a vehicle for sharing information and knowledge across the divisions within their offices. The wiki may cover virtually any topic and is intended to serve as the “Wikipedia for EPA”. However, we have a core group who will focus on capturing tacit knowledge in a form that can be shared through the wiki so that EPA employees can benefit from each other’s experience. Methods we will use to capture this knowledge include standard operating procedures and process after action reviews, best practices/lessons learned, case studies, and story telling. The experience we capture with these methods will itself be useful to the staff but the documents we produce and share though the wiki will also serve as models for applying these knowledge transfer methods in the future.

In addition, many Offices and Regions also currently has a resource directory which lists information about an individual employee’s function in the organization, expertise, education, past work experience, languages, and other background information. However, the current directory is an outdated Lotus Notes application and it not kept up to date. While using the wiki as a general encyclopedia about our work, we will also interoperate the built-in user profiles within to serve as a resource directory and social networking tool. This internal social networking application is similar to the popular FaceBook. We will assist the employees in setting up user profiles which contain the same type of information found in the current resource directory but we will also encourage staff to write about themselves and their outside interests so that other staff can get to know their interest and hobbies and other skills sets. Experience in other organizations has found that people are more willing to share information and engage with each other if they feel like they know their colleagues and the wiki with social network application will help us accomplish that. Furthermore the profile will assist our search engine(s) for dynamic context searches to improve information discovery and access.

2009-01-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

EPA Wiki Site (Pilot, password protected)

2008-12-19T10:04:00.000-08:00

https://wiki.epa.gov/envirocentral/index.php/Regpilot

EPA Wiki

United States Federal regulations are complex, diverse, and extensive. Their sheer volume creates an information-access problem that can be detrimental to business and hinder public understanding of government. This Wiki will develop a formal, practical infrastructure to enhance access to government regulations. EPA employees can log on with their Lotus Notes Password.

EPA Acid Rain Data in a Motion Chart (may take a few moments to load)

2008-11-15T11:58:00.000-08:00

If the chart isn't interactive, try this:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pMwbm9zf6AuwRXM61ehqldg
Published on Nov 11, 2008 3:00:48 PM EST

Readings for the Political Context of Public Environmental Managment

2008-11-13T08:43:00.000-08:00

Agrawal, Arun, 1962-, Environmentality : technologies of government and the making of subjects
Andrews, Richard N. L., Colonial precedents: environment as property
Andrews, Richard N. L., Managing the environment, managing ourselves : a history of American environmental policy
Andrews, Richard N. L., Nationalizing pollution control
Andrews, Richard N. L., Reform or reaction? The politics of the pendulum
Arnold, R. Douglas, Logic of congressional action
Ascher, William., Natural resource policymaking in developing countries : environment, economic growth, and income distribution
Bosso, Christopher J. (Christopher John), 1956-, Environment, Inc. : from grassroots to Beltway
Bosso, Christopher J. (Christopher John), 1956-, Pesticides and politics : the life cycle of a public issue
Carter, Neil, Politics of the environment (2007)
Carter, Neil, 1958-, Politics of the environment : ideas, activism, policy
Carter, Neil, 1958-, Politics of the environment [electronic resource] : ideas, activism, policy
Daly, Herman E., Introduction to essays toward a steady-state economy
Daly, Herman E., Shape of current thought on sustainable development
Friedmann, John., In defense of livelihood : comparative studies on environmental action
Guber, Deborah Lynn, Grassroots of a green revolution - selections
Guber, Deborah Lynn, Stability: have environmental attitudes changed over time?
Haas, Peter M., Institutions for the earth : sources of effective international environmental protection
Hawken, Paul, Next industrial revolution
Ingram, Helen M., Interest groups and environmental policy
Jänicke, Martin., Successful environmental policy : a critical evaluation of 24 cases
Kingdon, John W., Agendas, alternatives, and public policies, Selections Chapters 1 and 8
Levy, Marc A., Improving the effectiveness of international environmental institutions
McCormick, John, Environmental policy in Britain
Ostrom, Elinor, Reflections on the commons
Ostrom, Elinor., Governing the commons : the evolution of institutions for collective action
Ponting, Clive., Green history of the world : the environment and the collapse of great civilizations
Reich, Michael R., Environmental policy in India: strategies for better implementation
Ribot, Jesse C., Market-state relations and environmental policy: limits of state capacity in Senegal
Sen, Amartya, Ends and the means of development
Stiglitz, Joseph E., Better roads to the market
Stone, Deborah A., Policy paradox : the art of political decision making
Vig, Norman J., Environmental policy : New directions for the twenty-first century
Vig, Norman J., Environmental policy : new directions for the twenty-first century
Vogel, David, Representing diffuse interests in environmental policymaking
Weidner, Helmut., Capacity building in national environmental policy : a comparative study of 17 countries

