William R. Freudenberg, a Life in Social Research 9781781907351, 9781781907344

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WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG, A LIFE IN SOCIAL RESEARCH

RESEARCH IN SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND PUBLIC POLICY Series Editor: Ted I. K. Youn Recent Volumes: Volume 8:

The Organizational Response to Social Problems, 2001 Stephanie W. Hartwell and Russell K. Schutt

Edited by

Volume 9:

Environmental Risks: Perception, Evaluation and Management, 2001 Edited by Gisela Bo¨m, Josef Nerb, Timothy McDaniels and Hans Spada

Volume 10:

The Environmental State Under Pressure, 2002 P. J. Mol and Frederick H. Buttel

Volume 11:

Terrorism and Disaster: New Threats, New Ideas, 2003 Lee Clarke

Volume 12:

The Organizational Response to Persons with Mental Illness Involved with the Criminal Justice System, 2005 Edited by Stephanie W. Hartwell

Volume 13:

Long-Term Management of Contaminated Sites, 2006 Thomas M. Leschine

Volume 14:

Cultures of Contamination: Legacies of Pollution in Russia and the U.S., 2007 Edited by Michael R. Edelstein, Maria Tysiachniouk, Lyudmila V. Smirnova

Volume 15:

Equity and the Environment, 2007 William R. Freudenburg

Volume 16:

Integrating the Sciences and Society: Challenges, Practices, and Potentials, 2008 Edited by Harriet Hartman

Volume 17:

New Approaches to Social Problems Treatment, 2010 Mark Peyrot, Stacy Lee Burns

Volume 18:

Environment and Social Justice: An International Perspective, 2010 Edited by Dorceta E. Taylor

Volume 19:

Government Secrecy, 2011

Volume 20:

Disaster by Design: The Aral Sea and its Lessons for Sustainability, 2012 Edited by Michael R. Edelstein, Astrid Cerny, Abror Gadaev

Edited by Arthur Edited by

Edited by

Edited by Robert C. Wilkinson,

Edited by

Edited by Susan Maret

RESEARCH IN SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND PUBLIC POLICY VOLUME 21

WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG, A LIFE IN SOCIAL RESEARCH EDITED BY

SUSAN MARET School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, USA

United Kingdom North America India Malaysia China

Japan

Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2013 Copyright r 2013 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78190-734-4 ISSN: 0196-1152 (Series)

ISOQAR certified Management System, awarded to Emerald for adherence to Environmental standard ISO 14001:2004. Certificate Number 1985 ISO 14001

CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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DEDICATION

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INTRODUCTION: GEDENKSCHRIFT IN HONOR OF WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG, A LIFE IN SOCIAL RESEARCH Susan Maret

SECTION ONE

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REMINISCENCES

THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION PERSONIFIED: REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE, SCHOLARLY CONTRIBUTIONS AND PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG Riley E. Dunlap

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FREUDENBURG AND STARE AT WISCONSIN Thomas A. Heberlein

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LEARNING TO THINK ABOUT A MOUNTAIN WITH BILL Scott Frickel

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POWER IN COUPLED NATURAL AND HUMAN SYSTEMS: THE INTELLECTUAL LEGACY OF WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG Thomas K. Rudel

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CONTENTS

SECTION TWO

BILL’S THEORIES IN MOTION

THE DOUBLE DIVERSION OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN A GLOBALIZED ERA: OFFSHORE OIL, COAL, AND OIL SAND LEASES Christine Shearer, Debra Davidson and Robert Gramling

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“DOUBLE DIVERSION” AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL GOOD: FRAMING A DISPROPORTIONATE SOLUTION TO AN ECOLOGICAL THREAT AS A PROBLEM FOR THE COMMONS Daina Cheyenne Harvey and Andrew Varuzzo

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EQUITY, DISCOURSE, AND ACTION: AN INFLECTIVE PARADIGM LINKING PLANNING, PARTICIPATION, AND NATURAL SCIENCE Ann Ruzow Holland

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TOWARD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND POLICY MAKING: INSTITUTIONALISM OF WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG Ted I. K. Youn

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WHEN RECREANCY BECOMES THE NORM: EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLANNING AND THE CASE OF TAR SANDS UPGRADING IN THE ALBERTA INDUSTRIAL HEARTLAND Michael R. Edelstein

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“PEAK FARMLAND”: REVEALED TRUTH OR RECREANCY? Charles Geisler and Ben Currens

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FREUDENBURG BEYOND BORDERS: RECREANCY, ATROPHY OF VIGILANCE, BUREAUCRATIC SLIPPAGE, AND THE TRAGEDY OF 9/11 Susan Maret

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Contents

BREAKING NEWS: WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION DEPLOYED TO FIGHT SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON CLIMATIC CHANGES Margarita V. Alario

SECTION THREE

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THE WORK CONTINUES

POWER AND VULNERABILITY: CONTEXTUALIZING “LOW RISK” VIEWS OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND HEALTH HAZARDS Christine Shearer, Jennifer Bea Rogers-Brown, Karl Bryant, Rachel Cranfill and Barbara Herr Harthorn

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TEMPORAL MYOPIA: A CASE OF PROMISING NEW TECHNOLOGIES, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND INHERENT CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Mary B. Collins and William R. Freudenburg 259 DEVELOPMENT, INEQUALITY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY: AN ANALYSIS OF COMPETING HYPOTHESES USING LOCAL AREAS IN THE UNITED STATES Frank M. Howell, William R. Freudenburg (deceased) and Gregory A. Works

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ROBBING NATURE’S BANK: PREFACE

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WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG’S CURRICULUM VITAE

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Margarita V. Alario

Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, WI, USA

Jennifer Bea RogersBrown

Long Island University, Brookville, New York, NY, USA

Karl Bryant

State University of New York, New York, NY, USA

Mary B. Collins

National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

Rachel Cranfill

University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Ben Currens

Department of Earth and Environmental Science, The University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

Debra Davidson

Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Riley E. Dunlap

Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA

Michael R. Edelstein

Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, NJ, USA

William R. Freudenburg (deceased)

Environmental Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Scott Frickel

Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

Charles Geisler

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA ix

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Robert Gramling

University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, USA

Daina Cheyenne Harvey

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, USA

Barbara Herr Harthorn

University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Thomas A. Heberlein

Department of Community and Environmental Sociology and The Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

Frank M. Howell

Mississippi State University, Ridgeland, MS, USA

Susan Maret

School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, USA

Thomas K. Rudel

Departments of Human Ecology and Sociology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

Ann Ruzow Holland

Consultant, Willsboro, NY, USA; Antioch University New England, Keene, NH, USA

Christine Shearer

University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

Andrew Varuzzo

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, USA

Gregory A. Works

Works & Works Consulting, Belleville, IL, USA

Ted I. K. Youn

Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

William R. Freudenburg 1951 2010

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INTRODUCTION: GEDENKSCHRIFT IN HONOR OF WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG, A LIFE IN SOCIAL RESEARCH Susan Maret It is a privilege to serve as editor for volume 21 of Research in Social Problems and Public Policy (RSPPP) honoring the life and work of Dr. William R. Freudenburg. This Gedenkschrift, or commemorative volume, not only reflects Bill’s productive scholarly career and the immense esteem his colleagues have for him, but how his theoretical insights prove valuable enduring to the investigation of a wide variety of pressing social problems and public policies. Bill Freudenburg is perhaps best known as an environmental sociologist. Through his research on environmental and technological risk, critique of federal outer continental oil leasing policies, and with colleagues, the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, the Hurricane Katrina and BP Oil disasters, Bill’s research exemplified the sociological imagination. Taking the interdisciplinary road in his research, Bill at times adopted the role of historian, ecologist, philosopher, and political scientist; much like Max Weber before him, Bill also pondered on “the possibility of democracy” (Freudenburg, 2001, 2009). His conceptually rich work is filled with remarkable language that

William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 21, 1 5 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0196-1152/doi:10.1108/S0196-1152(2013)0000021005

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floats theory and sustains fresh ways of analyzing social dilemmas. Not only was Bill concerned with the role that language plays in the framing of social problems and public policies, he was an active participant in creating new vocabulary to drive theory. For example, Bill integrated biology-based metaphors in proposing “density of acquaintanceship as a type of ‘cell division’” (1986a); in another work, he (1993) argued for specificity in language for the “failure of those institutional actors those institutions to carry out their responsibilities with the vigor necessary to merit the societal trust they enjoy” (p. 909). In a 1995 Plenary Address given at Mid-South Sociological Association annual meeting, he made a call for “linguistic clarity” in sociological writing. In 2002, Bill wrote of the “politics of language” in “how we divide our concepts” that surround categories to which “analytical differences” are played out in the scholarly literature around discussions of “environment” and “natural resources” (pp. 232 235, 236). However, it is Bill’s investigations into information that I find most compelling. I’ll go out on a limb in sharing that I believe all of Bill’s theoretical work, including those crafted with colleagues, are about information (as knowledge constructed and communicated). I’m not aware if any of Bill’s colleagues (or critics) have pointed this out, but to me, Bill as social scientist is also an information theorist and a sociologist of knowledge. Whether the density of acquaintanceship as info sharing (perhaps a tip to Simmel’s work on gossip?), “planning for surprises” in The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process (Freudenburg, 1986a), or writing that “information, like any other form of ammunition, is generally judged not in terms of its sophistication but in terms of its likely effectiveness in battle” (1986b, p. 323), Bill probed the ways institutions analyze data and the knowledge they produce to stay the course, even under conditions where information is uncertain, missing, nonexistent, controlled, asymmetric, biased, and/or plagued by Type I and Type II errors. Information-laden language traverses his scholarly work. On a personal note, I can’t claim a longstanding relationship with Bill, but came to know him through his ideas; Bill’s research was critical to me as a concerned citizen struggling to understand policy failings and the ethics of risk assessment, and as a graduate student, anxious to make interdisciplinary connections between the Big Outside and theory, his work supported my own thinking. A few years ago as guest editor of volume 19 of RSPPP on government secrecy, I got to know Bill only for a little while. Bill, even as he battled illness, focused on assisting me in fleshing out the volume. From a January 29, 2009, email to me, Bill writes not just of the

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problem of government secrecy but a subject that he spent most of his career documenting, recreancy, or speaking simplistically, institutional failures. In its own way, this simple email underscores secrecy’s association with failures, which in itself is a monumental push in theory building. Bill’s note as written to me: It seems to me that the topic you propose government secrecy not only has a reasonable fit with the overall theme of RSPPP, involving topics that lie at the confluence of “social problems” and “public policy,” but also has considerable potential for contributing to thinking on something that Ted and I have been trying to encourage ever since we took over the editorship during the late Pleistocene greater attention to “social problems” that are the result of failures not by the poor and powerless, but by those who are big and powerful. It’s not AS hard to get those kinds of pieces published today as it was when I was just starting out, but Ted and I believe there’s still a need to draw more attention to “institutional failures,” as we call them. And a whole special issue is an even better way to draw attention to that topic than would publishing the same number of articles in a more scattered fashion. So you should consider this note from me to be all the encouragement you need to move forward aggressively.

In the end, I can’t do justice to the range and influence of Bill’s work in this introduction. Nor do I want to try. The individuals who know him best offer the finest accounts of Bill’s life in social research. Contributors to volume 21 carry Bill’s ideas onward in their own innovative interpretations of his work, and in doing so suggest to future scholars new visions and applications. Arrangement of This Volume Volume 21 is arranged in several distinct sections that represent Bill’s life and research. The first section, Reminiscences, includes personal and professional accounts by long-term colleagues Riley Dunlap, Thomas Heberlein, Scott Frickel, and Thomas Rudel. These accounts are not only moving; they also illustrate the trajectory of Bill’s academic career and its influence on the evolution of his ideas and collaborations. The second section, Bill’s Theories in Motion, focuses on specific “conceptual tools” (Rudel, this volume) and theories that Bill developed in his single authorship and with colleagues. The first chapter in this section by Christine Shearer, Debra Davidson, and Robert Gramling discuss the “double diversion” and energy policy, while Daina Harvey and Andrew Varuzzo apply the theory to study of access to the urban tree canopy in Worchester, Massachusetts. Ann Ruzow Holland follows with discussion of disproportionality in land use planning and the Adirondack Park.

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Bill’s theory of recreancy and the failure of institutions to carry out their responsibilities are a huge part of volume 21: Ted Youn explores what constitutes a social problem, or to state directly, the “special kind of social problem” that concern the “potential failure of public institutions to fulfill their obligations to the broader society … specifically the obligation to protect the environment and the health of present and future generations of the citizenry” (Freudenburg & Youn, 1999, p. 2). Following Youn, Michael Edelstein, in a comprehensive study of the Total Tar Sands Upgrader Project, Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, documents emergency response planning and its influence on local residents of the Heartland. In the following chapter, Charles Geisler and Ben Currens investigate peak farmland, the “dematerialization of the global land base,” and recreancy, while Susan Maret links recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage to the September 11, 2001 attacks. The last chapter in this section by Margarita Alario focuses on “weapons of mass distraction” or the role of language (and power) in framing climate science and denial. The third and last section of volume 21 features research that Bill was increasingly concerned with pursuing. It also includes some of his collaborative works that were left to completion by his colleagues after his death. The first chapter in this section by Christine Shearer, Jennifer Bea Rogers-Brown, Karl Bryant, Rachel Cranfill, and Barbara Herr Harthorn discusses gender and risk perceptions regarding nanotechnologies. The next chapter, written by Mary B. Collins and William R. Freudenburg, reports on the “temporal myopia” of federal partnerships with nuclear power and nanotechnology; In the following chapter, Frank Howell, William R. Freudenburg, and Gregory A. Works investigate the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) alongside the Environmental Kuznets Curve, the ecological modernization hypothesis, and indicators of inequality. The concluding work is a preface written by Bill for an upcoming book Robbing Nature’s Bank. In the preface, Bill discloses his terminal illness and his push to write “about the earth, and about what we humans are doing to it.” The preface is reprinted unedited in its entirety with a short commentary by Bob Gramling. As always, Bill’s provocative ideas leave us thinking, especially about the “things we can do as individuals wind up missing about 90% of all environmental problems.” Taken together, these chapters honor Bill Freudenburg’s life and legacy by way of his social research.

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REFERENCES Freudenburg, W. R. (1986a). The density of acquaintanceship: An overlooked variable in community research? The American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 27 63. Freudenburg, W. R. (1986b). Social impact assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 12, 451 478. Freudenburg, W. R. (1993). Risk and recreancy: Weber, the division of labor, and the rationality of risk perceptions, Social Forces, 71(4), 909 932). Freudenburg, W. R. (2001). Risky thinking: Facts, values and blind spots in societal decisions about risk. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 72, 125 130. Freudenburg, W. R. (2009). Sociology’s rediscovery of the environment: Setting the stage. Sociological Inquiry, 79(4), 505 508. Freudenburg, W. R., & Youn, T. I. K. (1999). Institutional failure in environmental management: Toward a fuller understanding of social problems and public policy. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 7, 3 18.

SECTION ONE

REMINISCENCES

THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION PERSONIFIED: REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE, SCHOLARLY CONTRIBUTIONS AND PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG$ Riley E. Dunlap ABSTRACT After briefly covering Bill Freudenburg’s early years, this essay reviews his major scholarly contributions and professional accomplishments while a faculty member at Washington State University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of California-Santa Barbara. Bill’s unique strengths especially his keen sociological imagination and crucial conceptual, theoretical and empirical contributions are highlighted, as $

This essay updates and expands significantly on Dunlap and Davidson (2011).

William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 21, 9 26 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0196-1152/doi:10.1108/S0196-1152(2013)0000021003

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well as his commitment to providing valuable mentoring for students and colleagues. The enduring importance of his work is ensured by the continuing application and extension of his ideas by other scholars. Keywords: Washington State University; University of Wisconsin; UCSB; sociological imagination; environmental sociology; sociology of natural resources

The world lost one of its most productive, creative, and influential environmental and natural resource sociologists, and these related fields lost one of their major intellectual leaders, when William R. Freudenburg passed away on December 28, 2010. Bill, who had just turned 59 the month before, finally lost his battle with cancer, having well exceeded the expectations of his doctors after the original diagnosis of bile-duct cancer in the summer of 2009. He remained highly active until the end, finishing teaching his Fall course and managing to complete a book on the 2010 BP oil spill with his long-term collaborator Robert Gramling, Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America (2011), that came out a couple of months before his untimely death. While it is impossible to do justice to the depth and scope of Bill’s rich legacy of scholarly contributions and professional achievements in a short amount of space, I will sketch out broad themes and trends in his scholarly work (often citing recent essays by others that expound on some of his primary research emphases) and highlight major accomplishments in his remarkable career. But first, I offer some information on his early years.

BILL’S EARLY YEARS Bill was born in Norfolk Nebraska when his family lived in nearby Madison. They later moved to West Point, Nebraska, where Bill did most of his schooling and graduated from high school. As of 2010, the population of West Point was 3364 and it appears that the high school currently enrolls well under 300 students (the combined Jr. Sr. high enrollment is around 350). This small-town background likely influenced Bill’s subsequent choice of research topics and paved the way for an exceptional career in rural sociology as well as in the larger discipline of sociology. Anyone who interacted with Bill for even a short amount of time likely formed three quick impressions: first, he had a magnificent voice; second, he was exceptionally articulate; and third, he was incredibly smart all of

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which enhanced his typical eloquence. I have always imagined that Bill was a very precocious child (as is Max, the young son he left behind), and while I cannot validate that I can report that he was high school valedictorian. Further, it came as no surprise to learn recently from his younger sister Patti and older brother Jim that Bill participated in every high school musical performed during his four years at West Point High School, demonstrating his vocal skills in roles such as Curly in Oklahoma. Bill also played in a rock band (keyboard and vocals), while lettering on the golf team. His stellar record led to a major scholarship to the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL). As an undergrad there Bill took advantage of an interdisciplinary program and received a B.A. in “Integrated Studies: Communication,” not surprisingly graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1974. He also continued singing, performing in the prestigious UNL Madrigal singing group. After completing his undergraduate work, Bill moved to Yale University in 1974 for graduate study in sociology where his advisor was Kai Erikson (see Erikson, 2012, on their initial meeting and subsequent long-term relationship). Perhaps it was his small-town background that eventually led him to focus on “energy boomtowns” in the Western United States, small communities that were undergoing rapid and disruptive growth as a result of oil shale development pushed by the Carter Administration in reaction to the 1973 1974 “energy crisis.” While working hard and starting to publish in grad school (Burstein & Freudenburg, 1977, 1978), Bill still found time to sing in the Yale Concert Choir.

LAUNCHING A FACULTY CAREER AT WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY By 1976, Bill Catton and I had teamed up at Washington State University (WSU) and I was excited not only about becoming an “environmental sociologist,” but eager to see the field develop especially at Washington State! In those early days of environmental sociology (a section on Environmental Sociology was established within the American Sociological Association [ASA] in 1976) social impact assessment (SIA) was a hot topic and a key component of this new field, so when WSU’s Department of Rural Sociology (where I had a half-time appointment) had an opening that year, I pushed to have it re-defined from a “community development” position to more of an SIA slot. Fortunately, Don Dillman, the new chair of Rural Sociology, was receptive to the idea. So we advertised for a joint position with the Department of Sociology that, while I do not recall all of the details, was designed for someone doing SIA, ideally in rural communities.

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At the August 1976 ASA meeting, I made a point of attending a session in which Bill was a presenter. He knocked my socks off with an enthusiastic and articulate talk about the impact of energy development on rural communities, one that received a very favorable audience response and lots of requests for his paper. I knew I had found the ideal candidate and cornered Bill when the session ended. I told him about the position and how he appeared to be a perfect fit given his research, but he indicated he was not close to being finished with his dissertation and was not on the market. I was disappointed, but vowed to keep my eye on him. Fortunately, the two people we interviewed that year turned us down, so when we re-advertised the following year I made sure to track Bill down at the 1977 ASA meeting where he again gave a great talk. This time I pushed hard to get him to apply, and truth be known, the small-town Nebraska boy seemed to have become a real Ivy League guy and was a bit unsure about WSU (he later confided that a Yale faculty member told him that he had expected Bill to land a job at a more prestigious institution) and especially its location in small and isolated Pullman. To counteract his negative view of the prospect of working at WSU, I explained that a half-time research appointment in Rural Sociology meant a lower teaching load in the Department of Sociology, reemphasized that he was a perfect fit for the position, and then added that he would have very good colleagues! Despite still having a lot of work left on his dissertation, Bill applied and easily got the job after performing very well during his interview, and arrived in Fall, 1978, with his dissertation incomplete (he finished it and received his Ph.D. the following year). The next several years were truly “glory years” for WSU environmental sociology, as we established the world’s first Ph.D. specialization in the field within the Department of Sociology (Eugene Rosa also joined the Department of Sociology in 1978, and within a couple of years offered a graduate course in Energy and Society that rounded out Catton’s course in Human Ecology, my course in Environmental Sociology, and Bill’s course in SIA). We also had a real esprit de corps, and Bill pushed to establish informal gatherings of faculty and grad students once a month where someone would give a presentation to be followed by discussion and beverageenhanced socialization, something we all eagerly embraced. Bill took the office next door to mine in Rural Sociology, and we struck up a fast friendship. He was full of ideas and happy to share them, also eager to hear mine, and never shy about expressing his views on anyone’s work including that of distinguished visiting lecturers. Bill was not shy, and while he occasionally ruffled the feathers of a few senior members of

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the department he also earned the respect and admiration of others, especially Bill Catton and James Short, two key members of the Department of Sociology. I learned a lot from Bill, and I hope vice versa, as we gave one another detailed feedback on our research and papers. Bill quickly made a name for himself in the profession with a series of articles and chapters and superb conference presentations that provided highly insightful and theoretically grounded analyses of the Western rural communities experiencing rapid growth due to energy development he was studying in great depth (e.g., Freudenburg, 1981, 1982), earning the nickname “Boomtown Bill” in the process. His work typically involved a creative synthesis of qualitative and quantitative evidence, solidly grounded in sociological theory, and often cast with an eye toward policy relevance qualities that would become distinguishing characteristics of Bill’s scholarship. Probably his most influential early articles were those he managed to get published in the premier sociology journals, American Sociological Review (ASR) (Freudenburg, 1984) and American Journal of Sociology (AJS) (Freudenburg, 1986a). Both required multiple submissions and numerous revisions, and Bill recently noted that they needed “to be presented as an analysis of something else … rather than an analysis of a community going through environmentally related disruptions” (Freudenburg, 2008, p. 451). Yet, these analyses of the differential impact of rapid growth on adolescents versus adults and the “density of acquaintanceship” represent the first appearance of work by a modern-era environmental/natural resource sociologist in these elite journals, one of many breakthroughs by Bill. As an aside, these two early pieces also laid the groundwork for Bill’s superb record of placing environmentally relevant research in elite journals, demonstrating his ability to frame empirical research as theoretically significant. Most sociologists regard ASR, AJS, and Social Forces (SF) as the three top disciplinary journals, and Bill managed to publish two articles and a long comment in ASR, four articles in AJS, and six articles in SF. He also published nine articles in the Rural Sociological Society’s flagship journal, Rural Sociology. This is an unparalleled record for an environmental/ natural resource sociologist, and provided an enormous contribution to legitimizing environmental research within the larger disciplines of sociology and rural sociology. To top it off, and reflecting his predilection for interdisciplinarity, Bill also published in leading interdisciplinary journals such as Science, Risk Analysis, and Global Environmental Change. Social science interest in energy boomtowns stemmed in part from the fact that SIA was rapidly growing as a field of inquiry, due to legal decisions mandating that environmental impact assessments include SIAs. This

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momentum stimulated creation of an “Ad Hoc Committee” within the ASA charged with drawing up guidelines for the conduct of SIAs, and Bill quickly became a leading contributor to the work initiated by the short-lived committee, and taken up by a subsequent committee involving a number of representatives from government agencies that eventually produced a report providing such guidelines (Interorganizational Committee on Guidelines and Principles for Social Impact Assessment, 1993). Bill’s efforts led to a series of articles on SIA (e.g., Freudenburg & Keating, 1982, 1985) emphasizing the need for strong sociological contributions methodologically rigorous and theoretically grounded to SIAs, most notably an agenda-setting review piece in the Annual Review of Sociology (Freudenburg, 1986b) that both signified and solidified Bill’s leadership in the field. As reflected in his choice of a dissertation topic, from the outset Bill had a strong desire to focus his intellectual efforts on important societal phenomena, and this evolved into a deep and continuing interest in the policy process. When the ASA developed a “Congressional Fellow” program, Bill applied, and ended up working with the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1983 1984. This experience, described in Freudenburg (1986c), heightened Bill’s interest in the policy domain. One can see the impact of this interest not only in his work on SIA (e.g., Freudenburg & Keating, 1985) but throughout his career, especially notable in pieces on nuclear power (Freudenburg & Jones, 1991a), agency failure (Freudenburg & Gramling, 1994a; Freudenburg & Youn, 1999), social science contributions to environmental management (Freudenburg, 1989), social science input into policy-making (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2002), the use of science in court cases (Freudenburg, 2005a), and the misuse of science in environmental controversies (Freudenburg, Gramling, & Davidson, 2008). Coming back to chronological order, another important development in Bill’s career occurred while he was at WSU. Likely due to Pullman’s proximity to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Bill became interested in nuclear power and waste. This led to a co-edited book with Rosa (Freudenburg & Rosa, 1984) and a long-term focus on nuclear issues (Alario & Freudenburg, 2007; Freudenburg, 2004; Freudenburg & Baxter, 1984, 1985; Freudenburg & Davidson, 2007; Freudenburg & Jones, 1991a), as well as a growing interest in environmental and technological risk in general and risk assessment writ large. This line of work led to numerous articles and chapters dealing with risk, including a landmark contribution in Science (Freudenburg, 1988), that continued to appear up until his death. The work on risk is especially rich theoretically, as exemplified by several articles: Freudenburg and Pastor (1992), Freudenburg (1993), Davidson and

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Freudenburg (1996), and Alario and Freudenburg (2003, 2007, 2010). In addition to introducing his well-known concept of “recreancy,” Bill, along with his colleagues, has offered insightful comparisons of American middle range and European grand theorizing on risk, especially in terms of their relative degrees of empirical support (see Alario, 2012).

TRANSITION TO THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON After spending a 1984 1985 sabbatical at the University of Denver, placing him close to the energy boomtowns he continued to follow, Bill was recruited to the Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin in 1986. This was a terrible loss for me personally, as I had come to value Bill enormously as both close friend and crucial member of WSU’s environmental sociology program, and I suspect his move was a key (although not the sole) factor in my being diagnosed with severe depression the following year. But it was clearly a great move for Bill, both professionally and personally. Indeed, he had grown weary of being a bachelor in Pullman, constantly complaining about his social life leading me to note that his habit of working in his office until nearly midnight almost every night certainly exacerbated the situation. Obviously Madison offered a far better social life, and to my pleasant surprise Bill eventually met and married Sarah, the love of his life, there. Also, the University of Wisconsin was home to a highly prestigious Department of Sociology with which the Department of Rural Sociology shared an integrated graduate program, giving Bill access to some of our discipline’s finest grad students. At Wisconsin, Bill again helped strengthen an already strong environmental sociology group, and played a key role in building an NSF-funded graduate training program that produced several young scholars who have gone on to excellent careers in environmental and natural resource sociology (as Tom Heberlein describes in his contribution to this volume). Building upon his earlier interests, Bill used his boomtown work as a basis for contributing broader insights about extractive economies in general (see Krannich, 2012; Stedman, Patriquin, & Parkins, 2012). He developed a highly productive and influential research program on the topic which, on the whole, offered irrefutable counter-evidence to the general assumption that natural resource development is an attractive option for rural communities, pointing to multiple maladies that coincide with such economies

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(Freudenburg, 1992; Freudenburg & Frickel, 1994; Freudenburg & Gramling, 1992, 1994b, 1998; Freudenburg, Gramling, & Schurman, 1999; Freudenburg & Jones, 1991b; Freudenburg & Wilson, 2002; Frickel & Freudenburg, 1996). Bill’s work on extractive communities was often conducted with Wisconsin graduate students, and also with Robert Gramling, with whom he began to collaborate after the two met on an advisory panel on offshore oil-drilling sponsored by the former U.S. Minerals Management Service. This chance encounter launched one of the most productive partnerships in environmental/natural resource sociology resulting in three important books, seven magazine articles and technical reports, and over twenty peer-reviewed articles (see Gramling, 2012). By the 1990s, with the help of Gramling and others, Bill began to turn more of his efforts toward one of his long-standing priorities enhancing the academic position of the still-youthful field of environmental sociology. Focusing explicitly on the vexing issue of theorization of socioenvironmental relations, this attention as with his other pursuits led to landmark contributions with his collaborators (e.g., Freudenburg, Frickel, & Gramling, 1995; Gramling & Freudenburg, 1996a). Bill and colleagues reported the results of creative studies that took an historical and comparative approach to analyses of societal environmental interactions, enabling them to compare varying environmental conditions and differing societal conditions over time, documenting the dialectic and socially contingent nature of environmental outcomes, always exemplifying in resounding terms the fact that “Nature does matter.” The archetype of this work are his and Gramling’s comparisons of the staunch support for oil production in Louisiana to the equally strong opposition to it in both California and Florida, research that is groundbreaking in both findings and as contribution to sociological methodology (Freudenburg & Gramling, 1993, 1994c; Gramling & Freudenburg, 1996b). These studies are exemplars of sophisticated, nonquantitative comparative methodology that provide current and future students invaluable tools for studying the relationships between social and physical phenomena, and offer superb illustrations of the fruits of strong environmental sociological research (see Murphy & Dunlap, 2012). Around the same time period, Bill’s risk scholarship began to showcase inquiries into disasters and what he termed “corrosive communities” (Freudenburg, 1997) in particular, beginning with a case study of the Exxon Valdez spill (Gramling & Freudenburg, 1992) and ending with several articles and a book chronicling the social determinants of the catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina (Freudenburg et al., 2008, 2009a, 2009b; Gramling, Freudenburg, Laska, & Erikson, 2011). In this work, Bill

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and colleagues emphasized the societal factors that help “construct” natural and technological disasters alike (see Tierney, 2012). It was perhaps this accumulating record of case study material on disasters and corrosive communities that highlighted for Bill the enduring inequities associated with the distribution of environmental benefits and harms. His more recent and arguably most compelling work was devoted explicitly to this issue, as represented in his groundbreaking research on disproportionalities and the double diversion tactics that serve to maintain them (Freudenburg, 2005b, 2006), as well as an article and volume co-edited with Robert Wilkinson (Freudenburg & Wilkinson, 2008; Wilkinson & Freudenburg, 2008) and work with long-time collaborator Margarita Alario (Alario & Freudenburg, 2010). (See Davidson & Grant, 2012, for more on this body of work). His attention to equity simultaneously illustrated his continued enthusiasm for interdisciplinary work, and was one of the key topics of engagement with his natural science colleagues (e.g., Haberl et al., 2006). More generally, Bill seems to have been motivated by a concern with “under-dogs” from the outset of his career, when he focused on residents of the small (and powerless) energy boomtowns in his dissertation research, to its premature end. As Bob Gramling put it in a message to me: Bill was the true intellectual and scholar, but he also was passionate about injustice from the level of recreancy by large federal agencies to the level of individual discrimination, and that passion drove much of his work. Particularly troubling to Bill were situations that involved the relationships between rural communities and the environments they exist in and depend upon and large corporate or agency interests that exploit or regulate those environments. Manipulation or incompetence in these relationships drove him nuts! A good bit of the motivation behind Catastrophe (Freudenburg et al., 2009a), Blowout (Freudenburg & Gramling, 1994c), Oil in Troubled Waters (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2010), and our other work was our perception that greedy growth machines, corporations, or incompetent agencies were screwing communities.

It is little wonder, then, that Bill found rural communities such a fitting place for his research. Something that always impressed me about Bill’s work was his aptitude for spotting significant public and policy issues, often very controversial ones, and then using his uncanny knack for designing creative data collection projects to obtain evidence for evaluating them. He had a special talent for developing innovative tests of widely held assumptions from the decline of Pacific Northwest timber harvests being attributed to the protection of endangered species such as spotted owls (Freudenburg, Wilson, & O’Leary, 1998) to the threat of global warming being exaggerated by mainstream media and climate

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scientists (Freudenburg & Muselli, 2010, 2013) and frequently finding them to be lacking in empirical support. Bill had a rich sociological imagination, one that married theoretical importance, policy significance, and rigorous empirical testing, and he consistently put it to good use.

NEW DIRECTIONS AT UCSB From his early years at WSU Bill made a habit of collaborating with grad students, and this tendency was strengthened during his time at Wisconsin and continued when he joined the Environmental Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), as Dehlsen Professor of Environment and Society, in 2002. Numerous graduate students learned how to do research and get it into print under Bill’s tutelage, and several have gone on to develop very successful careers of their own (see Fisher, 2012). While mentoring grad students came naturally to Bill, and he became a truly outstanding mentor, at UCSB he took on a new challenge, working heavily with undergraduates. Bill’s position at UCSB involved teaching a large introductory course in Environmental Studies. Along with others I wondered how he would deal with this, as he had mainly taught relatively small graduate courses throughout most of his career. Bill responded amazingly well and fulfilled the task brilliantly, developing one of the most popular courses on campus and regularly receiving standing applauses from classes exceeding 400 students. In 2006 2007, he received an “Outstanding Professor Award” from UCSB’s Residence Halls Association and Office of Residential Life. In addition, at UCSB he also extended his excellent mentoring to undergraduates, involving some in his research projects and teaching them how to publish their work (Freudenburg & Muselli, 2010, 2013). Of course, he also continued his successful mentoring of graduate students (drawn mainly from UCSB’s Department of Sociology, where he had an affiliate appointment), sometimes publishing jointly with them (e.g., Freudenburg & Collins, 2012) and sometimes supporting their individual efforts (e.g., Shearer, 2011). Being in an interdisciplinary program at UCSB also allowed Bill to follow his instincts to cross disciplinary boundaries, and he began working with colleagues (and some students) from a range of disciplines (e.g., Wilkinson & Freudenburg, 2008), although his premature death prevented some of these efforts from reaching fruition. He did, however, collaborate on a textbook appropriate for interdisciplinary environmental studies courses

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(such as the one he taught) with two non-UCSB colleagues, and it was recently published posthumously (Lee, Freudenburg, & Howarth, 2013). Finally, while at UCSB, Bill recognized the need for a professional association to support the inherently interdisciplinary fields of environmental studies and environmental science, and then took the initiative in organizing (with his colleague Robert Wilkinson) a 2006 conference that served as the launching pad for the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS). AESS has quickly become a vibrant professional organization that provides a home base, and its conferences a gathering place, for the diffuse community of scholars, students, and practitioners involved in environmental studies and sciences. The current editor of the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, who was involved from the outset in the establishment of AESS, credits Bill’s initiative, enthusiasm, hard work, and good ideas as the driving force in launching the organization (Rosenbaum, 2012). Not surprisingly, Bill was President-Elect of AESS when he died.

AWARDS, LEADERSHIP, AND RECOGNITION Having quickly reviewed some major trends and emphases (but certainly not all) in Bill’s research and writing see the symposia in the March, 2012, issue of the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences (Davidson & Dunlap, 2012) and the June, 2013, issue of Society and Natural Resources (Beckley & Hall, 2013), as well as the other essays in this volume for more in-depth explorations of Bill’s key areas of research and writing I turn to the recognition that he received for his work. Bill’s scholarly contributions were recognized via a wide range of awards, beginning with the 1992 “Award of Merit” from RSS’s Natural Resources Research Group (NRRG) (an award that Bill initiated when he chaired the NRRG) and the 1996 “Distinguished Contribution to Environmental Sociology” Award from the ASA’s Section on Environment and Technology (renamed from the original Section on Environmental Sociology). He also won “outstanding article” awards from the Pacific Sociological Association for Freudenburg et al. (1998), from ASA’s Section on Political Sociology for Molotch, Freudenburg, and Paulsen (2000), and from RSS for Freudenburg (2005b). The latter was the Rural Sociological Society’s (RSS) inaugural Frederick H. Buttel Award for outstanding publications, and having it named for his close friend and colleague from the University of Wisconsin (who, like Bill, was sadly struck down early by

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cancer) made it especially meaningful to Bill. Then, in 2010, Bill received the Excellence in Research/Theory Award from RSS, and received a standing ovation at the awards luncheon. Finally, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998. Bill was a leader not only on the basis of his intellectual achievements but also professionally through the numerous offices he held throughout his career. This was particularly the case for the Rural Sociological Society, where he served as secretary (1980 1981) and then chair (1982 1983) of the NRRG, and then as vice president (1993 1994), council member (2000 2002), and ultimately president (2004 2005) of RSS. Bill also served as secretary (1986 1993) and chair (1996 1997) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Section on Social, Economic, and Political Sciences (Section K), and as council member (1980 1983) and chair (1989 1991) of the ASA’s Section on Environment and Technology. As noted above, at the time of his death, he was President-Elect of the newly established AESS. Bill also compiled an exemplary record of service on prestigious advisory panels and boards, serving on several National Academy of Sciences/ National Research Council Panels as well as Advisory Committees for the U.S. Department of Energy and Department of Interior. He was an outstanding spokesperson for environmental social science in these advisory roles. I personally always felt good knowing that Bill would be representing our field of environmental sociology and the larger discipline of sociology in such fora, as I could not imagine anyone better equipped to convey the relevance and utility of our work. The respect, admiration, and affection for Bill felt by his students, both current and past, and colleagues was on display at “Freudenfest,” a symposium held in November 2010 at UCSB to honor Bill and his many contributions (revisions of the formal presentations were published in the symposium edited by Davidson and myself see Davidson & Dunlap, 2012).1 It was a joyous occasion, and one that touched Bill profoundly. A few days afterwards, Bill sent out an email thanking participants in which he ended by referring to something he often said to his son Max: In the long run, people get the kinds of friends they deserve. After Saturday night [when the symposium dinner was followed by personal tributes], though, I need to modify that. In certain rare cases, a fortunate few are honored by having better friends that they deserve. Thanks to you, I am one of those fortunate few.

Of course, all of us, and many more who could not be there, feel Bill more than deserved our friendship, support, and appreciation.

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Recognition and appreciation of Bill’s superb contributions scholarly, organizationally, and teaching/mentoring have extended beyond his passing. UCSB’s Environmental Studies Program has established a scholarship fund (designed to enhance the program’s activities) in Bill’s name, and the NRRG of the RSS has named its award of merit for distinguished contributions to the sociology of natural resources the “William R. Freudenburg Award of Merit” and established a travel scholarship for student presenters at RSS meetings in his honor. Perhaps most significant, AESS established the William R. Freudenburg Lifetime Achievement Award (for contributions to environmental studies/sciences) in 2011 to honor Bill, and one of the highlights of my career was receiving this award in 2012.

FINAL REFLECTIONS Despite the sadly premature ending of his extraordinary career, Bill left us with a rich legacy. Throughout the years he developed numerous theoretically grounded concepts that have become valuable and widely used tools in social science analyses of environmental/resource issues and are instantly associated with his name, including “density of acquaintanceship,” “diversionary reframing,” “recreancy,” “corrosive communities,” “disproportionality,” “double diversion,” and “SCAMs (for Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods). The continued fruitful use of these concepts by others will ensure that Bill’s legacy continues, and their importance was best captured by fellow environmental sociologist Steve Kroll-Smith in a January 1, 2011, post on the ENVIROSOC listserv paying tribute to Bill: I came to know some time ago that the greatest among us create vocabularies that become the way the rest of us speak or write the world into existence. Please accept my thanks for the words, the ideas and the subtleties of thought that pushed my work and me forward.

Bill also left huge numbers of colleagues and students with wonderful personal memories. Earlier in his career, he was sometimes a bit brash. As Heberlein suggests in his essay, when referring to Bill sometimes dashing about like an enthusiastic Labrador in his zeal to accomplish goals and not noticing the chaos he created (or faculty norms violated), Bill sometimes annoyed people. But like a fine wine, he improved with age. Bill not only became a marvelous and beloved mentor and teacher, giving generously of his time and energy (even as it flagged with his illness) to provide endless advice and encouragement for his students, but also became legendary

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at professional meetings for attending sessions and providing helpful comments on presentations and then often following up with personal conversations (and/or subsequent correspondence) in which he offered invaluable words of support and insightful advice to numerous grad students and junior faculty. More generally, he was a cherished member of the environmental/natural resources sociology community, providing advice and support for everyone from new grad students to senior colleagues in every possible fashion and venue. While he may have stepped on a few toes, Bill warmed many more hearts, lifted lots more spirits, and enlightened vastly more minds. In summary, Bill Freudenburg was one of the very brightest and most creative scholars I have ever encountered, and this coupled with his endless energy led him to produce more good ideas than any sociologist I can think of. He combined his superb scholarship with a great personality, human warmth, and boundless enthusiasm that encouraged and assisted innumerable students and fellow faculty, and has left so many of us with wonderful memories. Some successful scholars are “takers,” but Bill definitely became a “giver.” Among my many personal memories, I particularly treasure the times when Bill feeling especially good and needing to express that feeling via song would forsake an aria from one of his favorite operas and belt out a few lines from a blues tune to satisfy my love of the latter musical genre. Bill saw me through many difficult times, and I feel privileged (as do many others) to have had him as friend, colleague, and confidant. Although we both had brothers by birth, I came to think of and rely on Bill as a brother. He is truly someone I, and many others, will never forget.2,3

NOTES 1. Videos of interviews with Bill and many of his colleagues and students conducted during Freudenfest, as well as one of Bill’s lecture on his final book (with Robert Gramling), Blowout in the Gulf, all in November 2010, shortly before his death, are located at http://vimeo.com/channels/186979/page:1. 2. Those wishing to learn more about William R. Freudenburg and what a remarkable human being he was can find details on his life and written remembrances from his many colleagues, students, friends, and admirers at a Web site developed by his sister Patti at http://www.forevermissed.com/billfreudenburg/ lifestory#about. 3. The transcription of a long interview with Bill conducted by his ex-student Dana Fisher as part of the ASA Section on Environment and Technology’s oral history project, in which Bill gives detailed thoughts on his career, is available at http://envirosoc.org/freudenburg_history.pdf.

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REFERENCES Alario, M. (2012). Freudenburg on technological risks: Transcendent or titanic? Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 53 57. Alario, M., & Freudenburg, W. R. (2003). The paradoxes of modernity: Scientific advances, environmental problems, and risks to the social fabric? Sociological Forum, 17(2), 193 214. Alario, M. V., & Freudenburg, W. R. (2007). Atoms for peace, atoms for war: Probing the paradoxes of modernity. Sociological Inquiry, 77(2), 219 240. Alario, M. V., & Freudenburg, W. R. (2010). Environmental risks and environmental justice, or how Titanic risks are not so Titanic after all. Sociological Inquiry, 80(3), 500 512. Beckley, T. M., & Hall, T. E. (2013). A tribute to William R. Freudenburg. Society and Natural Resources, 26, 623 624. Burstein, P., & Freudenburg, W. (1978). Changing public policy: The impact of public opinion, antiwar demonstrations, and war costs on senate voting on Vietnam War motions. American Journal of Sociology, 84(1), 99 122. Burstein, P., & Freudenburg, W. R. (1977). Ending the Vietnam War: Components of change in Senate voting on Vietnam War bills. American Journal of Sociology, 82(5), 991 1006. Davidson, D. J., & Dunlap, R. E. (2012). Introduction: Building on the legacy contributions of William R. Freudenburg in environmental studies and sociology. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 1 6. Davidson, D. J., & Freudenburg, W. R. (1996). Gender and environmental risk concerns: A review and analysis of available research. Environment and Behavior, 28, 302 39. Davidson, D. J., & Grant, D. (2012). The double diversion: Mapping its roots and projecting its future in environmental studies. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 69 77. Dunlap, R. E., & Davidson, D. J. (2011). William R. Freudenburg: An intellectual and professional biography. The Rural Sociologist, 31(2), 63 70. Erikson, K. (2012). William R. Freudenburg as student. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 78 79. Fisher, D. R. (2012). William R. Freudenburg as a teacher and mentor. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 87 88. Freudenburg, W. R. (1981). Women and men in an energy boomtown: Adjustment, alienation, and adaptation. Rural Sociology, 46(2), 220 244. Freudenburg, W. R. (1982). Balance and bias in boomtown research. Pacific Sociological Review, 25(3), 323 338. Freudenburg, W. R. (1984). Boomtown’s youth: The differential impacts of rapid community growth upon adolescents and adults. American Sociological Review, 49(5), 697 705. Freudenburg, W. R. (1986a). The density of acquaintanceship: An overlooked variable in community research? American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 27 63. Freudenburg, W. R. (1986b). Social impact assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 12, 451 478. Freudenburg, W. R. (1986c). Sociology in legis-land: An ethnographic report on congressional culture. The Sociological Quarterly, 27(3), 313 326. Freudenburg, W. R. (1988, October 7). Perceived risk, real risk: Social science and the art of probabilistic risk assessment. Science, 242(4875), 44 49. Freudenburg, W. R. (1989). Social scientists’ contributions to environmental management. Journal of Social Issues, 45(1), 133 152.

