Description
Explores the controversy over selecting an approach to set the nation's environmental priorities. US Environmental Protection Agency representatives describe the agency's plans for pursuing risk-based planning, while analysts suggest ways to improve its methods, process, and implementation. Advocates of alternative paradigms, which give risk assessment little or no role, also present their best arguments. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
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For any government agency, the distribution of available resources among problems or programs is crucially important. Agencies, however, typically lack a self-conscious process for examining priorities, much less an explicit method for defining what priorities should be. Worst Things First? illustrates the controversy that ensues when previously implicit administrative processes are made explicit and subjected to critical examination. It reveals surprising limitations to quantitative risk assessment as an instrument for precise tuning of policy judgments. The book also demonstrates the strength of political and social forces opposing the exclusive use of risk assessment in setting environmental priorities.
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