Atmospheric Brown Clouds: Regional Assessment Report With Focus on Asia

2008-11-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

Cities from Beijing to New Delhi are getting darker, glaciers in ranges like the Himalayas are melting faster and weather systems becoming more extreme, in part, due to the combined effects of man-made Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs) and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

These are among the conclusions of scientists studying a more than three km-thick layer of soot and other manmade particles that stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to China and the western Pacific Ocean.

Common Misconceptions Regarding the Environmental Regulatory System

2008-11-12T19:06:00.000-08:00

"To deal effectively with environmental regulatory agencies and to better defend environmental claims requires a clear understanding of the regulatory agencies. This article examines some popularly held views about the environmental regulatory agencies that have little or no basis in fact and that can lead to greater costs and greater difficulty in dealing effectively with environmental issues."

A Regulation-Centric, Logic-Based Compliance Assistance Framework

2008-11-12T19:03:00.000-08:00

"In the United States, both federal and state, as well as local governments, have strict regulations imposed
on the protection of the environment. Environmental regulations are complex and voluminous, which can
be disproportionately burdensome on small businesses. A significant amount of regulatory information is
available online through various regulatory portals, and the coverage of online material continues to grow.
However, most of the current online portals are primarily designed for displaying the information for
experienced users and are difficult to use for further processing. Information technology (IT), if properly
designed and developed, has the potential to help the access and retrieval of relevant information and to
facilitate the compliance process. The REGNET research project at Stanford University aims to develop
a formal infrastructure for regulatory information management and compliance assistance. "

A Relatedness Analysis of Government Regulations using Domain Knowledge and Structural Organization

2008-11-12T18:53:00.000-08:00

"The complexity and diversity of government regulations make understanding and
retrieval of regulations a non-trivial task. One of the issues is the existence of multiple
sources of regulations and interpretive guides with differences in format, terminology and
context. This paper describes a comparative analysis scheme developed to help retrieval
of related provisions from different regulatory documents. Specifically, the goal is to
identify the most strongly related provisions between regulations. The relatedness
analysis makes use of not only traditional term match but also a combination of feature
matches, and not only content comparison but also structural analysis.
Regulations are first compared based on conceptual information as well as domain
knowledge through feature matching. Regulations also possess specific organizational
structures, such as a tree hierarchy of provisions and heavy referencing between
provisions. These structures represent useful information in locating related provisions,
and are therefore exploited in the comparison of regulations for completeness. System
performance is evaluated by comparing a similarity ranking produced by users with the
machine-predicted ranking. Ranking produced by the relatedness analysis system shows a reduction in error compared to that of Latent Semantic Indexing. Various pairs of
regulations are compared and the results are analyzed along with observations based on
different feature usages. An example of an e-rulemaking scenario is shown to
demonstrate capabilities and limitations of the prototype relatedness analysis system."

Regnet & Regbase Project

2008-11-12T18:51:00.000-08:00

"United States Federal and State regulations are complex, diverse, and extensive. Their sheer volume creates an information-access problem that can be detrimental to business and hinder public understanding of government.

This Project will develop a formal, practical infrastructure to enhance access to government regulations.

In the future, the results of this project could form the basis for a broader application of Information Technology to American law."