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Freudenburg, W. R. (1992). Addictive economies: Extractive industries and vulnerable localities in a changing world economy. Rural Sociology, 57, 305 332. Freudenburg, W. R. (1993). Risk and recreancy: Weber, the division of labor, and the rationality of risk perceptions. Social Forces, 71(4), 909 932. Freudenburg, W. R. (1997). Contamination, corrosion and the social order: An overview. Current Sociology, 45(3), 19 39. Freudenburg, W. R. (2004). Can we learn from failure? Examining U.S. experiences with nuclear repository siting. Journal of Risk Research, 7(2), 153 169. Freudenburg, W. R. (2005a). Seeding science, courting conclusions: Reexamining the intersection of science, corporate cash, and the law. Sociological Forum, 20(1), 3 33. Freudenburg, W. R. (2005b). Privileged access, privileged accounts: Toward a socially structured theory of resources and discourses. Social Forces, 84(1), 89 114. Freudenburg, W. R. (2006). Environmental degradation, disproportionality, and the double diversion: Reaching out, reaching ahead, and reaching beyond. Rural Sociology, 71(1), 3 32. Freudenburg, W. R. (2008). Thirty years of scholarship and science on environment-society relationships. Organization and Environment, 21(4), 449 459. Freudenburg, W. R., & Baxter, R. K. (1984). Host community attitudes toward nuclear power plants: A reassessment. Social Science Quarterly, 65, 1129 1136. Freudenburg, W. R., & Baxter, R. K. (1985). Nuclear reactions: Public attitudes and public policies toward nuclear power plants. Policy Studies Review, 5, 96 110. Freudenburg, W. R., & Collins, M. B. (2012). Recreancy and nanotechnology: A call for empirical research. In B. H. Harthorn & J. Mohr (Eds.), The Social Life of Nanotechnology (pp. 241 264). London: Routledge. Freudenburg, W. R., & Davidson, D. J. (2007). Nuclear families and nuclear risks: The effects of gender, geography, and progeny on attitudes toward a nuclear waste facility. Rural Sociology, 72(2), 215 243. Freudenburg, W. R., & Frickel, S. (1994). Digging deeper: Mining-dependent regions in historical perspective. Rural Sociology, 59(2), 266 288. Freudenburg, W. R., Frickel, S., & Gramling, R. (1995). Beyond the society nature divide: Learning to think about a mountain. Sociological Forum, 10, 361 392. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1992). Community impacts of technological change: Toward a longitudinal perspective. Social Forces, 70(4), 937 55. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1993). Socioenvironmental factors and development policy: Understanding opposition and support for offshore oil. Sociological Forum, 8(3), 341 364. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1994a). Bureaucratic slippage and failures of agency vigilance: The case of the environmental studies program. Social Problems, 41(2), 214 239. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1994b). Natural resources and rural poverty: A closer look. Society and Natural Resources, 7, 5 22. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1994c). Oil in troubled waters: Perception, politics, and the battle over offshore drilling. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1998). Linked to what? Economic linkages in an extractive economy. Society and Natural Resources, 11, 569 86. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (2002). Scientific expertise and natural resource decisions: Social science participation on interdisciplinary scientific committees. Social Science Quarterly, 83(1), 119 36.

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Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (2011). Blowout in the Gulf: The BP oil spill disaster and the future of energy in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Freudenburg, W. R., Gramling, R., & Davidson, D. J. (2008). Scientific certainty argumentation methods (SCAMs): Science and the politics of doubt. Sociological Inquiry, 78(1), 2 38. Freudenburg, W. R., Gramling, R., Laska, S., & Erikson, K. T. (2008). Organizing hazards, engineering disasters? Improving the recognition of political economic factors in the creation of disasters. Social Forces, 87(2), 1015 1038. Freudenburg, W. R., Gramling, R., Laska, S., & Erikson, K. T. (2009a). Catastrophe in the making: The engineering of Katrina and the disasters of tomorrow. Washington, DC: Island Press. Freudenburg, W. R., Gramling, R., Laska, S., & Erikson, K. T. (2009b). Disproportionality and disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Mississippi River Gulf outlet. Social Science Quarterly, 90(3), 497 515. Freudenburg, W. R., Gramling, R., & Schurman, R. (1999). Natural resource extraction and rural economic prospects: A closer look. Western Planner, 19(8), 6 8. Freudenburg, W. R., & Jones, T. R. (1991a). Attitudes and stress in the presence of technological risk: A test of the Supreme Court hypothesis. Social Forces, 69(4), 1143 1168. Freudenburg, W. R., & Jones, R. E. (1991b). Criminal behavior and rapid community growth: Examining the evidence. Rural Sociology, 56(4), 619 645. Freudenburg, W. R., & Keating, K. M. (1982). Increasing the impact of sociology on social impact assessment: Toward ending the inattention. American Sociologist, 17, 71 80. Freudenburg, W. R., & Keating, K. M. (1985). Applying sociology to policy: Social science and the environmental impact statement. Rural Sociology, 50(4), 578 605. Freudenburg, W. R., & Muselli, V. (2010). Global warming estimates, media expectations, and the asymmetry of scientific challenge. Global Environmental Change, 20(3), 483 491. Freudenburg, W. R., & Muselli, V. (2013). Re-examining climate change debates: Science disagreement or scientific certainty argumentations methods (SCAMs). American Behavioral Scientist, 57, 777 795. Freudenburg, W. R., & Pastor, S. K. (1992). Public responses to technological risks: Toward a sociological perspective. The Sociological Quarterly, 33(3), 389 412. Freudenburg, W. R., & Rosa, E. A. (Eds.). (1984). Public reactions to nuclear power: Are there critical masses? Boulder, CO: American Association for the Advancement of Science/ Westview. Freudenburg, W. R., & Wilkinson, R. (2008). Equity and the environment: A pressing need and a new step forward. In R. Wilkinson & W. R. Freudenburg (Eds.), Equity and the Environment, Research in Social Problems and Public Policy (vol. 15, pp. 1 18). New York: Elsevier. Freudenburg, W. R., & Wilson, L. J. (2002). Mining the data: Analyzing the economic implications of mining for nonmetropolitan regions. Sociological Inquiry, 72(4), 549 575. Freudenburg, W. R., Wilson, L. J., & O’Leary, D. J. (1998). Forty years of spotted owls? A longitudinal analysis of logging industry job losses. Sociological Perspectives, 41(1), 1 26. Freudenburg, W. R., & Youn, T. I. K. (1999). Institutional failure in environmental management: Toward a fuller understanding of social problems and public policy. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 7, 3 18. Frickel, S., & Freudenburg, W. R. (1996). Mining the past: Historical context and the changing implications of natural resource extraction. Social Problems, 43(4), 601 23. Gramling, R. (2012). William R. Freudenburg as a colleague. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 80 83.

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Gramling, R., & Freudenburg, W. R. (1992). The Exxon Valdez oil spill in the context of U.S. petroleum politics. Industrial Crisis Quarterly, 6(3), 175 196. Gramling, R., & Freudenburg, W. R. (1996a). Environmental sociology: Toward a paradigm for the 21st century. Sociological Spectrum, 16(4), 347 370. Gramling, R., & Freudenburg, W. R. (1996b). Crude, Coppertone®, and the coast: developmental channelization and the constraint of alternative development Opportunities. Society and Natural Resources, 9, 483 506. Gramling, R., Freudenburg, W. R., Laska, S., & Erikson, K. T. (2011). Obsolete and irreversible: Technology, local economic development and the environment. Society and Natural Resources, 22, 521 534. Haberl, H., Winiwarter, V., Andersson, K., Ayres, R. U., Boone, C., Castillo, A., … Zechmeister, H. (2006). From LTER to LTSER: Conceptualizing the socioeconomic dimension of long-term socioecological research. Ecology and Society, 11(2). Retrieved from www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss2/art13/. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Interorganizational Committee on Guidelines and Principles for Social Impact Assessment. (1993). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA Tech. Memo. NMFS-F/ SPO-16. Prepared by (listed alphabetically) Rabel J. Burdge, Kurt Finsertbusch, William R. Freudenburg, Peter Fricke, Robert Gramling, Arnold Holden, Lynn Llewellyn, John S. Petterson, James Thompson and Gary Williams. Krannich, R. S. (2012). Social change in natural resource-based communities: The evolution of sociological research and knowledge as influenced by William R. Freudenburg. Journal of Environmental Studies and Science, 2(1), 18 27. Lee, K. N., Freudenburg, W. R., & Howarth, R. B. (2013). Humans in the landscape: An introduction to environmental studies. New York: W.W. Norton. Molotch, H., Freudenburg, W. R., & Paulsen, K. E. (2000). History repeats itself, but how? City character, urban tradition, and the accomplishment of place. American Sociological Review, 65(6), 791 823. Murphy, R., & Dunlap, R. E. (2012). Beyond the society/nature divide: Building on the sociology of William Freudenburg. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 7 17. Rosenbaum, W. (2012). William R. Freudenburg and interdisciplinary innovation. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(10), 84 86. Shearer, C. (2011). Kivalina: A climate change story. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Stedman, R. C., Patriquin, M., & Parkins, J. (2012). Dependence, diversity, and the well-being of rural community: Building on the Freudenburg legacy. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2, 28 38. Tierney, K. (2012). A bridge to somewhere: William Freudenburg, environmental sociology, and disaster research. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 58 68. Wilkinson, R., & Freudenburg, W. R. (Eds.) (2008). Equity and the environment, Research in Social Problems and Public (Vol. 15), New York: Elsevier.

FREUDENBURG AND STARE AT WISCONSIN Thomas A. Heberlein ABSTRACT Bill Freudenburg arrived in the Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin Madison in 1986 with a broad view of environmental/resource sociology. Within a few years, Bill organized a dozen faculty members into STARE, the acronym for Science, Technology, Agriculture, Resources, and the Environment. For nearly a decade and a half, STARE comprised the country’s largest critical mass in environmental and resource sociology. His intellectual contributions to the field are well documented, but possibly his greatest legacy was training the next generation of environmental/resource sociologists. Keywords: Environmental sociology; graduate training; resource sociology

William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 21, 27 34 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0196-1152/doi:10.1108/S0196-1152(2013)0000021004

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INTRODUCTION “You guys just don’t get it. He is ours!” Rich Stedman called out after hearing admiring speeches and tributes to Bill Freudenburg by his Washington State colleagues, and even greater and louder praise from the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) crowd. And Stedman was right. Bill spent as many years (1986 2002) at the University of Wisconsin (UW) Madison as he did at the other two schools combined. The Wisconsin graduate students, who took his courses, attended STARE training seminars, canoed Wisconsin rivers, and co-authored 17 papers with Bill never imagined William R. Freudenburg belonging to anyone but them. But there was more to Stedman’s point than simply wresting Bill back from Western heathens. Bill was “all in” wherever he went. Even though he was rightfully ours, the Washington State University (WSU) and UCSB crowds could consider him every bit theirs, as well. And that’s the story of Bill Freudenburg. I want to describe what Bill helped create at the UW-Madison. The graduate training program called STARE reflected not only Bill’s love of acronyms and quirky titles, but his gift for seeing the big picture and bringing diverse groups to a common purpose. Training the next generation of environmental sociologists might well be his enduring contribution and true legacy. Rural sociology at UW-Madison came early in the environmental game, but by the mid-1980s environmental sociology had clearly become much more than attitudes, conservation behaviors, and outdoor recreation (my specialties). The department was ready to expand its capabilities. Bill Freudenburg attracted attention because of his strong publications in disciplinary journals, particularly The American Sociological Review, The American Journal of Sociology, and Rural Sociology. At the same time, he demonstrated his interest in policy with a yearlong American Sociological Association congressional fellowship. Plus, he was already in a rural sociology department at WSU. The Rural Sociology Department at Madison, under the leadership of Chairman Gene Summers, relentlessly recruited Bill. His job interview even included a meeting with the governor. Bill accepted UW-Madison’s offer and joined the faculty in autumn 1986. About the same time, Pete Nowak, a sociologist specializing in the environmental behaviors of farmers, was recruited to Madison for a position in rural sociology, and soil and water conservation. Nearly overnight on an academic time scale the department tripled its capacity in environmental/ resource sociology and broadened the expertise to include risk, agriculture, institutions, and community impacts.

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STARE: THINKING BIG Bill viewed the environment as a broad web of science, technology, and institutions. He was among those in the American Sociological Association who pushed to change the name of the “Environmental Section” to “Environment and Technology.” He viewed UW-Madison and its sociology and rural sociology departments as a whole with endless opportunities. For example, Jack Kloppenburg studied the sociology of science and the development of seed technology. Surely this was part of environmental sociology. Jess Gilbert was a historian of agriculture. Why wasn’t agriculture part of the environment? Warren Hagstrom in the Sociology Department was a former president of the Society of the Sociological Studies of Science. What’s more fundamental to environmental issues than science? Students, too, noticed the overlaps. Tom Beckley, Doug Jackson Smith, and Doug Hemken once said to Jess Gilbert: “You guys are all talking about the same thing. Why aren’t you talking to each other?” No one had a good answer. It took Freudenburg to start the dialogue. Rather than separating environmental sociology from the mainstream, Bill was inclusive. He came up with an easily pronounced acronym to capture what was going on: Science, Technology, Agriculture, Resources, and the Environment, or STARE. This tent was big enough to hold everybody. And keep them together. Bill described his vision of STARE in the recruiting brochure: STARE is based on three convictions. The first is that there is no law of nature to prevent us from using the scientific method merely because questions of human behavior are involved; instead, the human connection may actually increase the need for systematic analyses. The second is that there is no necessary conflict between studies that contribute to the resolution of real-world problems and those that contribute to the advancement of science; we believe that the study of the environment, for example, has as much to contribute to sociology as sociology has to contribute to the study of the environment. The third is that there can be significant value in exploring connections among fields of study that have often been pursued separately in the past—or to be more specific, in seeing the interrelationships between and among the fields of STARE, namely science, technology, agriculture, resources and the environment.

THE STARE FACULTY AND TRAINING GRANT The STARE faculty grew with new hires. In 1987, Don Field was recruited as associate dean in the School of Natural Resources. Stephen Bunker, a

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specialist in natural resources and development, and author of several award-winning books, joined the Sociology Department in 1989. And in 1992, Fred Buttel, a founder and leading theorist of environmental sociology, returned to Madison to become head of the Agricultural Technology and Family Farm Institute and a member of the Rural Sociology Department. With this critical mass of faculty and a string of environmental/ natural resource courses, it was time to craft a proposal for the National Science Foundation. In 1992, we received a $550,000 training grant with Bill as Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI). This was about enough money to cover four years of training for four students. Instead of investing the whole sum on a specific student, we used the money to recruit top students, pay for their first year at Wisconsin, and shift them to other research projects as they gained experience. With several extensions, we husbanded this money for nearly a decade, supporting more than 20 students at some stage in their graduate education. By the time the recruiting brochure was published in 1994, it pictured 12 faculty members. Besides those mentioned above were Jane Collins, an anthropologist who joined the Sociology Department in 1991 after working internationally in development and environment, and Paul Lichterman, also in the Sociology Department, who had studied environmental activism. Bill also enticed Cora Marrett to join STARE. She had served on the Three Mile Island Commission and, as the brochure noted, was on leave until 1995 to serve as the first director of social sciences at the National Science Foundation.

THE STARE SEMINAR Once he had the faculty aboard, Bill suggested a graduate training seminar in STARE. “But how do you get grad students to come?” I worried. “That’s easy,” said Bill with a gleam in his eye. “Free food and beer.” We met Friday afternoons, when people were ready to let down and kick back. Bill assessed each faculty member $25, and then had the students shop for the necessary items and prepare the table. We all helped clean afterward. Of course, we needed a special permit from the dean’s office to have alcohol at a university event. Before each semester, Bill trudged downstairs in Ag Hall to plead his case for the STARE seminar and permit. According to Bill, the STARE seminar was designed for “Half Baked Ideas,” thus reducing performance anxiety and encouraging students and

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faculty to take risks. The seminars usually featured two or three presentations. If the idea was hardly baked, the agony soon ended. Besides the nourishment (food), the seminars were fun and intellectually challenging. The connections “between and among” were fascinating. A couple of years after Bill joined the department, I found myself one Friday afternoon scanning a conference room filled with 20 eager students and five faculty members discussing society and environment. I wondered, “How did this happen?” The answer today is obvious.

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Bill’s vision of graduate education was further captured in the STARE brochure. STARE faculty place a heavier-than-normal emphasis on informal contacts among students and professors. Informal get-togethers take place in a variety of contexts, ranging from parties and discussions of STARE-related videos in professors’ homes, to canoe trips that have explored the scenery as well as the resource issues of nearby rivers and lakes. Often, conversations among students and faculty will continue, or ideas for new research projects will be hatched, over the sharing of food and beverages at the nearby Memorial Union Terrace, on the shores of Lake Mendota.

Bill made graduate education sound like summer camp, and it was. The annual STARE canoe trip, for example, combined my interest in outdoor recreation and Bill’s goal to make education fun. Over the years, we canoed the lower Wisconsin River (a visual landscape preserved through the efforts of UW faculty); the Mecan River and Neenah Creek (both proposed sites of Perrier’s efforts to mine Wisconsin waters, and both stopped though citizen activism); the frequently flooding Pecatonica that flowed past Steve Bunker’s farm; the Horicon Marsh, a site of resource destruction and preservation over the past 100 years; and the Kickapoo River, where an Army Corps of Engineers’ dam started in 1971 was stopped by the public in 1975. Bill, a Nebraska boy, participated in every trip. I don’t know if he ever paddled a canoe before reaching Wisconsin, but he did his best while ricocheting bank to bank with other beginners. These trips involved overnight camps and picnics. On a Wisconsin River trip, Bill’s girlfriend, Sarah who became his wife brought along her beagle. To perhaps show its gratitude, the dog devoured part of Bill’s contact lenses case, leaving him with one good eye to navigate the next day. After the Mecan River trip, we stayed in cabins on a farm that had

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diversified from a corn-and-hog operation to one including camping, canoe trips, pheasant hunting, and cross-country skiing. Students brought a guitar and an accordion to accompany our campfire songs. After the Pecatonica trip, we had a picnic dinner and campout at Steve Bunker’s farm. Many of us wore the STARE T-shirt, now a collector’s item, designed and printed by Bill.

BEYOND THE DEPARTMENT Bill was serious about science and was a regular presenter at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was the secretary of Section K (Social, Economic, and Political Science) when he joined the UW faculty, and later became the section chair. He was elected “AAAS Fellow” in 1998. His standing at UW-Madison beyond the department was enhanced by his “Science” article “Perceived Risk, Real Risk: Social Science and the Art of Probabilistic Risk Assessment,” published two years after joining the faculty. When the National Science Foundation put out a call for proposals for integrated centers dealing with the environment, Bill couldn’t resist. He organized scholars from environmental communication (Sharon Dunwoody), the business School (Dan Anderson), and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (Lyman Wible) to join the UW-Center for Resource Policy Studies (of which I was director at the time). The goal was to develop an integrated center linking the university and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to deal with environmental risks. The proposed Center for Risk, Environment, Science, and Technology (CREST) was not funded, but strongly influenced the participants. Two decades later, Anderson recalled that it was one of the most intellectually exciting projects he worked on during his UW career, and spurred thinking that evolved into his book, Corporate Survival: The Critical Importance of Sustainability Risk Management (Anderson, 2005). For Dunwoody, it was her first taste of interdisciplinary collaboration. This worked both ways, as Bill recalled in his oral history. “Another important influence in Madison was Sharon Dunwoody and all of her students in mass communication who kept me up on the latest mass communication stuff” (p. 36). Bill co-authored at least one article with a Dunwoody student who took his course. This joint effort on the CREST proposal helped build our capacity for the later National Science Foundation (NSF) successes, particularly the

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STARE Training Grant and the Integrated Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) Grant. Many STARE students came from other disciplines. The Institute for Environmental Studies attracted students hoping to solve environmental problems, but with no place to learn about human behavior. They showed up in our courses. Bill found them among the most intellectually able and creative students, but he had to teach them sociology first. In the mid-1990s, STARE built strong bridges with the limnologists at UW-Madison. For seven decades, the UW had conducted a long-term study of northern Wisconsin lakes and Lake Mendota in Madison. Since 1981, this work was funded as an NSF Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Project. Realizing the human issues in ecological change, NSF offered a significant funding increase if social science were incorporated in the Wisconsin LTER. STARE was perfectly positioned to join the team. This relationship not only funded our doctoral students but also provided post docs. We met monthly with the LTER group and had our students write multidisciplinary papers and dissertations on the Northern lakes. This partnership led to another successful NSF proposal. Pete Nowak and Stephen Carpenter (limnology) were Co-PIs for an IGERT grant to fund students in the natural and social sciences. Bill and Pete taught a multi-year IGERT training seminar, which required students to publish an interdisciplinary paper. Pete remembers that requirement causing great anguish for students, but with Bill’s help and hard work, they published nearly a score of papers over the years. None included Bill’s name, but all showed his mark.

PERSISTENCE AND MISSTEPS One of Bill’s most dominating characteristics was persistence. This was good for students. I never saw Bill give up on a student. No matter what it took even if that meant many years Bill was there. Persistence also applied to his own research, to institutional development, and to his colleagues. My own book, Navigating Environmental Attitudes (Heberlein, 2012), started in the heyday of STARE, but I never would have finished it 17 years later without Bill’s prodding. Persistence allowed him to break barriers and publish environmental sociology in disciplinary journals. He never gave up on a piece, no matter how negative the reviews, and he taught perseverance to his student co-authors. It was part of Bill’s very fiber. As he

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tried every possible tactic to fight cancer, he confessed to Sarah, “I just don’t know how to give up.” Shaking up the status quo and building academic programs is fraught with danger. At Wisconsin, Bill was sometimes like a Labrador retriever, plunging ahead with full enthusiasm while oblivious to upended tables and broken glasses. His STARE colleagues occasionally held him back or picked up pieces when we couldn’t. Bill credits our efforts in his oral history, noting that Heberlein was “very good at keeping me from stepping into things, or he tried to along with Fred Buttel.” That reminds me of the day I chased after him as he raced to the back door of Ag Hall, catching up just as he burst through the door and plunged into soft cement poured earlier that day. That footprint provided concrete evidence of “Freudenburg’s Misstep” and Heberlein’s unsuccessful prevention. We laughed about it and Bill even once showed it to his wife. When I checked for evidence of Bill’s misstep 20 years later, the cemented footprint had vanished. But Freudenburg’s imprint in the legacy of STARE students who today are productive researchers, journal editors, and leaders of our professional organizations only deepens with the years.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author thanks Dan Anderson, Debbie Davidson, Riley Dunlap, Sharon Dunwoody, Patrick Durkin, Dana Fisher, Scott Frickle, Jess Gilbert, Pete Nowak, Betty Thomson, Rich Stedman, and Sarah Stewart for suggestions and comments on earlier drafts.

REFERENCES Anderson, D. R. (2005). Corporate survival: The critical importance of sustainability risk management. New York: iUniverse. Heberlein, T. A. (2012). Navigating Environmental Attitudes. New York: Oxford University Press.

LEARNING TO THINK ABOUT A MOUNTAIN WITH BILL Scott Frickel ABSTRACT “Beyond the Nature/Society Divide: Learning to Think about a Mountain” was published in 1995 (Freudenburg, Frickel, & Gramling, 1995) just as environmental sociology was entering into its first internal philosophical debate, waged between materialists and social constructionists. Today the debate has moved beyond the article’s relatively modest arguments, but the work continues to be cited and earn critical attention for its contributions to that earlier conversation. This remembrance essay recalls the article’s publication history, begun in 1992, leading to its eventual publication in Sociological Forum and offers philosophical, sociological, and personal reflections on that process. Keywords: Conjoint constitution; William R. Freudenburg; materialism; nature society interactions; social construction.

William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 21, 35 44 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0196-1152/doi:10.1108/S0196-1152(2013)0000021006

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INTRODUCTION “Beyond the Nature/Society Divide: Learning to Think about a Mountain” was published in 1995 (Freudenburg et al., 1995), just as environmental sociology was entering into its first internal philosophical debate. The article made a distinctive contribution to that debate, which pitted materialists against social constructionists who argued the merits of philosophical realism and relativism, respectively (Goldman & Schurman, 2000). Today the debate has moved beyond the article’s relatively modest arguments, but the work continues to be cited and earn critical attention (Carolan, 2005; Rice, 2013; Rosa & Clarke, 2012). This remembrance essay is part sociology of knowledge and part personal reflection. I situate the paper’s central argument in the context of environmental sociology’s initial confrontation with social constructionism and I describe the article’s central ontological contribution to that conversation. Retracing the research and writing process, begun in 1992, that culminated in the article’s eventual publication in Sociological Forum, I argue that the article’s rather tortured publication history is explained in part as a consequence of becoming entangled in not one, but two debates then taking place simultaneously in different fields the realist/relativist debate in environmental sociology and the human agency/material agency debate in social studies of science and technology. I end by recalling this process as a pedagogical experience that has had a lasting impact on the article’s then rather naı¨ ve second author.

PROSPECT: A PLACE SHOWING SIGNS OF CONTAINING A MINERAL DEPOSIT1 Unbeknownst to me, when I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin in 1990 to enter graduate school North American environmental sociology was poised to enter into its first significant philosophical debate. At issue was the prospect that cultural constructionism would advance or forestall meaningful sociological analysis of nature society interactions. Cultural (or social) constructionism as an intellectual movement began in the 1970s, spread rapidly in the social sciences and humanities during the 1980s, and held sway in many areas of sociology throughout the 1990s (Reed, 2011). Constructionist arguments can take a variety of “stronger” or “weaker” forms and they often draw from a diverse intellectual ancestry including

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Durkheim, Marx, Schutz, and Wittgenstein. But all pursue the idea that human social groups produce their own realities. This basic notion runs counter to the arguments wielded by environmental sociology’s founders in the late 1970s. Just as constructivist arguments were beginning to gain momentum within sociology and the broader academic mainstream, these scholars advanced an overtly materialist view of nature society relations grounded, often implicitly and nonproblematically, in a realist philosophy of nature. There were well-known Marxist (Schnaiberg, 1980) and human ecological (Catton, 1980) versions of this argument. And, corresponding disputes about the political economic or human ecological sources of environmental degradation mark the first lines of substantive debate in what was then an emerging subfield (e.g., Buttel, 1978; Catton & Dunlap, 1978b). These early debates were instrumental, giving environmental sociology the intellectual traction it needed to attract scholarly attention and gain institutional ground. Yet the debate covered conceptual terrain that fell solidly within the parameters of sociological theory; it did not venture far, if at all, into philosophy. These scholars did not question the material nature of reality, nor did they question sociologists’ ability to gain access to that reality. Instead, and somewhat ironically given certain founders’ insistence that environmental sociology break from sociological tradition and embrace interdisciplinarity, the field’s first substantive debates clung to century-old theoretical divisions etched deeply within the discipline. And so, as late as the early 1990s, environmental sociology graduate students at Wisconsin (and presumably elsewhere) were introduced to the materialist theories of Richard Adams (energetics), Murray Bookchin (social ecology), and Arne Naess (deep ecology), but no cultural theory smacking of constructivism such as Berger and Luckmann’s phenomenological take on reality, Raymond Williams’ cultural critique of nature as ideology, or even Kuhn’s social psychological theory of scientific change. The exception was in Bill’s graduate seminar, where we read Douglas and Wildavsky’s Risk and Culture (1982) using Mary Douglas’s group-grid framework to trouble the standing demarcation between perceived risk and real risk (Freudenburg, 1988). In retrospect, I believe it was Bill’s work in risk analysis and, more importantly, his extended interactions with risk analysts and other environmental scientists not just reading their research articles but actively collaborating with them that positioned Bill to see beyond the relatively narrow theoretical debates then driving environmental sociological scholarship and the stakes potentially to be gained by shifting the focus of debate toward philosophy and a critical questioning of nature society interactions on epistemological and ontological grounds.

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CLAIM: A TRACT OF LAND STAKED OUT2 Set within the context of environmental sociological debate during the early 1990s, “Beyond the Nature/Society Divide” advanced a modest but timely set of arguments that, along with earlier work by Phil Brown (1992), Fred Buttel (e.g., Taylor & Buttel, 1992), and British sociologist Steven Yearley (1991), helped launch environmental sociology’s conceptual engagement with constructivist social studies of science and technology an engagement that has since grown increasingly diverse, productive, and policy relevant. The article’s central claim is ontological. It concerns what we then termed the “conjoint constitution” of nature and society. Describing this idea as it relates to natural resources, we argued that: The physical characteristics do matter, but they matter in a way that depends to a large degree on the practices, perspectives, and technologies that are taken for granted in a given time and place. At the same time, the social definitions of the situation can depend in unrecognized as well as recognized ways on the physical environment, both in its raw form and as modified by past human activity. The relevant challenge is thus … to understand the extent to which each can become a taken-for-granted part of the other and to realize that it is the taken-for-grantedness itself … that can lead to illadvised assumptions about what appear to be “natural” physical conditions or “strictly social” factors. (Freudenburg et al., 1995, p. 372; original italics).

To illustrate this argument, we developed a historical narrative that entwined the changing social definitions and changing material uses of Iron Mountain, a forested ridge peppered with iron ore deposits that cuts across northeastern Wisconsin into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Drawing primarily from secondary historical sources and contemporary documents and notes that I had collected on an earlier field trip to the region, our narrative charted the changing land uses and historical depictions of the region over the past 300 or so years. We used these changing social definitions of the regions’ natural resources as evidence for our ontological claim that what “Iron Mountain” is at any given time depends on who is there to use it. But at the same time, what there is to be used shapes what human social organization in the region becomes, whether it involves 18th century subsistence hunters, 19th century iron miners, or 20th century tour guides. But to better appreciate the contemporary significance of these historical differences, we also argued that “even where environmental factors exert profound influences on social life,” one needs to employ research designs that are “sufficiently comparative to allow our ‘variables’ to vary” across time or space or both (Freudenburg et al., 1995, p. 371). For our study, temporal variation was the key to seeing how nature and society mutually

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and recursively shaped the socio-environmental history of a particular place. And it is the explicit addition of the temporal dimension that significantly tames our ontological claim. I submit that the embodiment of nature in society and society in nature is not a particularly radical idea once we acknowledge the eternal presence of history and allow for the iterative transformation of the mountain and its people over a period of centuries. Today, climate change renders this argument all the more obvious and increasingly imperative. But in the early 1990s, our ontological claim encountered substantial challenge from reviewers and journal editors. “Beyond the Nature/Society Divide” was rejected by four journals before finding a sympathetic hearing from Jonathon Cole, a sociologist of science who then was editor of Sociological Forum. Why the resistance?

SPOIL: EARTH AND ROCK EXCAVATED OR DREDGED3 In preparing this essay, I revisited the reviews we received on different versions of our repeatedly submitted paper. Sifting back through these academic spoils makes clear that in seeking a publication outlet for our article, we encountered two distinct camps of critical reviewers: environmental sociologists and sociologists of science and technology. Reviewers from each camp objected to our argument on similar grounds but for different reasons. The differences and similarities are instructive. By far, the harshest reviews came from environmental sociologists, for whom the intellectual stakes of entertaining constructionist arguments about nature were (and still remain) quite high. At the time, some of the farthest-reaching constructionist statements coming from within the field were newly provided by Greider and Garkovich (1994) and Hannigan (1995). These works were widely read as arguing for the study of nature primarily as the product of cultural meaning systems and social power relations. Such interpretations were clearly at odds with environmental sociology’s longstanding commitment to materialism and realism. But they also posed a threat to this commitment by exposing a weakness in the logic of environmental sociology’s central challenge to the larger discipline. As that challenge was originally described, environmental sociology would eschew analysis of “social facts” alone in favor of analyses that combined environmental and social factors (Catton & Dunlap, 1978a). Left unanswered in this formulation were questions regarding the necessary mix

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of the two types of explananda. Specifically, how much “society” is needed to explain “society-environment relations” sociologically? Conversely, how little biophysical data must we incorporate into analysis for our studies to count as “environmental” sociology? Materialists didn’t seem to have a ready answer to these questions then like they do now (e.g., in various forms of critical realism such as Carolan, 2005). Social constructionists did have an answer, but it was one that most environmental sociologists including William R. Freudenburg found objectionable. “Beyond the Nature/Society Divide” does not offer an off-the-shelf social constructionist argument Bill made sure of that. Even so, I suspect that environmental sociological reviewers were inclined to read the paper that way, which may help explain why some our own seemed hell-bent on blocking its publication. In its final form, the article does figurative back flips, in the long passage cited above and elsewhere, to clarify our contention that natural resources are not “social constructions” per se, but simultaneously embody social and natural ontologies that are inextricably intertwined and irreducible to one or the other. This nuance is important. But if the environmental sociologists who reviewed our paper worried that our argument about conjoint constitution went too far, reviews by sociologists of science and technology registered disappointment that we didn’t take the argument further. By the mid-1990s, social constructionism was old hat in interdisciplinary social studies of science and technology. That field was by then occupied with a different set of intellectual skirmishes aimed, not in exorcizing social constructionism, but in deepening and further refining constructionist arguments. Among competing versions of constructionism, some of the contention revolved around the epistemological question of “agency” what it was, whether humans alone possess it, and how one goes about finding out. The established social constructionist view was that agency was a distinctly human characteristic and that explaining human action should be the central goal of social studies of science and technology (Collins & Yearley, 1992). But a rising chorus of opponents argued that non-human objects and biophysical materials could also “act” in ways that help explain socio-technical processes and outcomes (Callon & Latour, 1992). This move “decentered” humans, treating “things that act” whether human or non-human as carrying essentially equivalent analytical weight. It was in the context of this philosophical debate in social studies of science and technology that some reviewers suggested that our analysis fell prey to a different sort of criticism. Some reviewers suggested that our study over-privileged social explanations and gave insufficient explanatory

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weight to the Iron Mountain itself and to the technologies that made industrial-scale ore extraction possible during the 19th and 20th centuries. They preferred that our analysis instead investigate the intertwining of nature and society through the trial-and-error development of technologies deployed in the extraction of natural resources during different historical periods and requested major revisions along those lines. Thus, we were drawn unexpectedly into the weeds of a new debate in another field. We struggled mightily with this, and as a consequence the published article devotes an entire section to the task of climbing out of those weeds. The section in question is titled “Conjoint Constitution” and runs for six paragraphs. Embedded within the section, though, is a footnote that runs another five paragraphs, which I suspect is one of the longest footnotes to appear in a sociological journal in recent memory. In it we attempt to distinguish our sociological understanding of agency (as referring to the more or less independent volition of human action) from a “post-humanist” understanding of “material agency” as advocated by Pickering (the only reviewer identified to us) and others who study the temporal emergence of scientific practice (more recently, see Pickering & Guzik, 2008). Our efforts to disentangle our argument from the human agency/material agency debate must have been modestly successful.4 At the editor’s request, the conversation was continued a year later in a reply by Pickering (1996) and our response (Freudenburg, Frickel, & Gramling, 1996). This exchange in turn led to an invitation to Bill to speak at the University of Illinois, where Pickering ran the Science and Technology Studies Program. As Bill recalled afterwards, his presentation to the graduate seminar received a tepid reception, but later over a pitcher of beer, all parties amiably agreed to continue disagreeing.

PAY DIRT: EARTH OR ORE THAT YIELDS A PROFIT TO A MINER5 Getting this chapter published took the better part of three years and required multiple and extensive revisions. In short, it was a pain in the ass. For this then-graduate student, the experience was also at times depressing. But the process taught me a lot about the dynamics of publishing, professional expectations, and intellectual growth. The pay dirt was real. Much of the personal value I derived from these experiences both positive and negative I owe to Bill. In dealing with editors and critical

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reviewers, he showed me the value of persistence in academic life. Left to my own, I probably would have let the paper die quietly on my computer and moved on to other projects, shamed by the early negative reviews we received. But Bill was stubborn and proud and he insisted on staying the course. And he was right to have done so. As the review process wore on, he was also right to shift the bulk of our attention from revising the paper to revising the cover letter, which lengthened with each additional submission and at some point began to include a request that editors not invite Allan Schnaiberg to review the paper. Persistence can also be delivered in the form of patience and Bill showed no lack of patience for me. At that point in my graduate career, I had published one sole-authored article and was working hard to develop an authorial voice and writing style of my own. As those who’ve read him well know, Bill’s expository voice and style stands out in an academic crowd and more often than not I pushed against it as we traded drafts back and forth (Gramling mainly played a consulting role on the paper). Yet try as I might to inject some of “me” into the text, with each new draft, I discovered Bill had retranslated my belabored insights and turns of phrase back into Freudenburgese. What I then often interpreted as a form of academic bullying I now recognize as his way of showing patience with an early-stage graduate student learning the ropes largely by trial, error, and regular feedback scrawled across the page in red ball point. Above all, I think, persistence requires faith. In academic life, it is faith in the value of one’s ideas that matter most. Bill persisted with cranky editors and reviewers and he persisted with my clumsy writing and clumsier ego because he knew our ideas, forged through these torturous reviews and revisions, were good ones. There is no better evidence of this than the fact that “conjoint constitution” continues to be used, criticized, extended, and refined by others nearly 20 years after publication. The concept’s basic ontological premise that nature and society are historically embodied within one another also continues on in recent work that I have undertaken with Jim Elliott, a fellow Wisconsin Ph.D. and fellow participant in Freudenburg’s environmental sociology seminar. In seeking to build an environmental sociology of cities, Jim and I have begun to develop a theory of “socio-environmental succession”6 to describe “interactions among social and biophysical phenomena that situate urban land-use patterns recursively and reciprocally in place.” Taking our cue from conjoint constitution, we aim to show how ongoing redevelopment and reuse of urban land means that over time, urban organization “is neither strictly social nor strictly environmental but instead deeply and

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mutually constitutive of both” (Elliott & Frickel, 2013, p. 6). In this way, and others, learning to think about a mountain with Bill has provided lasting insight and interest in learning to think about other things like cities as well. Even more, Bill’s persistence, patience, and faith in the soundness of an idea helped me to develop enough intellectual courage and professional confidence to study the politics of environmental knowledge, that sometimes uncomfortable place where environmental sociology and social studies of science and technology meet. That is sociological reward enough; never mind the occasional philosophical mess.

NOTES 1. Merriam Webster Dictionary (2013). Available at www.merriamwebster.com/ dictionary/prospect. 2. Merriam Webster Dictionary (2013). Available at www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/claim. 3. Merriam Webster Dictionary (2013). Available at www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/spoil. 4. If so, that modest success was ironic, given the article’s tribute to Aldo Leopold’s celebrated “Thinking like a mountain” essay. In it, Leopold very much sides with “material agency,” granting his mountain the human capacity to hold “secret opinions,” “agree with,” and know the hidden meanings of a wolf’s howl (Leopold, 1949). 5. Merriam Webster Dictionary. (2013). Available at www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/pay%20dirt. 6. Freudenburg (1985) also worked on a theory of succession.

REFERENCES Brown, P. (1992). Popular epidemiology and toxic waste contamination: Lay and professional ways of knowing. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 33(3), 267 281. Buttel, F. H. (1978). Environmental sociology: A new paradigm? The American Sociologist, 13, 252 256. Callon, M., & Latour, B. (1992). Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath School! A reply to Collins and Yearley. In A. Pickering (Ed.), Science as practice and culture (pp. 343 68). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Carolan, M. S. (2005). Society, biology, and ecology: Bringing nature back into sociology’s disciplinary narrative through critical realism. Organization and Environment, 18, 393 421. Catton, W. R. (1980). Overshoot: The ecological basis of revolutionary change. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

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Catton, W. R., & Dunlap, R. E. (1978a). Environmental sociology: A new paradigm. The American Sociologist, 13, 41 49. Catton, W. R., & Dunlap, R. E. (1978b). Paradigms, theories and the primacy of the HEPNEP distinction. The American Sociologist, 13, 256 259. Collins, H. M., & Yearley, S. (1992). Epistemological chicken. In A. Pickering (Ed.), Science as practice and culture (pp. 301 326). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Douglas, M., & Wildavsky, A. (1982). Risk and culture: An essay on the selection of technical and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Elliott, J. R., & Frickel, S. (2013). Urbanization as socio-environmental succession: The case of hazardous industrial site accumulation. Unpublished manuscript. Freudenburg, W. R. (1985). Succession and success: A new look at an old concept. Sociological Spectrum, 5(3), 269 289. Freudenburg, W. R. (1988, October 7). Perceived risk, real risk: Social science and the art of probabilistic risk assessment. Science, 242(4875), 44 49. Freudenburg, W. R., Frickel, S., & Gramling, R. (1995). Beyond the society nature divide: Learning to think about a mountain. Sociological Forum, 10, 361 392. Freudenburg, W. R., Frickel, S., & Gramling, R. (1996). Crossing the next divide: A reply to Pickering. Sociological Forum, 11(1), 159 173. Goldman, M., & Schurman, R. (2000). Closing the ‘great divide’: New social theory on nature and society. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 563 584. Greider, T., & Garkovich, L. (1994). Landscapes: The social construction of nature and the environment. Rural Sociology, 59(1), 1 24. Hannigan, M. (1995). Environmental sociology: A social constructionist perspective. London: Routledge. Leopold, A. (1949). A Sand County almanac and sketches here and there. New York: Oxford University Press. Pickering, A. (1996). Further beyond the society/nature divide: A comment on Freudenburg, Frickel and Gramling. Sociological Forum, 11, 153 159. Pickering, A., & Guzik, K. (Eds.). (2008). The mangle in practice: Science, society, and becoming. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Reed, I. (2011). Interpretation and social knowledge: On the use of theory in the human sciences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rice, J. (2013). Further beyond the Durkheimian problematic: Environmental sociology and the co-construction of the social and the natural. Sociological Forum, 28(2), 236 260. Rosa, E. A., & Clarke, L. (2012). Risk as the real and the elusive. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 39 52. Schnaiberg, A. (1980). The environment: From surplus to scarcity. New York: Oxford. Taylor, P. J., & Buttel, F. H. (1992). How do we know we have global environmental problems? Science and the globalization of environmental discourse. Geoforum, 22(3), 405 416. Yearley, S. (1991). The green case: A sociology of environmental issues, arguments, and politics. New York: Harper Collins.

