Vogel, D. The Politics of Precaution: Regulating Health, Safety, and Environmental Risks in Europe and the United States. Princeton Univers. Press, 2012. Ch. 2
Where did/does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials? (This question only has to be answered once for Vogel.)
What are the topics of the text?
This text analyzes a variety of common arguments explaining the regulatory policy divergence between the EU and the US. These arguments include differences in actual risk, the idea of the EU being behind in regulations and as a result being forced to “catch up”, variations in rates of economic performance and relative living standards, the role of the political systems (including the public’s attitude towards the role of government) and the role of cultural values. From here, Vogel shifted to what he identifies as the three critical factors that have shaped transatlantic regulatory policy divergence since 1990: changes in political salience of consumer and environmental risks and the extent and intensity of public pressures to ameliorate them, changes in political preferences of influential policy makers and the criteria used by policy makers to decide whether or how to respond to particular risks.
What is the main argument of the text?
The main argument of this text is to identify causes of the regulatory policy divergence. Vogel goes through a process of introducing a common explanation for this phenomenon, followed by using a case study to discredit the argument. This process of introducing a concept and then striking it down is all a build-up to Vogel identifying what he considers to be the three main factors which shaped transatlantic regulatory policy divergence since 1990.
Describe at least three ways that the argument is supported.
“Still, it is possible that many of the specific differences in American and European risk regulations might be due to variations in the actual risk their citizens faced. For examples, mad-cow disease posed significantly greater risks for Europeans than for Americans; one would therefore have expected European regulations for animal feed and testing linked to BSE to be more stringent and extensive than those of the United States, which they were.”
“In short, the strengthening of European risk regulations since around 1990 cannot be satisfactorily explained by either the political preferences of the economic interests of European-based firms – any more than the previous strengthening of American consumer and environmental regulations reflected the political preferences or economic interests of most American businesses.”
“It has also been suggested that the EU has adopted the precautionary principle and the United States has not done so is because “Europeans are more risk averse and suspicious of technology than Americans and therefore more willing to take action even when the scientific evidence is uncertain.”…But the United States previous adopted highly constrained the “life styles” of “individualistic” Americans, by limiting, for example, the drugs they can take, the land they can develop, the products they can use, and the kids of cars they can purchase.”
What three quotes capture the message of the text?
“In each of these cares, what was different was not the actual risks themselves, but rather the public’s perception of them, which in turn helped shape differences in the extent and intensity of political demands to address them.”
“While European firms have been more willing to accept regulations for greenhouse gases than have most American ones, this is not because they were economically advantaged by them.”
“The politics of protective regulation in Europe have been no different from that of the United States: firms have typically opposed more stringent consumer and environmental regulations. The only difference is that, after 1990, producers became more successful in preventing their adoption in the United States than in Europe.”
What three questions about environmental risk and precaution does this article leave you with?
What influence does government have on the public’s perception of risks in the European Union? If government played a role in influencing these perceptions, then why did the United States stress different factors than the EU?
What would it take to shift the United States to a political system in which green parties could have enough of an impact that they could demand that environmental issues be addressed conditional of their support for the candidate?
Will this theory of “catching up” lead to the United States attempting to come back as a more stringent environmental regulator in years to come?
What three points, details or references from the text did you follow up on to advance your perspective on environmental risk and precaution? (Provide citations, with a brief explanation of what you learned. One of these should be fully annotated, as your second required reading for each week.)
REACH
i. REACH stands for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical Substances and has been in place since June 1st, 2007. This regulation places greater responsibility on industry to be accountable for any risks associated with the chemicals they produce. All information gathered by industry is required to be uploaded to a database ran by the European Chemical Agency (ECHA). REACH provisions are being phased in over the course of eleven years, and include progressive substitution of the riskiest chemicals once appropriate alternatives have been identified.
i. The European Green Party is a transnational political party made up of green parties within European countries. This party consists of two major bodies: the Council and the Committee. The Council has 120 representatives, with every party represented by at least two delegates. The Council deals with political affairs between congresses and decides over organizational matters such as the election of the Committee and the application of members and associates and candidates of the European Green Party. The Committee consists of nine members elected by the member parties and is responsible for daily political affairs, the execution of the council’s decisions and the activities of the secretariat.
