Customer Reviews

Practical Guide to Environmental Management, 10th Edition (Environmental Law Institute)

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First the bad - I dislike the lack of a index in the book. It makes it very hard to keep track of where important points are located within the book. The notes and references are mixed at the end of the chapters. When I have written journal articles and book chapters, the editors forbid the use of endnotes. They preferred that the information be presented in the text if relevant or possibly in an appendix. I think the book could greatly benefit by using such a rule. This would greatly reduce the number of notes, but probably not eliminate them. The remaining notes may be of more use if they are placed at the bottom of the page on which they are reference rather than dumped in a heaping mess at the end of the chapter. Place the references at the end of the chapter separate from the notes.

The good - the book is extremely well written and provides a "Practical guide" as the title implies. The context and most of the examples supplied provide a great industry related view of the challenges and opportunities of environmental management. The themes are reinforced and embellished between chapters, which partially explains the difficulty of indexing the major points.

The ugly - I'm not sure the author should attempt to address these issues. It would likely require the addition of other experts and expand th book so much that it becomes useless. The author does not do a good job of explaining why there is friction between industry and society (represented by regulators). He appears to have the very strong view that industry is a victim. This biased runs throughout the book. There is no discussion of resource economics paradigms. In the past industries could pollute at will and society had to pay to clean it up. In the 60s that changed to industry had to pay society to pollution social resources. Also, the free market is a constrained system in the US to ensure maximum benefit to our SOCIETY, but allowing individuals (and companies) to maximize their well-being within the CONSTRAINED market. You've heard of it - the invisible hand thingy. The government must be sure constraints are followed for the free market to work properly. The amount of government involvement should always be a major point of discussion and re-examination (as pointed out indirectly by Friedman). One constraint is the in company receiving the all benefits incurs all the costs. This of course is impossible in reality, but if major costs are shifted to society, then some of the major benefits should also also shifted. Friedman gets at this concept indirectly, but another text in social welfare economics would provide better background on all of these points so that Friedman's arguments can be better appreciated and examined.