POWER IN COUPLED NATURAL AND HUMAN SYSTEMS: THE INTELLECTUAL LEGACY OF WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG Thomas K. Rudel ABSTRACT Despite their salience as tools for understanding society environment relationships, coupled natural and human (CNH) systems approaches have consistently failed to offer realistic pictures of the political processes that shape efforts to create sustainable societies. Engagement with William R. Freudenburg’s work on political inequalities in the regulation of natural resources and its incorporation into CNH work would address this source of weakness. Over the course of two decades, Freudenburg introduced a set of concepts that describe the political mechanisms through which politically powerful polluters prevent environmental policy reforms. Freudenburg and Gramling’s last book, about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, integrates Freudenburg’s political concepts into a CNH analysis and produces an explanation for the oil spill that is exceptional in its empirically accurate treatment of the role of political inequalities in shaping environmental outcomes. Future progress

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in CNH systems analyses hinges to a great degree on its ability to portray power dynamics in realistic ways. The Freudenburg Gramling book on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill shows us how to do so. It represents an intellectual legacy which Bill Freudenburg would have been proud of. Keywords: William R. Freudenburg; power; coupled natural and human systems; oil spills

INTRODUCTION When Bill Freudenburg left a small town in Nebraska to attend graduate school in Connecticut in the early fall of 1974, he wanted to study the problematic relations between human societies and their biophysical environments and, through his work, contribute to the construction of a more sustainable society. The dominant intellectual approach to these issues during the early 1970s involved the extension or application of “systems thinking” to environment society relations. A simulation study, entitled The Limits to Growth: A Report on the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972), had defined the initial terms of discourse for students of environment society relations. Over the course of several decades, the book sold 12 million copies and was translated into 37 languages (Parenti, 2012). Only Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) probably exceeded The Limits to Growth in its influence on the ways humans thought about environment society relations during the 20th century. Bill, like all of us studying environmental sociology at the time, had to deal with the book, its thesis, and its methods. The Limits to Growth (hereafter referred to as The Limits …) had its strengths and its weaknesses. Its strengths stemmed from the affirmation that humans reside on earth and that the earth’s boundaries set limits on the scale of the human enterprise. The weaknesses stemmed from the peculiar depiction of human societies in the models. Aside from the critics who dismissed the book’s central argument as an unbelievable “doomsday” scenario without an empirical basis (Nordhaus, 1973), others, including most budding environmental social scientists, criticized The Limits▒… authors for ignoring the politics of reconstituting societies on a more sustainable basis (Cole, Pavitt, & Freeman, 1973). Bill Freudenburg, more so than almost all other environmental social scientists, grappled with the ways to understand

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and abet the political transformations necessary to create sustainable societies. The systems analysts did not, of course, disappear in the decades following the publication of The Limits…; they reconstituted themselves as students of coupled natural and human (CNH) systems (Liu et al., 2007, 2013), but they still encountered problems integrating the political dimension into their analyses. In the meantime, Bill had elaborated his insights on the politics of environmental transformation. These two analytic strands converged when Freudenburg and Gramling (2010) did a study of the massive blowout at British Petroleum’s (BP’s) Deepwater Horizon. This book integrates politics into a CNH analysis in an unprecedented way. In the following paragraphs, I offer a brief intellectual history of these analytic struggles, drawing first from my own readings of recent socio-ecological systems analyses and second, from a reading of Bill’s work and intermittent conversations with Bill from his first years in graduate school until a few months before his death.

EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES AND POLITICS IN THE WORK OF WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG The first 20th century energy crisis occurred in 1973 1974, Freudenburg’s last year in college. Cars lined up at gas stations throughout the United States. Investors showed renewed interest in other sources of energy, notably coal, and boomtown conditions began to characterize communities near large coal deposits in the western United States. For his doctoral thesis, Bill decided to study the impact of the coal boom on a small community in western Colorado. This choice reflected the opposite of the abstracted view of the environment society crisis depicted in The Limits… report. Bill chose to study the interactions between local residents and one of the most environmentally damaging industries on earth. He continued this line of research throughout his career, but the emphasis changed over the last two decades of his life, when he studied the oil industry in Louisiana, to a more concrete focus on the anti-environmental ethos and environmentally damaging exercise of power by extractive industry elites. This focus, which Freudenburg shared with other environmental social scientists, contrasts with the absence of any sustained discussion of political processes in systems theory depictions of the environmental crisis (Cole et al., 1973).

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During a two-decade period, from 1985 to 2005, Freudenburg created a portfolio of conceptual tools that could be used to analyze the politics of natural resource regulation. He described “recreancy” as the failure of institutions to fulfill electoral mandates to protect the environment (Freudenburg, 1993), the “atrophy of vigilance” or the decline over time in regulatory surveillance (Freudenburg, 1992), “disproportionality” as the tendency for the scale of largest polluters’ damages to go unnoticed (Freudenburg, 2006), and “the double diversion,” the concentration of natural resources and pollutants among a few emitters who have succeeded in diverting the public’s attention from their activities (Freudenburg, 2005). In effect, Freudenburg developed a suite of conceptual tools for studying the political inequalities of natural resource regulation that could, at least theoretically, be integrated into systemic analyses of the human environment predicament. For the most part, systems analysts ignored this work, just as environmental sociologists, with rare exceptions, ignored the biophysical environment in their own work. Freudenburg was sensitive to this omission in the work of environmental social scientists, and he addressed it in a 1995 journal article written with Scott Frickel and Bob Gramling. Entitled “Beyond the Nature/Society Divide: Learning to Think about a Mountain” (Freudenburg, Frickel, & Gramling, 1995). Freudenburg and his coauthors distinguished between the prevalent approaches which stress the differences between society and nature and the conjointly constituted approach that they advocated. The former approach does not really discuss interactions between nature and society. It characterizes the differences between them. The recommended approach outlines how the different attributes of nature and society shape the way people conceive of these two entities. The conjoint constitution approach introduces a reflexive and discursive quality into the ways that humans conceived of nature. In this instance, the conceptions of “Iron Mountain” on the upper peninsula of Michigan change over time with the use of the natural resources from the region. For example, the perception of the region changes when mining replaces logging as the chief source of income for the region’s residents in the late 19th century. While these cause effect sequences represent necessary segments in analyses of the human environment predicament, they are very geographically truncated accounts of society environment relationships. For example, does the shift in the meaning of the mountain reflect trends in land use outside of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? We do not know. Clearly, the social scientists had not produced a comprehensive conceptual framework for analyzing nature society interactions. CNH

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systems analysts had produced a candidate framework, but it had some, by now, familiar defects.

COUPLED NATURAL AND HUMAN SYSTEMS: A SECOND GENERATION OF SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ANALYSES Interestingly enough, the intellectual center of gravity in the environmental movement during the past 50 years has resided in the natural sciences, not among the engineers and systems analysts who performed the simulations reported in The Limits…. For three decades, while the authors of The Limits▒…▒sparred with critics, primarily economists, about their methods and the accuracy of their predictions, the silent majority of concerned ecologists gradually began to elaborate a separate strand of systems analysis. This group grew up around Buzz Holling, an ecologist, who had written several widely cited papers (Holling, 1973, 1986) on resilience in ecological systems. Once formalized, this group became the Resilience Alliance (Resilience Alliance, 2013). Holling and his colleagues presented their theory, now referred to as “complex adaptive systems” in a 2002 book, Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Gunderson & Holling, 2002). They also founded a journal, Ecology and Society, devoted to the analysis of complex adaptive systems. Two subsequent publications in high-profile journals (Liu et al., 2007, 2013) have provided easily accessible summaries of this new socio-ecological systems approach. A variety of different measures, the growing number of organizations affiliated with the Resilience Alliance, the high impact factor of their journal, and the large number of prominent scientists affiliated with the group, suggest widespread acceptance of complex adaptive theory. This new generation of systems theories avoids many of the weaknesses evident in The Limits…at the same time that it exhibits some of the same problems that inhered in the earlier systems analyses. Recent depictions of complex adaptive systems acknowledge political currents more explicitly. CNH models acknowledge political dynamics between different levels of governance. Higher levels of governance help to restore services to lower level jurisdictions through federal disaster relief programs. In other settings, political authorities in larger systems move so slowly to respond to disturbances that local authorities may revolt (Holling, Gunderson, & Peterson, 2002). Efforts in the United States to combat climate change by local and

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state governments in the face of indifference by the federal government would represent a revolt. Feedback effects, important as agents of change in political systems (Easton, 1957), also instigate changes in CNH systems (Liu et al., 2013). Finally, with the incorporation of telecoupling, “socioeconomic and environmental interactions over long distances” (Liu et al., 2013), into their analyses, complex adaptive systems theorists have acknowledged the importance of globalization in their models. Each of these characteristics in recent CNH models makes politics a more salient part of the processes depicted in the models. The more persistent difficulty with politics in this new generation of systems models centers on the treatment of political inequalities. One might expect, theoretically, to see more exaggerated inequality in the maintenance phase of complex adaptive cycles, and the contemporary world would appear, as a world system, to be in that cyclical stage (Rudel, 2013), but there has been little effort by resilience authors to incorporate these inequalities into their accounts of systematic change. Combining their systemic approach with Bill Freudenburg’s work on the role of political inequalities in natural resource regulation would appear to open the door to more politically realistic accounts of change in CNH systems. Bill, in his last book, Blowout in the Gulf (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2010), does pretty much just that. He incorporates power into an analysis of a CNH system. The following paragraphs outline the way he fused the natural with the human, all the while stressing how social inequalities shaped the way that the human intersected with the natural to produce a blowout and subsequent oil spill of stupendous proportions.

THE COUPLED NATURAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMIC DYNAMICS OF THE DEEPWATER HORIZON BLOWOUT The blowout of BP’s Deepwater Horizon well some 50 km off the Louisiana coast in April 2010 requires a CNH analysis to explain what happened. The natural elements of the situation spring from the ever more insistent search for new deposits of petroleum during the second half of the 20th century. Having discovered and exploited most of the easy to access oil fields on land during the early decades of the 20th century, oil companies began to develop technologies to drill for oil under water (Freudenburg & Gramling, 1994). Soon the companies had taken out leases

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to explore for oil in all of the shallow waters on the continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico. To exploit the remaining untapped oil fields, companies would have to explore and then extract oil from deposits in deep waters. The natural setting for the drilling posed a series of technological challenges for the drilling team. In particular, periodic bursts of upward pressure from trapped natural gases in the form of “kicks” threatened blowouts at these wells. These spikes in oil and gas pressures derive from the depth of the deposits and make working blowout preventers necessary for drilling (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2010, p. 47). The characteristics of the deposits, the drilling through ocean waters, and the complex technologies for extracting the oil created a tightly coupled CNH with “little margin for error” (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2010, p. 7; Perrow, 1984; Rudel, 2013). The human community supervising the extraction of the oil took a series of shortcuts in the construction of the Deepwater Horizon well that saved time and money, but increased the chances of a catastrophic accident. The company doing the drilling, BP, was privatized in stages between 1979 and 1986, and all of the major BP-related environmental disasters occurred after the privatization. In the years leading up to the Deepwater Horizon blowout, BP accounted for almost one half of all of the OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) safety violations by oil refiners between 2007 and 2010 in the United States (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2010, p. 42). BP’s actions during this period represent a classic example of the “double diversion” strategy described by Freudenburg in earlier work. On the one hand, the company advertised their openness to alternative energy technologies. In this ad campaign, BP signified “Beyond Petroleum.” Essentially, the ad campaign distracted consumers from BP’s chief activity which involved cutting corners in the traditional oil company business of drilling and pumping oil. After the Deepwater Horizon blowout, the company ended its “Beyond Petroleum” campaign, perhaps out of embarrassment. There were government regulators in the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the United States Department of the Interior who were responsible for overseeing the drilling and operation of the wells. The regulators could not, in most instances, be vigilant in their oversight because they did not have the technical expertise to question decisions made by BP and its subcontractors in the drilling of the Deepwater Horizon well. In this instance, vigilance could not atrophy because there was no initial period of real vigilance by the regulators. The inability of MMS technicians to estimate the volume of oil spilling into the Gulf after the blowout also testifies to their lack of expertise. The federal government’s approval of a BP

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response plan that contained unsubstantiated estimates of BP’s capacity for cleaning up a spill showed the same lack of engagement that the regulators displayed in other domains. In Lee Clarke’s formulation, these response plans were “fantasy documents” (Clarke, 1999). The atrophied vigilance of the MMS stems from the concentrated political power of the oil companies. In a word, the MMS exhibited “recreancy” (Freudenburg, 1993).

CONCLUSION The second wave, socio-ecological systems analyses of the Resilience Alliance have incorporated some consideration of political dynamics into their models, but, like earlier generations of systems analyses, they have avoided explicit consideration of political inequalities. Researchers can eliminate this weakness in their work by incorporating concepts from the political sociology of natural resources, created by Bill Freudenburg, into their analyses of CNH systems. Freudenburg and Gramling’s (2010) last book, a detailed analysis of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, effectively integrates political inequalities into a CNH analysis. It provides us with an example of what politically informed CNH analyses could look like. In this sense, it represents an intellectual legacy from Bill Freudenburg to those of us who survive him. I think that he would be happy with this legacy.

REFERENCES Carson, R. (1962). Silent spring. Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin. Clarke, L. (1999). Mission improbable: Using fantasy documents to tame disaster. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Cole, H. S. D., Pavitt, K. L. R., & Freeman, C. (1973). Models of doom: A critique of the limits to growth. New York: Universe Books. Easton, D. (1957). An approach to the analysis of political systems. World Politics, 9(3), 383 400. Freudenburg, W. R. (1992). Nothing recedes like success? Risk analysis and the organizational amplification of risk. Risk, 3(1), 1 35. Freudenburg, W. R. (1993). Risk and recreancy: Weber, the division of labor, and the rationality of risk perceptions. Social Forces, 71(4), 909 932. Freudenburg, W. R. (2005). Privileged access, privileged accounts: Toward a socially structured theory of resources and discourses. Social Forces, 84(1), 89 114. Freudenburg, W. R. (2006). Environmental degradation, disproportionality, and the double diversion: Reaching out, reaching ahead, and reaching beyond. Rural Sociology, 71(1), 3 32.

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Freudenburg, W. R., Frickel, S., & Gramling, R. (1995). Beyond the nature/society divide: Learning to think about a mountain. Sociological Forum, 10, 361 392. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1994). Oil in troubled waters: Perceptions, politics, and the battle over offshore drilling. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (2010). Blowout in the gulf: The BP oil spill disaster and the politics of energy in America. Cambridge: MIT Press. Gunderson, L. H., & Holling, C. S. (Eds.). (2002). Panarchy: Understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Washington, DC: Island Press. Holling, C. S. (1973). Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 4, 1 23. Holling, C. S. (1986). The resilience of terrestrial ecosystems: Local surprise and global change. In W.C. Clark & R.E. Munn. (Eds.), Sustainable development of the biosphere (pp. 292 317). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holling, C. S., Gunderson, L. H., & Peterson, G. D. (2002). Sustainability and panarchies. In L. H. Gunderson & C. S. Holling (Eds.), Panarchy: Understanding transformations in human and natural systems (pp. 63 102). Washington, DC: Island Press. Liu, J., Dietz, T., Carpenter, S. R., Alberti, M., Folke, C., Moran, E., … Taylor, W. W. (2007). Complexity of coupled human and natural systems. Science, 317, 1513 1516. Liu, J., Hull, V., Batistella, M., DeFries, R., Dietz, T., Fu, F., … Zhu, C. (2013). Framing sustainability in a telecoupled world. Ecology and Society, 18(2). Retrieved from www. ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art26/. Accessed on July 6, 2013. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens III, W.W. (1972). The limits to growth: A report on the club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind. New York: Universe Books. Nordhaus, W. D. (1973). World dynamics: Measurement without data. The Economic Journal, 83(332), 1156 1183. Parenti, C. (2012). The limits to growth: A book that launched a movement, The Nation, December 24. Retrieved from www.thenation.com/article/171610/limits-growth-booklaunched-movement. Accessed on July 6, 2013. Perrow, C. (1984). Normal accidents: Living with high risk technologies. New York: Basic Books. Resilience Alliance. (2013). Key concepts. Retrieved from www.resalliance.org. Accessed on July 7, 2013. Rudel, T. K. (2013). Defensive environmentalists and the dynamics of global reform. New York: Cambridge University Press.

SECTION TWO BILL’S THEORIES IN MOTION

THE DOUBLE DIVERSION OF NATIONAL ENERGY IN A GLOBALIZED ERA: OFFSHORE OIL, COAL, AND OIL SAND LEASES Christine Shearer, Debra Davidson and Robert Gramling ABSTRACT This chapter examines similarities in government policies that have accelerated and privatized the extraction of offshore oil, coal, and oil sands on public lands in the United States and Canada, as well as the arguments used to justify those policies. Sociologist William Freudenburg argued that the diversion of public resources into private hands was made possible by a second diversion, the diversion of attention. Freudenburg, with Gramling, later applied this concept to U.S. offshore oil leases, noting that when it came to offshore oil, the myth of “energy independence” was often used to justify policies that were actually antithetical to the concept, promoting further dependence on fossil fuels. We extend the double diversion concept from offshore oil to U.S. coal and Alberta oil sands, noting the similarities in both the policy

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changes and the diversionary frameworks. The frameworks also divert attention from the increasing risks associated with energy extraction. Keywords: Coal; disproportionality; double diversion; energy policy; offshore oil; oil sands

INTRODUCTION In 2005, sociologist William Freudenburg noted that Habermas (1970), among others, has identified what he considered to be a key challenge for advanced industrial societies: distributing resources in a way that is unequal yet widely accepted as legitimate (Freudenburg, 2005; Habermas, 1970). Freudenburg argued that patterns of privileged access to environmental rights and resources or disproportionality are widely assumed or expected to be economically “necessary,” such as for jobs, income, and economic growth. These assumptions often go unquestioned even when they are shown to be demonstrably false, such as highly emitting factories that deliver little in the way of jobs or goods (Freudenburg, 2005). Freudenburg argued that such privileged access is accomplished through a “double diversion” process. First is the diversion of access to environmental resources and rights to a privileged few, and second is the diversion of attention of the rest of US. This is accomplished through “privileged accounts” unquestioned assumptions or arguments conveyed in discourse that serve to naturalize and legitimize privileged access. According to Freudenburg, “the ideal way to do this would be in a fashion that appears to be in the self-interest” of the unprivileged (Gramling & Freudenburg, 2011, p. 22). Gramling and Freudenburg (2011) later applied this analytical framework to U.S. offshore oil leases. They found that changes to leasing policies in the 1980s greatly increased the acreage leased, while simultaneously reducing the price per acre paid into the U.S. Treasury. The policy changes also helped privatize the process, as the lease areas were so vast that the government left it to private companies themselves to conduct assessments of the full value of the public lands. These policy changes were legitimized through the discursive frame of “energy independence,” diverting attention away from the inequity and toward the ever-elusive goal of national energy security, presumably for the public (Gramling & Freudenburg, 2011). This chapter extends the double diversion concept from offshore oil to U.S. coal and Alberta oil sands on public lands. We note similarities in

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changes to U.S. leasing procedures of federal lands for coal mining changes that also increased the acreage leased while driving down the value collected by taxpayers, and enabling private companies to have more control over the leasing process. We then look at how leasing and royalty policies in the Province of Alberta have facilitated the fast exploration and “production” of oil sands on public lands with minimal public input and, until recently, the lowest royalty take of any large oil-producing nation. Taking a cue from Freudenburg, we argue that the energy and economic crises of the 1970s were capitalized upon by fossil fuel companies and political supporters to launch new privileged accounts. These discursive frames make the case that (1) an energy security crisis looms and (2) domestic production is capable of alleviating that crisis and boosting national economic growth. The frames served to legitimize the laissez-faire policy changes in the 1980s and 1990s that enabled the concentration of benefits of energy development among a privileged few, in the name of national energy and economic security. The effect of these policies has been to lessen public revenues and enable the faster export of finite fossil fuels, adding to economic and energy instability that is then used to further legitimize these policies as necessary for the national interest.

OIL The year 1953 marked the closing of roughly a century in which over half of the oil produced in the world came from the United States. Throughout World War II, the U.S. government became engaged in substantive efforts to expand its oil sector, invoking policies designed to facilitate increases in both supply and demand. In pursuit of the former goal, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to settle the issue of federal versus state ownership of offshore oil (Gramling & Freudenburg, 2011). Two pieces of legislation were quickly passed, which have continued to define the federal role in offshore oil development to the present. The first was the Submerged Lands Act of 1953 (43 U.S.C. § 1301 et seq) assigning to states the title to offshore lands that were within three miles of the shoreline. The second piece of legislation was the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953 (43 U.S.C. § 1331 1356), authorizing the secretary of the Department of the Interior to offer and manage leases for oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) (defined as the area beyond state boundaries up to 200 nautical miles). These twin acts of legislation provided the bedrock for all federal offshore leasing to the present time.

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There are two primary ways that federal lands generate income for the federal treasury subsequent to the 1953 legislation: (1) leases are offered for sale in a competitive bidding process with the high bids “bonuses” going into the federal coffers and (2) if oil or gas were discovered and produced, then the holder of the lease paid a royalty to the federal government, originally one-sixth of the value of the resource (Gramling & Freudenburg, 2011). As intended, the OCS program drove up the bids on leases and exploration and development activities substantially, particularly in coastal Louisiana and Texas communities (Gramling, 1996; Gramling & Freudenburg, 1990). In the wake of oil shortages brought on by the 1973/1974 oil embargo of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), President Nixon offered the American public Project Independence, which he claimed would bring “energy independence.” The plan included increased production on the OCS, including the tripling of OCS acreage offered for lease and leasing sales in “frontier” areas those areas that had never seen leasing or were closed following the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969. After Nixon resigned, President Ford continued the OCS program, expanding leasing on the Pacific and Atlantic OCSs. The first sale also went forth in 1976 on Alaska’s OCS. In the Gulf, the acreage leased in 1975 exceeded that of any previous year (Gould, Karpas, & Slitor, 1991). While expansion of oil drilling in the 1970s was substantial, no person had a larger influence on the future of U.S. offshore petroleum policy than James Watt, former President Reagan’s first Secretary of Interior (Gramling & Freudenburg, 2011). Before Watt took over the department of the Interior Department, only a limited number of blocks within an offshore area were offered in each offshore lease sale. Specifically, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act in 1953 divided offshore leasing between two agencies within the Department of Interior: the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Geological Survey. The BLM usually limited leases to a 3-mile-square “block” within broad offshore areas, based on the indication of interest by industry and on a resource assessment conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey. A competitive, sealed bidding process was then conducted. Most of the leases were sold under the stipulation of a fixed royalty rate paid to the Interior Department of one-sixth of the value any subsequent production (Mead, Moseidjord, Muraoka, & Sorensen, 1985). In an effort to further expand OCS leasing, Secretary Watt introduced “area-wide” leasing. In 1981, Watt proposed an amended leasing plan where all of the blocks in a given area (e.g., the entire central Gulf of

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Mexico) were offered at each lease sale, instead of the policy of offering much more limited selection of tracts that had been in effect (Gould et al., 1991). The proposal met with intense opposition, including litigation, from the states, but they were unsuccessful, and in 1982 Watt initiated area-wide leasing. Watt also combined all the leasing, regulation, and royalty collection functions of the OCS program into one bureau, the newly created Minerals Management Service (MMS). The net effect of the policy was not just more OCS acreage leased, but leased with fewer bids per tract and thus at much lower prices. Gramling and Freudenburg calculated that sales fell from a dollar per acre average of $2224.71 for all federal leases sold before 1982 to an average of $263.33 for all leases sold since 1983, when area-wide leasing went into effect (2011). In total, there were 3520 leases sold before 1983 at the $2224 average rate, while 21,179 were sold between 1983 and 2008 at the $263 rate (Minerals Management Service, 2009). Additionally, the changes helped privatize the process: With entire areas being put up for sale every year, suddenly only the multinational oil companies had the economic resources to contract seismic surveys on most of those areas. Smaller companies couldn’t keep up, and the federal government does not conduct independent offshore surveys. In practice, Watt’s area-wide leasing program set up a situation where the primary buyers (major oil companies) knew the potential value of a given tract, but no one else did, not even the federal government. (Gramling & Freudenburg, 2010)

The authors conclude that, in effect, Watt’s actions provided a mechanism to “transfer publicly owned resources to some of the wealthiest corporations in the world quickly, efficiently, and cheaply” (2010). Additionally, the United State has since 1983 commanded a lower percentage royalty rate than virtually all other nations: the Government Accountability Office (2007) concluded that, when it comes to royalties on national petroleum, the “the U.S. federal government receives one of the lowest government takes in the world” (p. 2). Initially, offshore leases required that the federal government receive one-sixth of the value of offshore resources extracted (16.66%). When area-wide leasing started in 1983, a number of leases were sold at just one-eighth of the value, or 12.5%. The lower rates were generally for leases with greater water depths, in an attempt to actively encourage leasing and exploration in risky, Deepwater Frontier areas that would otherwise be deemed uneconomic to drill. In 1995, Congress passed the Outer Continental Shelf Deep Water Royalty Relief Act to “encourage production of marginal resources” on tracts in the Deepwater areas of the Gulf of Mexico. The Act suspended all

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royalties for five years in a tiered system that allowed leaseholders to produce royalty free up to 492.6 billion cubic feet of gas or 87.5 million barrels of oil on leases in water depths greater than 800 meters (Outer Continental Shelf, Public Law 104-58). Many of Watt’s changes were made in the name of accessing new supplies of domestic oil and creating jobs and economic growth. It was argued that such policies would help lead to energy independence and remove U.S. reliance on international sources of oil. These arguments continued, with one of the main sound bites of the 2008 Republican election being “Drill, Baby, Drill!” The energy policy position of the Obama administration does not diverge substantially from the Republican, with strong recent endorsement for expanding domestic production, including unconventional sources like oil from fractured shale rock. Yet the policy changes have decreased the revenues collected for the public, while the resource is not necessarily used domestically: oil drilled on U.S. lands is sold on an international market, with a ban on exporting national Alaska oil overturned in 1995. Even the production facilities for offshore oil built onshore and then towed offshore can be built virtually anywhere in the world, and often are (Gramling & Freudenburg, 2010). Yet it is local populations that must deal with the immediate external effects, particularly large effects like the 2010 BP oil spill an accident that becomes more likely as policies enable increasingly risky activities in the name of energy security (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2011).

COAL Coal accounted for 40% of U.S. electricity use in 2011, and 30% of global energy use primarily for electricity generation and steel production (Energy Information Administration, 2013). The United States is among the largest producers of coal in the world. The federal government controls about a third of estimated U.S. coal reserves, with the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 (30 U.S.C. § 181) and the Mineral Leasing Act for Acquired Lands of 1947 (30 U.S.C. § 351) giving the U.S. Department of Interior’s BLM responsibility for coal leasing on about 570 million acres of public lands, concentrated mainly in the Powder River Basin (PRB) in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming (Nelson, 1983). The Bureau of Land Management is charged with assuring that the development of coal resources is done in an environmentally sound

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manner, and that it secures a fair market value for coal on public land. The Federal Coal Leasing Amendments Act of 1976 P.L. 94-377 further required that all public lands available for coal leasing be leased competitively. There are two procedures for competitive coal leasing: (1) regional leasing, in which the BLM selects tracts within a region for competitive sale; and (2) leasing by application (LBA), in which a company nominates a particular tract of coal for bidding (Nelson, 1983). Regional coal leasing requires the BLM to select potential coal leasing tracts, a process that requires close consultation with local governments and citizens before leasing. LBA begins with BLM review of an application to lease land outside of a coal-production region. For both regional leasing and LBA, preparations for the lease sale start with the BLM formulating an estimate of the “fair market value” of the coal. This number is to be kept secret and is used to evaluate the bids received during the sale. The winning bid will be the highest, and must exceed the coal tract’s fair market value (Commission, 1984). In April 1982, the BLM offered 11 tracts totaling 1.6 billion tons of coal one-twelfth of the country’s total reserves at the time for sale in Montana and Wyoming. The sale was marred by scandal. In the months prior to the sale, the MMS, the agency created by Watt and tasked with determining the value of the tracts, had conducted a fair market appraisal of the leases. At some point before the April sale, MMS staff leaked pricing information from the appraisals to coal industry representatives. The BLM then reduced the amount it was willing to accept at auction to a level below the fair market value, reducing the value of the tracts by roughly 50%. The BLM originally denied that it sold the coal tracts below fair market value, but later admitted doing so, claiming the need to provide domestic utilities with low-priced coal (Sanzillo, 2012). According to a report released by the General Accounting Office (1984), there were an unusually low number of bidders for each of the 11 tracts offered for sale, and the federal government lost $100 million in revenue. After several investigations and minor reforms in the wake of the scandal, the agency decertified the PRB as a coal-production region in 1990, arguing that doing so would increase investment interest in coal mining in the area. The process of decertification essentially stopped regional lease sales, but allowed the lease by application process to continue, as the LBA process is invoked by an application that is outside of a “coal-production region” (Nichols, 2009). The effect of the decertification was similar to Watt’s move toward areawide leasing for offshore oil (Shearer, 2011). By eliminating the PRB’s

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status as a coal-production region, large coal companies are increasingly designing coal lease boundaries in public lands where the federal government once did. This gives the companies insider knowledge and the ability to carve out tracts favorable to expanding their existing coal mines, undermining competitive bidding. Lease by application also allows BLM to analyze the environmental impacts of coal leasing on a parcel-by-parcel basis rather than considering the cumulative environmental impacts of leasing in the PRB as a whole (Nichols, 2009). Although the BLM has asserted that the 1990 “decertification” was needed to spur interest in coal leasing in the PRB, public records obtained regarding the decision suggest the BLM instead thought the LBA process would help facilitate expansion of existing coal mines (Wildlife Guardians, 2009). The 1990 decertification has been legally challenged on the grounds that there was no information “suggesting that the Powder River Basin was no longer producing coal” or that “coal leasing interest was waning” (Wildlife Guardians, 2009). Coal production in the area increased from 150 million tons in 1983 to 470 million tons by 2010. Despite currently being the site of over 40% of all coal mined in the United States (Energy Information Administration, 2013), the PRB is still not considered a coalproducing region by the BLM. While coal production in the PRB went up, the revenues collected from that leasing went down. A 2009 WildEarth Guardians’ report Undermining the Climate found that in the last 20 years, only 3 lease sales out of the total 21 in the region had more than one bidder. The report also found that, as would be expected, the areas with only one bidder were leased at much lower values than those with more than one bidder (Nichols, 2009). A 2012 report concluded that, since 1982, the bids by coal companies for leases did not match the estimated market value of the reserves, providing a $28.9 billion subsidy to coal producers and utilities in lost royalties and bonuses (Sanzillo, 2012). Although the BLM disputes this number, a 2013 inspector general’s report concluded the BLM allowed coal companies to expand their lease holdings by nearly 1000 acres with no competitive bidding and little oversight, approving 45 such lease modifications since 2000 at a loss to taxpayers of as much as $60 million (Office of the Inspector General, 2013). The decertification of the PRB was initially justified to increase domestic production and supply, and create jobs. This argument served to legitimize a policy change that helped privatize vast tracts of public lands and reduce the leasing rates of private coal companies. Yet much federally mined coal is now slated for export, with coal exports more than doubling since 2008

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(Energy Information Administration, 2013). Six export terminals on the west coast have been proposed to increase coal exports, with three still seeking approval. Despite these plans, coal companies have been found valuing federal coal for export at lower domestic prices rather than higher international prices, to avoid the larger royalty payout (Rucker, 2012). They also continue to fight against responsibility for the external costs of coal, such as air and water pollution; a 2011 Harvard report found that accounting for the full costs of coal would double to triple its price (Epstein et al., 2011).

OIL SANDS Oil sands (or tar sands) are mixtures of organic matter, quartz sand, bitumen, and water that can either be mined or extracted in situ using thermal recovery techniques. Canadian oil sand resources are located primarily in the province of Alberta. The vast majority of Alberta’s oil and gas resources are owned by “the Crown,” meaning the Government of Canada, and managed by the Government of Alberta on the behalf of Albertans, as per the 1930 Transfer Act that delegated responsibility for publicly owned natural resources to the provinces. The Province leases the rights to extract oil sands, collecting benefits for Albertans through royalties and taxes. The granting of rights to drill for and recover the oil sands is referred to as the oil sands tenure regime (Vlavianos, 2007). Research and development on oil sands began in the early 1900s. The Alberta Research Council, established by the provincial government in 1921, supported early research on separating bitumen from the sand and other materials. Demonstration projects continued through the 1940s and 1950s. Calls for domestic energy security during the fuel shortages of World War II boosted government support for oil sands research and development (Davidson & Gismondi, 2011). Alberta’s earliest tenure legislation for surface-mineable oil sands shortly followed, established for the area near Fort McMurray in the 1950s. Under this tenure legislation, the province granted three-year exploration agreements that could be converted to 21-year leases (Holroyd, Dyer, & Woynillowicz, 2007). Wider exploitation of oil sands in Canada began in 1967: the Great Canadian Oil Sands company, established by U.S.-based Sunoco (later Suncor), which began commercial production that year at 12,000 barrels per day (Humphries, 2008).

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In the 1970s, Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed attempted to ensure Albertans received maximum benefits from the oil and gas sector by setting a target for his government to capture 35% of the revenues from the industry. The province’s royalties from oil and gas production rose from $214 million in 1972 1973 to $3.4 billion in 1979 1980. Billions more accrued from lease sales (Longstaff, 2005). After Lougheed left office in 1985, the government of Alberta announced that existing oil sands operations and new plants would not be taxed on revenues, and the petroleum gas revenue tax would be phased out, to encourage development (Campanella, 2012). Changes were also made to the tenure process in the 1980s to increase oil sands development (Holroyd et al., 2007), fueled in part by arguments on the need for energy independence (Davidson & Gismondi, 2011). The oil sands tenure process was put under the charge of the Alberta Energy Ministry, in isolation from both the Ministries of Environment and the Department of Sustainable Resource Development (Holroyd et al., 2007). The Ministry’s Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) issues two types of oil sands agreements: permits that run for five years and can be converted to leases and leases that run for fifteen years and can be renewed indefinitely (Vlavianos, 2007). Leases have been the primary tenure instrument since the 1990s, after broader evaluation of oil sands resources (Holroyd et al., 2007). The tenure regime for oil sands is initiated when a company submits a request to the ERCB for a parcel of land, which is then posted in a public offering. The ERCB then conducts an internal review to determine whether the oil sands rights are available (Vlavianos, 2007). If they are, the request is passed to the Crown Mineral Disposition Review Committee (CMDRC), which initiates an interdepartmental review to identify any potential conflicts with current provincial environmental and land use policies (Wenig & Quinn, 2003). The CMDRC is the only group responsible for informing the Ministry of Energy about potential environmental or social issues associated with the surface location (Holroyd et al., 2007). The Ministry of Energy then decides whether to allocate tenure rights, with no public input sought or required (Holroyd et al., 2007). If the Ministry decides to allocate, the government posts a notice of public offering eight weeks in advance of the sale. The oil sands rights are then leased to the highest bidder (Vlavianos, 2007). The tenure agreement carries with it the expectation that the company will either evaluate the oils sands reserve or produce oil, a prerequisite to renew a lease. Additionally, an escalating annual rent is charged for all continued oil sands leases that do not meet a minimum level of production (Holroyd et al., 2007).

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It is only after the bidding, when an oil sands company files its application for project development and the accompanying environmental impact assessment that a formal process of public consultation and engagement begins (Wenig & Quinn, 2003). The ERCB and other government departments then review individual project proposals and consider the concerns of affected or interested parties, specifically defined by geographic proximity to the proposed operation. The outcome of its public interest decisions are tilted in favor of the proponent, as mineral rights holders may be legally entitled to compensation if they cannot access their tenure rights (Holroyd et al., 2007). In the mid-1990s, government and the oil industry representatives projected that Alberta might produce between 800,000 and 1.2 million barrels per day by 2020. That level of production was reached over a decade ahead of schedule, with 2011 production at 1.7 million barrels per day. It is now anticipated that production will exceed 3.7 million barrels per day by 2021 more than three times the high end of earlier projections (Campanella, 2012). While the resources are owned by Alberta, the benefits have not been distributed accordingly. In 1997, the Alberta government implemented a “Generic Oil Sands Royalty Regime” specific to oil sands for all new investments or expansions of current projects. (Previously each project’s royalty terms were negotiated on a project-by-project basis). Under the new regime, oil sand producers had to pay a 1% minimum royalty based on gross revenue until all capital costs including a rate of return are recovered. After that, the royalty is either 25% of net project revenues or 1% of the gross revenues, whichever is greater (Alberta Royalty Review & Hunter, 2007). In response to growing criticism, the Albertan provincial government established a Royalty Review Panel in 2007 to examine whether Alberta was receiving its fair share of royalty revenues; the panel concluded that Alberta received the smallest government share when ranked against other heavy oil and offshore producers such as Norway and the U.S. Gulf of Mexico (Alberta Royalty Review & Hunter, 2007). In response, the 2009 New Royalty Framework tied the royalty rate to the price of oil, at 25% for C$55 per barrel or below, up to a maximum 40% for C$120 per barrel or above. The original rate of return proviso, however, remained in effect: royalties are only collected once a project is deemed to have reached “payout,” meaning various start-up costs have been recouped (Campanella, 2012). A 2012 report by the non-partisan Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta concluded that the Alberta government has received less than

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20% of the wealth generated by oil sands production since 1997, well short of the 35% target first posed by Lougheed. It estimated the industry has banked $260 billion in pre-tax profits since 1986, while the public has received less than $25 billion, or less than 6% of the total value (Campanella, 2012). In addition to low royalties, oil sands companies have also received numerous public subsidies: the Global Studies Initiative found 63 federal and provincial programs directed at the oil sector, most designed to increase development and exploration activity, amounting to estimated subsidies from the federal government of over $1 billion annually (Sawyer & Stiebert, 2010). In Alberta, the Province also spent a total of $700 million in public revenues to support research and development in oil sands extraction from 1976 to 2001 (Humphries, 2008). The people of Alberta must also face many of the external costs of oil sands production, including land degradation, air pollution, and water contamination (Davidson & Gismondi, 2011). In analyzing public transcripts, sociologists Debra Davidson and Mike Gismondi (2011) noted that government and oil sands representatives in Canada, like the United States, have drawn upon diversionary frames to justify the fast development of public lands and transfer of resources. Much of the frames revolve around calls for energy independence and domestic revenues. Yet very little of the fuel produced from Athabasca bitumen is consumed domestically. Canadians consume about 2.2 million barrels per day, yet 1.1 million of these barrels are imported, while roughly 1.9 million barrels per day produced in Canada leaves the country, mainly to the United States. The vast majority of the oil consumed in Canada comes not from the oil sands but from conventional sources, primarily in the east, where much of the population is located (Davidson & Gismondi, 2011). Further, about 71% of oil sands production is owned by nonCanadian shareholders, with over two-fifths (41.3%) of the oil and gas industry’s profits flowing out of Canada (Campanella, 2012).

CONCLUSION This chapter has noted how the U.S. federal government and the Province of Alberta, Canada, facilitated the accelerated development of fossil fuels on public lands through policies that effectively facilitated privileged access through lowered royalty and leasing rates, while invoking privileged

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accounts of the “necessity” of such development for the common good of energy security and economic development. Fossil fuel companies and political supporters encouraged the “development” of these public lands, claiming it was in the public interest, particularly for energy independence and national economic growth in the wake of the energy and economic crises of the 1970s. Yet these policies went against public interests, by undervaluing public resources, and increasing the proportion of profits collected privately and the proportion of costs borne publicly. Leasing procedures and royalty rates, however, are primarily only questioned by environmental groups and other civil society organizations. As Freudenburg argued, disproportionality is often justified by claiming to be in the interests of the unprivileged (Gramling & Freudenburg, 2011). The “privileged accounts” of fossil fuel companies and their political supporters have increasingly put forward the idea that the best way to promote economic growth and energy security is by minimizing the role of government, expanding development as rapidly as possible, and allowing profits to accrue to corporations. If one accepts this narrative, then the only acceptable role that government can play is indeed facilitating private access to public lands. Yet both oil and increasingly coal are sold on a global market meaning both the fossil fuel and the profits tend primarily to go abroad. And fast, laissez-faire development promotes further dependence on fossil fuels through both increasing its supply and publicly subsidizing its full costs, making the fuels artificially cheap when compared to other sources of energy. This dependence becomes more tenuous, as we deal with greater environmental risks from more “extreme” sources of energy. The risks include “spills” from deepwater oil drilling and oil sands transport, as well as the dangers of climate change, in which coal and oil sands are among the most carbon-intensive energy sources. Even if global energy consumption were held constant, it could lead to increased ecological impacts, due to the increasing energy inputs required for production of harder-to-reach fossil fuel resources (Davidson & Andrews, 2013). Yet the increasing risks from fossil fuel extraction, like the inequities in its development, are portrayed as a necessary if unfortunate consequence of national economic growth, which remains the primary focus. The diversionary framework thus legitimizes both the privileged access and the entirely utopic goals of infinite fossil fuels and endless economic growth, even as we run up against the limits of both. Arguably, it is precisely because the “privileged accounts” continue to deny the existence of these limits that their diversionary frameworks hold so much power helping

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direct attention away from both uncomfortable inequities, and from the limits of the modern goals of prosperity and progress.

REFERENCES Alberta Royalty Review Panel, & Hunter, W. M. (2007). Our fair share: Report of the Alberta Royalty Review Panel to the Hon. Lyle Oberg, Minister of Finance. Edmonton: Department of Finance. Campanella, D. (2012). Misplaced generosity: Extraordinary profits in Alberta’s oil and gas industry. Parkland Institute Report. March 15. Retrieved from parklandinstitute.ca/ research/summary/misplaced_generosity_update_2012/. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Commission on Fair Market Value Policy for Federal Coal Leasing. (1984). Report of the Commission: Fair market value policy for federal coal leasing. Washington, DC. Davidson, D. J., & Andrews, J. (2013). Not all about consumption. Science, 339(6125), 1286 1287. Davidson, D. J., & Gismondi, M. A. (2011). Challenging legitimacy at the precipice of energy calamity. New York: Springer. Energy Information Administration. (2013). Sales of fossil fuels produced from Federal and Indian lands, FY 2003 through FY 2012. May. Washington, DC. Retrieved from www.eia. gov/analysis/requests/federallands/pdf/eia-federallandsales.pdf. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Epstein, P. R., Buonocore, J. J., Eckerle, K., Hendryx, M., Stout, B. M., Heinberg, R., Clapp, R., May, B., Reinhart, N., & Ahern, M. (2011). Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1219(1), 73 98. Freudenburg, W. R. (2005). Privileged access, privileged accounts: Toward a socially structured theory of resources and discourses. Social Forces, 84(1), 89 114. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (2011). Blowout in the gulf: The BP oil spill disaster and the future of energy in America. Cambridge: The MIT Press. General Accounting Office. (1984). Deficiencies in the Department of the Interior OIG investigation of the Powder River Basin coal lease sale. June 11, RCED-84-167. Washington, DC: Office of the Comptroller General. Retrieved from www.gao.gov/assets/150/141702.pdf. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Gould, G. J., Karpas, R. M., & Slitor, D. L. (1991). Outer continental shelf national compendium. Minerals Management Service, Herndon, VA. Retrieved from www.osti.gov/energy citations/product.bibliojsp?osti_id = 6375019. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Government Accountability Office. (2007). Oil and gas royalties: A comparison of the share of revenue received from oil and gas production by thefederal government and other resource owners. May 1. GAO-07-676R. Washington, DC. Retrieved from www.gao.gov/products/ GAO-07-676R. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Gramling, R. (1996). Oil on the edge: Offshore development, conflict, gridlock. New York: SUNY Press. Gramling, R., & Freudenburg, W. (2010). Pay, baby, pay. Pacific Standard. Retrieved from www.psmag.com/bU.S.iness-economics/pay-baby-pay-3633. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Gramling, R., & Freudenburg, W. R. (1990). A closer look at “local control”: Communities, commodities, and the collapse of the coast. Rural Sociology, 55(4), 541 558.