A distributed information management framework (REGNET) for environmental laws and regulations

2008-11-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

"The complexity, diversity, and volume of Federal and State regulations (as well as supplementary and supportive documents) are detrimental to businesses and hinder public understanding of government. The objective of REGNET project is to develop information infrastructure and tools for regulatory information management and to facilitate compliance assistance. As a pilot research application, the REGNET project focuses on environmental regulations. The experimental scope of this project focuses on Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 40: Protection of the Environment and California Code of Regulations (CCR) Title 22: Social Security. Implementation examples include regulations and selected supplementary documents, covering hazardous waste, drinking water and the management of used oil. Furthermore, tools have been tested with additional environmental regulations from other States and regulations from other domain areas, such as CFR Title 21 on Food and Drugs, and different regulations related to accessibility from the US and UK."

Citizen interaction with e-government: From the streets to servers

2008-11-12T18:43:00.000-08:00

"There has been a marginal shift from street-level bureaucracies to system-level bureaucracies
in the provision of some government services. The framework argued that the public sector
benefits from e-government by reducing the discretion of street-level bureaucracies and this
enhances bureaucratic accountability. Digital government also cuts the transaction costs of not
having to staff agencies through the automation of the provision of public services.
The results reveal that informational e-citizens are very prevalent, while transaction-based
e-citizens are not common. This is consistent with the existing supply side and demand side
literature on e-government adoption. Presently, citizens frequent government Web sites to
search for information such as tourism and recreational information. Transactional-based e-
government is done less frequently, with only 15% of e-citizens filing their taxes online.
The results of this model can be related to the framework outlined in Table 1. I did find
evidence that e-government has improved citizen interaction with government. Indeed, the
majority of e-government users prefer to interact with government over the Internet as
opposed to in person or the telephone.38 This has potential ramifications for replacing street-
level bureaucrats with a system-level bureaucracy. However, the Pew survey results revealed
that only 23% of the population use government Web sites several times a month. It seems
that the automated bureaucracy is a long way off.
Some of the key attributes of citizens that are more e-government engaged include that
they work for the government, are wealthy, and trust government. They are generally able to
get information for which they are searching, are more socially active, have a greater number
of years of online experience, and use government Web sites several times a month."

Web-based expert systems: benefits and challenges

2008-11-12T18:21:00.000-08:00

The rapid development of Internet technology has
changed the way that expert systems can be developed
and distributed. The essence of an expert system is to
mimic expertise and distribute expert knowledge into
non-experts’ hands. This can be enhanced signiﬁ-
cantly by using the Internet.

...
Beneﬁts and challenges
...
Knowledge acquisition. The impact of the Internet
on knowledge acquisition can be profound. Firstly, it
provides another valuable knowledge source. Sec-
ondly, it makes knowledge elicitation from the domain
expert possible at a distance. ... the users can be closely involved in the
selection and generation of the knowledge. However,
these beneﬁts bring with them problems and
challenges including dealing with information over-
load, effective knowledge mining techniques, locating
and verifying online experts, ﬁltering knowledge,
managing conﬂict when several online experts are
involved, and security and reliability consideration.
Knowledge representation and inferencing. Tradi-
tional development methodologies, tools, and techni-
ques that work effectively in a standalone environment
may not work well in a web situation.
Knowledge validation. The knowledge validation,
veriﬁcation, and testing process is likely to be one of
the most useful additions to ES development. Users
can directly submit their test cases or provide feedback
to system developers via the Internet. Alternatively,
the knowledge base can be uploaded for validation and
be accessed directly by users. However, this approach
needs a centrally managed validation process. Generic
online debugging tools would be welcomed by
developers.
Explanation and justiﬁcation. One of the distin-
guishing features of an ES is its ability to explain and
justify results. This function is enhanced by using
Internet technology. It is also possible to receive
explanation and justiﬁcation from a human expert via
the Internet. Therefore, future web-based ES shells
could have built-in functions to facilitate online real
time communications.
System evaluation, implementation, and mainte-
nance. From the users’ point of view, systems can be
easily accessed globally; their location is irrelevant
and no installation is needed at the users’ location.
Any updating and maintenance can be carried out
centrally. Users’ feedback can be collected via online
feedback forms for later analysis. Web-site analysis
tools can be installed to trace the number of visitors
and their behaviour; this is not normally possible with
traditional ES. As the system can be operated at the
site of the originators who are responsible for it, its
maintenance, upgrading, and monitoring can be more
effective and efﬁcient.

