environment

Freedom From Harm: The Civilizing Influence of Health, Safety and Environmental Regulation

Public Citizen and Democracy Project, 1986.  Co-authored with Joan Claybrook.  This book surveys the neglected, life-saving, civilizing benefits of health, safety and environmental regulation, which are typically understated or ignored by cost-benefit analysis and corporate adversaries of regulation.  In particular, the book focuses on the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

Our Psychic Connections to Nature

We’ve all seen the bumper sticker, "The Earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth." A pithy tagline meant to point out that human culture must align itself more closely with ecological imperatives. But is that a simple moralistic claim or a scientific, demonstrable fact?

A handful of psychologists are starting to conclude that human consciousness has a deep interconnections with nature — and that interfering with our sense of place and love of nature can cause severe emotional distress.

The Ginseng Commons of West Virginia

Sometimes it’s easiest to see a commons when it exists in a bounded geographic space that incubates a distinctive culture and set of social practices. That can certainly be said about the mountainous areas of southern West Virginia, where people’s interactions with the landscape have bred communities whose lives revolve around their interactions with the landscape.

New Era for Commons-based Development in Africa?

Could Professor Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize for Economics betoken a shift in development policies used in Africa? Korir Sing’Oei, an international human rights lawyer with a focus on indigenous and minority rights law and policy, believes Ostrom’s Nobel could have a significant impact on Africa’s poor.

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