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Gramling, R., & Freudenburg, W. R. (2011). A century of Macondo: United States energy policy and the BP blowout catastrophe. American Behavioral Scientist, 56(1), 48 75. Habermas, J. (1970). Toward a rational society. London: Beacon Press. Holroyd, P., Dyer, S., & Woynillowicz, D. (2007). Haste makes waste: The need for a new oil sands tenure regime. Pembina Institute. Retrieved from www.pembina.org/pub/1409. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Humphries, M. (2008). North American oil sands: History of development, prospects for the future. CRS Report to Congress, January 17. RL34258. Retrieved from digital.library. unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc96795/m1/1/high_res_d/RL3258_2008Jan17.pdf. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Linowes, D. F., Alexander, D. C., Brimmer, A. F., Gordon, R. L., & Walsh, J. M. (1984). Report of the Commission on fair market value policy for Federal Coal Leasing. Washington, DC. Longstaff, B. (2005). No free lunch and other myths. Vancouver: Ballot Publishing. Mead, W. J., Moseidjord, A., Muraoka, D. D., & Sorensen, P. E. (1985). Offshore lands: Oil and gas leasing and conservation on the Outer Continental Shelf. San Francisco, CA: Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research. Minerals Management Service. (2009). Detailed lease data. Retrieved from http://www.boem. gov/Oil-and-Gas-Energy-Program/Leasing/Five-Year-Program/Lease-Sale-Schedule/2012— 2017-Lease-Sale-Schedule.aspx. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Nelson, R. H. (1983). The making of federal coal policy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Nichols, J. (2009). Undermining the climate. WildEarth Guardians report. November 23. Retrieved from www.wildearthguardians.org/site/DocServer/report_powder_river_11-23-09. pdf?docID = 590andAddInterest = 1058. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Office of the Inspector General. Department of the Interior. (2013). Coal management program: U.S. Department of the Interior. Report No. CR EV-BLM-0001-2012. Washington, DC. Retrieved from www.doi.gov/oig/reports/upload/CR-EV-BLM-0001-2012Public.pdf. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Outer continental shelf deep water royalty relief act (Deep Water Royalty Relief Act), Public Law 104 58, 1996, 43 U.S.C. § 1337. Rucker, P. (2012). Prices of coal exports to Asia not reflected in royalty payments. Reuters, December 5. Retrieved from http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_22125541/prices-coalexports-asia-not-reflected-royalty-payments. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Sanzillo, T. (2012). The Great Giveaway: An analysis of the costly failure of federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin. Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis Report. Retrieved from www.ieefa.org.php53-4.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/wpcontent/ uploads/2012/06/062512_IEEFA_PRB_coal_report_FINAL2.pdf. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Sawyer, D., & Stiebert, S. (2010). Fossil fuels At what cost? Government support for upstream oil activities in three Canadian provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador. November. International Institute for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from www.iisd.org/publications/pub.aspx?id = 1360. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Shearer, C. (2011). Tapping “our” resources: Declining returns on fossil fuel leases. Truthout, February 4. Retrieved from www.truthout.org/archive/item/94137:tapping-our-resourcesdeclining-returnson-fossil-fuel-leases. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Vlavianos, N. (2007). The legislative and regulatory framework for oil sands development in Alberta: A detailed review and analysis: Canadian Institute of Resources Law.

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Wenig, M., & Quinn, M. (2003). Integrating the Alberta oil and gas tenure regime with landscape objectives: one step toward managing cumulative effects. In: H. Epp (Ed.), Access management: policy to practice. Calgary, Alberta: Alberta Society of Professional Biologists Conference. March 16-18. Retrieved from www.ucalgary.ca/files/cirl/MW-ASPB-2004.pdf. Accessed on August 1, 2013. Wildlife Guardians. (2009). Petition to recertify the Powder River Basin as a coal production region in accordance With federal coal leasing regulations and address global warming impacts of coal leasing; Petition to require coal companies to pay carbon fee for new leases in order to establish global warming impact fund. WildEarth Guardians v. Ken Salazar, United States Secretary of the Interior. Retrieved from www.wildearthguardians.org/ support_docs/petition_powder_river_11-23-09.pdf. Accessed on August 1, 2013.

“DOUBLE DIVERSION” AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL GOOD: FRAMING A DISPROPORTIONATE SOLUTION TO AN ECOLOGICAL THREAT AS A PROBLEM FOR THE COMMONS Daina Cheyenne Harvey and Andrew Varuzzo ABSTRACT William R. Freudenburg conceived “the double diversion” as the simultaneous process of diverting environmental resources or rights shared by all to a small group of social actors, which was made possible by a second diversion the acceptance of the taken-for-granted assumption that environmental harms benefit the common good. In doing so, Freudenburg was among the first to note the importance of looking at not only the distribution of environmental harms but also environmental privileges. In this chapter, we extend the conceptualization of the double diversion to include an instance where rather than framing environmental harm as being a public good, environmental action is framed as benefiting the

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public writ large, while larger issues of environmental injustice are ignored. In particular, we look at the disproportionate distribution of the urban tree canopy in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the framing of the mitigation of the environmental threat of the Asian Longhorned Beetle as a problem for the commons. Through an analysis of media, we demonstrate that organizations and social actors who have tried to address the effects of this particular ecological threat have nonetheless ignored previous disproportionalities in the environment society relationship. Keywords: Case study; double diversion; urban tree canopy; environmental privilege; Asian Longhorned Beetle; Worcester

INTRODUCTION William R. Freudenburg conceived of the double diversion in part to address the ongoing theoretical and empirical gap in those authors who see economic growth coming at the cost of environmental protection (Foster, 2012; Foster, Clark, & York, 2010; Harvey, 1996) and those who believe that environmental protection is made possible through economic growth (Buttel, 2000; Huber, 1985; Mol & Spaargaren, 1993). Rather than marshal case studies behind one view or the other, Freudenburg (2006) believed it is better to “identify the conditions under which empirical outcomes will be more likely to resemble the expectations from one body of work or the other” (p. 11; italics in the original). To do so, Freudenburg suggested one path of the study be the examination of disproportionality. Taking a cue from environmental justice studies (Bullard, 1990; Pellow, 2002; Roberts & Toffolon-Weiss, 2001), and work on the “growth machine” (Logan & Molotch, 1987), Freudenburg (2005, 2006, 2009) noted that environmental harms are often disproportionately experienced. Furthermore, the overall benefit of that harm is often disproportionately diverted to a few shareholders or elites. This is made possible by the “privileged accounts” narratives or stories about economic growth, development, capitalism, deregulation, etc., that are told regarding environment society relationships. Rather than being rare, however, these disproportionalities are normative. As Freudenburg (2006) noted, these “outliers” often become the tail that wags the dog (p. 13). He conceived as the double diversion as thus: The first diversion concerns the disproportionality that is experienced in the overall benefit to society from these

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socioeconomic activities that is disproportionately small in regard to the environmental degradation they cause or contribute to. The second diversion is the “disappearing act” (Freudenburg, 2006) of a critical analysis of environment society relations made possible in part by the privileged accounts inherent to the capitalist social construction of the environment that renders the private benefits and the social costs of access to the commons as taken-for-granted. In this contribution to the Research in Social Problems and Public Policy volume, we extend Freudenburg’s double diversion to include environmental action on behalf of the commons that nonetheless diverts attention from historical and ongoing environmental inequities. Here the first diversion, the disproportionate allocation of the benefits of the urban tree canopy to predominantly white, high-income neighborhoods with high percentages of single-family homes is made possible through the second diversion, the erroneous assumption that environmental efforts to protect the commons accrues benefits for all. Here we look at the discourse, and to some degree, the action, surrounding the environmental threat posed by the Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) to the City of Worcester, Massachusetts.

ENVIRONMENTAL PRIVILEGE AND THE CANOPY While studies of environmental amenities, what has been called environmental privilege, have documented disparities in access to trails (Lindsey, Maraj, & Kuan, 2001) and parks (Wendell, Zarger, & Mihelcic, 2011), and in the quality of green infrastructure development that marginalized populations have access to (Heynen, 2003; Heynen, Perkins, & Roy, 2006), the work on the inequities of urban canopies remains incomplete. Analyses that do exist, however, have generally shown that across North American cities economically and racially marginalized populations often have significantly less access to the canopy (Heynen et al., 2006; Landry & Chakraborty, 2009; Pham, Apparicio, Se´gun, Landry, & Gagnon, 2012). These canopy disparities can have important ramifications for residents. Urban trees have been shown to help conserve energy and water, reduce storm-water runoff and airborne pollution, aid in carbon sequestration, and improve soil quality (Dwyer, McPherson, Schrodeder, & Rowntree, 1992; Freilicher, 2011; Heisler, 1986; Meier, 1991; Nowak & McPherson, 1993). Socially, the presence of urban trees has been shown to increase foot traffic within business districts, improve neighborhood cohesiveness

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and interaction, reduce stress, reduce reported crimes, and improve hospitalized patients’ recovery times (Kuo & Sullivan, 2001; Maas et al., 2009). Furthermore, the absence of tree canopy has been shown to lower the overall quality of life in cities for marginalized populations, especially when compared to urban elites (Pedlowski, Da Silca, Adell, & Heynen, 2003). Discussions of the urban forest are often embedded in the natural landscape, where the presence of trees is the result of natural, ecological, and biological processes. The natural landscape, however, is the result of a dialectical relationship between nature and society (Heynen, 2003). And while the presence of canopy can be the result of household level or neighborhood preferences, and even the result of complex socio-historical factors, it is often the outcome of public-sector investments, development, planning, or the involvement of local policies and groups (Pham et al., 2012). Thus, while we recognize that there are both private property aspects to the canopy and in the statistical analysis of the canopy spatial autocorrelation problems, we argue that little attention in the disproportionality of the urban canopy has been given to the role of local actors even those who are actively engaged in mitigating environmental problems (for a rare exception, see Conway, Shakeel, & Atallah, 2011).

WORCESTER’S URBAN TREE CANOPY: THE FIRST DIVERSION In some of his earliest writings, Henry David Thoreau expressed concerns over the changes in New England’s forests. In 1855, he began to annotate the changes in the landscape around Concord; comparing it to when early travelers a few centuries before had noted the landscape for English readers, he could not but fathom how much had been lost (Cronon, 1983). During the time period that concerned Thoreau about two-thirds of Massachusetts’ woodlands were cleared (Herwitz, 2001). Despite the fact that the City had tree protection ordinances since almost its founding, the residents of Worcester had nonetheless managed to clear 5500 acres of land almost a fifth of the town (Herwitz, 2001) by the time Thoreau began to write about the canopy (Fig. 1). Various societies and associations, like the Worcester County Horticulture Society, which was founded in 1842, and the Worcester Grange, began to restore Worcester’s urban canopy in the late 19th

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Fig. 1.

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Worcester, MA & Worcester County. Source: Wikipedia. Insert Map: Massachusetts Office of Labor and Workforce Development.

century. Much of their efforts, however, were focused on particular parks and neighborhoods and revealed a clear class bias (Rosenzweig, 1983). By the mid-20th century, disparity in the canopy was evident. Zoning, planned communities, and advocacy groups created economic and ethnic disparities in access to canopy cover. By the end of the 20th century through ecological threats and budget cuts to forestry and park programs, Worcester’s street canopy had in 50 years gone from 50,000 trees to around 17,000. While the total canopy has not declined at the same rate as the street and park canopy, disparities that have existed in access to the public canopy exist here as well, and might even be more severe (Freilicher, Kane, Ryan, & Bloniarz, 2008). We rely on a two-step methodology to compare canopy cover with demographic and socio-economic data. To get an idea of the disproportionality in Worcester’s tree canopy, we used the U.S. Forest Service’s online I-tree canopy mapping utility. The current study analyzed a total of 166 areas corresponding to all census designated block groups within the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. Each area was plotted separately into the I-tree utility. Five possible land cover categories were then selected: tree canopy, grass/herbaceous, impermeable ground surface, permanent structure, and water/swampland. After defining land cover categories, all 166 areas were randomly sampled using satellite imagery. Each area resulted in 250 350 points of canopy. Areas were sampled until the program

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calculated a standard deviation of error for all land cover classes below 3%. In total, roughly 45,000 user-defined points were used to calculate tree cover across all 166 block groups within Worcester. Percent canopy cover data were then compared with corresponding block group demographic data compiled by City-Data.com (n.d.). The block group level was chosen for this study because of the availability of information, consistent demographics, and overall homogeneity of housing styles and lot sizes at this scale. The tract level proved to be too broad and inconclusive for a study at the city level, while the block level lacked available census data necessary for the study. Percent tree cover data for all block groups was compared against demographic trends within the block group area including percent white, percent black, percent family households, percent non-family households, median household income, median house or condo value, median monthly rent, percent of the block area that is composed of rental housing, percent unemployed, percent living below the poverty line, median resident age, percent male, percent female, and overall population density.1 As can be seen in Fig. 2, the spatial distribution of Worcester’s canopy is disproportionate. The maximum canopy coverage is 77.5%, while many blocks have very little canopy. In Fig. 2, we present several socioeconomic and demographic variables that have been found to affect canopy cover. Here, we can see that median household income, housing type, dominant racial and ethnic group, population density, the percent of the block unemployed, and percent of rental housing are significant drivers of the inequities in canopy cover. Areas with higher levels of income, more single-family housing, that have few renters and a low percentage of the neighborhood living in poverty, and are composed mainly of non-Hispanic whites seem to have better access to the urban canopy cover. To see which variables are mostly closely related to canopy cover, these variables and others were statistically correlated. Table 1 shows that canopy cover is statistically correlated at a significant level of 0.01 with a number of socioeconomic and demographic variables. Looking by block group, there is a positive, significant correlation in canopy cover and percentage of the neighborhood that is white (0.445). Likewise, as found in most of the literature on the urban canopy, while not statistically significant here, percentage of the block group that is black is negatively correlated with canopy cover (−0.133). While not establishing environmental racism, lack of canopy cover in black neighborhoods clearly reveals environmental justice concerns. Median household income at the block area is also moderately, statistically correlated with canopy cover

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0

15

30

45

60

75+

0

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Percentage Family Households

Percentage Tree Canopy Cover

0

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Percentage Renter Occupied Housing

0

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Percentage White Population

0

10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000

Population Density (People per Square Mile)

0

25,000 50,000 75,000 100,000 125,000 Median Household Income (U.S. Dollars)

Fig. 2. Worcester’s Canopy Cover (Top Left) Corresponds with Several Demographic Trends Including (from Top Right): Percentage of Family Households, Percentage of Renter Occupied Housing, Population Density, Percentage of White Population, and Median Household Income.

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Table 1. Socioeconomic and Demographic Correlations with Worcester’s Urban Canopy. PEARSON’S Correlation

Canopy

Residential Canopy

% White % Black % Family % Non-family % Income % Housing worth % Unemployed % Poverty % Population density % Rental housing

0.445** −0.133 0.285** −0.268** 0.447** 0.106 −0.270** −0.441** −0.390** −0.404**

0.421** −0.226* 0.257** −0.247** 0.479** 0.101 −0.279** −0.371** −0.523** −0.547**

*p < .05; **p < .01.

(0.447). While the political, economic, and historical bases of these relationships are complicated, taken together these two variables and their relationships to the canopy suggests that marginalized neighborhoods have disproportionate access to what is usually assumed to be a shared environmental good. Furthermore, regression analyses controlling for interaction effects between income and racial and ethnic status suggest that while there are other drivers of disproportionate canopy cover, these variables offer the most predictive power for explaining who lacks access to the urban canopy.2 While weakly correlated, the presence of single-family homes (0.285) is also positively correlated with canopy cover at the 0.05 level. The canopy is negatively correlated with unemployment (−0.270), living in poverty (−0.441), the percentage of housing that is rental (−0.404), and population density (−0.390). Another way of understanding these relationships is by stating that by living in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods with less population density and more single-family homes, residents gain environmental privilege. While not likely, it is entirely possible that inequities in the public canopy could be mitigated through access to the private or residential canopy. As noted by Landry and Chakraborty (2009), few studies of canopy differentiate between the two, and yet differences can be substantial. Table 1 shows that the differences between Worcester’s urban canopy and residential canopy are not large. Statistically speaking, there are very few differences between the two analyses. Being in a predominantly black block group becomes significant at the 0.05 level and population density

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becomes the variable with the greatest correlation (negative) with the canopy cover.3 While there are numerous reasons for the disproportionate spatial distribution of trees, including land use and settlement age (Nowak, 1993), political factors (Kendal, Williams, & Williams, 2012; McLean & Jensen, 2004), and even preference and behavior of residents (Talarchek, 1990), it is not the goal of this chapter to explain why the disparity exists in Worcester. For the purpose of the diversion, it is sufficient that the disproportionality simply exists. In the next part of the chapter, we turn to the second diversion, the taken-for-granted assumptions about the environmental good.

THE ASIAN LONGHORNED BEETLE INVASION: THE SECOND DIVERSION In 2008, the ALB was discovered inhabiting Worcester’s tree canopy. It is believed to have come from wooden pallets and other packing materials from Asia, though it can be carried into communities through other means (such as fire wood or lumber). The beetle is extremely destructive. Its larvae burrow deep into the tree and bore holes through the tree in a process called girdling that destroys the cambium layer which is responsible for transporting nutrients from the roots up to the leaves. The beetle has few natural predators and there is no cure for infected trees. Infected trees are quarantined and cut down and the wood is destroyed. Close to 81% of the street trees and a similar percentage of private trees in Worcester are the preferred hosts of ALBs. To analyze media discourse, we searched all local newspapers using the term “Asian Longhorned Beetle” in the ALB-affected area, including Worcester, Auburn, Holden, Boylston, West Boylston, and Shrewsbury. From Worcester, we also looked at alternative media sources, including InCity Times, Worcester Magazine, and the affiliated blog the Daily Worcesteria. From local papers and online sources, we also followed links and thus ended up with articles from the Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. A convenience sample produced 75 articles. The fight to eradicate the ALB from the greater Worcester area has garnered substantial local, regional, and even national media coverage since its beginnings in 2008. Though most media sources both frequently and

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accurately relay necessary information to the public regarding local, state, and federal eradication efforts, we find that almost all media sources ignore the overarching disproportionalities present in Worcester’s urban forest. The reforestation of Worcester has thus come to be characterized as a responsive measure to an acute environmental change instead of as a push to reverse a chronically devastating century-old decline. Media discourse surrounding the militaristic nature of both the beetle and the quarantine area has been instrumental in the characterization of the ALB infestation as an immediate environmental threat. Just months after the initial discovery, Worcester Magazine likened City Manager Michael O’Brian’s recent address to “a president declaring a war against aliens in a Will Smith blockbuster” (Skoler, 2010). The same message was again repeated in 2013 with the Worcester Telegram and Gazette reporting that, “[o]ur city and region continues to be vigilant and invest in the war against this scourge” (Caywood, 2013). Worcester Magazine and The Boston Globe also, respectively, published articles titled “The Battle Isn’t Over vs. the Asian Longhorned Beetle” (February 23, 2011) and “Workers Begin Toppling Trees in Beetle Battle” (January 4, 2009). Much like framing social problems as “emergencies” (Lipsky & Smith, 1989), framing this particular problem as a war or a battle has attracted much media attention, but has diverted attention away from larger, chronic issues of environmental privilege. Response to ALB resulted in increased political pressure on the part of the local government to secure reforestation funds, the holding of community meetings to address the City’s canopy, and a large monetary outlay at the state level. In news articles published between 2011 and 2013, however, the response to ALB is presented as replacement a strategy that only addresses areas specifically impacted by ALB. “With all of the replacement trees going back in, officials wanted to track everything” (Croteau, 2011) states one Telegram and Gazette article while describing the deployment of GIS software in the field. As early as February 2011, the Daily Worcesteria reported that, “[p]lanting has been done by all three to replace trees as they are cut in order to someday restore our canopy with a mix of species” (Kingsbury, 2011). More recently, the Shewsbury Patch confidently reported that, “[t]o complement the search and remove procedures, plans have been developed to plant an additional 300 trees with more on the way” (O’Donnell, 2013). A handful of articles noted the disproportionality of having to be selective in replanting, but hoped that eventually longstanding disparities would be remedied. “While the USDA plans to replace cut trees with small, young saplings, residents are concerned it may take

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decades for them to grow to full size. Mr. Murray said state and federal money also has limitations, and the supplemental public-private effort will provide more flexibility over the number, size and types of trees that can be used to restore the urban forest” (Monahan, 2009). Not all articles, however, were subtle when characterizing the reforestation strategy as selective and reactive. A well-publicized statement by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) Commissioner Ed Lambert, which reads “DCR is pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this grant program and be able to offer new trees to the communities that have been hardest hit by the Asian Longhorned Beetle infestation” (August 20, 2012), serves to illustrate this point. While it cannot be argued that reforesting the hardest hit areas is not of critical importance, Commissioner Lambert’s statement helped to cement in the eyes of the public the DCR’s targeted role in the re-greening process. Other news outlets, including the Worcester Magazine and InCity Times, relayed this message by noting that “(The) DCR will focus its replanting efforts in areas where trees have been removed as part of the Asian Longhorned Beetle eradication effort” (Bird Jr., 2012). In this way, federal and state agencies inadvertently diverted public attention toward targeted measures that respond to the ALB, but ignored broader forestry concerns.4 While the ALB is indeed an immediate environmental threat, the highly singular focus of the media attention served to re-enforce the takenfor-granted assumption that any effort to mitigate environmental peril is beneficial for the common good. This was especially noticeable in the media discussions of potential economic losses due to ALB in both specific neighborhoods of Worcester as well as the greater New England region. Perhaps most fully explored were the regional threats to the maple sugaring, tourism, lumber, and furniture industries. Just days after the discovery of the beetle in mid-2008, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette reported that, “if the beetle were to expand from quarantined areas it has the potential to wreak havoc nationwide, affecting such industries as lumber, maple syrup, nursery and tourism and [cause] more than $41 billion in losses” (Hammel, 2008). By late 2009, this broader threat had earned the attention of The New York Times where it was reported that, “[t]he discovery of the beetle in New England has raised fears about its threat to the region’s fall foliage and the maple syrup industry, if the infestation spreads farther north” (Green, 2008). Similarly, NPR warned that, “[a] massive beetle infestation could cost billions to the lumber, tourism and maple syrup industries and have significant but harder-to-quantify environmental impacts” (Carpenter, 2009), while the Smithsonian Magazine ominously

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quoted USDA Project Manager Clint McFarland saying, “[t]here is so much at stake. If it hits the Northeastern hardwood forest, you’re looking at the maple industry, timber, tourism. It’s huge. We really can’t fail” (Alsop, 2009). While these warnings ominously foretell of future loss at the regional level if proper action is not taken, other articles cited more immediate economic losses at the city level. These losses stem from the absence of the benefits associated with the presence of trees. “Other benefits trees provide are shade and cooling, blocking wind to reduce energy consumption, cleansing the air by reducing carbon dioxide and increasing oxygen, preventing flooding and reducing storm-water runoff, providing wildlife habitat, aesthetic amenities and other health benefits” (Lazzaro, 2012). Studies of the loss or potential loss of canopy cover, both at the regional and local levels, likewise convey the message that everyone has an equal stake in the mitigation of ALB. A study that valued the annual loss from 25,000 removed trees at $630,000 noted the benefit of the canopy to residents: “(s)torm runoff services, their heating and cooling services to homeowners, and their aesthetic value” (O’Keefe, 2010). And in a report prepared for the City and for the Massachusetts DCR, the annual benefit of street trees is valued at over two million dollars a year. Yet despite being presented as a problem for the commons, as shown in the previous section, the canopy is disproportionately distributed among Worcester’s residents. Some media coverage pointed out the diversion, but this was notable because of the dearth of attention. “Other neighborhoods have also lost a significant number of trees, not just on streets but on private property. In the southeastern section of the city, such as the Union Hill, Green Island, Vernon Hill and Grafton Hill neighborhoods, trees have been removed over a much longer time frame, with many streets losing all of their tree canopies” (Moynagh, 2009). And recently the Worcester Telegram and Gazette reported from a study at Clark University that, [b]etween 2008 and 2010 when most of the tree cutting occurred the tree loss due to urban development was actually double the ALB-related tree loss in the quarantine zone… This loss is more than the scale of ALB losses, but hidden because it doesn’t affect a concentrated urban area as did the ALB losses. But the impacts are significant nonetheless” (Martin & Rogan, 2013). These authors noted not only the selective attention to particular neighborhoods for canopy replacement but also the disregard for other more severe threats to the canopy. The media’s framing of and the discourse surrounding the ALB as a problem for the commons diverts attention from the fact that Worcester’s tree canopy is disproportionately distributed. Coverage also focuses mainly

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on replacing lost trees rather than creating an equitable distribution of the canopy a more important issue for creating an environmentally just city. By omitting the diverse threats to the canopy and reporting on its current state and by covering the dramatic effort to reforest Worcester, taken-forgranted claims regarding environmental action and environmental privilege remain uncontested.

CONCLUSION Freudenburg’s double diversion is about privileged access and privileged accounts. It has been mainly used to explain the un- (or under) questioned appropriation of environmental goods by corporations for the alleged benefit of all. In several recent disasters, notably Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures and the BP disaster, studied by Freudenburg and his colleagues, the double diversion is clearly at work (Freudenburg, Gramling, Laska, & Erikson, 2009; Freudenburg & Gramling, 2010). Freudenburg conceived of the double diversion as a research tool to challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions we have about society environment relationships. In this chapter, we have tried to expand the concept of the double diversion to include not only the disproportionality of environmental harm that is created by diverting resources and rights to the few but also the disproportionality of access to environmental privileges. Furthermore, we’ve extended it to consider a case where the outcome is not environmental harm, but rather environmental action. Yet, just as Freudenburg (2006) noted the dangers of not questioning privileged accounts of actions that end in environmental harm, we argue that not questioning claims of actions that end in environmental good can also be deleterious. Here, the framing of the decline of the canopy and subsequent environmental action the reforestation of Worcester as a war on the ALB hides the chronicity of the environmental peril as well as diverts attention from other causes of deforestation. More troubling perhaps, it presents the solution to the ecological threat as fixing a problem for the commons when in fact only select neighborhoods have been replanted and the problem of unequal access to the benefits of the urban canopy remain. The taken-for-granted accounts of environmentalists and activists are rarely questioned. And yet the scalar production of injustice inherent to many environmental solutions has a broad range of implications (Heynen, 2003).

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The case of Worcester’s urban canopy demonstrates that greater attention should be given to both the framing and solving of urban environmental ills. Likewise, those campaigns and actions for environmental justice that involve environmental privilege both access and accounts in particular those with which we might sympathize, deserve close scrutiny. Freudenburg’s double diversion offers numerous opportunities for application and analysis. In doing so, as Freudenburg (2005) suggested in his seminal paper on the diversion, our findings “can offer important opportunities for insights not just about nature but also about the nature of power, and about the power of the naturalized” (p. 108). Finally, in doing so we can also extend the important work of William Freudenburg and environmental studies.

NOTES 1. Not all results are reported here. Analyses of other variables are available upon request. 2. While not discussed here, these analyses are available upon request. 3. This is due, in part, to the fact that residential canopy is often a much larger percentage of the overall canopy and thus we would expect to see little difference between the two. If we had compared street canopy to residential canopy, then a larger difference may have been found. 4. It is important, and also fair, to note that actions at the state level throughout the course of the ALB eradication and replanting efforts were often dictated by stipulations attached to federal funding sources. A specific requirement that new trees must be planted within certain distances of removal sites was a key imposition on the use of federal funds. The reasons for these stipulations, however, can likely be traced to the perception of the ALB as a problem which poses a threat to the commons rather than specific neighborhoods.

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Buttel, F. (2000). Word society, the nation-state, and environmental protection. American Sociological Review, 65(1), 117 121. Carpenter, M. (2009, February 21). The return of the Asian Longhorned beetle. National Public Radio. Retrieved from www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId = 100961303. Accessed on August 5, 2013. Caywood, T. (2013, March 25). Asian Longhorn beetles can be eradicated but it takes time: Unlike NJ, beetles here still have bark. Worcester Telegram and Gazette. Retrieved from www.telegram.com/article/20130325/NEWS/103259969/1116. Accessed on August 5, 2013. City-Data. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.city-data.com. Accessed on August 8, 2013. Conway, T., Shakeel, T., & Atallah, J. (2011). Community groups and urban forestry activity: Drivers of uneven canopy cover? Landscape and Urban Planning, 101(4), 321 329. Cronon, W. (1983). Changes in the land: Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England. New York, NY: Hill and Wang. Croteau, S. (2011, March 21). Information is power as agencies track beetles, trees and dollars. Worcester Telegram and Gazette. Retrieved from www.telegram.com/article/20110321/ NEWS/103210352/1003. Accessed on August 7, 2013. Dwyer, J., McPherson, E. G., Schrodeder, H., & Rowntree, R. (1992). Assessing the benefits and costs of the urban forest. Journal of Arboriculture, 18(5), 227 234. Foster, J. B. (2012). The planetary rift and the new human exemptionalist critique of ecological modernization. Organization and Environment, 25(3), 211 237. Foster, J. B., Clark, B., & York, R. (2010). The ecological rift: Capitalism’s war on the earth. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Freilicher, M. (2011). Tree by tree, yard by yard: Replanting Worcester’s trees. Arnoldia, 69(1), 2 13. Freilicher, M., Kane, B., Ryan III, H. D. P, & Bloniarz, D. (2008). Trees in peril: Responding to the Asian Longhorned Beetle. A report on the status of street trees in Worcester, Massachusetts. Prepared for the City of Worcester, Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Freudenburg, W. R. (2005). Privileged access, privileged accounts: Toward a socially structured theory of resources and discourses. Social Forces, 84(1), 89 114. Freudenburg, W. R. (2006). Environmental degradation, disproportionality, and the double diversion: Reaching out, reaching ahead, and reaching beyond. Rural Sociology, 71(1), 3 32. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (2010). Blowout in the Gulf: The BP oil spill disaster and the future of energy in America. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Freudenburg, W. R., Gramling, R., Laska, S., & Erikson, K. T. (2009). Disproportionality and disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Mississippi River Gulf outlet. Social Science Quarterly, 90(3), 497 515. Green, A. (2008, November 27). Asian beetle spells death for maples so dear. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/us/28trees.html. Accessed on August 5, 2013. Hammel, L. (2008, August 7). Another beetle invasion: But this time, they don’t sing and no one is cheering their arrival. Worcester Telegram and Gazette. Retrieved from www. telegram.com/article/20080807/NEWS/808070774/1116. Accessed on August 7, 2013. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, nature, and the geography of difference. New York, NY: Blackwell. Heisler, G. M. (1986). Effects of individual trees on the solar radiation climate of small buildings. Urban Ecology, 9(3 4), 337 359.

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Herwitz, E. (2001). Trees at risk: Reclaiming the urban forest. Worcester, MA: Chandler House Press. Heynen, N. (2003). The scalar production of injustice within the urban forest. Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography, 35(5), 980 998. Heynen, N., Perkins, H., & Roy, P. (2006). The political ecology of uneven urban green space: The impact of political economy on race and ethnicity in producing environmental inequality in Milwaukee. Urban Affairs Review, 42(1), 3 25. Huber, J. (1985). Die Regenbogengesellschaft. O¨kologie und Sozialpolitik. Frankfurt am Main: Fisher Verlag. Kendal, D., Williams, N. S. G., & Williams, K. J. H. (2012). Drives of diversity and tree cover in gardens, parks and streetscapes in an Australian city. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 11(3), 257 265. Kingsbury, G. (2011, February 23). The battle isn’t over: Worcester vs. the Asian Longhorned beetle. Daily Worcesteria. Retrieved from worcesteria.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/the-battleisnt-overworcester-vs-the-asian-longhorned-beetle. Accessed on August 5, 2013. Kuo, F. E., & Sullivan, W. C. (2001). Environment and crime in the inner city does vegetation reduce crime? Environment and Behavior, 33(3), 343 367. Landry, S., & Chakraborty, J. (2009). Street trees and equity: Evaluating the spatial distribution of an urban amenity. Environment and Planning A, 41(11), 2651 2670. Lazzaro, A. (2012, July 11). Watering Worcester’s trees with the Worcester tree initiative. Worcester Magazine. Retrieved from www.worcestermag.com/home/top-stories/WateringWorcesters-Treeswith-the-Worcester-Tree-Initiative-162035405.html. Accessed on August 6, 2013. Lindsey, G., Maraj, M., & Kuan, S. (2001). Access, equity, and urban greenways: An exploratory investigation. The Professional Geographer, 53(3), 332 346. Lipsky, M., & Smith, S. (1989). When social problems are treated as emergencies. Social Service Review, 63(1), 5 25. Logan, J., & Molotch, H. (1987). Urban fortunes: The political economy of place. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Maas, J., Verheij, R. A., de Vries, S., Spreeuwenberg, P., Schellevis, F. G., & Groenewegen, P. P. (2009). Morbidity is related to a green living environment. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 63(12), 967 973. Martin, D., & Rogan, J. (2013, May 21). Trees under multiple threats. Worcester Telegram and Gazette. Retrieved from www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID = /20130521/ NEWS/10529947/0. Accessed on August 5, 2013. McLean, D., & Jensen, R. (2004). Community leaders and the urban forest: A model of knowledge and understanding. Society and Natural Resources, 17(7), 589 598. Meier, A. K. (1991). Measured cooling savings from vegetative landscapes. In E. Vine, D. Crawley, & P. Centolella (Eds.), Energy efficiency and the environment: Forging the link (pp. 321 334). Washington, DC: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Mol, A. P. J., & Spaargaren, G. (1993). Environment, modernity, and the risk society: The apocalyptic horizon of environmental reform. International Sociology, 8(4), 431 459. Monahan, J. (2009, January 12). Replacing felled trees: Big push to plant trees where beetles roamed. The Telegram. Retrieved from actrees.org/files/Newsroom/telegram_treegoal.pdf. Accessed on August 4, 2013. Moynagh, S. (2009, May 5). Trees for our inner-city neighborhoods. InCity Times. Retrieved from incitytimesworcester.org/2009/05/05/trees-for-our-inner-cityneighborhoods/. Accessed on August 4, 2013.

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EQUITY, DISCOURSE, AND ACTION: AN INFLECTIVE PARADIGM LINKING PLANNING, PARTICIPATION, AND NATURAL SCIENCE Ann Ruzow Holland ABSTRACT William R. Freudenburg’s work contributes to an understanding of how local and external factors influence environmental quality through landuse planning and growth management. A recent Adirondack planning study (Ruzow Holland, 2010) explores and analyzes, through the methodological lens of Participatory Action Research (PAR), how the town comprehensive planning process evolved within the community of Willsboro, New York (2010 Population 2025). Access to knowledge, technology, and deliberative decision making reduces the power of the “Privileged,” including external influences, to control the rate and type of local land development. The analysis illustrates the conversion point(s) of Freudenburg’s sociology of knowledge, power, and natural resources

William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 21, 91 107 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0196-1152/doi:10.1108/S0196-1152(2013)0000021010

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with the lessons learned from a place-based PAR, land-use planning project. Keywords: Capacity building; William R. Freudenburg; growth management; landscape conservation; land use; Participatory Action Research

INTRODUCTION William R. Freudenburg lived, worked, and studied in the American landscape (Freudenburg, n.d.). His teachings were shaped by the contours of the land and people inhabiting the notion of Place. Place-based land-use planning is about mitigating change in both the cultural and physical landscape. It is irrevocably inseparable from social institutions and processes that dynamically work for or against change. Freudenburg’s comprehensive work on the sociology of knowledge, power, and natural resources serves as an explanatory, interdisciplinary bridge contributing to an understanding of how local and external factors influence environmental quality through land-use planning and growth management. Freudenburg’s contributions to planning praxis reinforce the importance of participatory, natural science-based land-use planning as a crucial component in responding to land-use change and reorient the way a community reacts to, responds to, and manages change (Hannah, 2005). Environmental concern and community-based appreciation of nature are enhanced by land-use planning practices that focus on issues of local importance, recognize power differentials, deliberately empower citizens, and equalize their access to and use of knowledge. Participatory approaches that recognize the value of citizen discourse provide technological and scientific resources that enable citizens to broaden their control of local environmental decision making. In the process of practicing environmental stewardship, the disproportional power of the “Privileged” to control the rate and type of land development is diluted. This chapter will argue that equal access to knowledge, technology, and deliberative decision making can “level the playing field,” focusing attention and importance on locally and regionally important natural conditions and environmental issues. A recent Adirondack land-use Participatory Action Research (PAR) planning study (Ruzow Holland, 2010) describes, documents, explores, and analyzes, through the methodological lens of PAR, how the town comprehensive planning process evolved within the

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community of Willsboro, New York. The first part of this chapter establishes the context and significance of the Adirondack land-use PAR planning study and provides a brief digest of the study’s research questions and methods. The second part discusses three of Freudenburg’s concepts that relate to land-use planning and PAR with examples provided by the case study. The analysis illustrates the conversion points of Freudenburg’s sociology of knowledge, power, and natural resources with the lessons learned from a place-based PAR, land-use planning project. The chapter concludes with a set of findings relevant to the many disciplines associated with place-based environmental studies.

THE ADIRONDACK CASE STUDY New York’s Adirondack State Park possesses an ecologically diverse landscape of international distinction. The six million public and private acres of the Adirondack State Park are part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Adirondack/ Champlain Biosphere Reserve. The Adirondacks are also included in the four-state designation (New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) of the 30 million-acre Northern Forest Region. As a small but significant part of the 80 million acre Northern Appalachian/Acadian Eco-Region, the Adirondacks serve as a biological corridor and include several migratory flyways. The Adirondack’s land and water environments provide an important, ecologically rich source habitat for diverse and thriving plant and animal communities. These environments were recognized by New Yorkers for the economic value and importance of their water and timber resources (Graham, 1978; Porter, Erickson, & Whaley, 2009), and led to the creation of the Adirondack Forest Preserve in 1885 through the enactment of Article 14 of the New York State Constitution. For 125 years, this bold initiative, “one of the strongest protections of land in the world,” preserved core Adirondack ecosystems owned by the State of New York (Erickson, 2009, p. 194). In 1971, the New York State Legislature passed the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) Act, a state-of-the-art regulatory framework that attempted to manage growth issues within a six million acre protected landscape composed of public and private lands (Glennon, 2009). The statute called for the preparation of a Land-Use and Development Plan. Reactions to the first draft of the Land-Use and Development Plan were mixed. While

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responses from proponents were supportive and encouraging, critics responded with outrage. Legislative compromise was finally reached, the consequences of which involved reducing the powers of the APA and diminishing the effectiveness of the land-use plan from its original intent (Glennon, 2009; Graham, 1978; Terrie, 1997). The Adirondack Park LandUse and Development plan, as modified, was adopted in 1973. Overall, the APA Act’s intentional design and negotiated “re-design” incorporated and encouraged a two-tiered land-use planning system of state and local community planning. The design enabled and empowered local governments to participate in their own land-use planning and obtain various levels of devolved authority from the APA process for specific kinds and intensities of land uses. The legislative compromise in the APA Act land-use protections limited State regulatory “reach” which resulted in Adirondack Park local governments possessing sole authority to regulate a majority of total development in the Park, relegating the APA to a far more limited role in the parcel-by-parcel land-use decision making. The permit record for new residential, commercial, and industrial structures indicated that local governments made 80% of the overall land-use decisions and 57% of the new principal structure decisions in the Park (Bauer, Thomas, & Sterling, 2001). Local planning is not a panacea, especially in a top-down regional planning environment. Proponents of environmental planning struggle with the challenges of creating a sense of stewardship and community momentum at the grassroots level and local government scale (Brosius & Russell, 2003; Castellanet & Jordan, 2002; Hannah, 2005). However, the fact remains that the Adirondack Park Approved Local Planning Program is a two-tiered regional planning system with obligations on the partnership. Active and informed participation in the program has the potential to empower local governments and their indigenous communities to play a critical role in implementing protected areas planning (Burby, 2003; Porter et al., 2009). From 2007 to 2011, a single subject case, a mixed methods study, was conducted within the perspective of a three-decade old, two-tiered, regional/local land-use planning framework (the APA Act) in a home rule state. Focusing on the comprehensive planning process, the central question framing this case study was, “How can we build capacity to make land-use decisions on private lands in protected areas?” The PAR overarching approach and the single case study enable the use of a mixed methods data collection process in order to produce results responsive to the research questions.

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Using a combination of environmental assessment, land-use planning practices, and interactive PAR activities, the Town of Willsboro (2010 Population 2025) developed a comprehensive plan (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005). The mixed methods approach framed by PAR blended quantitative and qualitative data. PAR methodology brought together the data collected to answer the research questions and framed the breadth and depth of the results. The methods also brought scientific information and evidence-based technologies Geographic Information System (GIS) to the case study. PAR and the single case study method accommodated variations introduced by involvement of citizen co-researchers resulting in an emergent design (Stake, 1995). Methods that encouraged contributions of multiple perspectives that were beneficial, positive, and purposeful were used (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005). Through a collaborative relationship with the Willsboro Steering Committee, externally and locally generated qualitative and quantitative data were generated utilizing publicly available methods, combined with public meeting attendance and participation. The Steering Committee provided a focal point and a conduit for the reporting of results: two key roles with respect to the data collection process. For example, workshops, surveys, and information flowed to the Steering Committee, who reviewed the information and warranted the generated reports for consistency in content and purpose with raw data and their firsthand experiences in meetings (face validity). PAR provided a rich and diverse set of data and an important backdrop that promoted data collection in a collaborative manner with volunteer, citizen-based co-researchers. This collaborative climate presented important opportunities to reevaluate the relevance of methods and actual data to the case study and to the research questions as part of the methodology. The social and cognitive consequences of the various PAR techniques were reviewed for validity and warranted through a debriefing roundtable with the Steering Committee. Steering Committee members evaluated the efficacy of PAR methods against the three criteria of engagement, information transfer (knowledge), and dialogue that were defined for them.

Knowledge, Power, and Natural Resources The case study offers an opportunity to explore the relationship between William R. Freudenburg’s theories of Disproportionality, Privilege,

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Conjoint Constitution, and Growth Machine Orientation and land-use planning praxis (Freudenburg, 1991, 2000; Freudenburg, Frickel, & Gramling, 1995). The findings illustrate the conversion points of Freudenburg’s sociology of knowledge, power, and natural resources with the lessons learned from a place-based PAR, land-use planning project.

DISPROPORTIONALITY: CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT AND EMPOWERMENT Traditional land-use planning may comprise a governmental process, where experts and funding agencies from outside the community appear for a short time to tell citizens what they should or should not know and think (and what is reimbursable or not through a planning grant). It places external interests in a position of power and influence set high above society and the public sphere in which they were assigned to work. Outside factors, particularly those from environmentally concerned regulatory agencies of the state, are far from symbolic (Fisher & Freudenburg, 2004; Gramling & Freudenburg, 1990). The relationship between local communities and outside interests has evolved to the point where the persuasive power of professional planners, funders, and government regulatory agencies on local land-use planning decisions is taken for granted and rarely questioned. Freudenburg referred to this kind of influence as Disproportionality, where discursive rights or resources are deliberately diverted to a Privileged few. These kinds of asymmetrical power relationships engendered as Privileged, Naturalized accounts exist in a world governed by multi-scalar societies and political economies (Fisher & Freudenburg, 2004; Freudenburg, 2000, 2005, 2006; Freudenburg & Gramling, 1998; Freudenburg, Gramling, Laska, & Erikson, 2009; Haberl et al., 2006). The dynamism of social interaction and discourse drives the circumstances, constituency, and decisions made in land planning. Place-based land-use planning can fall short of a pluralist viewpoint and result in the disproportional emphasis on the most powerful and strongest factions’ interests. Designing and executing citizen participation planning for Willsboro involved research into “bottom-up” participatory best practices. A painstaking stakeholder analysis process resulted in the participation of 17 citizens and 20 local, regional, and New York State agency personnel serving on a two-tiered Steering Committee. Between townappointed members and the 26 meeting “guests,” deliberations became

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more democratic, representative, and proportional to the variety of interests in the community in quantity, distribution, and weighting. Willsboro did not engage in citizen participation as a symbolic gesture; the increased attention paid to the interests, issues, and concerns of citizens in order to address disproportionality and privilege were significant aspects of the case study (Fisher & Freudenburg, 2004; Freudenburg, 2000, 2005, 2006; Freudenburg & Gramling, 1998; Freudenburg et al., 2009; Haberl et al., 2006). Public commentary from all sources weighed heavily with the Steering Committee and was intentionally diverse. A town-wide community survey provided open-ended responses from a statistically representative 330 people. Multiple outreach methods, including web, social network, and list serves, provided a rich mixture of stakeholder commentary about issues and concerns. Over 16 months, eight public workshops were held and attended by 195 citizens. The research study used special forms of public engagement, including listening sessions, story-based visioning workshops, and GIS-based charrettes. These distinguished the participatory process from conventional approaches. Steering Committee members spoke with excitement and respect for their workshop experiences, which were very different from what they had experienced before. Meeting with citizens in a workshop setting framed by PAR principles provided the Steering Committee with a new understanding of the issues, interests, and concerns of the community. It provided important context and perspective of the citizen’s and Steering Committee’s roles and responsibilities to the town, the planning process, and to themselves. Alternative forms of public engagement provided opportunities for empowerment and equitable representation, distribution, and weighting of interests. For a small town with population swings from 2025 (2010 census) to perhaps 6000 in summer season, nearly 600 people made a conscious choice to actively participate as stakeholders in the comprehensive planning process and, in doing so, shape its contents. Over 705 comments from citizens framed the development of straw man planning documents, including the town’s vision statement and the land-use recommendations. Stakeholder ideologies and interests ranged widely. Dialogue in meetings and workshops was rich and exciting. Views on land-use planning, conservation, private property rights, economics, conservation easements, taxation, public access to shorelines, and government roles and responsibilities were diverse and perhaps more proportional, diluting the influence of naturalized and Privileged interests (Fisher & Freudenburg, 2004; Freudenburg, 2000, 2005, 2006; Freudenburg & Gramling, 1998; Freudenburg et al., 2009; Haberl et al., 2006).