“Why Do Americans Believe Danger Lurks Everywhere?”
i. Full citation.
Spencer, Jane, and Cynthia Crossen. “Why Do Americans Believe Danger Lurks Everywhere?” Wall Street Journal 24 Apr. 2003. Web. 12 Feb. 2013.
ii. Where did/does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials? (This question only has to be answered once for Vogel.)
Jane Spencer is the Executive Editor of The Daily Beast and was a founding editor of the site. She was formerly a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong and New York and a member of a team of reports whom won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for their coverage of China’s “naked capitalism” and the adverse consequences of the economic boom. Some of her other articles are “Why China Could Blame Its CO2 on the West” and “China Pays Steep Price as Textile Exports Boom”.
Cynthia Crossen is a senior editor who has been a reporter and editor since 1983. One of her well known publications is “The Rich and How They Got That Way” and the “Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America”.
iii. What are the topics of the text?
This article focuses on the shift in risk present in the United States as we have become more technologically advanced, the ease in which the population can be scared, with or without credible information, and the natural tendency of a human being to fear before thinking in order to survive.
iv. What is the main argument of the text?
In the United States, Americans fear things in an irrational manner due to media hype and a variety of other factors even though the likelihood of death related to these fears is much lower than that of everyday risks we overlook. In addition, in today’s age it is becoming increasingly difficult to know what to believe due to so many conflicting studies which are publicized.
v. Describe at least three ways that the argument is supported.
Today, thanks to research labs, tort law and media hype, danger seems to lurk in every corner of life, from children's toys to McDonald's coffee, anthrax to secondhand smoke, West Nile virus to SARS. Faced with a barrage of warnings -- including the color-coded caveats of the new Homeland Security department -- it's not surprising that in contemporary America, the safest society in recorded history, many people feel as though they have never been more at risk.
Armed with scientific and technological breakthroughs, Americans have dramatically reduced their risk in virtually every area of life, resulting in life spans 60% longer in 2000 than in 1900. Many deadly infectious diseases were tamed, food and water were purified, drugs and surgery helped forestall heart attacks, and thousands of safety devices -- window guards, smoke detectors, circuit breakers, air bags -- protected against everyday mishaps. Even the risk of financial disaster was reduced by insurance, pensions and Social Security.
But most people try to reduce the fear in their lives. Unfortunately, once a person has learned to fear something, he or she may always associate the experience with fear. That means that over a lifetime, fears tend to accumulate rather than supplant one another. Furthermore, humans can fear events they have only read or heard about, which is why people worry about calamities they have never endured.
vi. What three quotes capture the message of the text?
"It's much easier to scare than unscare," says Paul Slovic, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. "We trust people who tell us we're in danger more than people who tell us we're not in danger."
Marketers and the media have capitalized on people's desire for risk-free living by appealing to their vulnerability. "If you're alive, you're at risk," proclaim the ads of Destiny Group, a Newport Beach, Calif., company that insures against lawsuits. Women are "at risk for breast cancer just because they're women," declare the developers of a cancer-risk-assessment model. The Scottsdale, Ariz., company TriVita Way International Inc. sells its calcium supplements by cautioning in ads, "Chances are, you're at risk."
Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of risk now is that humans are actually manufacturing it -- with nuclear power plants, the ozone hole, toxic waste, global warming, nuclear weapons, even terrorism. Most of these systems are so huge, complex and relatively new, that the possible consequences of them are wholly unknown.
vii. What three questions about environmental risk and precaution does this article leave you with?
What educational tools can be implemented to help people improve their risk assessment abilities?
Have we reached the point where our technological findings are too advanced for us to truly understand the implications of them?
How do people counter a natural instinct to fear unlikely circumstances? Further, what statistical percentage would a person be comfortable with if it meant their life was at risk? Are statistical measures actual useful or does attaching a number to a risk make it seem more real?
