Contract with America: costing the earth?

As part of their “Contract with America”, Republican lawmakers in the United States Congress have been attempting to reform the country´s health, safety, and environmental legislation through the application of risk assessments and cost-benefit analyses. Their “Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Act of 1995” was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in early 1995 but then stalled in the Senate. The bill would require that government agencies undertake a full risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis before implementing any major regulation. The rationale embodied in the bill is to “provide more cost-effective and cost-reasonable protection to human health and the environment” by using “scientifically objective and unbiased” consideration of risks, costs, and benefits as a basis for decision-making. This raises the question of whether environmental and health costs and benefits can be assessed in a scientifically objective manner. Environmental controversy arises because different groups of people have varying appreciations of the environment and what it is worth. Under the bill, costs and benefits would be quantified as much as possible. The reduction of political values to numbers enables such analyses to appear to be scientifically objective when they are not. “Numbers carry an unwarranted authority” because they are associated with rationality and neutrality. Asking economists to assign numbers to values, as this bill would involve, is unlikely to resolve value conflicts. But it will give more influence to the values of one group of people-the economists and those who employ them