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DISPROPORTIONALITY: UNEVEN INFLUENCE Planning is not all about architecture and engineering, and few planners have the benefit or depth of understanding about natural landscapes, ecology, political economy, critical theory, or participation needed to empower citizens to engage in planning. Planners recognize what they are up against with respect to society and politics, but idealistic documents abandoned on dust-ridden shelves are still the norm (J. Forester, personal communication, July 7, 2009). Disproportionality can often leave communities unhappy with the process outcomes and unmotivated to implement planning recommendations. The traditional approach of a consultant or a public land management agency (or both) defining the problem and the solution does not result in motivation or follow through by stakeholders (Burby et al., 1997, and others). “There is a need for closer attention to the relationships between power over discourses and power over resources specifically including the need for more attention to the ways in which outcomes are shaped by socially structured and Privileged patterns of access to resources” (Freudenburg, 2005, p. 108). Professional planners can exert a powerful and uneven influence on local land-use decisions by the actions they take. Communication, power, and social learning play a central role in communities taking ownership and following through on land-use planning recommendations. PAR’s approach to the design of planning techniques, the development of documents, and the use of technology shifts the role of the professional planner from the powerful and Privileged focal point to planning system “steward.” PAR proposes that planners preempt the exercise of their municipal government-assigned authority, which may cause isolation and bureaucracy to segregate citizens from their government, and instead establish a “facilitative-planner” relationship. In this way, the planner cooperates and collaborates fully with the community on equal footing. Decision making is delegated to the citizen group. Land-use planning within a PAR framework can productively compromise the planner’s power and position, increase the level of trust and respect among all group members, and positively influence group dynamics. In practice, this devolution of power and privilege is difficult to achieve. In the case study, it was initially, then chronically, difficult to dispel the Steering Committee’s notion of the researcher as professional planner and therefore the “chief cook and bottle-washer.” Their expectation was that the professional (or in this case academic) planner

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performed many or all decision making and support functions. The committee perceived their role as nominal or symbolic, providing a rubberstamp function at the monthly meetings. I was routinely confronted with, “You are the expert and our leader. Tell us what to do. We don’t know what we are doing.” PAR placed the Steering Committee in the proverbial driver’s seat. In their leadership role, the Steering Committee directed me to codify planning policy documents. This presented a dilemma, as authorship might imply ownership. Expediting complex, written work during the visioning and land-use recommendations process required that I prepare what is customarily entitled a straw man document. Purposefully titling a document as a straw man allows it to be criticized, edited, and substantially modified in order to shape it to the purpose and “ownership” of the group. During the final research debriefings, the Steering Committee praised the process of presenting a straw man for the vision statement and the land-use recommendations. They reviewed the documents purposefully, looking for confirmation that I had accurately reflected commentary from the citizens, data from the community profile, and information from the scientific analyses. Having these documents to react and respond to focused attention on the content, members pointed out they were not bashful about making the documents over in their “image.” When prepared as a neutral document ready for comment and change, the straw man will not necessarily compromise the PAR process. If prepared with care and precision, the straw man document will systematize citizengathered knowledge and create a focal point for adult learning (Bhatt & Tandon, 2001). I deliberately chose not to meet the Steering Committee’s expectations and dominate the planning process. I could have and the results might have produced an expedited comprehensive plan with a substantially smaller investment of time and expense on everyone’s part. It was a constant challenge to avoid seduction into a lead role. As the land-use planning program progressed, my confidence and intuitive ability to move from passive and neutral facilitator to activist, enabler, nurturer, and cheerleader improved (Bhatt & Tandon, 2001). With the Steering Committee asking critical questions about content and process then making the planning recommendations and decisions, I felt the process change and become energetic in its direction, intellectually important and dynamic in its discourse. According to feedback from the Steering Committee, so did they.

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CONJOINT CONSTITUTION: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCT OF THE COUNTRYSIDE In an amenity-rich, conserved landscape such as New York’s six-million acre Adirondack State Park, the Bio-Geo-Physical world is an active social, economic, and political force (Freudenburg et al., 1995; Freudenburg, Frickel, & Gramling, 1996). Although the relationship between Adirondack people and nature shifts between practical utilitarianism regarding natural resources and romanticism about wilderness, nature’s dominant presence remains constant (Erickson, 2009; Terrie, 2009). Citizens, and especially landowners, are personally motivated to understand the interconnections between nature and development in terms of physical impact on the land. Extreme weather events that cause property damage focus citizen attention on proximity to risk, density, storm water management, soil stability and erosion, vegetative cutting practices, water quality, and land use. Moreover, as these events become more frequent, popular interest grows for understanding the relationships between society and nature. Discovery, recognition, and discussion of local environmental conditions and “nature” are powerful determinants to improve understanding of the relationship between social actions and natural conditions (Davidson & Freudenburg, 1996). The case study enabled stakeholders to acknowledge, discuss, and actualize their recognition of nature’s interdependence with society in concrete and action-oriented ways. The Steering Committee and other volunteers shared and told nature-based stories, collaboratively envisioned the future, and listened to scientists and citizens speak about natural and physical features of the landscape. They identified and analyzed previous plans and studies, reviewed existing GIS data, and when they were not satisfied with existing data, collected their own in the field. Instead of relying solely on a professional planning advisor, the Steering Committee members learned how to utilize scientific data and GIS as tools to conduct rudimentary ecological land-use planning in a protected area town. In these ways, the Steering Committee acquired a working knowledge about the physical, social, and economic conditions and trends surrounding them. Natural science is a complex discipline containing elements of the physical and biological sciences. Citizens charged with the authority to draft land-use recommendations through a comprehensive planning process share with many professional planners an understanding of the social and economic conditions that contribute to land planning but possess a very limited competency to understand the science of nature and its link to

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growth. To improve capacity and generate a common-working knowledge of landscape ecology, subject-matter experts in the areas of soils, geology, hydrology, and wildlife were recruited to orient the Steering Committee to the nature of Willsboro. Steering Committee members were immersed in the development and analysis of natural resource GIS maps. This helped the Steering Committee understand the special relationship between ecological considerations and town geography. They assisted in preparing, reviewing, and working with the GIS overlay maps that addressed natural resource constraints and opportunities. In the overall process of developing land-use recommendations, the Steering Committee became literate in the primary scientific data (i.e., soils, habitat, wetlands, and wildlife) and background scientific rationale for the recommendations listed in the first and second straw man versions of the land-use recommendations. Members could link these recommendations to their mapping and to their analysis. As focal points in their study of ecological conditions, the Committee developed a good understanding of Willsboro’s soils, hydrology, and surficial geology. For example, attention was paid to land slumps and landslides, unique natural communities and rare species, shoreline hardening, scenic resources, and agricultural lands. Willsboro’s fragile soils, limited centralized wastewater system, important agricultural soils, and preponderance of residential growth made the soils and on-site wastewater data and mapping very popular with the Steering Committee and the citizens. In this way, they integrated the natural resource inventory with the ecological and community analysis process. For some members, the exposure to natural science provided a foundation and context for the ecological importance of Willsboro. For others, it reinforced what they already knew. When Steering Members shared their scientific, mapping, and statistical data with the public on July 24, 2010, citizens commented that they were impressed with the thoroughness of the comprehensive plan work. Some citizens commented that they were not aware that a plan considered scientific and environmental conditions at all or that alternative scenarios were considered. Common currency among stakeholders was the story about nature and the continuing desire to reside by the lake, near the mountains, and in the countryside despite the risks. With an understanding of nature, communities manage their vulnerability or resilience to environmental change (Krannich, 2012). Access to scientific information and GIS technology can help citizens practice Conjoint Constitution by actively determining where land is more (or less) suitable for growth, and engaging in reflective discussions of the relationship between existing ecological and environmental conditions and

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development. Of all the PAR activities, the science-based activities generated the greatest level of knowledge transfer for the Steering Committee. There was consensus among Steering Committee members that they had learned a great deal from the science-based activities and that access to information and their active involvement and immersion brought science literacy to their doorstep. An emergent, conjointly constituted understanding of the countryside enabled the Steering Committee to develop a thoughtful and effective comprehensive plan that was based on a careful balance of the ecological, social, and economic considerations of the community and the region. The number and scope of land-use recommendations adopted in the official Town Comprehensive Plan that represented ecological topics and land-use concerns are extensive and reflect a high degree of science literacy on the part of the Steering Committee.

GROWTH AT ANY COST: THE GROWTH MACHINE ORIENTATION The boom and bust economic cycles that amenity-rich areas experience are strongly influenced by what Freudenburg describes as the Growth Machine Orientation (Freudenburg, 1990, 1991). The informal network of public and private “growth at any cost” interests can act to subjugate environmental stewardship in favor of economic development (Freudenburg et al., 2009). If citizens perceive the condition of a local economy to be unstable, land-use decision-making can become polarized, resulting in rapid urbanization, unsustainable exurban development, and automobile-dependent and sprawl-inducing land-use patterns (Salkin, 2007; Vermont Department of Housing and Community Affairs, 2007). Popular acceptance of “growth at any cost” is also reflected in the content of local and regional comprehensive plans and regulations that include low-density recommendations and homogenous use restrictions. A common and naturalized citizen-based perception of Privilege holds that growth is necessary and good and good for the tax-base regardless of the municipal cost of additional infrastructure and services (Freudenburg, 2005). This perception finds truth in a state agenda where real property taxation policy establishes land values using highest and best use. It is now understood that these Growth Machine patterns of decision making lead to state and local laws that may unintentionally be the cause of sprawl, increase the

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cost of government-provided services, and, in the aggregate, work against the growing movement for sustainable and environmentally sensitive development (Freudenburg, 1990, 1991; Molotch, Freudenburg, & Paulsen, 2000; Salkin, 2007). Can a community change its patterns of decision making to avoid the polarization brought about by a Growth Machine Orientation? “If only there were some third choice available other than bad growth or no growth … that third choice is good growth” (Duany, Plater-Zyberk, & Speck, 2001, p. xxi). In an effort to search for Duany’s “third choice,” municipalities carry out land-use planning. When confronted with permit applications for real estate development projects, citizen planners face the realities of growth and must help decide whether, and to what extent, they wish to see growth in their community. As agents of the people appointed by the local government and without the capacity of building knowledge to make informed and sustainable decisions it may be very challenging to even suggest to powerful Growth Machine interests a community’s desire to constrain economic growth, find suitable alternatives, and protect nature. In land-use decisions, the question of determining who gains and who loses is placed squarely on the table. In addition, the Privilege of discourse and decision is reserved for the strong-hearted. A representative group of citizens may not be able to confront a Growth Machine Orientation without training, access to knowledge, and the collaborative strength than comes from common cause. The case study Steering Committee began as a loosely aggregated group of town appointees. Over time, through joint effort and shared experience, the committee was transformed into an organized and formal team. The Steering Committee developed the interpersonal skills and practical knowledge necessary to lead a consensus-building agenda to capitalize on the natural landscape, mitigate, reduce growth impacts, and preserve what is best about the countryside. The Town of Willsboro Comprehensive Land-Use and Action Plan was adopted by the Town Board of Willsboro on September 12, 2012. The document includes one central chapter dedicated to establishing a framework for land-use regulatory change in the Town. In this chapter, 11 major consensus driven recommendations (and dozens of minor ones) include direct references and language about local environmental conditions and issues. The recommendations and subsidiary strategies are firmly grounded in natural science and are supported by hundreds of comments from nearly 600 citizens. Multiple forms of discourse are evident in these recommendations.

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The Steering Committee confirmed their commitment to the importance of Willsboro’s natural resource base, critical habitats, and working landscape in the face of a Growth Machine Orientation. The words and spirit of the document reflect the interconnectedness of the town’s ecology with its plans for growth. Support for working agricultural landscapes and a viable main street are echoed in the discourse. Recommendations instruct the town leadership to “protect, preserve, consider, and maintain” existing resources while they “avoid, or minimize adverse impacts” when development is imminent. Instead of growth anywhere and anyway at the discretion of the Growth Machine, recommendations indicate how and under what conditions growth should and should not occur.

LIVELY, CONTINUOUS, AND INFORMED CIVIL DIALOGUE THE INFLECTIVE PARADIGM OF PAR Local land-use planning decisions have important cumulative impacts on protected area land development at the local and regional scale. Piecemeal, short-term Growth Machine Oriented planning by local governments can result in over-sized, freestanding retail depots flourishing while main streets perish, real estate development hugging ever-expanding arterials between communities, and prime farmland transforming to variable-density residential subdivision developments on cul-de-sacs (Hayden & Wark, 2004; Mason, 2008; Mitchell, 2007). In protected areas, it was once thought that indigenous stewardship could not match the fervor of external conservation interests. This case study revealed that stakeholder viewpoints about community-based natural environments are not at odds with conservation views: the community cares deeply about nature. It also showed that ecologically based comprehensive planning utilizing a PAR framework improves citizens’ confidence in decision-making capacity and expands their science literacy. A natural science-based, PAR approach shifted the planning paradigm from top-down to bottom-up in design, content, and process. At the town level, access to knowledge and technology, inclusionary practices, and citizen-driven decision making resulted in a climate of constructive engagement, collaborative development of knowledge about Willsboro’s environment, and lively and civil debate about future land-use recommendations. With stakeholders at the center of a place-based process,

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planning was democratized, enabling knowledge to be socially constructed by the group. Knowledge, in a conventional sense, was no longer a narrowly defined concept withheld from the many by the few. A collective analysis of life experiences, local knowledge, and other forms of knowledge identified as necessary by the group was incorporated into the process so that “Truths become products of a process in which people come together to share experiences through a dynamic process of action, reflection and collective investigation” (Gaventa & Cornwall, 2001, p. 74). Egalitarian participation became the fulcrum in a sincerely dialogic process where social action was the outcome and “a community [became] prepared to study the results of its own social action” (Lewin, 2008, p. 8). Freudenburg notes that this form of realism and verification is often missing from environmental discourse (Freudenburg, 2005, 2006). William R. Freudenburg’s leadership in environmental sociology contributes to an improved, interdisciplinary understanding of social change. His research explains how knowledge-based, egalitarian, pragmatic, and participatory activities might approach the “boundaries that separate power and structure” (Gaventa, 1982, p. x). Giving voice to the community-atlarge may diminish the power over process and product traditionally reserved to the “state” and other Privileged interests. External forces will continue to strongly influence local environmental conditions and generate cyclic booms and busts (Freudenburg et al., 1995). Nevertheless, building local capacity to understand and manage growth can help mitigate the local impacts of external forces and their contribution to rapid land-use change. A participatory natural-resource-based planning process can dilute the disproportional effects of Privilege, conjointly constitute a working knowledge of nature and society, and mitigate the long-term impacts of a Growth Machine Orientation. An emergent, citizen-led comprehensive plan will reflect a process where the primacy of community self-determination and consensus building yields recognition of the link between, and sanctity of, nature, home, and homeland.

REFERENCES Bauer, P., Thomas, P., & Sterling, P. (2001). Growth in the Adirondack Park: Analysis of rates and patterns of development. North Creek, NY: Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks. Bhatt, Y., & Tandon, R. (2001). Citizen participation in natural resource management. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice (pp. 301 306). London: Sage Publications.

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Brosius, J. P., & Russell, D. (2003). Conservation from above: An anthropological perspective on transboundary protected areas and ecoregional planning. Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 17(1/2), 39 65. Burby, R. J. (2003). Making plans that matter. Journal of the American Planning Association, 69(1), 33. Burby, R. J., May, P. J., Berke, P. R., & Dalton, L. (1997). Making governments plan: State experiments in managing land use. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press. Castellanet, C., & Jordan, C. F. (2002). Participatory action research in natural resource management. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis Group. Cooperrider, D. L., & Whitney, D. (2005). Appreciative inquiry: A positive revolution in change. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Davidson, D. J., & Freudenburg, W. R. (1996). Gender and environmental risk concerns: A review and analysis of available research. Environment and Behavior, 28, 302 339. Duany, A., Plater-Zyberk, E., & Speck, J. (2001). Suburban nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press. Erickson, J. D. (2009). The park in perspective. In W. F. Porter, J. D. Ericson, & R. S. Whaley (Eds.), The great experiment in conservation: Voices from the Adirondack Park (pp. 193 205). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Fisher, D. R., & Freudenburg, W. R. (2004). Post industrialization and environmental quality: An empirical analysis of the environmental state. Social Forces, 83(1), 157 88. Freudenburg, W. R. (n. d.). Curriculum vitae. Retrieved from es.ucsb.edu/sites/www.es.ucsb. edu/files/sitefiles/people/FreudenburgVitaFINAL.pdf. Accessed on August 4, 2013. Freudenburg, W. R. (1990). A “good business climate” as bad economic news? Society and Natural Resources, 3(4), 313 330. Freudenburg, W. R. (1991). Rural-urban differences in environmental concern: A closer look. Sociological Inquiry, 61(2), 167 198. Freudenburg, W. R. (2000). Social constructions and social constrictions: Analyzing the social construction of “the naturalized” as well as “the natural.” In G. Spaargaren, A. P. Mol, & F. Buttel (Eds.), Environmental sociology and global modernity (pp. 50 103). London: Sage. Freudenburg, W. R. (2005). Privileged access, privileged accounts: Toward a socially structured theory of resources and discourses. Social Forces, 84(1), 89 114. Freudenburg, W. R. (2006). Environmental degradation, disproportionality, and the double diversion: Reaching out, reaching ahead, and reaching beyond. Rural Sociology, 71(1), 3 32. Freudenburg, W. R., Frickel, S., & Gramling, R. (1995). Beyond the nature/society divide: Learning to think about a mountain. Sociological Forum, 10(3), 361 392. Freudenburg, W. R., Frickel, S., & Gramling, R. (1996). Crossing the next divide: A response to Andy Pickering. Sociological Forum, 11(1), 161 175. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1998). Linked to what? Economic linkages in an extractive economy. Society and Natural Resources, 11(6), 569 586. Freudenburg, W. R., Gramling, R., Laksa, S., & Erikson, K. T. (2009). Disproportionality and disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Mississippi River-gulf outlet. Social Science Quarterly, 90(3), 497 515. Gaventa, J. (1982). Power and powerlessness quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Gaventa, J., & Cornwall, A. (2001). Power and knowledge. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice (pp. 70 80). London: Sage Publications.

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Glennon, R. (2009). A land not saved. In W. F. Porter, J. D. Ericson, & R. S. Whaley (Eds.), The great experiment in conservation, Voices from the Adirondack park (pp. 265 281). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Graham, J. F. (1978). The Adirondack park. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf and National Audubon Society. Gramling, R., & Freudenburg, W. R. (1990). A closer look at ‘local control’: Communities, commodities, and the collapse of the coast. Rural Sociology, 55(4), 541 558. Haberl, H., Winiwarter, V., Andersson, K., Ayres, R., Boone, C., Castillo, A., & Zechmeister, H. (2006). From LTER to LTSER: Conceptualizing the socioeconomic dimension of longterm socioecological research. Ecology and Society, 11(2), 13. Hannah, K. S. (2005). Planning for sustainability: Experiences in two contrasting communities. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(1), 27. Hayden, D., & Wark, J. (2004). A field guide to sprawl. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company. Krannich, R. S. (2012). Social change in natural resource-based rural communities: The evolution of sociological research and knowledge as influenced by William R. Freudenburg. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(1), 18 27. Lewin, K. (2008). Resolving social conflicts and field theory in social science. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Mason, R. J. (2008). Collaborative land use management: The quieter revolution in place-based planning. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Mitchell, S. (2007). Big-box swindle. The true cost of mega-retailers and the fight for America’s independent businesses. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Molotch, H., Freudenburg, W. R., & Paulsen, K. E. (2000). History repeats itself, but how? City character, urban tradition, and the accomplishment of place. American Sociological Review, 65(6), 791 823. Porter, W. F., Erickson, J. D., & Whaley, R. S. (2009). The great experiment in conservation, voices from the Adirondack Park. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Ruzow Holland, A. H. (2010). Participatory planning for a promised land: Citizen-led, comprehensive land-use planning in New York’s Adirondack Park. Doctoral dissertation, Antioch University. Salkin, P. (2007). Squaring the circle on sprawl: What more can we do? Progress toward sustainable land use in the states. Widener Law Journal, 16(3), 787 837. Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Terrie, P. (1997). Contested terrain. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Terrie, P. (2009). Compromise, continuity, and compromise in the Adirondack Park. In W. F. Porter, J. D. Ericson, & R. S. Whaley (Eds.), The great experiment in conservation: Voices from the Adirondack Park (pp. 354 369). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University. Vermont Department of Housing and Community Affairs. (2007, May). Vermont land use education and training collaborative: Essentials of local land-use planning and regulation. Retrieved from www.vpic.info/Essentials.html. Accessed on August 4, 2013.

TOWARD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND POLICY MAKING: INSTITUTIONALISM OF WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG Ted I. K. Youn ABSTRACT What constitutes a social problem? How do policy-making institutions carry out their responsibilities to solve problems that lead to risky consequences? This issue has drawn relatively little attention among researchers in the social sciences, partly because it lies at the interface of social problems and public policy cutting across disciplinary boundaries. This chapter attempts to focus on the issue where social problems and public policy come together with a greater attention to the institutions that are responsible for managing risky outcomes. It summarizes major contributions made by W. R. Freudenburg. Particularly it focuses on the ways that solutions to social problems are not successfully carried out by

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policy-making institutions. The chapter explains reasons for institutional failures and discusses some future challenges for a fuller understanding of institutional failures. Keywords: William R. Freudenburg; public policy; recreancy; social problems

INTRODUCTION Under our joint editorship, volumes published in the Research in Social Problems and Public Policy (RSPPP) series over the past two decades represent Bill and my continuing interest in problems that have drawn relatively little attention among researchers in the social sciences, because it lies at the interface of social problems and public policy, cutting across disciplinary boundaries. While there are diverse perspectives in explaining the political process of policy making in the social sciences, there is little attention among researchers in examining the relationship between social problems and policy making, particularly for those with risky outcomes. Over the past five decades, the potential failure of public institutions (Barber, 1983) to fulfill their obligations to the broader society has been increasingly recognized by many segments of society, including journalists and mass media institutions. This chapter is intended to focus on a topic where social problems and public policy come together. In particular, it intends to bring out important arguments that Freudenburg advocated throughout volumes over the past two decades (Freudenburg, 1993; Freudenburg & Jones, 1991; Freudenburg & Youn, 1997, 1999). The basic questions that we posed in this chapter are as follows: How do societal problems, particularly those with greater risk to the populace such as handling of nuclear waste or solving major oil spill accidents, become public actions? Why is it that much of effort to solve these risky situations has failed? To answer these questions, the chapter will begin with the question of what constitutes a social problem. This new definition of social problem was presented by Freudenburg (1993; Freudenburg & Youn, 1999). This chapter will then review the conditions that explain institutional failing, particularly Freudenburg’s own arguments about causes and the social impact of institutional failings. Finally, the chapter will look to the future and discuss some possibilities of understanding social problems and solving problems.

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A SPECIAL KIND OF SOCIAL PROBLEM The relative lack of attention to this problem in the past can be seen as reflecting a limited vision with respect to what constitutes a “social problem.” The traditional approach to social problems such as crime, poverty, and other forms of deviant behaviors was what most citizens in society saw as “problems.” In recent decades, an increasing number of observers began to draw attention to an inherent bias in the traditional definition of social problems, noting that it tends to “blame the victim” (Ryan, 1971), while simultaneously failing to examine the larger social system that often created the victimization in the first place. Freudenburg (1993) argues that the field ultimately began to recognize the need to “guard against the tendency to accept the definition of a social problem provided by those in power” (p. 3). Slavery, for example, was not a social problem in the South, but slave rebellions were. In colonial New England, “the persecution of witches was not a social problem, but the witches were” (Becker, 1967). In one respect, Freudenburg’s thesis helped to note the study of social problems in a new context. Over the past several decades, the nature of blaming has changed significantly, to the point where most social scientists who study social problems have a clear sensitivity about the potential bias of simply blaming problems on the victims. Indeed most would prefer to err instead on the side of looking for the causes of problems in the system as a whole. Furthermore, the field has shown a significant increase in attention to new categories of problems such as environmental threats (Mauss, 1975; Dunlap & Catton, 1979). Even with this change in balance of blaming, however, present-day social research is still likely involve a disproportionate emphasis on problems that are experienced by those who are relatively low in power and wealth notably the poor, members of racial and ethnic minorities, women, the aged, and the unemployed and those involving the behaviors of persons who depart most sharply from the expectations for normal societal behaviors as in the case of criminals, drug users, and those who suffer from mental illness. It is not the action of individuals who happened to be relatively powerless, but the actions of institutions and organizations that happen to be quite powerful. Virtually by definition, organizations tend to be established mainly by those who are relatively powerful. All other factors being equal, organizations continue to be most likely to be established and mobilized for dealing with whatever it is that the more powerful actors in society define as problems whether in establishing public education or fighting disease. When citizens identify “problems,” they often see the need to do so, because established formal

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organizations have failed to recognize the problem or to do enough to correct it. In formal terms, it is the problem of institutional failure, or recreancy (Freudenburg, 1993). The problem involves the potential failure of public institutions to fulfill obligations to broader society. This is clearly a new way of examining social problems.

WHY DO INSTITUTIONS FAIL? By far the most familiar portrayal of solving social problem by way of public action is one that interprets action as rational choice (Allison, 1971; Elster, 1979). The idea is old and its durability in the intellectual history is impressive. Theories of rational choice, although often elaborated in formal and mathematical ways, draw on everyday language used in understanding and communicating about human choices. The main argument follows for the most part those political and social events as the consequence of calculated decisions. The idea of rationality has come to mean many things. Often rational is approximately equivalent to “intelligent” or “successful.” It is used to describe actions that closely linked to desirable outcomes. Nevertheless rationality is defined as a particular and very familiar class of procedures for making choices. First, in rational procedure, decision makers or institutions recognize the existence of a problem. Then they specify the goals and preference that define an optimal solution. They consider all possible alternatives. They rely on information to choose the solution among these alternatives that maximizes the likelihood of achieving the goals and preferences (Allison, 1971; Downs, 1957; Gramlich, 1981; Lindblom, 1959; Luce & Raiffa, 1957, for descriptions of this rational model). The action of decision makers according to the rational model may be characterized as “willful” that results from intentional actions taken in the name of individual or collective purpose (March, 1994). Studies of decision making in the real world, however, suggest some serious limitations about the pure rational model of decision making, mainly because decision makers face serious limits in allocating attention, maintaining memory, expanding capacities for comprehension, and facilitating communication. Doubts about the empirical validity and usefulness of the pure theory of rational choice have been expressed in many studies of decision making (Cyert & March, 1963; Feldman, 1989; March, 1994; March & Olsen, 1989; Simon, 1957). The limitations of the pure rational form of

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decision making are real. Are there alternatives to the pure rational form? There are several viable alternative forms of decision making. We will now examine the following possibilities: (1) Bounded or limited rationality; (2) rule evoking; (3) uses of politics and power; and (4) decision making as an interpretive action. (1) Bounded rationality: Herbert Simon (1957), seeing the cognitive limits to human attention, proposed the idea of bounded rationality with the notion of “satisficing” rather than “maximizing” the decision outcomes. Today, ideas of limited rationality is reasonably well-accepted and shared among decision theorists (March, 1994). What are the steps to follow this model of limited rationality? In coping with problems of information constraints, according to March (1994) decision makers employ some fundamental simplification steps such as the following: (a) Editing, using a small number of cues combining them in a simple manner. Complex problems or situations may be simplified. (b) Decomposing, reducing large and complex problems into a small component parts. For example, Freudenburg’s study of decision making in nuclear waste problems shows how complex problems get organized into decomposed by having division of labor among specialists (Freudenburg, 1993). (c) Using heuristics, recognizing patterns in the situations, decision makers apply rules of thumb to those risky situations to solve decision problems (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). (d) Framing, taking on certain perspective to take on a given problem will result in what technologies should be used to ask the question and what questions should be asked. (2) Rule evoking: In the theory of rational choice, decision making is portrayed as an act of rational calculation and emphasis on outcomes. The advocates of this rational theory view decision making as an action that is based on an evaluation of alternatives in terms of their consequences for preferences. March and Olsen (1989) see an alternative to this logic of consequences. That is logic of appropriateness. Organizations follow rules and much of behavior in an organization is specified by standard operating procedures. To describe behavior as following rules is to see action as a matching of behavior with situation. Decision making in an organization is seen as rule following that results from the fulfilling of an identity and obligation rather than calculating outcomes of preferences chosen.

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By “rules” we mean the routines, procedures, conventions, and roles around which political activity is constructed. “Rules” also mean the beliefs, codes, cultures, and identity. It is a common observation that behavior is constrained or shaped by social norms. Action is based on normatively appropriate behavior than on calculating the return expected from alternative choices. March and Olsen (1989) argue that rules within political institutions are devices for partitioning politics into relatively independent domains leading to division of labor. The division of responsibilities or “counting on” specialized experts among different domains generate the boundaries among domains. At the same time, the buffers impose requirements for relatively high levels of trust across the boundaries (March & Olsen, 1989). Freudenburg (1993) argues that an increased interdependence among domains through the division of labor brings out the potentiality for recreancy that involves failings among institutions. Rule following actions also generate capacity for an organization to learn from its experience and modify the rules for action incrementally on the basis of feedback from the environment. Rule following actions also allow an organization to discover good, even optimal rules for most of the choice situations that the organization might face. Therefore, rule following actions are likely to lead to more adaptive changes. While organizations generally follow invariant rules over time, the external population of rules might change and these changed rules in the population of organizations may cause an evolutionary selection of rules. Rule following actions may lead to a form of natural selection in the ecology of organizations (March & Olsen, 1989). Finally, rule following actions often generate some rules follow the process of contagion. In other words, interorganizational relations with respect to products, personnel, and status similarities lead to imitation of rules among organizations (Nelson & Winter, 1982). The spread of organizational rules seems to show many properties and perversities. It also promotes innovations and dramatic changes over time. (3) Uses of politics and power: One problem identified by students of decision making is that behavior is not always guided by a set of welldefined goals and preferences. Individuals and organizations often have multiple and conflicting goals (Cyert & March, 1963). As a result, decision processes are influenced by inconsistent preferences and identities of social actors. When interests and identities of multiple actors are inconsistent, the idea of power and politics become prevalent in

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organizations. While the pure theory of rational choice implies a single willful leadership in organizations, the model of interests and identities of multiple actors face endemic conflicts. Potential contentiousness of disagreements over what you want presumes and poses differences in power. Inconsistencies and contentiousness in implementing policies encourage organizations to potential recreancy (Freudenburg, 1993). The model of power leads to actions to control over rules, control over resources, or control over preferences and identities (March, 1994). Coalition building and log-rolling politics over power and politics in organizations will dominate. Freudenburg remains in the tradition of viewing organizational participants as problem solvers and decision makers. It is these participants’ stable coalition building process that removes recreant outcomes. (4) Decision making as an interpretive action: James G. March and his associates propose the concept of ambiguity in explaining the processes of decision making in organizations (Cohen & March, 1974; March & Olsen, 1976; Feldman & March, 1981). Ambiguity refers to a lack of clarity or consistency in “reality, causality, or intentionality” among actors in organizations. Ambiguous purposes are intentions that cannot be specified clearly. Ambiguous identities mean imprecise or contradictory identity of rules and routines of organizations. Finally, ambiguous outcomes of organizations mean the implications of decision events are unclear. No one meaning is given and there may be multiple meanings (March & Sevon, 1984). Whether the situation has many meanings or no clear meaning, the issue for the organization is to make sense out of it. Choice and organizational action are sometimes an outcome of this sense-making behavior. How certain institutional arrangements foster recreant behavior, as Freudenburg examined, is an example of decision making under ambiguity.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS Bill Freudenburg has provided us with a novel way of understanding the relationship between social problems and policy actions by focusing on the failure of institutional actors to carry out their responsibilities with a deeper commitment necessary to merit societal trust. He argued that future research should focus on the examination of institutional behaviors that provide reason to believe that some portion of our increasingly complex

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and interdependent societal system can no longer be counted on. There is a need for more work to examine the kinds of institutional arrangements that are most and least likely to foster recreant behavior and about the factors that can foster the efforts of recreant officials and organizations to evade the responsibility for their failing. Perhaps the next level of question, as Freudenburg advocated, should focus on the societal impact of these recreant behaviors. Do institutional failures affect social structure and social relations of organizations and institutions in society? Freudenburg’s plea for more institutional analyses of policy-making organizations is understandable. How are visible structures and routines of policy-making organizations affected by wider organizational environments? As Perrow (1991) states, we indeed have a “society of organizations” but organizations involved are by no means autonomous. They are embedded in every aspect of their structure and functioning.

REFERENCES Allison, G. T. (1971). The essence of decision: Explaining the Cuban missile crisis. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Barber, B. (1983). The logic and limits of trust. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Becker, H. S. (1967). Whose side are we on? Social Problems, 14(3), 239 247. Cohen, M. D., & March, J. G. (1974). Leadership and ambiguity: The American college president. New York: McGraw-Hill. Cyert, R. M., & March, J. G. (1963). A behavioral theory of the firm. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper and Row. Dunlap, R. E., & Catton Jr., W. R. (1979). Environmental sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 5, 243 273. Elster, J. (1979). Ulysses and the sirens: Studies in rationality and irrationality. New York: Cambridge University Press. Feldman, M. S. (1989). Order without design: Information production and policy making. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Feldman, M. S., & March, J. G. (1981). Information in organizations as signal and symbol. Administrative science quarterly, 26(2), 171 186. Freudenburg, W. R. (1993). Risk and recreancy: Weber, the division of labor, and the rationality of risk perceptions. Social Forces, 71(4), 909 932. Freudenburg, W. R., & Jones, T. R. (1991). Attitudes and stress in the presence of technological risk: A test of the Supreme Court hypothesis. Social Forces, 69(4), 1143 1168. Freudenburg, W. R., & Youn, T. I. K. (1997). Introduction: A Variety of Social Problems and Institutional Failures. Research In Social Problems And Public Policy, 1997, 1–8, JAI Press.

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Freudenburg, W. R., & Youn, T. I. K. (1999). Institutional failure in environmental management: Toward a fuller understanding of social problems and public policy. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 7, 3 18, JAI Press. Gramlich, E. M. (1981). Benefit-cost analysis of government programs. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Lindblom, C. E. (1959). The science of muddling through. Public Administration Review, 19, 79 88. Luce, D. R., & Raiffa, H. (1957). Games and decisions. New York: Wiley. March, J. G. (1994). A primer on decision making: How decision happen. New York: The Free Press. March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1989). Rediscovering institutions: The organizational basis of politics. New York: The Free Press. March, J. G. & Olsen, J. P. (Eds.). (1976). Ambiguity and choice in organizations. Bergen, Norway: Universitetsforlaget. March, J. G., & Sevon, G. (1984). Gossip, information, and decision making. Advances in Information Processing Organizations, 1, 95 107. Mauss, A. L. (1975). Social problems as social movements. Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott. Nelson, R. R., & Winter, S. G. (1982). An evolutionary theory of economic change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Perrow, C. (1991). A society of organizations. Theory and society, 20(6), 725 762. Ryan, W. (1971). Blaming the victim. New York: Pantheon Books. Simon, H. A. (1957). Administrative behavior. New York: Macmillan. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185, 1124–1131.

WHEN RECREANCY BECOMES THE NORM: EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLANNING AND THE CASE OF TAR SANDS UPGRADING IN THE ALBERTA INDUSTRIAL HEARTLAND Michael R. Edelstein ABSTRACT Bill Freudenburg’s concept of recreancy is used as a frame for explaining processes that perpetuate questionable regimes of emergency response planning. The specific instance of tar sands upgrading in Alberta, Canada, is used as a case in point. When recreancy is institutionalized so that the results correlate across permitted hazardous facilities, it must be concluded that recreancy is less of a situational response than a normative dynamic. Keywords: Alberta Energy Resource Conservation Board; Alberta Industrial Heartland; citizen participation; emergency response planning; tar sands; William Freudenburg

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MICHAEL R. EDELSTEIN It is the nature of regulatory proceedings that those who are asked to “live with” the consequences of the plant most intimately are often the ones whose interests are least weighed in the considerations. Edelstein’s Rule

INTRODUCTION Over much of the author’s nearly 40 years studying the psycho-social consequences of environmental contamination and siting of hazardous facilities, Bill Freudenburg was a close colleague and friend. Bill was adept at crafting opportunities to do real work on seminal topics, opportunities that he shared generously. He was also a vital thinker and theoretician. His notion of recreancy explained an important contributing dynamic to what I call the “culture of contamination” (Edelstein, 2004; Edelstein, Tysiachniouk, & Smirnova, 2007) by highlighting the failure of institutions to meet their responsibilities to be protective, responsible, and trustworthy in the matters they regulate. This chapter will examine recreancy related to subject matter of keen interest to Bill, himself a significant scholar and critic of oil and gas production.1 Specifically, this chapter addresses one of the major controversies of our moment in time, Alberta’s promotion and permitting of the extraction and processing of “oil sands” or “tar sands.” Deep tar deposits are being melted in northern Alberta and moved south through pipelines as a slurry. Widespread devastation of the land surface and subsurface, pollution of air, soil, and water, and violation of the rights of First Nations is involved (Nikiforuk, 2008). While global attention has been drawn to this tar sands extraction as well as to the Keystone pipeline project that was designed to bring the product to Texas for further refinement and export, relatively little attention has been paid to an intermediate stage in the process, “tar sands upgrading,” the refining of extracted tar oil. Attention is due. There has been a massive push to build tar sands upgraders along the pipeline clustered in the Alberta Industrial Heartland (AIH), a huge industrial park created for the purpose on the Northeast of Edmonton just above Fort Saskatchewan. This chapter is based on my work as an expert witness for residents opposing the application of the French multinational corporation, Total, for permission to construct a tar sands upgrader in the AIH (Edelstein, 2010a).

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RECREANCY Freudenburg (1993, p. 927) offers a straight forward definition of recreancy as “the risk that socially consequential actors will fail to carry out their duties with the full degree of competence and responsibility their fellow citizens need to expect.” But there is much more to the concept. With recreancy, Freudenburg proposed a Faustian reinterpretation of the classic causal relationship between society’s division of labor and its unprecedented levels of “prosperity, prowess, and even physical health and safety” and resulting longevity. These gains, however, came at the expense of creating ever greater levels of interdependence and thus “societal vulnerability” to recreant behavior (Freudenburg, 1993, p. 915). Recreancy is thus more than a particular violation of trust; it is a condition of dependency on shaky social scaffolding prone to such violations. Recreancy thus encompasses a variety of situations: where corruption occurs, where collusion between parties with common interests overcomes fiduciary responsibilities, where people undertake tasks absent the requisite competence to carry them out, where corners are cut, favors offered, and palms are greased. The common thread is that “duties are not being carried out properly whether the ‘fault’ is one of individual actors or of a broader system in which important responsibilities may fall through the institutional cracks” (Freudenburg, 1993, p. 915; see also Freudenburg, 2000). In this chapter, I take Freudenburg’s thesis a step further, beyond such commonplace violations of trust. Recreancy is not merely a vulnerability made more likely by our high degree of social interdependency. Modern wealth depends on economic growth driven by the use of technology to extract diminishing resources from the earth. These growth and hard technological drivers of our prosperity and longevity depend on recreant regulation for permitting and operation outside the boundaries of what most would consider appropriate risk, in fact capturing the ability to define the term and terms of appropriateness. It is not a coincidence that we are not enamored of the precautionary principle. As a result, recreancy is hardly the exception, but rather the rule. And recreant behavior in regulatory or management structures has become the norm.

VICTIMIZATION AS AN OUTCOME OF RECREANCY If there is one axiom that emerges from nearly 40 years of work with those living in contaminated or degraded environments, it is this:

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It is the nature of regulatory proceedings that those who are asked to “live with” the consequences of the hazard most intimately are often the ones whose interests are least weighed in the decision(s).

Such interests are readily dismissed as selfish. Freudenburg (1993, p. 917) aptly noted, however, that blaming citizens rather than the situations they are responding to is itself fundamentally self-serving: The repeated complaints about public “irrationality” by scientists and engineers could be seen as efforts to divert attention away from institutional failings, doing so in part by calling into question the legitimacy of citizen concerns about those failings.

There is a dialectic process at work here. On one hand, the responsible actors are shielded from scrutiny. On the other hand, a proliferation of hazardous facilities (practices and products) represents a process of victim creation. Victims then become the problem. This dialectic is insufficiently recognized, accounted for, or addressed in the rationalized rational decision making procedures we have constructed (Edelstein, 2003). In fact, as I demonstrate here, such victimization is itself a by-product of recreant systems and their recreant norms. On their part, victims are first stressed by the environmental problems created, but then again at least as much by the way society responds (or fails to respond) to their plight (Edelstein, 2004). Recreancy thus competes dead on with environmental exposure in its psycho-social harm. Emergency response planning (ERP) has received increasing public attention after Katrina and 9/11. In an industrial context, it has a longer history as “contingency planning” or mitigation for risks of acute releases of toxins, fire or explosion and is a widespread condition for permit issuance and renewal. Industrial ERP is a comparatively reactive (as opposed to preventative) means of addressing and ameliorating victimization. Because, hazardous facilities cannot be permitted if found unsafe, ERP plays a crucial role in “mitigating” risk and thus rationalizing as acceptable actions that place people in harms’ way. But is the mitigation rhetorical or real (see Bogard, 1989)? The validity of ERP as mitigation is thus a ripe issue for examining institutionalized recreancy. Any systemic failure of ERP is, by definition, an indication of recreancy. I will use the case of the Total Tar Sands Upgrader Project, Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta,2 in order to elucidate this idea of systemic and normative recreancy. In 2010, Total, the French multinational corporation, applied for approval to construct and operate an oil (i.e., tar) sands bitumen upgrader (Total E&P Canada Ltd., 2007). Their application then went before Alberta’s Energy Resource Conservation Board (ERCB) for review.3

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Following prior practice, concerned citizens with a proximate and significant interest were given the opportunity to retain counsel and intervene in the permit hearings in order to raise substantive issues germane to whether and how permits should be granted. Alberta provided funding for both legal representation and experts to support this right of intervention. Fearing that the proposed plant would pose a future hazard to their safety, a group of citizens living nearby the proposed Total Upgrader organized as Citizens for Responsible Development (CFRD) to oppose the plant’s approval and seek additional safeguards should it be permitted. They obtained representation from Ackroyd Barristers & Solicitors of Edmonton, Alberta, to participate in the hearings. However, Total challenged CFRD’s standing. Although CFRD prevailed, they were denied a permit extension sufficient to prepare for the hearings. The clock was already ticking as Ackroyd retained experts to prepare testimony on multiple issues, including the adequacy of the ERP submitted by Total as part of its application. While the citizens found Total’s ERP to be full of inaccuracies and false promises, the expert on how ERPs work that Ackroyd retained to review the plan was inclined to find no major problems. The leaders of CFRD realized they instead needed an expert on how ERPs fail. My body of work on the psycho-social impacts of environmental contamination and toxic exposure was just that, a body of information on the failure of ERP. Ackroyd approached me to evaluate the adequacy of the ERP submitted as part Total’s application. Despite a big task, limited upfront budget and an impossibly short deadline, I took the job. I was promised compensation for my work after the ERCB rendered a decision on the permit.