Building Semantic Webs for e-government with Wiki technology

2008-11-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

E-government webs are among the largest webs in existence, based on the size, number of users and number of information providers. Thus, creating a Semantic Web infrastructure to meaningfully organise e-government webs is highly desirable. At the same time, the complexity of the existing e-government implementations also challenges the feasibility of Semantic Web creation. We therefore propose the design of a two-layer semantic Wiki web, which consists of a content Wiki, largely identical to the traditional web and a semantic layer, also maintained within the Wiki, that describes semantic relationships. This architectural design promises several advantages that enable incremental growth, collaborative development by a large community of non-technical users and the ability to continually grow the content layer without the immediate overhead of parallel maintenance of the semantic layer. This paper explains current challenges to the development of a Semantic Web, identifies Wiki advantages, illustrates a potential solution and summarises major directions for further research....
It is difficult to extract the knowledge and information from documents and people.
Extracting knowledge from documents requires some form of data or text mining, which is difficult when documents are unstructured. Knowledge extraction from people is often hindered by the fact that people tell less than they know, a
phenomenon often explained by the term “tacit knowledge” ...
E-government encompasses the largest amount of web documents world wide, and is still rapidly growing. The organisation of this knowledge in a user-friendly, efficiently usable and widely accepted way will be one of the major hurdles of the communication between government and the e-government users who are citizens and voters.
Our research suggests that the development of feasible e-government Semantic Webs is as much a technical as a social challenge. The enormous complexity of such webs requires a paradigm shift in the design that enables large numbers of citizens to participate in the development. These are citizens whose technical expertise is not guaranteed. The scenario therefore calls for the creation of a knowledge web, which is easy to develop and maintain. In reviewing the challenges, a two-layer Semantic Web based on Wiki architecture and explicit representation of semantic information offers
numerous benefits.
While such an architecture can address several existing challenges, other still remain and new ones emerge. Trading off accuracy of the web and trust in it against broad and easy participation remains an unanswered question. Managing a multitude of semantic overlays may become a task of unmanageable size and complexity; while the design of hybrid search engines that combine content search and Semantic Web analysis creates a new research challenge.
Overall our analysis suggests that the development of e-government Semantic Webs will create a multitude of difficult research questions and application issues for a long time to come. These questions and issues will increase in difficulty, as citizen demands for larger and better e-government sites grow.

Unofficial Example of a Management Report Summary for an Imaginary Department

2008-11-12T07:59:00.001-08:00

EPA Air News Wordle for 11.12.08

2008-11-12T06:35:00.001-08:00

EPA Region 2 News Wordle for 11.12.08

2008-11-12T06:32:00.000-08:00

Acid Rain Program All Units NOx and SO2

2008-11-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

NY and NJ Acid Rain Data by Facility

2008-11-11T12:26:00.000-08:00

Global Warming Podcastwebcast.berkeley Course - L&S 70B by John Chiang and Nathan Sayre

2008-11-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

This lower division course (here as a podcast) introduces global warming as both a scientific and social issue. We will introduce the physical science that sets the stage for the problem, from the basic concepts of climate (carbon cycle, greenhouse effect, climate feedbacks) through to the climate model projections of future climate changes and their impacts. Social scientific perspectives will be integrated throughout, including the history of climate science, the geographical and political-economic implications of fossil fuels and industrial production, and the challenges posed to existing regulatory and governance systems by the current and prospective impacts of global warming. Several guest lecturers will give in-depth reviews of specific topical issues, potential examples being climate models, carbon sequestration, and impacts on public health. We aim to provide students with a solid understanding and information base with which to analyze and evaluate ongoing developments and (often heated) debates surrounding global climate change.

Policing the voluntary carbon market : article : Nature Reports

2008-11-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

Ultimately, mandatory government policy must be our primary approach to dealing with climate change and the GHG emissions that cause it. However, voluntary GHG off set markets can contribute to emissions mitigation and sustainable development objectives while government-mandated schemes are under development. Voluntary markets can also foster innovation through new technologies and project types still under evaluation by compliance emission markets. While governments focus on developing a consensus on GHG mitigation policies, or more stringent policies, the voluntary off set market, with proper government oversight, has the potential to play a significant role in mitigating future climate change.

