Environmental Law

Environmental Law

Name of Student

Name of Institution

Response to Question 1

FREE means the Foundation for Economics and Education. Its goal is to make citizens aware of the constitutional principles, sound money, free-market economics, foreign policy, and limited government. Although FREE is mainly concerned with lawmaking and political issues, it does address environmental concerns as well. The free market economy largely influenced environmental law. Ron Paul, the politician behind the FREE concept, endorsed a measure of environmental preservation through private property (Farber & Findley, 2010). The overriding principle in this approach was that people do not have any right in polluting property belonging to neighbors. Specifically, FREE has minimized environmental pollution massively since its inception.

Response to Question 2

Environmental self-audits refer to the reviews that a company conducts on its processes and operations (Kubasek & Silverman, 2011). The aim of such audits is to assess the company’s adherence to specific environmental laws and regulations. The audits are broad in scope and include assessment of buildings, engineering hazard, commercial developments, activities, procedures, and operations. The audits could be conducted on a voluntary or legal basis. The latter stresses on reviewing plant emissions, safety at the workplace, and overall environmental practices.

The emergence of environmental protection laws spurred companies to adopt environmental self-audits. Businesses conduct environmental self-audits to establish hidden environmental problems that could be detrimental to operations. Such hidden problems could be threats to the business goals or make the business incur greater expenditures in rectification. Present and past practices of the business could accumulate contaminations that hamper the physical environment of the business. Where the self-audits do not lead to proper redress of the problems, prospective buyers could walk away. Injured buyers could sue the company for compensation (Kubasek & Silverman, 2011).

Honesty should guide the audit process. The results should not be doctored in attempts to achieve unmerited goals. This way, the company will not benefit at all from the data so gathered from the audit. When the truth comes out, the business always loses its repute. The audit should also be conducted objectively. On the contrary, businesses derail the audits in trying to establish a positive image. Subjectivity deprives the company of reliable data to use in redressing the environmental problems (Hill, 2009). If these two aspects are adhered to properly, the possible impacts on the company will be minimal if the environmental violations are revealed.

Response to Question 3

End-of-pipe regulations, as defined by some authors, are the tendency of lazy industrialists to treat the waste products at their point of disposal in a bid to save the environment. Literally, the chemicals exuded at the end of the pipe are treated so that they do not harm the environment when they are disposed. This method was considered easy and cost-effective to businesses (Kubasek & Silverman, 2011). The two most common end-of-pipe regulations are pollution prevention and recycling.

Pollution prevention means that the amount of pollution is minimized as much as possible. This involves the taking of measures to prevent pollution in the initial stages of product manufacturing (Kubasek & Silverman, 2011). It could involve the use of fewer noxious chemicals to manufacture the product in question. The fewer noxious chemicals could be used to replace bad chemicals that previously caused pollution. The reduction in the levels of energy and water consumed in the production process also amounts to pollution prevention.

Recycling and reuse are also a common end-of-pipe regulatory process. Commonly recycled items include paper, aluminum cans, and glass. Recycling certain wastes such as aluminum cans has been proven to save much energy in the production process. Air and water pollution also reduce drastically when waste products are recycled. Reuse, on the other hand, is taking the waste product such as bottles, washing them up, and filling them with new content. This has a close connection with the pollution prevention procedure. However, serious problems could arise if recycling and reuse are not done in a proper manner (Hill, 2009). Out of the above end-of-the pipe regulatory measures, I would recommend that the company uses the pollution prevention method because it is the safest and the most cost-effective.

Response to Question 4

Administrative agencies are constituted to take charge of various social crises and problems deemed serious and beyond the normal scope of legislative machineries. The agencies are composed of professionals and experts in various fields on which they operate. In an environmental agency, the professionals and experts will be drawn from the legal, health, commercial, engineering and other fields of study that have a bearing on environmental protection (Farber & Findley, 2010). The agency is charged with developing rules and regulations on environmental management and protection.

The environmental agency carries out three main functions in accordance with its mandate. These are rulemaking, adjudication, and investigation. Regarding the first function (that is, rulemaking), the agency adds to the environmental laws passed by the law-making body so that the laws can apply in real life situations. Emission reductions may be authorized by a piece of legislation, for instance. When the agency makes a rule on emissions reduction, it could include the extents of reduction and the manner of the reduction depending on the type of the manufacturing process. The role of agencies is judicial in nature because judges cannot handle the matters put before specific agencies (Kubasek & Silverman, 2011). The agency is mandated to impose fines on rule violators. They can also question persons responsible for rule breaking among other powers. The environmental agency has contributed much to ensuring adherence to environmental laws. This has benefitted the society in terms of living in a pollution-free environment. If the mandate be left to the courts, polluters would be infringing the environmental laws largely and walking away freely.

References

Farber, D. & Findley, R. (2010). Environmental Law in a Nutshell. New York: Oxford

University Press

Hill, M. K. (2009). Understanding Environmental Pollution. New York: Springer

Kubasek, N. K. & Silverman, G. S. (2011). Environmental Law (7th Edition). Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Prentice Hall