THE FOCAL PROJECT As the centerpiece in a push for tar sands bitumen to be refined before shipment south to the US, a huge industrial park, the Alberta Industrial Heartland (AIH), was created in 1998 by a partnership of four (now five) governmental entities. It sits on 582 square kilometers just outside Fort Saskatchewan, a city at the northern edge of Edmonton’s metropolitan area. The land had some industry but was primarily farmland and rural residential development. AIH’s mission was to Provide a single approach to promote and facilitate industrial development proactively and efficiently collaborate on facilitating services and infrastructure and plan for the area’s use while maximizing the attractiveness and efficient functioning of the

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Heartland for industrial development while minimizing environmental conflicts within the Heartland and on the periphery. (Alberta Industrial Heartland Association, 2010)

AIH advertises itself as “Canada’s largest hydrocarbon processing centre for petroleum, petrochemical, and chemical industries and the ideal location in Alberta for cost-effective, value-added processing of the oil sands bitumen and petrochemical feedstock” (Alberta Industrial Heartland Association, 2013). Alberta’s bitumen production is expected to more than double just between 2006 and 2015 to 164 million cubic meters (Alberta Environment, 2010). This growth is being concentrated in the AIH. Total is rated as one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies with production facilities in 29 countries. Total E&P Canada Ltd. proposed to construct an upgrader in the AIH in order to process 47,200 cubic meters per stream day (m3/sd) of tar sand bitumen into synthetic crude oil, coke, and sulfur. Construction was approved in 2010 as an outcome of the proceedings being discussed here with construction startup approved until 2016 (ERCB, 2010a). However, no work has been done to date and Total appears to have instead committed to a different project, the “Voyageur” Upgrader, a partnership with Suncor Energy (Alberta Industrial Heartland Association, 2013, p. 10). At the time of its 2010 review, the Total application was one of several upgraders in operation, under construction, or under review in and around the AIH. The nearby Suncor Energy Edmonton Refinery was an older plant dating from the 1950s and later converted to process bitumen into premium and regular unleaded automobile gasoline, all grades of diesel fuel, aviation fuels, and heating fuels such as kerosene and stove fuel. The Shell Scotford Upgrader began operations in 2003 and was expanded in 2011 to produce a variety of products including styrene monomer and mono-ethylene glycol, synthetic crude oil, catalysts, process chemicals, products chemicals, C3C4 mix, gasoline, jet fuel, diesels, heavy distillate, benzene, heavy aromatics, n-hexane, and sulfur. The BA Energy Inc. Heartland Upgrader began construction in 2006 and continues slow development. It is intended to produce synthetic crude oil and diluents. The Northwest Redwater Partnership Sturgeon Upgrader is under construction and due to open in 2015. It is intended to produce ultra low Sulfur diesel, diluent, vacuum gas oil, and naptha. PetroCanada also had an approved Upgrader. In addition, the AIH houses scores of other industrial enterprises (Alberta Industrial Heartland Association, 2012, 2013, pp. 9 15). The Total ERP, appended to the upgrader application, drew its guidance from Alberta Directive 071, “Emergency Preparedness Requirements for the Petroleum Industry.”4 Accordingly, permitted facilities are required

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to have ERPs in place and the capability to carry out effective emergency response to incidents that present potential hazards to the public and the environment. ERPs are also charged with serving the public interest and reflecting the needs of all Albertans (ERCB, 2008, 2009a).

TRUST, RECREANCY, AND THE ERP From the standpoint of vulnerability, it is hard to find a more sensitive population than the neighbors of a facility where a chemical release may harm them. A successful ERP may be all that stands between them and disaster. The ERP is thus central to issues of trust and recreancy. At the same time, and ironically, ERP success depends as much on the public as it does on industry (see Table 1).5 When there is no emergency, industry is expected to be fully vigilant even while it pursues such goals as efficient production, cost and delay avoidance, and worker safety. On their part, nearby residents live normal everyday lives with a sense of unthreatened well-being. Achieving this outcome is a major test of whether the public trusts the ERP to be protective. Absent such trust, normalcy is abandoned and nearby residents are themselves pressed into being vigilant for chemical releases. When there is an emergency with hazardous chemicals released, both industry and residents have key roles to play if ERP is to work. Industry is expected to respond rapidly and effectively, detect the problem, address it to stop the release, and warn and assist the public to assure their safety. An ERP can be judged according to how reliably these actions occur and their effectiveness. ERPs are less clear about their equal dependence on the participation of the residents themselves, who nevertheless become unwitting partners in the ERP process. Residents must respond exactly as guided to for the ERP to succeed. ERPs presume that everything will work fine. They are plans. The question I posed, however, was whether they were also reality. Table 1. Presence of Emergency Not present Present

Citizen Involvement in Emergency Response. Role of Industry Vigilance Mobilized

Role of Residents Normal life Mobilized

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METHODS The challenge of writing an evaluation of the Total Upgrader ERP was to address not only what was presented by Total in its application but also what was missing. As Total offered no data to support the efficacy of their plan, I sought a feasible empirical test. Because Total’s ERP mirrored those used by all industrial plants in the AIH, an evaluation of emergency response to releases from these existing plants would offer a reasonable approximation of how well the proposed Total ERP would work. Given the paucity of literature on emergency response performance, here was a chance to break new ground. In order to assess historical compliance with Directive 071 in the AIH, a content analysis of the directive revealed seven core components, which would serve as the indices of evaluation. Given the absence of publicly available data, I elected to use nearby residents’ experience with industrial releases in the AIH as the basis of analysis, drawing upon the help of interveners in the Total hearing, members of CFRD. During the short time available, I conducted a lengthy phone interview with four resident interveners, received extended written input on the interview questions from two of these plus another resident, and reviewed prior public hearing testimony by seven residents that was then coded using the same format as the interviews. The resulting small but diverse sample illustrated impacts for the residents. It tapped key informants who could speak from both personal and advocacy experience. The sample included farming and non-farming families, residents with both long and short ties to the land, elders and young people, parents with children at home and with grown children, and residents living both inside the AIH and just outside its borders. After filing a 114 page report, I came to Fort Saskatchewan on June 8, 2010 for the administrative hearings before the ERCB. Before testifying, I toured the AIH, the Total site, and the surrounding communities with the resident interveners. My observations confirmed what I had written. I testified before the ERCB on June 11, 2010.

PSYCHO-SOCIAL BASELINE AND FINDINGS My first task was to reconstruct some point in the past when people lived normal lives unobstructed by industry and then trace forward the impacts of subsequent developments. The analysis is based on the three fundamental pillars of normal everyday life: (1) lifestyle, people’s pattern of

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customary life activities; (2) lifescape, the basic assumptions that underlay residents’ everyday life, including perceived health, control over life, security of home and community, safety of the environment, viability of livelihood, and degree to which others can be trusted to act for one’s best interests; and (3) lifestrain, levels of stress, adaptive coping, conflictive relationships, and resulting overall psychological health (Edelstein, 2004). Residents in my sample often had deep roots and place-connection in the AIH region whether or not they predated industrial development. Rather than centering on environmental threat, their baseline residential expectations were rural, close to nature, appreciative of beauty, and based on an assumption of a healthy and safe environment. These comments by local residents capture the sense of place at that time: “it was peaceful and quiet, relatively wild, and secluded by the river”; “this idyllic piece of God’s creation”; “provided our family with a rural lifestyle we wanted to eventually retire here”; and “Edmonton’s island of beautiful soil.” The environment for children was expressed by a farm mother who had a multigenerational bond to the land: It was a great place for raising a family. We had lots of people in the area with children roughly the same age. Kids could ride their bikes, cross country ski, snowmobile, and do all the regular outdoor activities what we expect from country life, a carefree existence.

But this pre-development baseline shifted rapidly after the plan to create the AIH surfaced. One resident’s recollection underscored the exclusion of the public from decision-making: I found out by accident. It was May 2000. I went to an open house, very poorly attended because, of course, no one knew of it, and I was shocked. Oh my gosh, this is our neighborhood! Here they are planning the biggest industrial area of its kind in Canada, and they did not send out information to residents!

She instigated a well-attended public meeting, but publics’ concerns were assuaged with promises to limit development and do careful studies that were subsequently not kept. A subsequent court challenge by residents failed and the litigants were saddled with costs, a disincentive to future action. Thereafter residents described where they lived according to the long list of chemical plants they lived near. Instead of the rural environment she and her husband moved to, one resident reeled off this list of her industrial neighbors to describe where she lived: Air Liquide, CN Rail, CP Rail, the Scotford Colony Intensive Livestock Operation, the Shell Upgrader, Shell Refinery, and Shell Chemicals, also to Oxy Vinyls (now) Gulf Chemicals and Metallurgical Corp.

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Each resident had a comparable list. Although some industry preceded their move to the area, the intensity of the change came after most residents had settled in. In many cases, residents did not learn that adjacent land had been purchased for industry until it was too late to object. Residents characterized such changes as destroying their dreams and plans for their land and changing the character of the region that had attracted them in the first place. Lifestyle impacts were evident across my sources. Direct impacts of industry as well as the threat of emergency led to palpable disruptions of normal behaviors. Such lifestyle alterations have meaning beyond the inconvenience. A farmer in AIH complained: Our once farming community has been bought out by industry which has transformed our community into an industrial existence. This has modified our lifestyle greatly On a daily basis there are concerns with air quality, well water quality/quantity, and safety. The environment has changed more drastically in the past 5 years. The increase in noise, traffic, and individuals who have no connections to the community has violated our once quiet farming community and lifestyle.

Such formerly mundane activities as going for a walk in one’s neighborhood were now difficult. Noise impacts were constant, prompting one teenage girl to complain that “earplugs really hurt when you are sleeping.” Industry had become intrusive in every way. Lifescape impacts included a reassessment of health across past, present, and future symptoms. Several residents reported that their health was only bad when they were at home. Residents smelled odors and were unable to protect their children. Their disempowerment was exacerbated by distrust of government: No one really knows what the long-term effect will be and if our families are being affected. We do know that some of these releases are highly carcinogenic. What does that do to you as a parent? You live in a rural environment which you thought would be a peaceful place to raise your children and carcinogens and other harmful chemicals are being pumped into the air your family is breathing.

The above respondent rejected government statistics proclaiming the area safe because she saw firsthand the suffering of people with cancer and other diseases. To prove health effects, citizens prepared a map showing the locations of cancer and other disease incidence. Farmers cited “flourosis” in their cattle and horses. A teenage equestrian reported declining health in her horses and worried about getting flourosis herself and having to face “grossness of colour on my teeth.”

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To live in a landscape being forcibly transformed from a residential/ agrarian homeland to an industrial heartland resulted in a profound loss of control over the course of their life, as a resident observed: We were suddenly designated the AIH by some unknown person in search of power. We learned of it by seeing our land for sale on the worldwide web in English, French, German, and Japanese. Like the birds in our backyards, seeing the great horned owl, the residents of north-east Strathcona County felt panic in their hearts. Eminent scientists informed us that we were living in a toxic soup.

Residents had not chosen the situation, felt helpless to oppose big corporations, and disabled by the secrecy and tactics. Some were forced to sell out cheap, get out, and start over. Community conflict ensued when some residents benefitted by supporting industry while others resisted. Residents quickly learned to distrust government information, catching officials in mistruths over monitoring, results, and implications. At the same time, residents were increasingly expected to be experts on life in an industrialized environment, as when officials wanted them to identify the odors they smelled. A major source of disempowerment was distrust of emergency notification, as indicated by this comment, “We have lost faith that we are going to be informed. And that unknown element takes its toll on a family.” With rapid turnover of their community to industrial uses, neighbors disappeared only to be replaced by factories. There were extreme consequences for how residents felt about their own homes in line with what I have elsewhere called the “inversion of home” (Edelstein, 2004). Residents’ privacy, control, identity, and security were subverted. Intrusions of strangers became common, as did intrusions of noxious conditions. Uncertainty discouraged investment in the home. Families found themselves in limbo, uncertain if they would also feel forced to relocate. In the extreme, love of home was so inverted that the residents desired to leave: We had built our home here and this is the place we were going to retire and live out our lives. And we look at the future with all the industrialization happening. This is not what we planned. We planned a quiet life in the country. And that is not what happened. Our hopes, dreams, and plans were taken away from us. And that opens up a new set of problems because where are you going to go?

Another lifescape impact was the loss of trust in others, particularly government and industry, and by extension the protective technologies, systems, and strategies they deployed. The AIH’s industrial history created a backdrop of distrust for the Total application. Residents cited instances of mistakes and deceit. Behind hilarious tales of futile efforts by industry to

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prove their competence was a foreboding. Such incidents undermined industry reassurances of their expertise and professionalism. There seemed to be no learning curve for individual industries, let alone from one industry to another. The same mistakes were repeated, with plants built too close to residences, and failures of monitoring and emergency notification. One resident tersely summed up community views about trust: I do not trust any company including Total or government agency for that matter to keep us safe. Protecting local citizens is not a priority.

All of these lifescape and lifestyle impacts took a cumulative toll or “lifestrain.” Direct stresses from industries such as “noise, light, alarms, traffic, and pollution,” melded with the “lack of confidence in ERP’s and fear of the unknown.” The unraveling of plans and future uncertainty that resulted is well-expressed by this resident: This uncertainty causes us a lot of stress. We feel we are living temporarily in our own home. I am also anxious about what will happen if we are required to move.

Activism was a particular source of stress. Surrounded by scores of industrial enterprises with different owners and different permits, residents were living in a full-time regulatory circus playing in at least three rings. They were drawn to participate in siting hearings, regulatory oversight, synergy groups and other planning committees, and to meet with industry staff and attend open houses. It is an overwhelming burden for normal people, lacking technical expertise and having family and work responsibilities, amounting, as one activist explained, to being “a full-time job.” It was a volunteer job in an unchosen field to boot: The processes are not set up at our convenience or do not seem to take into consideration that we have lives we, as residents, do not go to hearings or prepare for hearings as a profession. Our lives are busy and there is no account for this.

The activist explained that she had missed the Total hearing notice because she was tending her ill husband for an extended period when he needed care and then it was Christmas, “a time when families should have family time.” Regardless of such excuses, however, potential interveners needed to respond according to the regulatory clock, “to work within a short timeline set out without our input. We are just supposed to be available.” Total successfully opposed the citizens’ request for sufficient time to prepare for the hearing. Residents experienced a constant pressure to make industry business their business. They had to enforce exceedances of noise and other noxious

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conditions. And often, it was they who observed releases and reported them. The result is tremendous overload for resident activists. Several reported abandoning hobbies they loved. A local farmer elaborated on the burdens: Yes, it does change your lifestyle. There are endless meetings from industry and taking time from our families’ needs. Not only are we living in this, but now evenings are consumed with meetings or they are calling us.

Regulatory time and time measured in resident’s lives are too different epochs. Residents are expected to meet regulatory timetables that industry regularly violates. Residents organized Citizens for Responsible Development to address these issues, but over such a protracted period, the press of industry demands outpaced their capacity to keep up, as the organization’s head acknowledged: Members change. People are frustrated by the process. We have spent a lot of time over the last 10 years to get the municipalities and industries to listen to our concerns. And it feels like no one is listening. It is a big time consumer. People are frustrated. There is still a very serious concern in the community but people feel hopeless; they feel their efforts have been fruitless. Some are intimidated by the processes. Some have given up.

As old stalwarts are bought out and compelled to silence by purchase agreements, the group was robbed of support and expertise, leadership, and an understanding of history. The Total hearings were hardly their first mobilization. For one resident, it was his fifth. For a key activist, the pace and scale of industrial development has consumed much of her time for a decade: This includes attending meetings and participating in consultations and other process so that we are somewhat informed and so that we can have some input. And, despite our efforts, we are unfortunately losing the battle to defend our lifestyle.

The armies of industry Public Relations people who invite residents to meetings or stop by for a visit create another situation for residents, as one explained: They try to be good neighbors, but in another sense they smooth you over so that you do not talk about the unpleasantness of living with industry. Industry’s due-diligence is to send their PR people to the community and your home to try to appease you. So it takes up your time. You do not want to be bothered with industry invading our thoughts, our time, and our lives. They try to buy our cooperation with gifts and invites to dinner.

Activists also face community pressure, given that some local people work in factories or have relatives that do. As a result, people are careful

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what they say. Support for activists is often, literally, silent. Those who are too vocal may be warned. And fiery public arguments between neighbors occur. All of this has serious impacts for local families: This has been very difficult on families. I have seen separations and I have seen divorces. Perhaps, this is not the sole cause of the family problems but the time consumed because of industry development, the uncertainty, and the changes to our lifestyle certainly has added to the pressures. In a time when most families are already struggling for quality time, this development has caused an enormous amount of stress and pressure on the lives of the people in our community.

The fact that it is a losing battle does not help. Such stresses are experienced by children as well as adults. They see reports of industrial accidents in the newspapers, their neighbors move away, and they worry about their family’s own plans. A mother described how her children had shifted from opposing to wanting the family to move: The uncertainty of what the impact of all this development will bring has caused stress for our family and for our children. This was supposed to be our home where we had plans for the future. For the last 10 years, those plans have been put into limbo. We do not know if we will stay and if we move, we do not know where we will go. Through the years, I have heard our children say that they do not want to go anywhere, then I hear them say they are concerned about the pollution and the health effects, where will we go, and it is always looming over them.

When adult children bring grandchildren home to their parents, they find a dramatically altered place devoid of trees and neighbors and dominated by a neighboring upgrader. “They see that our yard is the same, but all around us, the whole environment has changed.” But of greatest significance, “When I have my grandchildren over I keep them inside more for their safely.” Another resident, whose farm is adjacent to an approved upgrader, was concerned with the lost quality of life he has seen his neighbors endure. He does not want the same horrible experience. “We cannot imagine raising our children if there is an upgrader within a mile of our home.” For those already closer to industry, this local mother’s lament underscores the farmer’s fears: The issues do not go away. We live surrounded by industry. Our concerns are never put to rest. We know accidents can happen even to responsible companies. So it is always there. You worry about your family’s long-term health, you worry about accidents, and you worry about the time that is lost as a family and what toll that will have on your children.

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The tension between activism and motherhood was a challenge for this activist who became involved when “the youngest was in diapers.” She “thought it would take a few weeks, and here we are 10 years later and it is still consuming our life.” While industrial demands proliferated, the childhood of her kids slipped away. Now she laments that “our time as a family has been robbed, their time with their grandparents was robbed, time that cannot be brought back.” She noted feelings of guilt for this loss despite her efforts to protect her children, “your spare time is consumed. We cannot shut it off. It has definite adverse effects. It is stress that you have to be away from the kids.” She knew that the situation had caused family conflict for others. “These issues consume people.” One activist pulled back because “her husband had said that either you walk away or he wanted a divorce.” A teenager who depended on her mother for mobility in the rural community gave a child’s perspective on her mother’s activism: Six years may not seem like a lot to an adult, but it is a third of my life, and all I can remember living at our farm is my mom battling Agrium and other industries, plus the County you are sitting home alone wishing your mom was here.

She fought with her mother over the meetings, and her mother finally resorted to bribery, giving her $10 for every meeting she went to and $15 if the meeting were at home due to “the rush cleanup.” By her count, she had earned at least $500. She also fought with her mother over use of the family computer. Having already moved once, she has “always worried about moving away from my new friends” and opposed her mother’s efforts at relocation. At school, meanwhile, her peers teased “that my mom was Erin Brockovich.” At first upset, she eventually decided she was proud of her mom, not that she told her. Guilt has a big part of their relationship, with her mom “constantly apologizing to me and her friends for not spending as much time as she should with us.” On her part, the daughter knew that the family had relocated to the area to get her the best trainers for her avocation as an equestrian. She expressed guilt that now they were “in this polluted area.” Emotions boil in such situations. A significant part of residents’ experience was the landscape of fear in which they now lived. They reside under an industrial shadow always in evidence: homes are lit at night with bright lights and flares, invaded by industrial odors, and made inaccessible by industrial traffic and trains. Residents have no idea what they are breathing in at any given moment. And, they are dependent on others for protection that they had learned to

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distrust. Accidents had a higher certainty than did their receiving warnings and assistance. Activists were engaged in research and learning, and the more knowledge they acquired, the more concerned they became. Experts from industry and the Province went home at night. But, for activists, this was their home. As one activist explained, The way my mind works by stating in the documents that it “could” happen then it “could” happen, and this makes me extremely uncomfortable!!

While Shell argued with her that just because something can happen does not mean that it will, in her mind it did not mean that it would not. All of my sources agreed that another upgrader would significantly expand their risk, in the words of one “It expotentiates the problems already present.” The local farmer with a new upgrader for a neighbor already knew what to expect: Every time we hear a strange noise, or smell a strange smell, or see a flare or smoke, we will be alert, wondering what is going on. And waiting for the phone to ring, telling us to run, or worse yet, not confident that the phone will ring, telling us to run never mind if we are not near a phone.

Already, living near the AIH, he was already vigilant for flares and wind direction. Such demands on attention continually tax residents’ coping resources, as an activist acknowledged: We know a lot of incidents/accidents have happened over the years chemical spills, releases, fires, etc. People’s lives have been turned upside down. Many have been bought out and relocated. If the other plants come on line that have been approved and then this one, well, our problems will be much larger and more people will be affected. We cannot handle what we have now.

The AIH is already unlivable, and that is with only one of the five approved upgraders operating. The activist’s family decided to gauge the cumulative impact by taking an outing to that operating upgrader: When we got near the upgrader, the odor was terrible. My eyes were burning, my husband said his throat was burning. And we all had headaches by the time we got out of there. My husband described the area as “uninhabitable.” He said it was like he was on another planet. And that is just one upgrader! What is going to happen when the ones that have already been approved are up and running and adding more pollution to the air?

Nearly every aspect of residential life in the AIH region has been captured by industry. The very fabric of normal life is shredded. There is a lost sense of health, feelings of control, enjoyment and security of home,

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property and surrounding environment, and ability to trust government, industry, and others. Citizens wage lopsided battles against powerful forces of industry and government. Increasingly, an exit strategy from the Heartland is more plausible plan than building a future there. Industry has a major incentive to keep residents feeling unsafe, intimidated, defeated, and ready to give up and depart.

BASECASE: EMERGENCY RESPONSE DELIVERY AS A MEASURE OF RECREANCY In the basecase, the study component used to project the success of the Total ERP, a content analysis was made of Directive 071. Seven key components were identified that are required for ERP compliance, listed in Table 2. The table also indicates a rating of acceptable, marginal, or not acceptable, and a summary reasoning for the rating. As will be seen in the following review of these requirements, the Total ERP flunked miserably.

Emergency Command Structure, Rated Fair Two full sections of the Total ERP were devoted to describing the Emergency Command Structure for managing an emergency, featuring a detailed organizational design for emergency management down to the shape of the command room and its contents (Total E&P Canada Ltd., 2007). Despite the descriptive detail, however, no information was provided on how well the approach has worked for other corporations in the AIH or elsewhere. No consideration is given for community communication other than requiring that a local phone book be present. The command post-table is drawn, but the kitchen table is not considered; the landscape on the other side of the plant’s quarter mile buffer where people live and work is ignored. Numerous cooperating agencies, companies, and emergency responders are listed, but no information is provided about their capacity and limits and their ability to address multiplesimultaneous demands. Non-profit industry organizations involved in communication (NR CAER) and air monitoring (FAP) are voluntary and understaffed.

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Table 2. Requirement

Compliance with Directive 071 in the AIH. Rating

Reason

Good Fair Inadequate Emergency command Bounding of emergency planning zone Effective public communication and education Emergency notification Emergency detection

x x

x

x x

Emergency protection

x

Non-emergency relocation

x

Lacks evaluation of performance in practice No certainty that zone will correspond to actual release; failure to use empirical data Ineffectual communication; very limited education Failed history of timely warning that is neither acknowledged nor analyzed Mixed record, no reported follow-up and learning Limits to shelter ignored; no evacuation plan; ignore problems with evacuation VRPPP record of unjust practice

Bounding Potential Emergencies, Rated Inadequate Since my first visit to Love Canal in 1979, I have been interested in how hypothetical boundaries around real or potential areas of contamination become reified. Geographically bounding risk by precisely demarcating a poorly understood problem is a heuristic devise a mental shortcut that trades simplifying a complex phenomenon for the risk of being misleading.6 ERPs depict spatial zones of potential impact showing populations at greatest risk and, accordingly, most in need of involvement, training, warning, and assistance. Because the actual dispersal of chemicals during an accident cannot be predicted, such boundaries accept considerable distortion and error, which must be, but is not, acknowledged. Directive 071 mandated the calculation of two protective boundaries as part of the Total ERP. In the case of the Total application, both boundaries had been substantially altered by the time of the permit hearings (ERCB, 2009a). The Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ) is described by Directive 071 as a geographic area surrounding wells, pipelines, or facilities containing hazardous products reflecting an area of significant potential exposure without prompt action. Total calculated an EPZ of 2.8 km surrounding the

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proposed plant. By the time of the Total hearing, new models were adopted for the EPZ that would shrink its size for future applications. The ERCB reasoned that a smaller EPZ “based on the most advanced dispersion modeling science available” would spare the public unnecessary alarm while remaining “extremely protective of those who reside in proximity to oil and gas development” (Henton, 2010a).7 The mid-review modification aroused public distrust after an air pollution modeling expert, Dr. Shuming Du, calculated that the revised model significantly underestimated risk (Du, 2009). As Du later explained to me, the ERCB would no longer calculate EPZ based on “worst case scenarios,” dismissed as having a “very low probability of occurrence” (ERCB, 2009a). Instead, EPZ would be based on the more conservative “average risk.” Shrinking the EPZ had an important political implication. Fewer people would now have standing to intervene against facility permits. The Emergency Action Zone (EAZ) was defined as the area outside the EPZ where public protection measures might be required. Total calculated an EAZ of 13.8 km surrounding its proposed upgrader. Mid-course in the review, however, the ERCB abruptly dropped the EAZ from Directive 071, claiming errors in modeling the size of the zone. In effect, the ERCB decision eliminated required public protections beyond the EPZ. Acknowledging that an actual release was unlikely to correspond to the predicted EPZ, Directive 071 required two additional response zones to be mapped according to actual conditions during an industrial release. The Initial Isolation Zone (IIZ) is the area of closest proximity to a continuous hazardous release. Recognizing that indoor sheltering offers only limited protection, it was directed that residents be evacuated from the IIZ if safe to do so. The Protective Action Zone (PAZ) is calculated after a release by measuring wind direction and the distance from the incident to the EPZ’s outer boundary. Because both the IIZ and PAZ may substantially differ from the EPZ, the EPZ can be seen as a planning tool limited by substantial error. On their part, IIZ and PAZ measure reality, but only after an emergency is underway. As a measure of the overall modeling error, it is necessary to know how often actual releases are contained within Emergency Planning Zones and whether the policy error from using the EPZ resulted in a loss rather than gain of protection. To the extent that past chemical dispersion traveled beyond the modeled EPZ, people located outside the EPZ are justified in having a “risk perception shadow” bigger than the EPZ boundaries (Stoffle et al., 1991). This was certainly the case for the AIH region.

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There are important protective implications, however. Drawing boundaries may not demarcate where risk stops, but it delineates the margins of government warnings, assistance, and corporate responsibility with a perverse outcome. Those inside the boundary receive more protection and assistance than those on the outside margins even though there is no evidence offered to distinguish their relative levels of risk. There are also implications of these changes to Directive 071 for residents’ rights to participate in the permitting process. These were clearly stated by farmer Clinton Whitelock, from Lodgepole, Alberta, who found himself close enough to a proposed gas well to fear harm from release of acutely toxic sour gas yet unable to intervene under the revised ERCB regulation (Henton, 2010a): I feel that there is a very high chance that I will be both adversely and directly affected by this (well), but because I am outside of this EPZ circle I may no longer have the right to file an objection, and if I do, I may not get full participatory rights at an ERCB hearing.

Thus, drawing boundaries confirms the risk inside the demarcated region without offering comfort to those living on the margins. The uncertainty of the margins (“I am uncertain if I am safe or not, so what do I do?”) may be more stressful than the negative certainty of being inside the boundary (“I am in danger and here is what I need to do”). In the context of the Total ERP, I recommended assessing the cumulative EPZ by considering all enterprises in the AIH as well as its entire area of influence within its airshed.

Is the ERP Supported by Effective Public Communication? Rating: Inadequate Total’s ERP described how public communication and emergency notification was planned to occur but offered no analysis of how well similar approaches have previously worked in the AIH or elsewhere. To address this gap, I evaluated whether emergency notification has worked during past incidents in the AIH, whether people living and working around the AIH felt protected and the implications for Total’s plan. I reasoned that communication between industry and the public is required at three distinct times. Before any emergency, communication serves to explain potential hazards and educate residents about how to respond, to gain feedback on procedures, and to consult about problems. During emergency events,

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communication is used to warn endangered residents, provide and receive information, and answer questions. Communication after emergency events is needed to evaluate ERP effectiveness, improve procedures, and institute preventative changes. I found evidence of limited pre-emergency communication, major gaps in emergency communication, and no post-emergency communication. As noted, a major purpose of ERP is to reassure residents when there is no emergency. Thresholds differ for satisfying a regulation and satisfying the public that the regulation is intended to protect. Past experiences are a potent and reasonable way to predict future outcomes and inevitably influenced residents’ expectations for how Total would perform. Distrust, once established, is hard to reverse. The public judges industry according to the number of times ERPs fail while industry judges itself according to how often ERPs succeed; government seeks an “acceptable” balance of the two. From the public’s perspective, this balance is fictional. Protection either works or fails. No failure rate is acceptable. An effective ERP demands public communication before, during, and after emergencies.8 The Total ERP promised authentic communication featuring “forums for direct engagement” and “meaningful input” in “an open, transparent, and responsible manner” in order to “earn the trust of stakeholders and the public” (Total E&P Canada Ltd., 2007, p. 2.2) to maximize the upgrader project’s benefits and understand its effects (Total E&P Canada Ltd., 2007, p. 2.2). Total’s sincerity, however, was undermined by previous promises by other AIH corporations who, in reality, appeared to be just acting in their own interests. Emergency Communication When residents were asked about past experiences with emergencies in the AIH, a faulty warning system was evident. The reports of several residents are illustrative: When the Shell chemical incident happened, my husband, a farmer, was in the field and we were not notified. He heard it on a radio station late that evening that there had been an incident and that all the close neighbors had been notified. And we are one of the closest neighbors we live only a mile across the field from the plant it was a severe accident. Employees were quarantined. Tires, tarmac, and baby seats all were discarded it was a major disaster over there. When the BP fire occurred in 2001, it was a frightening experience. Fire balls were bursting into the air. You could see that the sprinklers were on in some of the other plants to keep them cool. Black smoke billowed into the air. What was happening? No one told us. Radio reports indicated that Fort Saskatchewan was on evacuation alert.

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We are much closer but we knew nothing. As a family, we had a lot of fear from not knowing what was going on. It caused a lot of lingering insecurity long after it was over. In May 2001 Shell Canada Products Scotford Refinery had an incident a pipe ruptured and that resulted in a release of hydrogen and refined crude oil in a fine mist. The plume initially went northwest of the Refinery so people in that direction were called. Later on that evening when the wind changed direction we received a phone call from a neighbor telling us it was heading our way. I phoned the plant and two Shell employees came to the yard at 1:00 a.m. to reassure us that everything was under control and there was nothing to worry about. I still did not feel at ease about the release it took quite some time that night to get to sleep. I believe it took several days of cleanup in some areas of the plant before the plant was safe enough for the workers to return to safety.

In theory, residents are close enough to industrial facilities to be warned directly by sirens. However, although sirens are indeed sounded as alarms in the AIH, they are also used for such routine functions as announcing lunch time and they are tested frequently. Residents of the AIH are subject to a constant cacophony of sirens, obscuring serious warnings and causing residents to become inured to their sounding. The result is what one resident termed the “crying wolf” phenomenon. The common and annoying sound of sirens to the point where people are numb to the sound as they are so commonplace no one will take action sirens are ignored. If there is an emergency where sirens are used, I am afraid no one will take notice.

Her husband told visitors alarmed by the sirens: “it is either lunch time or we are all going to die. And only time will tell.” During one particularly loud blast where sirens “could be heard through our house,” she contacted Northeast Region Community Awareness Emergency Response (NR CAER) and ERCB but learned nothing. Three days later, she was informed that, although it was unclear who sounded it, the siren was likely just a routine test. As such, information was never put on the Update system, reserved for unusual non-routine events (Berriman, 2009). Apparently, residents were to conclude that finding no information was all the assurance they needed and it was certainly all they were going to get. Non-Emergency Communication Residents were barraged with invitations from numerous companies to plant meetings and tours while receiving occasional home visits from industry representatives. These contacts invariably pursued a one-sided corporate agenda and inevitably failed to address residents’ circumstances. Often such sessions seemed manipulative and a waste of residents’ time. Any

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good will nevertheless created was then undermined during subsequent emergencies by communication failures. Government communication is also problematic. The ERCB focused on creating cooperative multi-stakeholder “synergy groups” designed to address local public safety concerns and regional issues while improving stakeholder communication (ERCB, 2009b, 2010c). But, of 209 synergy groups active in Alberta in 2008, only one involved the AIH. Synergy groups appear better suited for addressing abstract problems than urgent community interests. Furthermore, as only few members of the public have time to participate, other stakeholders dominate the groups, subjecting citizen participants to conformity pressure and being seen by fellow residents as “selling out.” Alberta thus evidenced a commitment to superficial public communication and a reticence to really empower residents around the issues confronting them. On the most important issues, AIH citizens lacked leverage in their dealings with industry and government, as this resident reported on his experience with localized consultation, “in the end citizens were forced to compromise until we received exactly what we started with, which was nothing.” Given the disparity of power between corporation and citizens, the dynamic is unlikely to change. Thus, disempowered citizens are neither motivated to speak nor are corporations motivated to listen.

Is the ERP Supported by Effective Public Education? Rating: Inadequate Life in the EPZ demands being aware of hazards and how to address them. It also requires being aware of the relevant regulations and agencies and understanding how to deal with a potentially large number of industrial enterprises. These are not things that residents would necessarily know, and their ability to respond to warnings and take proper and effective action is dependent on such learning. Yet, when I asked my informants to describe the training and information they had received regarding emergency response actions and its effectiveness, I was simply informed, “There is no training.” No online materials were found. The resident most surrounded by industrial plants questioned whether she had been prepared for the most basic form of protective response to an accident, “What is shelter-in-place? I have no course in this. I do not know how it would work.”

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Are the Early Notification and Emergency Notification Systems Effective? Rating: Inadequate Emergency notification programs are run collectively through an industry organization, NR CAER, rather than by individual corporations in the AIH. There are two principal NR CAER programs (NR CAER, 2013). “Update line” is a phone number residents can call for information about unusual occurrences (loud noises or alarms; prolonged flares or smells; smoke or fire; and traffic conditions). NR CAER’s automated call-out system provides emergency notification to residents within the EPZ of a particular plant; residents can also register to receive early notification of any emerging incidents at a plant in the AIH. The Total ERP application contained no evaluation of how effectively these systems system worked, a gap again filled by my interview data. Call-Out One resident tersely summed up her assessment of call-out. “Shelter-inplace was ordered; residents did not receive the call and were left outdoors exposed to chemicals.” An elderly couple, now relocated, reported a string of incidents about a year apart where industry communication was almost a comedy of errors: The NR CAER line has had numerous glitches and failures over the last few years. There has been many times when we have not been notified for over 2 hours. There have also been several occasions where I have had to leave work to try to reach my husband because he was not in the house answering the phone when I received a call-out from the NR CAER line at work. When my husband is outside, as he often is, he does not get the calls notifying him of the emergency or to shelter-in-place. My husband saw smoke and fire at about 9:30 coming from the Shell complex. I called the Update line at 10 a.m. Nothing on the line, so I called security she knew nothing other than they had an incident and the emergency response team was in action. Security told me that the NR CAER Update line would be updated as more information was available. I asked her what was in the release, and how much was released. She told me she would have to get more information and call me back. While waiting for her to phone back I got a call to “shelter-in-place” at my work number and cell phone number, so I called home to be sure my husband received the call. He did not answer the phone, so he had already gone outside not knowing about the “shelter-inplace.” Security called me again with new information and said there was no off-site impact expected and if the situation arose they would put a fan out call to “shelter-inplace.” I told her that had already been done and that my husband was home and outside, and could they please send someone over to alert him to stay indoors. She again

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said she would have more information At 11:50 we got the fan out call that all was clear and that you could get more information on the Update line. My husband was outside and heard sirens and saw smoke coming from the Shell plant at about 10:40 a.m. He called me at work at 10:50 and asked me to call and see what was happening. I called the NR CAER line at about 10:50 and there was nothing on it. So I called within 5 minutes to the Shell Complex and spoke to the security. She said they had a release at the Sulfur Recovery Unit and had evacuated the plant. I asked if my husband should be leaving our home and giving her the location. She did not know and spoke to someone else, who apparently said that he should be alright. I asked her what level of emergency it was and she told me it was a level two. When I asked why we were not notified, she said that was the responsibility of NR CAER. I asked if we should be expecting a call but she did not know. At 11:25 I called the NR CAER line. Still there was nothing on it. I phoned Shell back and spoke to the person who was supposed to be in charge. He sounded annoyed or stressed out. He told me that Shell had evacuated the Plant and that everyone was okay but he had to go. I told him my husband was not on the Plant site but he was at home very close by and there was no information on the NR CAER line. In the meantime, I tried several times to call my husband who had gone back outside with our new cordless telephone which turned out not to work outside the house. So I ended up leaving work at 11:30 am to make sure Dennis was okay. Because I have asthma, as soon as I hit Highway 15 and 112th street my eyes started to water and I could feel my chest getting tight. When I got home I called the NR CAER line again and this time there was finally information about the incident. It said there was a leak at the Sulfur Recovery Unit and there would be flaring of acid gas. I took my husband and we left. His eyes were running and he started coughing and sneezing. At 1:30 pm I called the NR CAER line again which had a message that the leak had been contained but they were flaring acid gas and monitoring, although there was no detectable impacts at the time. I did not know how long it would take for impacts to be detected. At about 2:25 pm I called Shell again and talked to another woman at security and asked if it was safe to go home and she said it was. At 2:30 pm I received an automated call to my work number. It is one of our emergency contact numbers and this message told me that we should be sheltering in place. (When a Shell representative later called to check on her and her husband) I was quite upset by that point and asked why it took more than 3 hours for the NR CAER call to shelter-in-place. She told me that they had asked for a fan out call at noon.

They had actually received the call only 2½ hours late. In another instance, a mother, just done testifying at an upgrader hearing, learned that a chemical release was underway in her neighborhood. Dow had just had a hydrocarbon release and the plume was heading toward Riverside Park, where we live. Emergency crews had been dispatched. I immediately ran to call home. My kids were home alone and they did not receive a call on the wonderful

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system we have. Industry did not make a call-out. Media were made aware of it, the PR work was done, but people were not called to be informed.

She elaborated upon the stress associated with such industrial failures. Absent call-outs, there was no way to assure her children’s safety: The emotion of what this does to you, they simply do not understand. The unknown, especially when the trust has been broken, is very difficult when your family and other people you care about are involved.

As these instances illustrate, such incidents were visible long before any industry information or action was taken. Notifications were too late to be helpful. Well meaning industry representatives might be wrong and misleading, unaware that nearby residents had been ordered to shelter-in-place and/ or misinformed in assurances that it was safe to go home. Notified parties might not have any way to reach loved ones at risk, a source of extreme stress. Such incidents consumed massive amounts of time and effort and destroyed planned activities and disrupted normal life. Overall, the idea of call-outs was problematic in many ways. There were numerous reasons why residents of the AIH area might be unreachable by phone. They might be out in the fields working, outdoors enjoying recreation, walking their dog, or playing with children in the backyard. They might even be home with the phone off, a handset misplaced, or batteries dead. Cell reception might be poor. Or a parent might be chatting with their college child. Or a call might be confused with spam; one resident refused a warning from Shell because she assumed a call from Texas meant it was telephone solicitors. Such instances of normal life confound urgent NR CAER communications. The interviews revealed consistent gaps in the system’s effectiveness, with frequent reported failures of notification. Whose fault was this? NR CAER tended to blame residents for not updating their contact lists. However, as one resident explained, industry boasts of effectiveness were not always borne out in resident experience. In March 2005, Shell Chemicals had a release of styrene and ethyl benzene from their plant site. The vapor cloud traveled in the direction of our home. Shell Chemical told the local papers that the neighboring residents had been contacted within 20 minutes of the release. We are one of the closest neighbors and according to our call display, the call came in 2 hours after the fact not 20 minutes.

Such instances signal to residents that the NR CAER warning systems are not trustworthy. In the end, NR CAER appeared to fail industry just as it failed the residents. Companies could never be certain that their warnings were disseminated and if so how effectively.

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Is the Update System Effective? The “Update system” lets residents call in for taped updates on releases. It is used when residents believe an emergency is underway but no warnings have been received. Total’s ERP did not evaluate the system’s effectiveness, but interview data shed light on problems, as indicated here: There have been too many times when things happen and we try to use the NR CAER call in system but when we call in to see if we can obtain information as to what is happening, whether it be flares, black smoke, or other incidents of concern, the information is too often not there. About a month ago, I called when Scotford was flaring intermittently9 over several days to find out what was going on. There was nothing on the line so I called Alberta Environment (AE) who after a couple of hours phoned to tell me what was happening. They did not know why it was not on the Update line. There never was anything put on the Update line, even after my phone call.

In another instance “an incident at Dow chemical, black smoke was billowing out. It was incredible!” Tipped off by an acquaintance that the smoke was heading her way, the resident tried repeatedly to call Update. It took government officials calling Dow directly to eventually reveal air releases underway. No warning or Update was ever issued. As indicated, the absence of information on Update forces residents to fill the gaps with calls to industry and government, “and all this consumes time because you end up calling them all.” This resident contrasted such failures to NR CAER claims about “what a wonderful community notification system and protocol they have a system that should be used in communities across the country”: The document outlines a protocol and time limits or expectations to enter information on the system depending on the level of incident. This protocol was developed after meeting with the public and consulting with them. But when something happens, industry/NR CAER does not follow the protocol. It looks good on paper but there is no follow-through. There is no enforcement. It is all voluntary. When residents have complained, we are sometimes told that there was no risk to the public so the information was not put on the system.

Later, this respondent inadvertently discovered another reason why so little information was posted on Update. She was researching why nothing was posted about prolonged flares at Shell just before Christmas when she got a call from a Shell representative who … said they had found out that they were putting more information on the line than other companies in the region. They felt that this was an injustice to the public and basically they wanted to fit the industry standard.

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In other words, Shell had posted the information and then removed it due to industry peer pressure. Does Social Networking Compensate for the Failure of Official Networks? The failure of formal information channels to disclose what is happening in the AIH forced some residents to create their own information pipelines: I know people who work there (the plant), and I get information directly from them about what happened. And neighbors get more that way then from the industry quite frankly … . There is a limited utility to this information, however. It is after the fact. It is not when I would need it and it would make a difference then it is too late we learn after the fact how serious it is.

by

Workers are neither a formal nor a reliable part of the notification process and risk getting in trouble if they disclose too much. Nevertheless, when they let information slip informally, they may contradict official communication, as happened for a neighbor’s understanding of a major Shell release: Workers cannot openly talk about incidents. It just comes up in coffee shop conversation. But for the major incident that happened, I understand how significant it was. And they even had workers quarantined on the site. And Shell claims it was not going any further than their fence, and that is not a bright statement! It went a couple miles down the road, and it could have been in my yard. And I do not know what I was breathing that day.

Local industry workers find themselves in double jeopardy. They are exposed at work and at home. And, worried about their families, they quietly share insider information that could get them fired.

Summary: Failure of Communication For my activist informant, the notification failure is the central ERP issue: It seems that whenever there is an incident that impacts people, the part of the response plan that gives information to the people consistently has not been satisfactory. I do not know if it has ever worked. The major problem is community notification. The people have been left out of the plan.

There are clear implications of these findings. While Total presented no data on system reliability, my informants all reported system failures. As more plants are added to the AIH, the notification systems will be

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strained further. One hundred percent reliability is demanded for an ERP to be protective.