Leadership and decision making: William R. Ruckelshaus and the Environmental Protect ion Agency

2008-11-10T15:33:00.002-08:00

This paper applies case study methodology to analyze secondary data on the two-term EPA administrator, W.R. Ruckelshaus. The first objective is to examine the plausibility of the proposition that leadership of real world organizations has three defining characteristics: the setting of a strategic direction or vision, concern with changing the status quo, and the energizing of others to act by swaying their expectations, aspirations, and commitments. The second objective of the paper is to demonstrate the utility of a five-component framework of leadership decision making developed by Lipshitz and Mann for studying the relatively neglected subject of the leadership process. The first two sections deal with Ruckelshaus' first and second terms as EPA administrator and consist of a brief outline of the terms' history, a description of an illustrative key decision and analysis. The concluding section discusses the utility of studying leadership from a decision making perspective. The case shows that Ruckelshaus is clearly concerned with all three issues delineated by the proposed defining characteristics. In addition it shows that using the Lipshitz and Mann framework can generate a detailed description of the actions and differential concerns of specific leaders, highlight distinctions between different leaders, and track how the leadership of a single leader under different circumstances. Finally, it indicates that conceptualizing leadership as an influence relationship between a leader and his followers should be expanded to include a wider community of internal and external stakeholders and a wider set of "managerial" functions.
**********
Leadership is one of the most widely researched phenomena in the social sciences. Nev ertheless, researchers of leadership hav e failed to agree on a single definition or the precise nature of this phenomenon. Indeed, "leadership ...has come to mean all things to all people. Scholars and practitioners ... are no more sure of what leadership is in 1990 than they were in 1 930" (Rost, 1991 , p. 7 ). Rost went on to identify motivating of followers as the defining characteristic of the leadership process: "Influence is probably the word most often used in the leadership definitions of the 1980s ... transcending several conceptual frameworks of leadership" (Rost, 1991, p. 79, italics in the original).
Our own review of the literature (Lipshitz & Mann) revealed three recurring themes which we propose as the defining characteristics of leadership: The setting of a strategic direction or vision, concern with changing the status quo, and the energizing of others to act by swaying their expectations, aspirations, and commitments (Rost's original focus). To the extent that the literature provides a comprehensive, valid description of leadership, persons who satisfy these criteria are bona fide leaders, as distinct from persons in leadership positions (presidents and chief executives) who may, or may not be true leaders.

Motivating Enforcement: Institutional Culture and the Clean Water Act

2008-11-10T15:33:00.001-08:00

SSRN – Administrative Law
Motivating Enforcement: Institutional Culture and the Clean Water Act Pace Environmental Law Review (PELR), Vol. 24, p. 67, 2007, U of Alabama Public Law

SYNOPSIS:
Vigorous enforcement is a critical component of any credible
environmental protection program. Congress recognized that fact
when it enacted the Clean Water Act in 1972. The Act, therefore,
contains an enforceable pollution control scheme, more than adequate
federal enforcement tools, and calls upon the states and private
citizens to aid in the enforcement of the Act. Unfortunately,
enforcement efforts have lapsed several times in the recent past.
This article explores a form of self-regulation that would create an
ex ante limit on politically motivated attempts to undermine the
Act through non-enforcement. While not fail-proof, the full blossoming
of a proud, independent law enforcement culture within
the enforcement staff itself may be one of the most feasible ways
to maintain a stable and vital enforcement program.

Governing the Environment: The Transformation of Environmental Regulation

2008-11-10T15:30:00.000-08:00

The commitment to economic growth grounded in private property, free enterprise, and market exchange created unprecedented employment opportunities, incomes, and consumption choices in the United States; it also produced growing environmental degradation that became the
source of growing public concern in the late 1960s. In 1970, President
Richard Nixon and Congress responded to the wave of environmental concern
by creating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and passing landmark legislation that set the legal and institutional foundations for the contemporary environmental era. Subsequent decades would be punctuated by sharp political conflicts and hyperbolic rhetoric linking the EPA to a long list of maladies, including inflation, unemployment, and a loss of international competitiveness. Today, after nearly four decades, environmental protection policy is the most heavily funded regulatory responsibility in the United States—and, many would suggest, the most important. Although the EPA’s budget is the largest of all federal regulatory agencies ($7.6 billion in 2006), it pales in comparison to the costs borne by state and local regulatory governments, by corporations, and ultimately by consumers and taxpayers.

