Cost-benefit Analysis: Policy Implications
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a process that places a monetary value on costs and benefits to evaluate issues. Environmental CBA aims to provide policy solutions for intangible products such as clean air and water by measuring a consumer’s willingness to pay for these goods. CBA contributes to environmental racism through the valuing of environmental resources based on their utility to society. The more someone is willing to pay for a resource such as clean water or air benefits society more than when people are not willing to pay for these goods. This creates a burden on poorer areas, however, by relocating toxic wastes and other environmentally hazardous goods through the justification that they are not willing (or able) to pay as much as a wealthier area for a clean environment. The placement of toxic wastes near poor people lowers the property value of already cheap land. Since the decrease in property value is less than that of a cleaner, wealthier area the monetary benefits to society are greater by dumping the toxic waste in a “low-value” area.
Read more about this topic: Environmental Racism
Famous quotes containing the words policy and/or implications:
“The Oregon [matter] and the annexation of Texas are now all- important to the security and future peace and prosperity of our union, and I hope there are a sufficient number of pure American democrats to carry into effect the annexation of Texas and [extension of] our laws over Oregon. No temporizing policy or all is lost.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)