Is Emergency Detection and Exposure and Health Assessment Effective? Rating: Inadequate Did the Total ERP address emergency detection, monitoring follow-up and evaluation, and health monitoring? Adequacy of Emergency Detection Total’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, an automated emergency detection system should respond instantaneously to serious incidents. Yet, Total offered no evidence of reliability. Threats such as power failure, computer attacks and malfunctions, operator error, and deliberate human interference were neither discussed nor the backup systems identified. The technological fix was presented as if infallible. Yet, AIH residents are nonetheless asked to notify plants if they observe any problems and often do so. The eyes and ears of the public would hardly be needed if SCADA were totally trusted. Effectiveness of Incident Follow-up, Post-incident Monitoring and Evaluation, and Medical Monitoring ERP effectiveness depends on a culture of evaluation, not in evidence. My informants were unaware of any incident follow-up and evaluation (such as medical screening, soil sampling, and animal testing). Residents hear one of the industry mantras dismissing the need for follow-up: “These are shortterm exceedances that cause no long-term effects,” “The effects are negligible” or “There were no off-site impacts.” If residents begin investigating an incident, they face obstacles such as being forced to request documents under the freedom of information act. In contrast, problems are publicly acknowledged when larger releases garner media attention. The industry meetings are held to apologize with “next time we will do better” or “now we understand that the public wants this information.” Residents dismissed such rituals because the learning was not viewed as genuine and “problems are constantly repeated.” Likewise, residents distrust the system of air monitoring charged with detecting ambient threats. Rather than being done by government, the volunteer Fort Air Partnership (FAP) monitors air. A resident activist dismissed this tersely, “In reality, industry monitors itself and is expected to

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report on itself. To me, this is both shocking and appalling.” She cited FAP’s organizational problems and charged that only safe results were published in the press while exceedances were suppressed. Her experience with FAP was illustrative of a characteristically slow response: I did not receive a reply until 10 days later. During that time, I had no idea whether our family’s health had been put at risk, whether there was an operational problem at the plants or whether AE had been contacted or any measures were being taken.

Although an exceedance was finally confirmed, she was told that AE determined the threat insufficient to warrant notifying residents. Despite repeated requests, she was never even able to learn the threshold for notification or the cause of the exceedances. I witnessed a de novo test of ERP on March 16, 2010, when an industrial emergency occurred just outside the AIH (Henton, 2010b, 2010c). Suncor partially evacuated its plant during two “process upsets,” the plant’s fourth release that year. A mixture of at least four chemical compounds was pumped into the air for an unspecified duration, sending visible plumes of smoke toward the Sherwood Park residential neighborhood. The release was detected by only one monitor for one compound. Suncor indicated it had posted information for public access. AE described the released chemicals as “highly toxic and carcinogenic material and” material data safety sheets listed some released chemicals as toxins, mutagens, somatogens and carcinogens, and respiratory irritants. However, Suncor stressed that concentrations were very low and there was no public health hazard and was given a week by AE to detail the release and its consequences. This delay drew astute criticism from one of my sources: What good is an emergency response plan if they can’t identify that there was an emergency situation? Here we are a week later and they are waiting for reports from industry to see if the people were breathing carcinogenic chemicals. How can an emergency response plan be expected to protect anyone if the hazard is not identified?

The incident underscored questions about air monitoring, early detection, and timely response in the ERP process. The sheer concentration of industries and known exposures to “below-detection emergencies” and “below threshold chronic exposures” suggested the need for health monitoring for incremental and cumulative effects of exposure. When I inquired of my informants about programs of active medical monitoring, however, I was told there were none. There was, therefore, no way to detect symptom clusters beyond the residents’ own disease mapping. This was another gap in the Total ERP.10

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Is Emergency Protection Effective? Rating: Inadequate The Total ERP offers two protective options for residents, “shelter-inplace” and evacuation. I will discuss each in turn.

Is Shelter-in-Place a Viable Protective Strategy? Both the Total application and the NR CAER website relied upon shelterin-place as the primary public response to chemical releases. To shelter-inplace, residents lock themselves in their homes, shut and seal windows and doors, shut down any HVAC systems, and wait for directions by radio, TV, or phone. In case of strong odors or instruction to do so, occupants undertake further sheltering in an inner room sealed with wet towels while breathing through a wet towel as a filter. The only public information about shelter-in-place is found on the NR CAER website and the accompanying refrigerator magnet (Table 3). Shelter-in-place policy assumes that people cannot be removed from harms’ way and must remain there. But is shelter-in-place protective against toxic chemicals such as H2S? And, in a place like the AIH, is it even feasible for local residents? Can they reach their homes quickly and effect adequate sealing? And, once sheltered, how long can they remain, their breathing potentially filtered by a damp towel? Such problems were not hypothetical. Residents and especially farmers may be too far a field when when events occur, vulnerable to exposure but unreachable by phone. They may be outdoors working, recreating, walking a dog or playing with children or grandchildren in the backyard, taking hikes or riding a horse or tending a backyard garden or grill or swimming in a pool or pond. They may even be home with the phone turned off, busy, charging, or misplaced. Cell reception may be poor. Must one alter daily

Table 3.

Shelter-in-Place Steps (NR CAER, 2010a).

Shelter-in-Place Steps: 1. Go inside. Turn on local radio or TV. 2. Close all windows and doors. 3. Shut off fans that draw outdoor air inside. 4. Listen to radio or TV for further instructions. Keep phone lines free. 5. If odour is strong, seal an inside room with wet towels at the base of the door. Breathe through a damp towel to filter air. Want a fridge magnet

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routine everyday staying home, windows shut, so as make shelter-inplace viable? Other impediments to shelter-in-place are the presence of children, elders, the disabled, pets, and animals. People with disabilities might be home without able bodied helpers. Children might be home with no adults. A house sitter, baby sitter, or guest may not know what to do. Or time taken rounding up children and pets might prevent shutting up the house before the chemicals arrive. People may panic and evacuate instead of sheltering. Parents can be expected to rush to their children despite instructions to shelter-in-place. Key questions about shelter-in-place went unanswered. Will area residents have the time, ability and know how to shut down their homes quickly? Are their houses drafty even when closed up? Will they be able to disable automated ventilation systems? Might inhabitants be put at risk from heating the home without adequate ventilation? Could a chemical heavier than air enter a house through the chimney or other openings? How much do heating, ventilation and air conditioning fans undermine a home’s defenses? How long can residents shelter in extreme temperatures without air conditioning or heating and or in extreme discomfort and isolation or before claustrophobia or fear of chemical exposure would adversely affect their emotions or judgment? Total’s ERP offered no data on the effectiveness of homes as shelter-inplace and how well homes act as a barrier to the different chemicals potentially released. The ERP did not even discuss whether shelter-in-place works better for workers at the plants than for their families sheltering at home? And there was neither a literature review nor significant literature available for review.11 Directive 071 offered some indication of limits to shelter-in-place in the area closest to a continuous hazardous release (IIZ), recommending evacuation if safe to do so “because indoor sheltering may offer only limited protection there.” Of course, if evacuation is unavailable, then limited protection through shelter-in-place may be residents’ only option (ERCB, 2009a, p. 4.5.5). Calls to shelter-in-place in the AIH periodically occurred but were poorly communicated, and, as an informant explained, this failure eroded trust: There are a couple of instances of releases where a shelter-in-place was ordered for residents living near the Shell upgrader and yet residents nearby were not advised about it. They linger in your memory for a long time because the trust is broken. It does not happen everyday but they are happening. Residents are not notified and are left outside exposed.

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And, even if notified in a timely way, she did not feel secure with the protectiveness of shelter-in-place: Personally, I have a lot of fears and concerns about whether it is the right thing to do. I have spoken to an individual who was a manager at a plant and he said “I worked with these chemicals. I have been at the plants for years. And I would not shelter-inplace. I would get out of there.”

But, she noted, it is an increasingly likely occurrence: We are being surrounded by industry. Approvals have been given for the construction and operation of upgraders near us, and when you look at the history and location of other residents, how close they are to industry, and what they have experienced, history tells us that the chance of us being told to shelter-in-place will increase.

It would be a prescription for chaos were people ordered to shelter-inplace after a chemical explosion, a local farmer feared. “I don’t know how well it would work if an explosion happens. There could be pandemonium, honestly.” An elderly resident worried a lot about the effectiveness of shelter-inplace, “I cannot see how we are going to prevent outside air from getting in.” A mother questioned the ethics of the strategy for her children: Last week, when we talked about “shelter-in-place,” it really made me think, why are we having to raise kids and teach them how to seal themselves in their home in a safe environment or one that we want them to think is a safe environment in the event there could be a chemical release and we may have to shelter-in-place? Other kids do not have that; they do not live like that! It reminds me of when we were kids and there was the threat of nuclear war and we had to go through the steps of practicing to prepare by sitting under our desk. And it still sticks in my head. Preparing your kids for shelter-in-place is a confusing issue you want to be prepared in the event that an accident happens and this is the only option but what will this do to our kids knowing it is not so safe in their home? Perhaps the same thing as it did to us as kids preparing for a nuclear bomb. Perhaps “shelter-in-place” is about as productive in terms of protection as sitting under the desk if a nuclear war occurred! Yet I know that there are so many industries here, and I know the chance of getting a call to shelter-in-place because of a chemical release is a reality. Is it fair to our kids?

The nuclear war analogy underscores the bind in which parents find themselves. Is it better to take potentially meaningless protective actions than to admit that in reality the situation has rendered them helpless? Industry may face the same question, actually, but from a different perspective. As opposed to the Cold War period, schools apparently do not prepare students for shelter-in-place, as the mother noted: I asked my son if they practice for things like that. He did not recall it. I do not believe it has been done, at least, not in a way that they recall and are prepared for.

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And, involved and experienced herself, she worried that few residents were even familiar with the concept: I am concerned that people in the neighborhood are not aware of what shelter-in-place involves. New people move into the community, are they informed?

And, this veteran AIH activist could think of but one example of NR CAER’s outreach to inform the public: There was a magnet for the fridge with instructions from one company years back. They left one on our door knob. I had one once.

The fridge magnet continues to be featured prominently on the NR CAER website along side of the only other public educational tool I found on shelter-in-place, a 3-minute cartoon, Mona Talks about Shelter-in-Place (NR CAER, 2010b). At the onset, we meet our narrator, Mona, a young lady who “drills” the viewer on the topic. With a silly but ominous touch of “South Park,” she introduces the protagonists, two kids named “Jack and Jill,” described as “your friends” living in a house “just like yours.” Tellingly, the backyard of the house is set against an industrial backdrop: an industrial plant, an underground pipeline, and a train track. The movie is apparently aimed at children living in just such a setting. As Jack and Jill play in their yard, a passing freight train skids off its tracks and the air fills with a white chemical cloud. Mona asks watchers, “Do you know what to do?” Assuming the kids are not alone, Mona continues: “Your mom or dad will tell you to come inside quickly.” Jack and Jill are frantically herded toward the house by a panicked mom. Meanwhile the white cloud has been transformed into a ghost in hot pursuit, grasping at the kids as they barely escape inside, and then enveloping the house in it’s embrace. Mona explains that doors and windows have to be shut: “You come in, the chemical stays out.” Mona instructs the kids to listen to their parents, remaining inside until an okay is broadcast by phone, TV, or radio. As “all safe” is signaled, the enveloping cloud obediently retreats and, instantly, the kids run back outside to play ball. The track miraculously cleared, the train once again passes by as the smiling engineer toots hello and waves. Distracted, one of the kids gets hit in the head by the ball and Jack and Jill break into peels of laughter. Normalcy has been restored. In closing, Mona reviews the steps of shelter-in-place, adding a provision for kids to shelter without their parents if they “see something bad happening.” But she does not address how they will shut up the house and turn off HVAC systems. Questions are left for teachers and parents to answer. NR CAER provides no data on the movie’s effectiveness.

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The cartoon effectively drills steps required to teach a child not to stand outside gaping at an unfolding disaster. However, its meta-statement about the inherent danger of living in and around the AIH may not be what NR CAER intended. Industrial Alberta is rendered as a combat zone where children learn to race for the bomb shelter at the siren’s call. Even young children comprehend that their home environment is unsafe, that they must live in fear, and learn to be vigilant. The movie illustrates a double bind for parents of which they are well-aware. Teaching their children to shelter-inplace affirms their inability to protect their families and instills fear. Do they share this frightening reality with their children or allow them a childhood that is psychologically secure but rife with hazard? Addressing this double bind, a farmer explained how an upgrader next door will change childhood for his kids: We have two little children who love to be outdoors. Now everyday we will be monitoring the wind direction to see if it is safe for them to play. They have no idea what is safe and what is not. Or do we now have to teach them what it means when alarms go off in the distance? Do we have to tell them to quickly run inside every time there is a strange noise or smell or industry-related occurrence? What kind of life is that?

An activist resident also had a parental opinion about the double bind raised by the shelter-in-place cartoon: I have not shown the video to my children. Again, I feel it is a confusing issue you want them to be prepared but you do not want to worry them. I would hope that if an accident happened, I would be at home. They have enough on their plates, and I do not believe they should be worried by such things. I still remember the feeling in my stomach, as a child, sitting under the desk practicing for a nuclear bomb. Do we want to have our kids feel unsafe in their home?

Parents are likely to blame industry and government for this predicament. But they may also blame themselves for allowing their family to live in such a situation. Reliance on shelter-in-place as the primary protective method in the Total ERP underscores the basic reality that ultimately nearby residents and farmers cannot be protected from hazards released by plants in the AIH. Is Evacuation a Viable Protective Strategy? The other strategy for protecting people from a chemical emergency is their physical removal from the situation. Yet, evacuation was barely mentioned in the Total ERP or NR CAER website and it was unclear whether an evacuation procedure was in place, how residents would be notified and told the evacuation route and destination, what roads were feasible for their

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escape, and who would help residents unable to drive. There was no discussion of evacuation impacts such as car accidents caused by nervous drivers, panic due to routes being closed or blocked, whether cars provide adequate shelter, and whether road travel is safe during an emergency. I noted that NR CAER lacked a movie about evacuation and there was not even a fridge magnet available. The resident interviews confirmed the lack of evacuation documents. No informants reported ever being told to evacuate as the result of an industrial incident. Furthermore, as a resident noted, “There was no discussion of routes or how to do evacuation.” Informants also did not know about any designated evacuation reception centers. There were also questions about whether people would behave as expected during an evacuation. Even a clear and well-publicized evacuation policy might find dissenters. During Katrina, some people were reluctant to leave their homes, pets, or relatives. In the AIH, would farmers leave their farm animals? Would parents follow evacuation orders if children were at school? A mother of two had a clear answer to this question: No, My child is in school. I imagine other mothers; we would race to school. I do not think the emergency plans are prepared for that and what the impact might be.

She reiterated that unplanned evacuation would be motivated by a lack of faith in shelter-in-place: I am not sure about shelter-in-place. My concern is that it is not protective. Would that be my choice? I would leave the area if I could.

Despite the obstacles, the farmer also pinned her intent to evacuate on distrust of shelter-in-place: I do not think you could stay and close everything in a two-storey house. I cannot tackle windows. I cannot tape everything shut so nothing gets in here. I guess I would just leave if I was still alive. I am too close to the source so I may not have the time to leave or be able to leave. I would grab every living thing I could. You cannot close off the home.

But she recognized that there might not be a choice if she was not informed early enough: It all goes back to notification. If I got information, we could make our choice. But you need information. But we have lost faith in this community that information is going to come soon enough.

The evacuation challenge for animal owners was raised during hearings for the Petro-Canada Fort Hill Sturgeon Upgrader by another resident:

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We do not believe it is enough for Petro-Canada to have a cut and paste ERP. They should be required to have a fully developed ERP and be able to demonstrate to us that they have considered all types of emergencies and demonstrate that they will be able to respond to them. In our case it is not just me and my husband who need to be evacuated in case of emergency. I also need our horses, dogs, cats, and alpacas to be evacuated.

Another local farmer testifying in the same hearing expressed concern about the health and quality of his nearly 100,000 birds that would have to be either sheltered or evacuated: No one from Petro-Canada contacted us to discuss an evacuation plan for our farm in case of emergency. For that matter, they did not contact us about anything.

The prospect of evacuation made my interviewees insecure. They were ill-prepared for it and did not think it feasible. One major concern was the road congestion on local highways, a problem that transportation planners expected to get worse (MacMillan, 2010). An industrial incident would further limit mobility, as one of my respondents found after witnessing a chemical accident from a local roadway and being blocked by road closures set up by police as part of accident response. A second major concern was over the long chemical trains servicing the AIH. As another local resident noted, such train traffic made local travel unpredictable and sometimes impossible: Since 2003 we have noticed an increasing amount of train traffic as well as longer trains. Incidences of the train blocking our access are increasing. On average we have an incident of prolonged road blockage every 6 weeks. About 18 months ago my husband was blocked by the train from coming home for 7 hours. Another example was in April of this year when we were blocked one morning for 26 minutes and then later at noon for another half an hour. I am also particularly worried about what will happen to us and our animals in the event of an emergency if our access is blocked.

She had read that there would be an estimated further increase of train traffic by 3 10 times just due to one proposed project, the Petro Canada Upgrader. Yet, another respondent feared that trains would block her reaching her children during an incident: And I am worried about being able to get in and get the kids out. If the train comes, it can take long. The trains block access to the kids. There are a lot of train lines. We are circled with trains.

The farmer living in the AIH captured some of the angst residents feel about evacuation in her comment:

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Evacuation is not possible if there are trains sitting on the tracks. And you do not know which way the wind is blowing that day. If something happens, I would be in a state of anxiety. I would just head northeast, directly away from the prevailing winds.

Train blockages were another issue where the elder observed amusing industry failures. At a 2003 open house for the Scotford complex, residents complaining about long traffic blockages on the CP line crossings were promised future waits of no more than 10 minutes. These promises were not kept, she knew “from personal experience of being on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak.” She was subsequently invited to observe a test clearing of the track in 2005 demonstrating that the problem was solved. “The long awaited test was unsuccessful. Not only could they not get the track cleared they were told that there was no track at that location.” Another attempt also failed. Then on April 25, 2006, she was invited by Shell to attend a third track clearing test. The result? “Well, now we are three for three!!!!!!! Unsuccessful again.” It is not clear if the track in question was ever cleared, or even found for that matter. In conclusion, evacuation, much as shelter-in-place, is a fundamentally flawed protective strategy that fails to mitigate the hazard. Protectiveness under the Total ERP was found to be inadequate.

Emergency Preparedness Rating: Fair The Total ERP offered little information about whether plant employees and emergency responders would be able to protect the public during a chemical emergency. It was not clear, for example, what division of labor and cooperative framework existed between multi-industry plant responders and community responders and whether sufficient trained personnel were available for ERP response and their capacity for handling multi-site releases. It was not made clear that responders had detailed information about the chemicals they might encounter in the AIH. And, given failures of resident communication, it was not made clear whether local emergency responders also faced inadequate incident notification. Given the detailed attention paid to emergency response command, it is ironic that issues such as these were ignored. NR CAER’s website listed 30 industrial and 9 municipal members, as well as 6 response and 9 non-profit partners including mutual assistance programs, municipal services, and other extensive emergency resources. But there was no information about whether these website links translate

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into an integrated and effective program of emergency response. There was no information on the performance of local responders to prior events. The question of capacity to address multiple interacting disasters was underscored by an incident that began when a forest fire burned out of control for a day in the AIH. NR CAER did not initially list the hazard in its system. When, Shell unexpectedly increased their gas flaring, the fire emerged as a potential industry disaster for which no one was prepared. Given dispersal of industrial facilities across the area, there was concern that fire might ignite a facility. To my sources, the episode underscored deficiencies in both industry emergency response and the NR CAER system and uncertainty over who is in charge during major hazard events. A persistent problem noted by my activist informant was that neither the ERCB nor AE maintained local offices and staff in the AIH zone. As a result, “By the time they arrive on scene, the signs of problems have disappeared.” The distance of the regulators from the AIH cast into doubt the effectiveness of government oversight during a crisis. The Total ERP had little information on the ERCB Field Incident Response Support Teams tasked with preparing for and responding “to significant oil and gas emergency events” and the status of ERCB Field Centers tasked with capabilitybuilding for “the event of a complex oil and gas emergency” (ERCB, 2008). Given all of these issues, I found the Total ERP to be only fair with regard emergency response.

Resident Relocation Rating: Inadequate From the beginning it was clear that the AIH was incompatible with residential land use. The AIH’s mission omits mention of residential quality and a map showing the self-described “eco-industrial park” shows large blocks of heavy industry surrounded by a ring of farmland as an industrial buffer but no residential areas (Strathcona County, 2007; Total E&P Canada Ltd., 2007). A sister agency, the EUB (1988) recognized this incompatibility in a series of decisions, beginning with a Shell hearing in 1988: The Board believes that full industrial development of the area is ultimately not acceptable without the relocation of the residents in the area.

Continuing, the EUB spoke directly to citizens in the AIH (EUB, 1988): Residents’ concerns have gone unanswered and, in fact, the issue of land-use conflict is growing. Residents have worked diligently for over a year to voice their concerns to the municipalities involved with no consideration given. The municipalities have not

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listened to your warnings but instead have continued with poor planning that will encourage further industrial development close to densely populated areas. We are no longer speaking of only a few residents who will be affected but we are talking of many. Previous conflicts with landowners has not been resolved, the municipalities are not learning from past mistakes but are instead continuing poor planning at the expense of the individual landowner. Perhaps, the time has come when someone must take responsibility for the health, safety, and quality of life of residents.

Nearly a decade later, in considering a Dow permit in 1997, the Board returned to this consideration (EUB, 1997): The Board believes that land-use conflicts represent a mounting concern with further industrial growth in this area. Dow and other projects will be handicapped in time as the cumulative effects of growing industrial activity on the area are felt. Given the current land classification, it appears the land use for the area is ultimately destined for industrial purposes. Growing public concerns due to cumulative environmental effect and deterioration of lifestyles should be expected during this transition.

The habitability theme was revisited in the Dow decision, calling for “collaborative process which would address the growing land-use conflicts in the area” (EUB, 1997) and explicitly in the EUB Bio-Clean decision in 1998 (EUB, 1998): The Board understands and is sympathetic to the concerns of the Local Residents and notes their ongoing interest to relocate. The Board continues to be of the view that the relocation of the residents in the area offers the only viable long-term solution to the growing industrial encroachment in the area.

Even Total E&P Canada Ltd. (2007, pp. 5 27) concurred: Generally, the proposed upgrader projects are intensifying the industrial nature of the Heartland, which is ultimately not compatible with residential use.

The concept of resident relocation drew full agreement from the residents I spoke to, for example, a local farmer: Industry and residents are not a good mix. If the residents are not moved away the industry should not come.

Effectively, the AIH had violated the basic premise of zoning, namely the separation of incompatible uses. The activist informant saw this separation issue as a failure to learn: We said from the start of the industrial zoning process that residents and industry do not mix and there has to be an acceptable distance between industry and residents, but they do not learn from their past mistakes. They continue to locate industry too close to residents and people are tormented for years before they are relocated. Yet the process continues to encroach upon more residents.

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Short of achieving relocation, several residents sought increases in the buffers between industry and residences. A farmer saw the setback issue as a life and death matter: I do not have a lot of knowledge of ERP’s. I do know that from other’s experience, as well as common sense, that if I live within a mile of industry and there is a large problem, I will not be contacted in time to save myself or my family. If we are working outside and without cell phones I cannot see how we can be contacted in time to warn us of impending doom. Larger buffer areas are the greatest solution to mitigating the problem.

Perversely, his land is a buffer area: Our home is situated less than a half mile from the Petrocan property line and of course our property borders Petrocan. Petrocan is using our land as a buffer from our dwelling. We should not be the ones supplying a buffer for industry.

Given these considerations, the AIH can be seen as having a de facto policy of forcing residents out by pushing them to their coping limits. Everyone, including this farmer, has a limit: I think I could still live here with the existing plants. As more and more plants come into the region, the question of being able to stay will become larger. If and when they build the approved upgrader next to our home, we will not be able to live in our place. I am sure we will be moving away from here.

Farmers have an obvious problem in relocation. Yet, even homeowners near the AIH face an obstacle in moving elsewhere. Environmental stigma caused by chemical releases and shelter-in-place are hardly conducive to successful home sale. Absent an industry buyout, they were stuck. To assist in relocation, the Voluntary Residential Property Purchase Program (VRPPP) administered by Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Land Trust Society began taking applications in February, 2006. Its mission (Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Land Trust Society, 2006) was to Provide an equitable, efficient, and economical process of acquiring properties of rural landowners currently located within the AIH policy area who voluntarily wish to relocate outside of the policy area.

First, two or three appraisers value the property, ignoring “any negative effects of existing or proposed heavy industry on adjoining rural residential and agricultural property values” although not future plans for the area. Applicants accepted for buyout were paid the appraised value plus moving costs (including relocation costs for cattle) plus an inconvenience payment of $24,000 plus 2% of the house’s value. Details of the transaction were to be kept confidential (Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Land Trust Society, 2006).

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The Total ERP cited the VRPPP as mitigation for residents’ concerns (Total E&P Canada Ltd., 2007, pp. 2 6). However, my informants identified numerous problems with the program. Not all applicants met requirements for participation; some were denied. Payments received might not cover purchase of a comparable house elsewhere. Frequent delays undermined purchase of the new property. Shortfalls in program funding might push potential purchases to a priority list for future purchase. Indeed, for residents, applying to VRPPP was viewed as an act of desperation, as two residents noted, respectively, I live in the Heartland. I never applied for a buyout because I did not hear positive things about it. We have people who were really desperate and industry did not make an offer to buy so they applied to the VRPP program and took what they could get. The residents involved needed to be bought out. They agreed because they needed something right now. The other residents look for a long-term fix.

An elderly observer derided the program as the “victim prosecution policy” and cited participants as lamenting, “It is the biggest mistake I ever made.” At the time, he and his wife wanted to move and avidly watched real estate. They had specific needs: they were on fixed incomes, needed good roads and a short commute to work, wanted a new house of equal cost and ease of maintenance and heating, with updated services, a treed lot and not in a subdivision. With the AIH construction boom and industrial job opportunities, housing competition drove prices skyward. As his wife explained in her written testimony on the NW Upgrader project, they were losing hope by the moment of being able to afford to relocate: The prices are rising weekly. We have heard that people are putting in offers of $2025,000 over the list price because there are already numerous offers on the same property. The availability and cost of real estate prospects for us are becoming further and further away from my job.

The local farmer previously turned down industry relocation. He was not yet considering VRPPP for several reasons: One, we are arguing on principal that upgraders should not be built on good agricultural soils. Two, we cannot just sell our land and let the problem of being next to upgraders fall on the people next to us. As well, because of the uniqueness of our farm, we are not able to relocate. And I do not think the VRPPP would ever be willing or able to pay us what we think our farm would be worth.

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Muzzling At one point in his interview, the local farmer referred to “issues with applying for the program and still being able to speak out against industry.” When examined, the problem was twofold. First, landowner interveners in permit hearings were denied participation in the VRPPP until a decision was rendered (Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Land Trust Society, 2006). Viewed as punishment for activists, the practice discouraged public participation. Second, strictly enforced confidentiality agreements permanently silenced participants. My informants referred to such people as “muzzled,” forbidden to speak out or participate in AIH issues, or to share the terms of their buyout: They cannot say anything more once they go through the buyout. They cannot speak against the companies. These people have been through enough after begging to be bought out, some for 10 years, and they would not take any chances.

The stipulations VRPPP placed on participation sent a chill through the residential community desperate for a buyout: If you make application to the VRPPP and then a hearing comes up for an upgrader or other industrial facility, if you then participate in the regulatory process, your application to VRPPP is put on hold. Residents look at that as a threat to speaking out. They are faced with a dilemma do you keep quiet and let the company get their approval without voicing your concerns in the hope that you may get bought out or do you voice your concerns and have your application put on hold while others may go ahead. There is only so much funding available for relocating residents and there are only selected times when you can apply to the VRPPP. Your democratic rights are taken away. There are no promises that if you apply your application will be accepted, but you would give up your right to speak and voice concerns about the upgrader. This decision could affect you the rest of your life if you do not get bought out.

“Muzzling” deprives the larger community of important social capital as people with a lot of experience are silenced. Remaining activists “lost their support system and someone knowledgeable and who ate and breathed this and then suddenly cannot be involved with it.” By the Total proceedings, the elderly couple had taken a buyout and relocated. They attended the hearings as silent observers. I had so looked forward to meeting these eloquent community advocates. But, when I met them, they were unable to talk to me other than saying hello and shaking hands, proof that outspoken and effective critics were silenced. Margins A further limitation of the VRPPP was the drawing of boundaries that may not correspond to the actual area of need, as a resident on the margins noted:

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Eventually people inside will be removed. But we live on the outside. And this does not protect us. Where we live, we are surrounded by industry. But I live on the outside. That plan did not include me.

She later elaborated on the problem of artificial boundaries robbing her equal rights: I was involved in the steering committee for the VRPP program. I resigned. I live on the outside of the border that was designated for the industrial heartland. I am a mile from what is zoned heavy industrial. They say if you live on the outside, you will not be impacted. Every time the concern for residents outside the Heartland border (imaginary line) was brought up in this process, the municipal and industry representatives argued that addressing the concerns of residents living outside the border of the AIH would only slow the process and possibly put the whole program in jeopardy. We have similar concerns to those of the residents living inside the AIH (environmental health risks, lack of due public process, and concerns of future marketability for our properties). And we are particularly concerned about future environmental health concerns, given the plans for the expansion of the AIH.

She believed her home outside the AIH to still be marketable, but that might not be true in the future. Given industry expansion and the lack of relocation assistance, the family will continually be forced to reconsider giving up and leaving or staying and fighting. In sum, VRPPP, contrary to stated intentions, served to trap people in the situation rather than facilitate departure. Resettlement is the only ERP option truly protective of residents. However, VRPPP suffered from significant flaws: It was voluntary and run by a non-profit. It dealt with residents as if they were benefiting from relocation when, in reality, industry most benefits when residents are relocated who cannot be protected or are likely opponents. Given the extraordinary investments being made in the AIH, incentives to relocate could and should be very generous and accessible. Were they not being muzzled, participants’ disclosures would help convince others to leave.12

CUMULATIVE IMPACT Cumulative effects are subject to what psychologists call a diffusion of responsibility. Because every permitted AIH facility contributed to cumulative risk, it was likely that no one was addressing many of them. Cumulative impacts arise in numerous ways in the AIH. First, there is the question of downstream impact and compartmentalized review: The Total upgrader will be built on the west boundary of Strathcona County and the residents on the east border of Sturgeon County are only separated by the river.

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And both proximate and distant plants in the AIH contribute to resident impacts, as noted by the local farmer: All these plants will affect our quality of life. The nearer ones more dramatically, the more distant ones will still increase traffic volumes, tax our local services and infrastructure, and increase pollution levels.

Moreover, as several respondents noted, “The air is an accumulative mix from all industries.” Such observations raise complex issues. One consequence of air mixing is that significant exposures might occur in the absence of a clear violation at any plant. Exposures might occur to new compounds created at the moment by the chance mix of components from varied sources. Such unique compounds defy measurement and would be impossible to regulate because the original sources cannot be sorted out or traced. In short, if regulation is intended to protect residents and the environment, cumulative effects defeat protection. Another context for cumulative impact is a system’s analysis that considers the inputs, throughput, and outputs to the facility. Beyond the potential for releases and incidents related to processing, Total would utilize pipelines to transport bitumen to the plant and return recovered dilutants to upstream sites. By-products would be taken out by rail and synthetic crude oils by pipeline. Products would be stored in tanks on site until processing (Total E&P Canada Ltd., 2007, p. 2). In fact, numerous pipelines and rail lines, actual and proposed, were located near the Total site, including the connecting points for the Alberta oil sands pipelines and the Keystone pipeline intended to carry refined product to the south (ERCB, 2009c; Weir, 2012). Pipelines are a source of additional and cumulative hazard. ERCB data found a pipeline failure rate of 2.1 per 1000 km and inspection failure rates above 10%, a good percentage of these rated as high risk (ERCB, 2008). Rail and traffic accidents were another hazard source. One local resident had direct experience with a local train derailment on the CN rail line in March 2005 for which the hazards were never disclosed.

CORPORATE VERSUS SITE-SPECIFIC ERP A brief note is in order on the question of corporate versus site-specific review. Alberta had bifurcated its ERP process so that a generic “corporate” ERP was presented with the application to construct the upgrader

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while a more detailed “site-specific” ERP would be prepared after construction as part of a permit application to operate the facility. As I learned, the common practice was to offload operational detail to the site-specific review. As a result, review of the ERP became relatively pro-forma. Coming from the outside, both of Alberta and of ERP, I applied a critical analysis to a body of ERP doctrine that was comparatively sacrosanct. As a result, as I would learn, the administrative judges were neither on the same wavelength as I was nor appreciative. From the standpoint of recreancy, the approach I employed has important implications. First, it was evident that the proposed ERP did not satisfy Directive 071 if empirical evidence of its likely operations were considered. Second, it became clear that the place to disclose these problems was at the most generic level. And third, the routine practice of pushing serious consideration of ERP off until after construction meant that problems were unlikely ever to be brought up. It is not likely that having approved construction of a multi-million dollar plant, that the ERCB would then deny an operations permit on grounds that could have been anticipated during the original review. Industry of course would not tolerate this occurrence. So the only real opportunity for a serious review of ERP was during the initial permit hearings despite common practice. It is a clear indication of recreancy that crucial ERP decisions are deflected from the construction decision to the site-specific review, where real remedies are unlikely to be taken. A local farmer made a similar point during a prior hearing: Should we trust Petrocan when they say they will develop an ERP after they have received their approval? We all know about how existing ERP’s work in other parts of the Industrial area. There is no confidence instilled in us whatsoever from recent, and unfortunately, common situations.

Since the record of ERP failures cited by residents as a basis for distrust derives from the practice of operating facilities, it is clear that ERP problems persist post-construction after site-level operation permits are granted. Accordingly, problems need to be addressed up front or the permit denied.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE ERCB REVIEW PANEL My conclusions were characteristically blunt. In my opinion, the Total ERP was not in compliance with the requirements of Directive 071 and

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actually undermined public safety and protection by giving the promise and pretence of mitigating the dangers of industry when in fact it did not. The core confounding factor for emergency planning in the AIH was the failure to separate incompatible land uses, residences, and farms from factories, with the result that residents and farmers had subsequently been rendered victims of industry. The decision to sacrifice rich farmland and rural residences was made when the AIH was created. The failure of the AIH to admit this conflict of land uses has confounded continuing permit review ever since. Perhaps the failure to promote resident safety was perpetuated as part of a deliberate attempt to force people to move out. I also recommended mitigation to the ERCB. So that residents’ might better assure the protection of their families, I suggested creation of a “party of interest process” for the AIH, paid for by industry, which would regularly convene local residents, industry management, and regulators to review incidents and effect required changes. I recommended that a professional staff be supervised by a resident-dominated stakeholder Board. Among the other features would be access to inspect industrial operations and full and immediate disclosure of all information by industry and government pertinent to public safety. The process would take over current NR CAER and FAP roles to assure resident-centered operations. Subcommittees would be formed for particular industrial operations. A key goal would be to create a cumulative learning process to assure that all industries learn from the experience of others over time. All key compliance issues of ERP would be reviewed with redesign, as needed, of all systems, including community notification, ongoing air and other monitoring necessary to assess issues over time, and to allow for early and anticipatory detection. Full testing and modification of protective strategies of shelter-in-place and evacuation would be undertaken, as well as education programs, tests, evaluation, medical monitoring, medical support, counseling, extension services for modifying homes, and industry funding for home modifications, communication systems, transport, and other ingredients needed to make ERP protective. Plant emergencies and/or Directive 071 failures would result in a “three-strikes you are out” policy with permit suspension until deficiencies were remedied. Authentic communication would involve active listening and advocacy for resident concerns. An industry-funded medical registry would be offered for all current and past residents, including costs of testing and health insurance. Ecosystem monitoring would also be undertaken. Analysis of

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cumulative data would be done to identify incremental releases and cumulative threats. Instead of an EPZ for each plant, a monitored cumulative impact zone or a “composite exposure zone” for the AIH would be created. As part of the parties-of-interest process, a replacement for VRPPP would be offered to assure residents’ ability to move to comparable homes and property outside the cumulative impact zone of the AIH and to restore their chosen lives. Incentives for relocation would be offered and funded by industry, including assistance in locating suitable replacement properties, full funding for replacement properties even if costs exceed appraised property values, full support for relocation, compensation for increased commuting or other disadvantages, and any other steps necessary to assure that the person relocated was made whole in the process. Relocation would not demand the silence of participants and they would be encouraged to remain active. The long-term goal would be the successful relocation of people from areas where they are sensitive to harm. In the interim, an expanded buffer area surrounding the cumulative AIH would be created sufficiently large to prevent emissions or releases from the AIH reaching residences, farms, or other non-industrial land uses. As the AIH became free of residential or farmland uses, full industrial density would be permitted there so long as adequate buffers were maintained and residential populations never placed at risk. The process would also seek to protect the rich farmlands of Alberta as a hedge against climate change, recognizing that the region stands to become a major world food production area in the future if it is not destroyed now. The process would serve as a long-term steward for the AIH region, with rich farmlands of the region held in trust for future generations and monitored for contamination, with full cleanup achieved through a Superfundlike arrangement of funding through AIH industry. New industries would be designed for easy dismantling and minimal long-term impact to the land so that the region can be restored to its pre-AIH conditions in a generation or two in line with these words of the local farmer: I would like to tell you what I think the public interest is. Whenever I talk to a person that I encounter and get talking about what are the most important things in our lives, we always end up talking about family and community. We worry for our children and their future, and what kind of world we will leave them. We talk about respecting our neighbors and expecting our neighbors to respect us. We talk about what we are doing to the earth, and what we can do to take better care of it.

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OUTCOMES I knew from the moment I entered the hearing room that the vibes were negative. I was sworn in as part of a large panel of experts and it took several days of waiting before it was my turn. I had come a day earlier for a meeting with the attorneys, but so many experts came the same day that I never had a chance to do what the others did, a dry run of my presentation with feedback. I assumed that there would be ample time for discussion of my presentation before the hearing. I had neither realized that I would be sworn in quickly with the panel nor that in Canada, attorneys are not allowed to speak to an expert about their testimony after they are sworn in. As a result, I was flying blind regarding the peculiarities of Alberta hearings and how hard to pitch my findings and opinions. As an impact assessment professional, I had long ago formed my opinion of Canadian practice based on the important work of early pioneers in the field who respected public input and were concerned about the authenticity of citizen involvement. In particular, I imagined an inquiry conducted in the spirit of the reknowned Berger Commission Report, prepared by Administrative Law Judge Thomas Berger (1972) at the beginning of the environmental era. Berger was tasked with determining whether permits should be issued for the proposed Makenzie River gas pipeline. Rather than rushing through the process, he traveled widely through the huge region and took time to hear every viewpoint, giving respondents as much time as they needed. His sample bridged technical experts, construction workers, and First Nations. He was meticulously careful to understand impacts on people as well as on the environment. In the end, realizing the incompatible values of the cultures of development and life on the land, he decided that no decision about gas development should be made until First Nations had their full place at the table. In short, he tabled development. His report was published under the title Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland, reflecting these two different perspectives on the land (Berger, 1972). Not only had I expected that the hearing would have Justice Berger’s spirit of open inquiry, but I had taken a major conclusion of my report from Berger’s notebook when I recommended that no more permits be issued in the AIH until residents and farmers were presented with a fair opportunity for relocation. Such relocation would resolve many of my concerns. Observing the panel’s demeanor while I waited to testify, I realized that this was no Berger court. My images of an open and fair process in Alberta were unrealistic. Moreover, my use of Berger as a major source in

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the report and as a basis for pushing residential relocation or permit denial, although the right recommendation to make, did not win much sympathy here. In any case, my testimony was pre-filed and already read. The three presiding judges greeted me with closed looks the moment I began my slide show. When I tried a joke to achieve some levity, I felt like I was doing standup at a funeral. Otherwise, the presentation went smoothly. But then neither the judges nor the applicant (Total) or the ERCB attorneys had any questions. It ended much too abruptly. But if there was no love expressed by the judges at the hearing, they saved their real wrath for their written report and especially for the fee decision. The decision of September 16, 2010, approving the permit to build the upgrader discounted my testimony on several points that were later elaborated upon to the devaluing of the testimony in the fee decision of December 15, 2010 (ERCB, 2010b). I had been warned that the expert fees to be paid by Total had first to be approved by the ERCB and that the ERCB had a tendency of lopping a bit off the fees earned by experts whose testimony they did not appreciate. I expected them perhaps to take a whack at my knee caps, but, as you can read below, they went for the jugular. The fee decision follows with the ERCB panel’s words. My commentary is in italics: • The evidence of Dr. Edelstein was not helpful to the Board in its consideration of and decision on the application. The Board gave them little weight in its decision. • The Board notes that Dr. Edelstein’s experience is in social psychology and concludes that he is not an expert in emergency planning and response. This narrow perspective on expertise assures that no one with a broader understanding will shake up the accepted modes of thinking among narrow specialists. My clients selected me as an expert precisely because I was capable of critically examining the Total ERP. And, I did. • The Board finds that Dr. Edelstein’s alarmist comments regarding the effectiveness of sheltering in place could potentially jeopardize public safety, particularly in circumstances where sheltering in place is safer than evacuation. Never asking questions about unrealistic assumptions is the actual threat to public safety.

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• The Board also questioned the basis of Dr. Edelstein’s statements that houses in the AIH were inadequate for sheltering, given that he lacked the technical knowledge required to adequately assess building structures in relation to their suitability for sheltering. This misconstrues my statement. I actually said that neither Total nor anyone else had ever studied the adequacy of homes in the AIH for protective sheltering. Besides, this was a minor comment in my report. • It also appeared that Dr. Edelstein was confused or unaware of the fundamental differences between a corporate ERP and a site-specific ERP, and consequently, his evidence in this area was unfounded and inaccurate. I wish the Board had asked me about this because they missed my point. I was hardly confused. My argument was that issues should not be put off for site-specific ERPs after the plant is already built if the ERP does not justify construction. The assumption that the site-specific study can remedy core failings in the corporate ERP is ill-founded. Given the cost of construction, it would be unfair to Total to allow it to construct a plant only to decide that emergency response was inadequate and no operations permit can be issued. Of course, this is the point. Once constructed, the ERCB and the courts would be highly unlikely to block operation. Accordingly, by shuffling key ERP issues to the operations permit, it is assured that they will never be questioned. The Board declined all of my fees and, subsequently, all appeals failed. With this one painful decision, ERCB not only tried to make sure I would never show up in Alberta again, but that citizens seeking to intervene in administrative hearings using funding by the applicant could no longer promise experts that they would be paid if their findings were too controversial. When I did testify at a second ERCB hearing (Edelstein, 2010b), the ERCB had the identical response, demonstrating that both me and the ERCB are slow learners. By the end of my second hearing, citizen intervention in Alberta permit hearings was in trouble. Citizens could still intervene in hearings, but their ability to retain experts had been severely compromised. Citizens for Responsible Development, my client in the Total Case, is unlikely to intervene in the future for this reason. Moreover by exposing the vulnerability of residents and farmers to AIH and government recreancy, I had made myself vulnerable. The ERCB had selected my testimony as the occasion upon which to effectively shut the door on citizens concerned with their

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industrial neighbors, clearing the way for hearings not muddied by any serious questioning at all.

CONCLUSIONS The “culture of contamination” is supported by normative recreancy. As this chapter has demonstrated, recreancy is more than a situational phenomenon. It has been found to be integrated into normal procedures for meeting regulatory demands and, by extension, structurally implicit in the regulations themselves. The result is “rhetorical protection” where the promise, not the reality, is considered as mitigation for potential adverse impact. Industrial ERP is practiced widely across the globe, and it is designed everywhere to support corporate interests at the expense of prospective victims of any releases or disaster. Having worked on scores of projects on several continents, I hardly see the Total ERP experience as rare. The institutionalization of recreancy is an important consideration. Rather than recreancy emerging from a given transaction between regulator, polluter, and victim, these instances suggest that recreancy is a routine outcome of institutions and their normative approach to business as usual. Recreancy is, accordingly, not a function of the site-specific instance, even if it materializes there, but it is a generic “corporate” pattern built into the structure of regulatory permitting for hazardous facilities. Perhaps it is also a marker of the ossification of institutions in late modernity.13 The ability to satisfice rather than optimize ERP persists because of the significant public commitment to industrial growth broadly and energysector development specifically. In the current value set operating in Alberta, the rights of the public to environmental justice is curtailed in favor of corporate government agenda of development. This is hardly the first instance of this imbalance in the world, but coming in Canada, with its traditions of environmental assessment and public participation, it is a clear, shocking, and disappointing shift in practice.