Choosing Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Policies in Canada

2008-10-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

Choosing Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Policies in Canada

This report examines carbon pricing mechanisms in detail. In particular, it explores the best ways to use revenues
raised through carbon pricing, and the best options to mitigate any reduced international
competitiveness that Canadian industries may encounter.

Conservation Finance e-Resources

2008-07-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

Conservation Finance e-Resources
"funding for conservation is often one of the first government budget items to be cut in times of economic difficulties, because the effects of the budget cuts may not be apparent for some time. Oftentimes, governments only begin to realize the importance of biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource management after fish stocks have become depleted, reefs and wetlands have been destroyed, and ecosystems no longer provide the goods and services that people used to take for granted.
Revenues from agriculture and fisheries can dramatically decline if coastal wetlands and coral reef ecosystems are not adequately protected. Marine Protection Ares serve as the spawning grounds for many species of fish that can subsequently be commercially harvested. Protected area managers and conservationists need to be able to demonstrate these economic benefits to officials of the ministries of finance and planning, to members of national and local legislatures, and to influential news media and community groups."

Orange Juice and Weather

2008-03-01T13:35:00.000-08:00

Orange Juice and Weather
”The market price of frozen concentrate orange juice is affected by the weather, especially by cold temperatures. A statistically significant relation was found between Orange juice returns and the central Florida region, where most juice oranges are grown. Orange juice prices are much less related to errors in rainfall prediction. Indeed, no significant statistical association as found between these variables.
The orange juice future price is rendered informationally inefficient by the existence of exchange imposed limits on price movements. This inefficiency manifests itself in the data by allowing temperature surprises to have apparent predictive power for later price changes. When limit moves are taken into account, however temperature has no remaining predictive content.
... Even though weather is the most obvious and significant influence on the Orange crop, weather surprises explain only a small fraction of the observed variability in futures prices. The importance of weather is confirmed by the fact that it is the most frequent topic of Stories concerning oranges in the financial press and by the ancillary fact that other topics are associated with even less price variability than is weather.
...Yet no factor as identified can explain more than a small part of the daily price movement in orange juice future. There is a large amount of inexplicable price volatility."

Richard B. Howarth, Sustainability as Opportunity Land Economics, Vol. 73, No. 4, Defining Sustainability

2008-03-01T13:31:00.000-08:00

Richard B. Howarth, Sustainability as Opportunity Land Economics, Vol. 73, No. 4, Defining Sustainability
“This paper argues that providing future generations with a set of life opportunities that is undiminished relative to the present may be construed as an ethical duty that is grounded on a contrarian view of distributive justice.
The concept of sustainable development proceeds naturally from the premise that the members of a moral community should enjoy equal opportunity to the benefits of society's resource endowment.
Attempts to operationalize this criterion in terms of nondecreasing utility or wealth meet with difficult conceptual and practical objections.
The basic problem concerns the assumption that the future impacts of present decisions can be reliably predicted across the full range of prospective outcomes.

Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837

2008-02-24T15:26:00.000-08:00

”Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984)^[1], was a case in which the United States Supreme Court set forth the legal analysis for determining whether to grant deference to a government agency's interpretation of its own statutory mandate."

Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.

Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, 354 F.2d 608

2008-02-24T15:25:00.001-08:00

The Scenic Hudson Decision
”The Scenic Hudson Decision was a 17-year (1963-1981) legal dispute which defeated Consolidated Edison's plan to embed the world's largest pumped storage hydroelectric plant into the face of Storm King Mountain, near Cornwall, New York. The lengthy and controversial case had an immense impact on environmental and legal issues affecting the Hudson River Valley as well as the nation. The landmark case set important precedents in environmental law including: the right of citizens to participate in environmental disputes, the emergence of environmental law as a legal specialty, ideas Congress incorporated in the country's first National Environment Policy Act (NEPA), federal and state regulation of the environment, and it is credited with launching the modern environmental movement.“

Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe

2008-02-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe is a notable example of the power of litigation by grassroots 'not-in-my-backyard' and preservationist movements to block government action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_to_Preserve_Overton_Park_v._Volpe

Pursuing Environmental Justice Through the Courts: An Overview of the Process and Why It has Failed

2008-02-24T15:20:00.000-08:00

Pursuing Environmental Justice Through the Courts: An Overview of the Process and Why It has Failed
”Developers are interested in cheap land costs, therefore from an economic perspective it is more cost-effective to place hazardous waste sites in areas that will provide the path of least resistance. If placing these toxic facilities in minority and poor communities becomes less costeffective due to stricter legislation, zoning boards with minority members, and threats of legal costs, the developers will move elsewhere.“

"A company will place its plant in a location that will minimize costs and maximize
returns. Those neighbors who can afford to move away because they dislike being near the hazardous plant will do so. The diminished willingness to move into the area tends to lower property values. As property values decline, real estate prices and housing rents become more affordable for lower income families. This type of market-based analysis could explain the greater percentages of persons of color around hazardous facilities, which would explain why environmental justice plaintiffs are losing their cases based on their inability to prove intentional discrimination.“

”Legal action is not going to remedy the problem because obviously the system is designed to
benefit those who have the financial means to litigate. These are not the people that are victims of environmental racism in the first place.“

High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines

2008-02-24T15:17:00.000-08:00

"High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines, provides a roadmap for incorporating ‘best management practices’ (BMPs) into New York City’s right-of-way infrastructure capital program. The Guidelines are written for the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), but they are also intended for use by planners, designers, engineers, public officials, and anyone else involved in constructing, operating, or maintaining the right-of-way"

"The public right-of-way organizes the massive flow of energy and matter that courses through the city on a daily basis. Right-of-way components include the roadway, sidewalks, sub-grade systems, and landscaped areas, and the design of each these components profoundly affects our experience of the city. By undertaking coordinated, sustainable approaches to streetscape design, construction, operations, and maintenance – and by joining considerations of function and performance with concern for the human experience of the urban environment – cities can promote safety, reliability, cost effectiveness, public health, and quality of life.

On its surface, the right-of-way rationalizes and choreographs the complex circulation of automobiles, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians, prioritizing them through its geometry, lane markings, crosswalks, and signaling – allowing each to yield to the other in a safe mix. The streetscape is also shared public real estate for the social and economic activity that enriches civic life. City streets double as play space and rallying grounds, while sidewalks serve as zones of casual interchange, shopping, dining, and display."

The Common Law: How it Protects the Environment

2008-02-24T15:10:00.000-08:00

The Common Law: How it Protects the Environment

http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=653

"Most Americans presume that the environment is something the government must control to protect. Without government control, they think, we would return to the frightening days of burning rivers, dying lakes, people fleeing their homes at Love Canal, and thick smog filling the air that little children breathe.

Politicians have fostered this notion, and academics of many stripes have supported it। But they are ignoring, in some cases deliberately, a long history of environmental controls through common-law protections. Common law is the term we use for the legal rules and traditions that have been developed over time through court decisions."

"The common law provides harsh penalties against firms that disregard the rights of citizens by exposing them to harms। Indeed, when real harm is inflicted, citizens get far better relief through common-law suits than they do from appeals to the Environmental Protection Agency."

Policy Options for Reducing CO2 Emissions

2008-02-22T15:25:00.000-08:00

Policy Options for Reducing CO2 Emissions

OMB report on Reducing CO2 concludes that
"a tax on emissions would be the most efficient
incentive-based option for reducing emissions and
could be relatively easy to implement. If it was
coordinated among major emitting countries, it would
help minimize the cost of achieving a global target for
emissions by providing consistent incentives for reducing
emissions around the world. If other major nations
used cap-and-trade programs rather than taxes on
emissions, a U.S. tax could still provide roughly comparable
incentives for emission reductions if the tax
rate each year was set to equal the expected price of
allowances under those programs."