- Full citation.
- Vogel, D. The Politics of Precaution: Regulating Health, Safety, and Environmental Risks in Europe and the United States. Princeton Univers. Press, 2012. Ch. 2
- Where did/does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials? (This question only has to be answered once for Vogel.)
- What are the topics of the text?
- This text analyzes a variety of common arguments explaining the regulatory policy divergence between the EU and the US. These arguments include differences in actual risk, the idea of the EU being behind in regulations and as a result being forced to “catch up”, variations in rates of economic performance and relative living standards, the role of the political systems (including the public’s attitude towards the role of government) and the role of cultural values. From here, Vogel shifted to what he identifies as the three critical factors that have shaped transatlantic regulatory policy divergence since 1990: changes in political salience of consumer and environmental risks and the extent and intensity of public pressures to ameliorate them, changes in political preferences of influential policy makers and the criteria used by policy makers to decide whether or how to respond to particular risks.
- What is the main argument of the text?
- The main argument of this text is to identify causes of the regulatory policy divergence. Vogel goes through a process of introducing a common explanation for this phenomenon, followed by using a case study to discredit the argument. This process of introducing a concept and then striking it down is all a build-up to Vogel identifying what he considers to be the three main factors which shaped transatlantic regulatory policy divergence since 1990.
- Describe at least three ways that the argument is supported.
- “Still, it is possible that many of the specific differences in American and European risk regulations might be due to variations in the actual risk their citizens faced. For examples, mad-cow disease posed significantly greater risks for Europeans than for Americans; one would therefore have expected European regulations for animal feed and testing linked to BSE to be more stringent and extensive than those of the United States, which they were.”
- “In short, the strengthening of European risk regulations since around 1990 cannot be satisfactorily explained by either the political preferences of the economic interests of European-based firms – any more than the previous strengthening of American consumer and environmental regulations reflected the political preferences or economic interests of most American businesses.”
- “It has also been suggested that the EU has adopted the precautionary principle and the United States has not done so is because “Europeans are more risk averse and suspicious of technology than Americans and therefore more willing to take action even when the scientific evidence is uncertain.”…But the United States previous adopted highly constrained the “life styles” of “individualistic” Americans, by limiting, for example, the drugs they can take, the land they can develop, the products they can use, and the kids of cars they can purchase.”
- What three quotes capture the message of the text?
- “In each of these cares, what was different was not the actual risks themselves, but rather the public’s perception of them, which in turn helped shape differences in the extent and intensity of political demands to address them.”
- “While European firms have been more willing to accept regulations for greenhouse gases than have most American ones, this is not because they were economically advantaged by them.”
- “The politics of protective regulation in Europe have been no different from that of the United States: firms have typically opposed more stringent consumer and environmental regulations. The only difference is that, after 1990, producers became more successful in preventing their adoption in the United States than in Europe.”
- What three questions about environmental risk and precaution does this article leave you with?
- What influence does government have on the public’s perception of risks in the European Union? If government played a role in influencing these perceptions, then why did the United States stress different factors than the EU?
- What would it take to shift the United States to a political system in which green parties could have enough of an impact that they could demand that environmental issues be addressed conditional of their support for the candidate?
- Will this theory of “catching up” lead to the United States attempting to come back as a more stringent environmental regulator in years to come?
- What three points, details or references from the text did you follow up on to advance your perspective on environmental risk and precaution? (Provide citations, with a brief explanation of what you learned. One of these should be fully annotated, as your second required reading for each week.)
- REACH
i. REACH stands for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical Substances and has been in place since June 1st, 2007. This regulation places greater responsibility on industry to be accountable for any risks associated with the chemicals they produce. All information gathered by industry is required to be uploaded to a database ran by the European Chemical Agency (ECHA). REACH provisions are being phased in over the course of eleven years, and include progressive substitution of the riskiest chemicals once appropriate alternatives have been identified.- http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_intro.htm
- European Greens
i. The European Green Party is a transnational political party made up of green parties within European countries. This party consists of two major bodies: the Council and the Committee. The Council has 120 representatives, with every party represented by at least two delegates. The Council deals with political affairs between congresses and decides over organizational matters such as the election of the Committee and the application of members and associates and candidates of the European Green Party. The Committee consists of nine members elected by the member parties and is responsible for daily political affairs, the execution of the council’s decisions and the activities of the secretariat.- http://europeangreens.eu/learn-about-egp
- “Why Do Americans Believe Danger Lurks Everywhere?”
i. Full citation.- Spencer, Jane, and Cynthia Crossen. “Why Do Americans Believe Danger Lurks Everywhere?” Wall Street Journal 24 Apr. 2003. Web. 12 Feb. 2013.
ii. Where did/does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials? (This question only has to be answered once for Vogel.)- Jane Spencer is the Executive Editor of The Daily Beast and was a founding editor of the site. She was formerly a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong and New York and a member of a team of reports whom won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for their coverage of China’s “naked capitalism” and the adverse consequences of the economic boom. Some of her other articles are “Why China Could Blame Its CO2 on the West” and “China Pays Steep Price as Textile Exports Boom”.
- Cynthia Crossen is a senior editor who has been a reporter and editor since 1983. One of her well known publications is “The Rich and How They Got That Way” and the “Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America”.
iii. What are the topics of the text?- This article focuses on the shift in risk present in the United States as we have become more technologically advanced, the ease in which the population can be scared, with or without credible information, and the natural tendency of a human being to fear before thinking in order to survive.
iv. What is the main argument of the text?- In the United States, Americans fear things in an irrational manner due to media hype and a variety of other factors even though the likelihood of death related to these fears is much lower than that of everyday risks we overlook. In addition, in today’s age it is becoming increasingly difficult to know what to believe due to so many conflicting studies which are publicized.
v. Describe at least three ways that the argument is supported.- Today, thanks to research labs, tort law and media hype, danger seems to lurk in every corner of life, from children's toys to McDonald's coffee, anthrax to secondhand smoke, West Nile virus to SARS. Faced with a barrage of warnings -- including the color-coded caveats of the new Homeland Security department -- it's not surprising that in contemporary America, the safest society in recorded history, many people feel as though they have never been more at risk.
- Armed with scientific and technological breakthroughs, Americans have dramatically reduced their risk in virtually every area of life, resulting in life spans 60% longer in 2000 than in 1900. Many deadly infectious diseases were tamed, food and water were purified, drugs and surgery helped forestall heart attacks, and thousands of safety devices -- window guards, smoke detectors, circuit breakers, air bags -- protected against everyday mishaps. Even the risk of financial disaster was reduced by insurance, pensions and Social Security.
- But most people try to reduce the fear in their lives. Unfortunately, once a person has learned to fear something, he or she may always associate the experience with fear. That means that over a lifetime, fears tend to accumulate rather than supplant one another. Furthermore, humans can fear events they have only read or heard about, which is why people worry about calamities they have never endured.
vi. What three quotes capture the message of the text?- "It's much easier to scare than unscare," says Paul Slovic, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. "We trust people who tell us we're in danger more than people who tell us we're not in danger."
- Marketers and the media have capitalized on people's desire for risk-free living by appealing to their vulnerability. "If you're alive, you're at risk," proclaim the ads of Destiny Group, a Newport Beach, Calif., company that insures against lawsuits. Women are "at risk for breast cancer just because they're women," declare the developers of a cancer-risk-assessment model. The Scottsdale, Ariz., company TriVita Way International Inc. sells its calcium supplements by cautioning in ads, "Chances are, you're at risk."
- Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of risk now is that humans are actually manufacturing it -- with nuclear power plants, the ozone hole, toxic waste, global warming, nuclear weapons, even terrorism. Most of these systems are so huge, complex and relatively new, that the possible consequences of them are wholly unknown.
vii. What three questions about environmental risk and precaution does this article leave you with?