ANTICIPATORY DE´JA` VU It is hardly a revelation that issues of risk differ for government, corporations, and the people who bear or will bear them. In Bill Freudenburg (and Ted Youn’s) first extended exploration of recreancy, the 1993 fifth edition

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of their important Journal of Social Problems in Public Policy, Lee Clarke, writing about the EXXON Valdez disaster, considered the possibility that EXXON had calculated the costs of a spill and decided that it was more cost-effective to ignore the possibility of its occurrence than to prepare to address it (Clarke, 1993, p. 299). Clarke’s next words on EXXON’s failed contingency planning are quoted here with a few bracketed modifications to show how well they equally fit the instance of the AIH: Rather than planning to fail, … the organizational-set responsible for anticipating a major … [industrial accident] failed to plan. My explanation for this failure is that experts and organizations systematically misperceived [industrial] … risks which, in turn, encouraged reliance on response assumptions that were inappropriate. … These processes occurred in a regulatory environment in which regulators had no effective social control mechanisms and in which industry assumed primary responsibility for emergency planning … .

In my view, industrial ERP has been reduced to a form of normative recreancy. Standards are mutually set low by industry in order to assure that permits are issued. The lax regulation and minimal penalty generally assessed for ERP mistakes create a clear record of non-compliance evident to residents vulnerable to victimization but is dismissed as insignificant and within acceptable bounds by industry and government. Here I have demonstrated the depth of adverse psycho-social impact associated with recreant behavior. I truly wish that my friend Bill Freudenburg’s concept of recreancy was just an anomaly. But I am rather convinced instead that it is the rule. Bill, you caught a bigger fish than perhaps you knew. But then, I am not surprised.

NOTES 1. Ideas for this chapter emerged from a spoof called “Wreckreancy” that I had hoped to present at Freudenfest, the event in Santa Barbara in October 2010 in honor of Bill where he made his last major public appearance. Ironically, I could not attend because of a last minute shift in when I was to testify before the Alberta Energy Resource Conservation Board. So, instead the Wreckreancy occurred in Alberta. 2. This case study is based on Edelstein (2010a). 3. Note the ERCB was replaced as energy regulator in mid June, 2013, by a new organization, the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), intended to combine ERCB with the Energy Utility Board (EUB) and the energy components of Alberta Environment (AE) (Tait, 2013). 4. Directive 071 was originally promulgated in 2003 but updated in 2008 “to enhance public safety” (ERCB, 2008).

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5. Government was present as regulator in name only as neither of the two major government regulators over AIH industry, the ERCB and AE, had local offices. As a result, by the time agency personnel were dispatched to the AIH, an event was frequently over. It will be interesting to see if the new superagency, AER, remedies this problem. 6. At both Love Canal and Jackson, New Jersey, boundaries were drawn separating areas considered safe from those considered dangerous. 7. The ERCB elsewhere describes their extensive effort to get the EPZ criteria and calculations correct and their decision to modify Directive 071 ERCB (2009c, p. 20). 8. With the bounded public, that is. The Total application acknowledged six residents within 1.5 km and an unspecified number of area residents within 5 km of the plant, including residents in three proximate communities (Riverside-Hu Haven, Fort Augustus, and Lamoureux). Revisions to the EPZ and elimination of the APZ may well have reduced this number. 9. Flaring involves burning off escaping gases and is generally only done if those gases are considered to be harmful. Flaring is itself considered by some to be a hazard. 10. The issue of air quality hazard in greater Edmonton has become a major topic of public controversy in late 2013 with the release of an air quality study conducted by U.S. scientists with funding from the Tides Foundation finding a basis for long term health concern. The AIH, government and industry downplayed the results and disputed the conclusions (Pratt, 2013). 11. In 2012, I testified before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board regarding the re-permitting of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Station in New York. In my pre-filed testimony, I raised similar questions about emergency protection (Edelstein, 2011). The Nuclear regulatory Staff challenged my criticism of shelterin-place, citing a chemical industry report (National Institute for Chemical Studies, 2001) based on US government studies. Upon review, I discovered that the studies supported my concerns. One showed chemical infiltration of a “safe room” in less than an hour. A second found that only one of two chemical warfare agents released onto an uninhabited wood cabin plated out significantly, reducing potential exposure. However, even that agent may have infiltrated the cabin sufficiently to harm occupants (Edelstein, 2012b). Although shelter initially offers more protection than being outdoors, the NCIS gave this lukewarm endorsement of shelter-in-place: Over time, small cracks in buildings will allow contaminated air to enter the indoor atmosphere. Some exposure will occur. (National Institute for Chemical Studies, 2001, p. 2 3). 12. As of 2013, seven families had been relocated under the program and the VRPPP was under revision (Life in the Heartland, 2013). 13. Examples of recreancy under the Soviet system are offered by Edelstein et al. (2007, 2012a).

REFERENCES Alberta Environment. (2010). Alberta’s environmental plan to deal with the cumulative impacts of development. Retrieved from www.industrialheartland.com/images/stories/homepage_ features/cem_nvironmental_plan.pdf. Accessed on 11 August 2013.

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Alberta Industrial Heartland Association. (2010). Alberta societies act application, 10000198000517367. Retrieved from www.industrialheartland.com/index.php?option = com_content&task = vie&id = 115&Itemid = 129. Accessed on 11 August 2013. Alberta Industrial Heartland Association. (2012, July). Industry and organization profiles. Retrieved from www.industrialheartland.com/images/stories/industry/aiha_industry_ information_july_2012.pdf. Accessed on 11 August 2013. Alberta Industrial Heartland Association. (2013). Alberta industrial heartland. Retrieved from www.industrialheartland.com. Accessed on 11 August 2013. Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Land Trust Society. (2006). Voluntary property purchase program information booklet, March 15. Berger, T. (1972). Northern frontier, northern homeland: The report of the Mackenzie river pipeline inquiry (2 vols.). Ministry of Supply Canada. Retrieved from yukondigitallibrary. ca/Search.aspx. Accessed on 11 August 2013. Berriman, K. (2009). Private letter responding on behalf of NR CAER to “the Activist” on February 12. Bogard, W. (1989). The Bhopal tragedy: Language, logic, and politics in the production of a hazard. Boulder, CO: Westview. Clarke, L. (1993). The disqualification heuristic: When do organizations misperceive risk? Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 5, 289 312. Du, S. (2009). Comments on ERCBH2S version 1.20 Beta and Bulletin 2009 32. December 21, p. 3. Unpubished paper. Edelstein, M. R. (2003). Weight and weightlessness: administrative court efforts to weigh psycho-social impacts of proposed environmentally hazardous facilities. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 21(3), 195 203. Edelstein, M. R. (2004). Contaminated communities: Coping with residential toxic exposure (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press/Perseus Books. Edelstein, M. R. (2010a). Habits of the heartland: Home/farmland vs. industrial zone, an evaluation of the emergency response plan for the proposed TOTAL upgrader. Written testimony submitted to the Alberta Energy Conservation Review Board, submitted May 10. Edelstein, M. R. (2010b). Anticipated psycho-social Impacts to proximate residents and recreationalists from the Shell Waterton 68 project. Testimony submitted to the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board, September. Edelstein, M. R. (2011). The environmental justice implications associated with the re-permitting of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Complex. Written testimony before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, September 1, Buchanan, NY. Edelstein, M. R., Cerny, A., & Gadaev, A. (Eds.). (2012a). Disaster by design: The Aral Sea and its lessons for sustainability. In Research in social problems and public policy (Vol. 20). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Edelstein, M. R. (2012b). Rebuttal to respondents’ testimony on the environmental justice contention. Written testimony before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, June 27. Edelstein, M. R., Tysiachniouk, M., & Smirnova, L. V. (Eds.). (2007). Cultures of contamination: Legacies of pollution in Russia and the U.S. In Research in social problems and public policy (Vol. 14). New York, NY: Elsevier. ERCB. (2008). Pipeline safety field studies report. Retrieved from http://www.aer.ca/aboutaer/spotlight-on/pipeline-safety-review ERCB. (2009a, November 24). Directive 071: Emergency preparedness and response requirements for the petroleum industry. Retrieved from www.aer.ca/documents/directives/ Directive071-with-2009errata.pdf. Accessed on 11 August 2013.

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ERCB. (2009b). ST41-2009: Year in review, 2008, ISSN 1705-9143 June. ERCB. (2009c). New version of ERCBH2S available for testing and feedback and implementation plan for Directive 071. Bulletin 2009-32, Calgary, Alberta. ERCB. (2010a). Decision 2010-030: Total E&P Canada Ltd. Application to construct and operate an oil sands upgrader in Strathcona County, Calgary, Alberta. September 16. ERCB. (2010b, December 15). Re: TOTAL E&P Canada Limited, Energy Cost Order 2010009. ERCB. (2010c). Public involvement. Retrieved from www.ercb.ca/portal/server.pt/gateway/ PTARGS_0_240_2546971_0_0_1. Accessed on 11 August 2013. EUB. (1988). Energy Utility Board Decision 98-3 Shell, 4-3. Retrieved from http://www.aer. ca/documents/decisions/1998/d98-03.pdf EUB. (1997). Energy Utility Board Decision 97-4, DOW 5.2. Retrieved from http://www.aer. ca/documents/decisions/1997/D97-04.pdf EUB. (1998). Energy Utility Board Decision 98-01 BioClean, 10-3. Retrieved from http:// www.aer.ca/documents/decisions/1998/d98-01.pdf Freudenburg, W. (1993). Risk and recreancy: Weber, the division of labor, and the rationality of risk perceptions, Social Forces, 71(4), 909 932. Freudenburg, W. (2000). The “risk society” reconsidered: Recreancy, the division of labor, and risks to the social fabric. In M. J. Cohen (Ed.), Risk in the modern age: Social theory, science and environmental decision-making (pp. 107 120). New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Henton, D. (2010a, January 18). Lodgepole gas leak a fresh memory: Farmer now worries new wells pose another deadly danger. Edmonton Journal. Retrieved from http://www2.canada. com/edmontonjournal/news/cityplus_alberta/story.html?id=8c7ffbed-daed-4ab1-a427-4640c 3494b40&p=2 Henton, D. (2010b, March 16). Refinery belches out yellow smoke. Edmonton Journal. Retrieved from http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/cityplus/story.html?id=3c b7c6a2-6200-4b3f-93e4-3fd3f6bbd453 Henton, D. (2010c, March). Province, Suncor dispute severity of chemical leak. Edmonton Journal. Retrieved from www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Province + Suncor + dispute + severity + cemical + leak/2705883/story.html. Accessed on 10 August 2013. Life in the Heartland. (2013). Residential relocation. Retrieved from www.lifeintheheartland. com/issue_resident.html. Accessed on 10 August 2013. MacMillan, C. (2010). Fort Saskatchewan, city, county talk hwy bypass: Fort Sask. Strathcona negotiating alignment of bypass hoped to be in place within 12 years. The Record, February 5. National Institute for Chemical Studies. (2001, June). Sheltering in place as a public protective action. Charleston, WV. Retrieved from www.nicsinfo.org/docs/shelter%20in%20place.pdf. Accessed on 10 August 2013. Nikiforuk, A. (2008). Tar sands: Dirty oil and the future of a continent. Vancouver: Greystone Books. NR CAER. (2010a). Shelter-in-place. Retrieved from www.nrcaer.com/cms/CommunitySafety/ ShelterInPlace/tabid/135/language/en-US/Default.aspx. Accessed on 10 Augus 2013. NR CAER. (2010b). Mona talks about shelter-in-place. Video. Retrieved from www. nrcaer.com/cms/CommunitySafety/ShelterInPlace/tabid/135/language/en-US/Default.aspx. Accessed 10 August 2013.

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NR CAER. (2013). Update line. Retrieved from www.nrcaer.com/cms/Community Notification/UPDATEline/tabid/354/language/en-US/Default.aspx. Accessed on 10 August 2013. Pratt, S. (2013, October 25). Local officials try to take air out of pollution study. Edmonton Journal. Retrieved from http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/Local+officials+take+ pollution+study/9079751/story.html Stewart Weir. (2012). Land use map of the AIH. Alberta’s industrial heartland facilities. Map downloaded from the AIH. Retrieved from http://www.industrialheartland.com/images/ stories/maps/land_holdings_september_2012.pdf Stoffle, R., Traugott, M. W., Stone, J. V., McIntyre, P. D., Jensen, F. V., & Davidson, C. C. (1991). Risk perception mapping: Using ethnography to define the locally affected Population for a low level radioactive waste storage facility in Michigan. American Anthropologist, 93(3), 611 635. Strathcona County. (2007). Eco-industrial master plan: Area structure Map of Alberta’s industrial heartland. Map 2. Downloaded from the AIH. Retrieved from http://www.industrialheartland.com/images/stories/maps/asp%20-%20zoning.pdf Tait, C. (2013). Alberta revamps energy regulator in bid to polish environmental image. The Globe and Mail, May 13. Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-onbusiness/industry-news/the-law-page/alberta-revamps-energy-regulator-in-bid-to-polishenvironmental-image/article11901575/ Total E&P Canada Ltd. (2007). Application to construct and operate an oil sands upgrader in Strathcona county. ERCB Application No.1551460. Retrieved from www.total-ep-canada. com/upgrader/documents.html. Accessed in February 2010. As of July 31, 2013, this document was removed; some documents remain at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved from http://wayback.archive.org/web/20090424031512/http:/www.totalep-canada.com/upgrader/ documents.html

“PEAK FARMLAND”: REVEALED TRUTH OR RECREANCY? Charles Geisler and Ben Currens ABSTRACT Recreancy is a concept that received William R. Freudenburg’s studied attention. Freudenburg moved beyond its conventional meaning shirking duty to a larger realm of irresponsibility by public actors who breach a societal trust they assume. This research focuses on the issue of “Peak Farmland,” a rendering of global carrying capacity that, we suggest, qualifies for what Freudenburg called “privileged discourse” and possibly recreancy. Scholars identified with dematerialized progress argue that finite farmland in the face of increasing population will improve human welfare and spare land for nature. This iconoclasm presents an arena for testing academic probity with respect to global food security. After an overview of past carrying capacity debates, we summarize the “Peak Farmland” position of the dematerialization school and suggest an important blind spot: the dematerialization of the global land base itself. Gathering the results of multiple studies on land loss, we offer evidence that the world’s warehouse of productive land is not just peaking but eroding on a grand scale. Ignoring this form of

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dematerialization while proclaiming nearly unlimited carrying capacity for Earth’s denizens strains the meaning of responsible scholarship. Keywords: Public trust; carrying capacity; dematerialization; peak farmland; recreancy; land loss; case study

INTRODUCTION: FREUDENBURG ON RECREANCY William Freudenburg minted terms that illuminated the social world and retrieved others from obscurity. Recreancy illustrates the latter. In various articles (1993, 1997, 2000) Freudenburg brought relevance and wisdom into this arcane term, moving beyond its conventional meaning shirking duty to a larger realm of irresponsibility among scholars and public actors encumbered with a public trust. To him, recreancy referred to “the failure of experts or specialized organizations to execute properly responsibilities to the broader collectivity with which they have been implicitly or explicitly entrusted” (Freudenburg, 2000, p. 116). Posthumously, he coauthored with Mary Collins (2012) insights on risks to the social fabric of nanotechnology, illustrating recreancy yet again. Freudenburg’s intellectual legacy extended as well to macro land use policy (boom towns, mining developments, nuclear landscapes, oil-damaged coastal regions) where he usually took a landscape-level view of what he called “addictive economies” (Freudenburg, 1992). At that larger level, societal land uses frequently evoke issues of public trust, both legally (the public trust doctrine) and politically (government fiduciary obligations over national patrimonies) (Sagarin & Turnipseed, 2012; Takacs, 2008). Bill would be entirely at home, we feel, in examining the Peak Farmland discourse through the lens of recreancy. Peak Farmland, though newly named, is in fact a long-standing issue: are we approaching the maximum land base suitable for growing food adequate to feed the world’s population? The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) holds that roughly 12% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface is suited to this purpose (Food and Agricultural Organization, 2011), or nearly double what it was in 1700 (Owen, 2005). But the future supply of farmland is ambiguous for two reasons.1 By roughly 2050, according to the same FAO source, rising population and incomes will require 70% more food production than in 2009 and the majority of this is expected to come from intensified productivity on

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presently cultivated lands. Yet, as the FAO (2011, p. 113) itself warns, 25% of the Earth’s lands are seriously degraded. FAO states that many land and water systems necessary to food production “… face excessive demographic pressure and unsustainable agriculture practices” (FAO, 2011, p. xxiv). So more intensive and efficient food production is at once a solution and a problem. Though efficiency has its benefits, it does not equate with engineering our way out of crisis, efficiency gains being easily swamped out by the “iron cage of consumption” (Jackson, 2009). What of the prospect of bringing additional farmland into production (e.g., from what FAO (2011, p. 113) terms stable or slightly/moderately degraded land)? Here a second ambiguity arises. The University of Wisconsin’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) used satellites to generate maps showing 38% of the Earth’s land surface is in agriculture (Ramankutty, Evan, Monfreda, & Foley, 2008; Foley et al., 2011). Other ice-free lands on the planet are poorly endowed for agriculture, so farmland expansion must come at the expense of forests, principally in the tropics. This trade-off is worrisome to SAGE researchers because such forests are rich reservoirs of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and carbon storage (Foley et al., 2011). To sacrifice them seems like fiduciary folly.2 The ambiguity does not stop here, as we explain below. A different perspective on Peak Farmland altogether arises from a cluster of scholars who assure the National Academy of Sciences and other important outlets that, whichever farmland footprint is correct, there’s not a shortage of farmland on the planet. The proponents of this view argue the finitude of farmland will spur productivity breakthroughs that will not only feed future populations through new green revolutions, genetic engineering, in-vitro meat production,3 etc., but will simultaneously permit farmers to spare significant portions of former farmland “for nature.” As prelude to this argument, it is useful to revisit the deeper carrying capacity debate of which Peak Farmland is a part.

CARRYING CAPACITY, OLD AND NEW Carrying capacity is a concept first advanced in 1889 and refers to the maximum population a specified area will support without deterioration (Merriam Webster Dictionary). Within a few years, William Graham Sumner (1896) opened his much cited essay on “Land Hunger” with these

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words: “The most important limiting condition on the status of human societies is the ratio of the number of their members to the amount of land at their disposal. It is this ratio of population to land which determines what are the possibilities of human development or the limits of what man [sic] can attain in civilization and comfort” (Sumner, 1896/1913, p. 31). Unlike Malthus, who held the same view but advanced strong opinions regarding the limits of population growth, Sumner took no position on what the ratio should be. This ratio of people-to-land would soon become polemical, some scholars seeing higher densities as a carrying capacity anathema and others, invoking variants of “human exceptionalism” reasoning (Catton & Dunlap, 1978; Dunlap, 2002), seeing them as a threshold to ever-greater human ingenuity, flourishing, and development. Joel Cohen’s (1995a) book on global carrying capacity and summary article in Science (1995b) that year were markers in the history of the concept. Addressing the question “Can Earth support the people projected for 2050?,” he provides 65 observations from several centuries. Astonishingly, the answers appearing in literature from the seventeenth century to present range from less than a billion to over 100 billion, with variability increasing over time (Cohen, 1995a, p. 342, 1995b). He notes that this growing scatter of estimates is the opposite of the converging estimates that “would ideally occur when a constant of nature is measured.” We appreciate Cohen’s long view and skeptical candor, but part company with his assumption that the world’s land base is constant. What if it is not? What if in future decades we experience depletion in terra firma and how would this alter Peak Farmland reasoning?

“PEAK FARMLAND” ICONOCLASM At least since the seminal work of Danish economist Ester Boserup (1965), academics from different disciplines have found positive associations between increasing population and prosperity, variously measured. In a landmark rebuttal to Malthus, Boserup reversed the food-population binary, arguing that increases in population density can launch new technologies and management strategies leading to production up-ticks commensurate with rising demand. Numerous studies, summarized in Turner and Fischer-Kowalski (2009), echo this iconoclasm. Among these are Tiffen, Mortimore, and Gichuki’s (1994) respected work, More People, Less Erosion, on the increased carrying capacity in the Machakos Reserve of

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Kenya. More recently, Malakoff (2011, p. 544) updated the Machakos study, concluding that the region had changed from a seeming wasteland to a veritable “garden” as population increased, and that there was even a surplus of land left over for conservation. He referred to this windfall as a “land release.” This resonates with claims put forth by scholars at the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University in New York. The Rockefeller cluster of engineers and economists have argued for over two decades that dematerialization is a potent counterforce to the pressures of population growth (Ausubel, Wernick, & Waggoner, 2013; Herman, Ardekani, & Asubel, 1989; Waggoner, 1994; Waggoner & Ausubel, 2001). Dematerialization, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (2001), refers to: [T]he reduction of total material and energy throughput of any product and service, and thus the limitation of its environmental impact. This includes reduction of raw materials at the production stage, of energy and material inputs at the use stage, and of waste at the disposal stage.

Dematerialization gained stature in the Brundtland (1987) report, Our Common Future, which states that the amount of raw materials needed for a given unit of economic output has dropped over the twentieth century for practically all nonagricultural commodities, except in times of war. Similar tributes to eco-efficiency have appeared in the writings of industrial ecologists (e.g., Ayers & Ayers, 2002), ecological modernization theorists (e.g., Spaargaren, Mol, & Buttel, 2000; Spaargaren & van Vliet, 2000), and sponsors of green growth (e.g., Hultman, Sierra, Eis, & Shapiro, 2012). The Rockefeller University enclave is in the forefront of linking dematerialization to the idea of Peak Farmland. In a recent supplement to Population and Development Review, Ausubel et al. (2013) state that global arable land and permanent crop areas rose from 1.37 million hectares (3.38 million acres) in 1961 to 1.53 million (3.78 million acres) in 2009; they project it to a fall to 1.38 million hectares (3.41 million acres) in 2060 (Fig. 1). Here the iconoclasm takes a new turn. In 2011, FAO reported that an extra net 70 million hectares of farmland worldwide will be needed in 2050 due to the land degradation it reported. Yet the Rockefeller researchers insist that, though global croplands may have peaked, the consequences are not dire. As with peak oil (the possibility that we have reached the point of maximum world petroleum production, heightening interest in alternatives), finite supplies of farmland will stimulate the search for farmland substitutes, including conservation, greater efficiency, and generally

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Global Arable Land, 1961 2009 and Projections to 2060. Source: Ausubel et al. (2012).

producing more-with-less. This has been and will be so successful that it will result in vast tracts set aside for nature and serve the biodiversity needs of the planet. This provocative claim appeals not only to those concerned with world hunger but, necessarily, to those protective of global ecosystems. In summarizing how the encounter between population and finite farmland will enable appreciable “land releases,” Ausubel et al. (2012) state: [W]e believe that humanity has reached Peak Farmland, and that a large net global restoration of land to Nature is ready to begin. Happily, the cause is not exhaustion of arable land, as many have feared, but rather moderation of population and tastes and ingenuity of farmers. (p. 1)

The authors cite previous work in which, based on inspection of 75 nations including China, Brazil, and Indonesia, farmers spared cropland for nature even as population grew (Waggoner & Ausubel, 2001). In just China and India alone they found that an area over twice the size of France had been “saved” for nature largely through forest restoration, despite some of the most imposing demographic increments on the planet (Ausubel et al., 2012, 2013, p. 6). The area released from traditional, less efficient farming, comes to roughly150 million hectares or more than all the arable land now farmed in China (Doyle, 2012).4 This rendition of Peak Farmland (Fig. 2) conveys triumphal human exceptionalism, with silver linings both for food consumers and conservationists.

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Actual and Potential Land Used for Global Production, 1961 2009.5 Source: Ausubel et al. (2012).

PEAK FARMLAND AND RECREANCY What could be wrong with Peak Farmland reasoning and how might its salutary messaging be a breach of public trust? The chorus of authors referenced above, and others not cited here, seem to cement a wisdom the world has long awaited: with conservation, adjusted consumption, scientific prowess, and reduced human fertility, humans can dematerialize food production and save habitat for biodiversity. This iconoclasm-turned-consensus is worth examining through Freudenburg’s tempered eye, including his 2005 and 2006 works on disproportionately powerful voices having a “considerable ability to shape the overall contours of media coverage” in constructing reality (Freudenburg, 2005, p. 107). Keying on outliers with disproportionate environmental impact, he cautioned against discursive privilege that distracts us from other valid accounts.6 In the remainder of this chapter, we offer the contrary view that the Peak Farmland narrative of the Rockefeller University authors is beset by problems minimized in their high-profile publications and media releases. The prospects for recreancy surface in as much as abundant counter evidence which we illustrate is neglected if not elided. We begin by

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questioning key definitions and end the chapter by suggesting that “land releases” must be viewed at the level of the planet as a whole, that is, at a scale where outlier effects do not exist. The risk of recreancy increases if scholars broadcasting “good news” for society and environment carry human exceptionalism to extremes.

Definitions Let us pause momentarily to consider the meaning of dematerialization and Peak Farmland. Herman et al. (1989, p. 50) stated long ago that the presence of dematerialization depends on how it is defined. It would seem that, if the term means less material requirements to attain the same standard of living, it is non-polemical. The same might be said of decarbonization7 (reducing carbon-based energy per unit of economic activity to minimize atmospheric CO2 emissions), a central component of dematerialization definitions (e.g., Ausubel, Werrnick, & Waggoner, 2008; Sun & Meristo, 1999). But these terms are in fact polemical if we consider performance. As for decarbonization, though carbon intensity has declined for well over a century, the pace of decarbonization has slowed dramatically in recent decades (Pielke, 2010) and carbon emissions have grown exponentially (Gruber, 1998 cited in Schandl & Turner, 2008). And though dematerialization would seem empirically uncomplicated (reducing the material requirements of an economy, or less mass per unit of economic activity), it can mask increases in energy use (classic mass-energy trade-offs), cause welfare declines in echelons of society who can’t afford new technologies, and vaunt “progress” that may come at the expense of structural changes (e.g., extending the life of consumer products to reduce overall system through-put) and other equitable alterations in consumption (Schandl & Turner, 2008). The same authors citing a long list of like-minded scholars state: A significant volume of literature exists around the issue of whether or not increased efficiency leads to environmental or social improvements. There is substantial empirical evidence and theoretical arguments that efficiency gains, by themselves, have not generally resulted in an overall decrease of pressures, but instead are likely to have contributed to increased pressure due to the “rebound” effect also known as the “take back” or Jevons paradox … (Schandl & Turner, 2008, p. 6)

The definition of Peak Farmland warrants close attention as well. Were it to mirror peak oil, the definition would signal human arrival at a maximum global farmland supply without further access to land that is not

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quickly degraded. Pulling significant portions of farmland from food for biofuel production, as Ausubel et al. (2013) note, of course accelerates the arrival of this version of Peak Farmland. But in fact their logic of “land release” departs from the peak oil analogue in a fundamental way. The declining slope from the present to 2060 reported in Fig. 1 derives less from disappearing farmland area than from declining need for farmland thanks to declining human fertility and assumed ingenuity (Prengaman, 2013).8 “Need” is harder to quantify than hectares and eludes easy empiricism. Returning to Freudenburg’s double diversion cautions, food needs may be one thing to well-fed researchers in the Global North and quite another to the subsistence farmers and the world’s undernourished inhabitants. This said, there remains a significant lacuna in the logic linking dematerialization and Peak Farmland. Here we refer to the dematerialization of terra firma itself at the global level. This is not a subject to be definition ally dismissed or minimized. As with full disclosure of decarbonization, the gravitas of policy prescriptions following Peak Farmland research requires that its portrayal whether based on supply or demand assume a fiduciary responsibility that incorporates relevant literature on this aspect of dematerialization. To claim that land is being spared “for nature” while remaining silent about the gravest source of dematerialization facing the planet may well be myopic, or worse.

Dematerialization as Global Land Loss The terrestrial base of the planet is under siege from a number of directions and literature speaking to this condition is not sparse. This perspective goes beyond the concerns of relative scarcity as expressed in the 2011 FAO report that of population growth in relation to available farmland. In addition, we would emphasize the growing importance of absolute scarcity due to diminished productive land on earth induced by a variety of anthropomorphic forces. We thus turn attention to existing research on five categories of land use where significant depletion has been empirically demonstrated and projected into the twenty-first century. Land loss, some will note, must be permanent or near permanent on a human time scale to qualify as “dematerialization” that is, be subject to reclamation for farming only at extraordinary if not insurmountable costs to society. Our examples are chosen with this in mind: expanding roadways, military blight, municipal waste disposal sites, degraded lands, and on-going urban sprawl. This list is not exhaustive, but is sufficient to cast

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doubts on the peaking need for farmland. We suggest that, at the global scale, the sum of these losses constitute an acute depletion of farmland resources (and reserves) and a diminished carrying capacity for the planet over and above the effects of population change. .

Roads Roads are all-important in getting farm products to market but they also take land out of production. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency, 2013) provides data for road length (mostly paved) totaling 102,260,304 km for all countries. Based on normal width assumptions (7.2 m for two lanes), we estimate an area of 268,074 km2 of paved roadways (and 32,955 km2 of unpaved) roadway at present. As for future growth, the prognosis is nonstop expansion. As a recent article pitched to global investors put it: From Seattle to the Sinai and from Swindon to Singapore, roads are rapidly being built in every corner of the world. Particularly in the higher growth markets of Asia, Latin America and Africa (but also parts of the US and Europe), road construction is booming in an all-out effort to keep up with expanding populations and their veracious appetite for development. (McManus, 2010, p. 33)

Road expansion in China and India are of particular interest in future estimates because of their demographics, growing appetite for cars, and demand for new roads. China reportedly added 639,000 km of roadway between 2006 and 2010 (Research in China, 2010), and India added 823,000 km between 2009 and 2012 (Sundaram, 2012). This translates to 159,700 km and 274,333 km a year, respectively. If we assume linear expansion at this rate to 2050, China will have 10,533,750 and India 14,568,076 km of roadway. This translates into 82,163 km2 for China and 42,796 km2 for India at mid-century. Combined, these come to an added 124,959 km2 over the World Bank-based figures just given. The proportion of future roads that will be paved is unknown. The opportunity cost of roads for productive lands is not limited to their paved components. Forman (2000) estimates that 19% of the total area of the United States is impacted by roadways, including diverted animal migrations, stream rechanneling and altered runoff, and land-filling of used road materials. To this must be added the potential influence on climate change, such as altering planetary albedo and increased fossil fuel consumption (Santero & Horvath, 2009). As such, the land loss impacts of expanding

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road networks are both direct and indirect, and surely exceed our spatial estimates of total paved surfaces in 2050. Our area estimates of between 475,892 and 492,378 km2 are also conservative for lack of corridor effects and future road projections for over 190 countries beyond China and India.

Military “No Man’s Lands” Warfare temporarily withdraws land from productive use, at times on a massive scale. At a global level, however, warfare is a nearly constant condition. Further, war preparedness requires military bases and training zones (the U.S. military was recently declared to be the world’s largest landlord, see Turse, 2007), a “loss” of production space many nations resign themselves to. So war, its anticipation, and aftermath even in times of peace place a “military mortgage” on productive lands. Here we limit ourselves to areas stricken by explosive remnants of war (ERW), which reportedly exist in 60 80 countries (International Committee of the Red Cross, 2011; United Nations Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit, 2012). The combination of potential U.S. (Butler, 1997) and internationally known unexploded ordinance land estimates yields a total of between 56,508 and 66,203 km2. On such landscapes (many are on military base lands, others is war and postwar zones) farming and grazing are possible only at considerable risk to humans, their farming equipment, livestock, and to wildlife. Where human food production persists, the chemical constituents of high explosives jeopardize food safety and food production (Douglas, 2006). As for the future, though warfare and ERW are unlikely to abate, the erratic nature of warfare make linear projections highly unreliable.

Landfills and Municipal Solid Waste As populations increase particularly urban populations (see below) additional solid waste is generated and requires land-dependent disposal. According to the Waste Atlas, which collects data on the waste streams of 162 countries (97% of global waste generation), humans generate 1,825,463,704 tonnes per year (Waste Atlas, n.d.). Varying disposal methods exist for this waste: incineration, biofuel conversion, recycling, resource mining, as well as scattering. While these reduce the total waste stream destined for landfills and open dumps, landfills and open dumps remain

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the most common form of urban refuse disposal (World Bank, 2012). Although estimates of the global area dedicated to such land uses are not readily available, the World Bank offers estimates of per capita waste generation by country. From this a rough calculation of future municipal solid waste (MSW) generation can be made, assuming, as the World Bank (2012) does, that MSW accompanies urbanization and that increasing wealth and urban concentration correlate with the amount of solid waste produced. Here we generated the linear trend in waste generation to 2050, using U.N. urban population predictions and making assumptions regarding MSW density, proportion of waste landfilled, and vertical dimensions; the higher a landfill, the less its horizontal spread. These assumptions and our projection methodology appear in the appendix. By our calculations, the area for landfills/open dumps increases dramatically from 2012 to 2050. Assuming homogeneous landfill heights of 30 m across the globe and the proportion of waste landfilled conforming to 2012 levels, MSW landfilling will require 3,396 km2 across the globe. Lower landfill heights (10 m) will require 10,187 km2. As open and accessible land decreases due to competing uses, landfill heights will increase and result in the lower of the two numbers or somewhere in between. Other potential reductions may arise from greater dependency on integrated waste disposal system. Waste composition and density may change with pre-cycling and conservation, not to mention the possible redefinition and future revaluing of waste as a valuable commodity (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012).

Degraded Lands Land degradation was once equated with erosion and desertification (Eswaran, Lal, & Reich, 2001), but today covers a wide spectrum of physical processes. Early estimates of compromised land ranged from 19.6 million (Oldeman, 1994) to 35.9 million km2 (sources cited in Bai, Dent, Olsson, & Schaepman, 2008), but suffered from definitional discord and lack of global data. As Safriel (2007, p. 4) states in The Assessment of Global Trends in Land Degradation, only five attempts to carry out and present assessments of land degradation at a global scale have occurred in the last 30 years and these shared inherent definitional difficulties for measuring the attribute chosen to represent “land degradation” as well as “a paucity of field data.” These difficulties have ebbed thanks to remote sensing technologies.

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Using 22 years of satellite data (1981 2003), the 2008 Global Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (GLADA) Report #5 provides excellent quantification of global land degradation at present (Bai et al., 2008). Land degradation therein refers to long-term decline in ecosystem function as measured by net primary productivity (NPP). It uses NPP as a proxy for erosion, salinization, desertification, water scarcity, nutrient depletion, pollution, and disruption of biological cycles9 and reported that 35,058,104 km2 (23.5% of the earth’s land surface, a figure similar to the FAO finding noted above) were degraded as of 2003 (Bai et al., 2008). GLADA found land degradation thus defined is occurring across the planet in a variety of FAO land-cover categories, including cropland (18%), broadleaf forests (23%), and needle-leaved forest (19%) the latter two being traditional sources of new farmland when needed.10 Although GLADA data appear inclusive, the deserts and dry lands of the Mediterranean, Middle East, and South and Central Asia regions are not strongly represented herein. Commenting on this lack of overlap, the Report authors observe: “Some areas of historical land degradation [major deserts] have been so degraded that they are now stable at stubbornly low levels of productivity” (Bai et al., 2008). Still, 12 million hectares are lost each year due to drought and desertification, an area that the United Nations (2012) says could grow 20 million tons of grain annually.11 Desertification affects 25% of the earth’s land area and diminishes the livelihoods of over a billion people in 100 countries (Brown, 2011). If the major degraded dry lands are added to the degraded lands tallied by GLADA, the total land area degraded or undergoing degradation approximates 48 million square kilometers, or 32% of the total terrestrial surface of the earth, as of 2003.12

Glurbanization Global urbanization in the twentieth century has been swift and extensive, and is referred to by Dalby (2009) as “glurbanization.” Urban inhabitants grew from 220 million people in 1900 to over half the world population in 2010. By 2030, 6 out of every 10 people will live in cities, and by 2050 this will rise to 7 out of 10 (WHO, 2013).13 Current area estimates vary, and range from 400,000 km2 (The World Bank, 2005) to 579,703 km2 (Sutton, Anderson, Elvidge, Tuttle, & Ghosh, 2009) to 726,943 km2 (Seto, Fragkias, Guneralp, & Reilly, 2011).

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When it comes to urban land needs in the future, population influxes are expected to continue over the next four decades (United Nations Population Division, 2011). Rising affluence will significantly alter urban area per capita, with affluent countries requiring almost four times (355 m2) the area per capita as less affluent countries (85 m2; Angel et al. as quoted in McDonald, 2008). Both are expected to drive urbanization at increasingly faster rates and require the construction of new cities, expansion of existing ones, and the increasing intensification of available urban space. Seto et al. (2011) offer 2030 estimates of urban land conversion, using a meta-analysis of 326 previous studies. Starting with an observed worldwide increase in urban land area of 58,000 km2 from 1970 to 2000, their meta-analysis shows that by 2030, global urban land cover will increase between 430,000 and 12,568,000 km2, with an estimate of 1,527,000 km2 to be likely. Some of the most populous cities in the world (Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Jakarta, and Delhi) were not represented in the meta-analysis, making their final estimates somewhat low. As cities expand, land-cover and ecosystem services are replaced and diminished. This is so even though variability will occur from city to city based on local governance, topographic structure, availability of water, transportation choices, and decisions to build up rather than out. Historically, cities have shown affinity for relatively flat lands near water sources, for obvious reasons. These lands, often in river basins, on fertile deltas, and bordering coastal zones, are also zones highly suited for agriculture. Thus, it is not just the amount of land glurbanization consumes that matters but its unique productive qualities that are lost.

DISCUSSION Our rendering of “dematerialized” land resources for farming and related productive uses errors on the low side for a number of reasons. It says nothing about sea level rise due to accumulating greenhouse gas effects on global oceans, glaciers, and ice shields, nor does it speak to the lost ecosystem service of CO2 storage as permafrost melts. If CO2 is sequestered in planted forests in amounts equivalent to what permafrost now warehouses, it will inevitably encumber vast landscapes that might have been used as farmland. Nor do we include farmland loss due to nuclear exclusion zones. Given the three accidents in recent decades (Three Mile Island, 1979; Chernobyl, 1986; and Fukushima, 2011), the expansion of such zones cannot be ruled out in the future.14

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It is time to critically rethink dematerialization in relation to changing land resources. A substantial part of the dematerialization we have engaged is attributable to a credo of modernization and what Freudenburg (1992) meant when writing about “addictive economies.” Nonetheless, the Rockefeller authors blandish their readers with an ultimate-resiliency view of the future. They state: For millennia food production tended to grow in tandem with land used for crops, a fundamental relationship in population and development. Now land for food is flat. If yields had remained at prior levels, immense, continental areas of forest and range and desert would have been shaved or ploughed for human food during the past 50 years. Surprisingly, instead, we find humanity gradually moving toward what we call, with deliberate hyperbole, landless agriculture. Paul, Iddo, and I believe humanity now stands at Peak Farmland, and the 21st century will see release of vast areas of land, hundreds of millions of hectares, more than twice the area of France for nature. (Ausubel et al., 2012, p. 6)

Could it be that India and China, featured prominently in their writing, are sparing farmland at home because, in part, they and other relatively wealthy countries are investing in lands abroad an offshore “farmsrace” and harnessing those lands for domestic food consumption? If so, such behaviors must be integrated into the larger Peak Farmland discourse to avoid diversion and distraction.15 It is estimated that China has a stake in 5 9 million hectares abroad (Smaller, Qui, & Liu, 2012) and is the world’s largest importer of soy beans, bringing in more than all other countries combined (Brown, 2013). According to the same author, India’s irrigation wells are going dry and the country is becoming a leader in overseas land acquisitions to enhance its food security. The Rockefeller researchers are adept at publishing their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, leading academic journals, important green development venues, and significant media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and the Huffington Post.16 This is what Freudenburg (2005) would call “privileged discourse.” Distinguished though it may be, such discourse runs the risk of diverting the public gaze from the unfolding picture of global land use, loss, and shrinking access. We believe that Freudenburg, were he writing about Peak Farmland, would draw attention to the disproportionately powerful outlier data that are left out of the upbeat deus ex machina account of the Rockefeller University iconoclasts. Left unexamined, their portrayal of Peak Farmland muddles understanding of planet-level dematerialization by omitting “lost” land resources on which the human community must survive, despite dreams of landless agriculture. Academics are

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not exempt from scrutiny when it comes to recreancy. We are endowed with public funding, enjoy the benefits of public institutions, and are custodians to no small quantity of public trust. Our revealed truths must not be tainted by revealed omissions.

NOTES 1. Agricultural land is the share of land area that is arable, under permanent crops and under permanent pastures. Arable land as defined by the FAO includes land under temporary crops, meadows or pasture, land under market or kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow. 2. “Fiduciary” as a formally inscribed responsibility carries legal penalties if neglected or abused. Here, we use the term as an informal though powerful norm which the public expects officials and intellectual leaders to adhere to by being cognizant of and candid about the likely unintended consequences of their actions and recommendations. 3. The idea of in vitro meat tissue, now decades old and recently accomplished by Dr. Mark Post of Maastricht University, could save land and energy compared to conventionally produced meat, according to Tuomisto and de Mattos (2011). 4. In a 2001 paper, Waggoner and Ausubel report the land release could exceed 400 million hectares by 2050 in a scenario of low human fertility growth (0.55 per year). 5. Global production here is calculated according to the Production Index (PIN) of the FAO for all crops weighted by the value or price that people put on them. 6. Freudenburg (2006) cautioned against the dual diversion failure to grasp that the majority of environmental harm is traceable to a relatively small number of economic actors and that this minority is privileged in its access to resources, including its ability to generate counterfactual discourses. His view was as follows: [w]hatever the ultimate feasibility of reducing a society’s overall environmental burden in the face of economic growth, the socially structured disproportionalities in the creation of environmental damage are worthy of increased attention in their own right (Freudenburg, 2005, p. 91). For an application of the dual diversion to agriculture, see Nowak, Bowen, and Cabot (2006). 7. More commonly, the term refers to removing carbon from internal combustion chambers, or “decarburization,” without reference to a net reduction in the total use of carbon fuels per se. 8. Ausubel et al. (2013) draw on others such as Alexandratos and Bruinsma (2012) to support their view of altered future demand. 9. Several other authors concur with this approach, emphasizing the “reduction or loss of ecosystem services, notably the primary production service” (Safriel & Adeel, 2005, cited in from Safriel, 2007). Perhaps the broadest framing of land degradation is “any form of deterioration of the natural potential of land that affects ecosystem integrity” (Overseas Development Group, 2006).

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10. The large role of forest degradation may inflate the total; Bai et al. (2008) also note that high-latitude taiga may skew the data due slow recovery from catastrophic fires. Land degradation determined by remote sensing in the absence of field studies and ground truthing is problematic. 11. UN, at www.un.org/en/events/desertificationday/background.shtml (accessed on August 4, 2013). 12. Most forms of land degradation are notoriously hard to reverse and represent long-term if not permanent losses in NPP. Top soil regeneration can take tens of thousands of years. Bai et al. (2008) report on NPP improvements as well, most of which are independent of degradation processes (See their Preliminary Findings Section). 13. Though definitions of urbanization vary across nations (Thomas, 2008), the figures here refer to populations of over 100,000 people (WHO, 2013). While the definition of “urban” can be contentious and population density varies, the World Bank number is supported by estimates using remote sensing (579,702.74 km2) (Sutton et al., 2009). 14. Worldwide, there have been at least 99 (civilian and military) recorded nuclear power plant accidents between 1952 and 2009, incidents that either resulted in the loss of human life or more than US$50,000 of property damage. For a country-by-country list, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_ accidents_by_country. 15. Sonnefeld (2000) makes this point with respect to pulp and paper production overseas. He sees “supermaterialization” occurring in South-East Asia, a possible way to facilitate dematerialization in the Global North. 16. Andrew Rivkin of The New York Times (2012) reports on Peak Farmland saying that Jesse Ausubel is his “go-to” guy for matters of climate change and food production and encourages his readers to take the Ausubel, Wernick, and Waggoner reporting seriously.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors acknowledge the helpful comments of Darragh Hare and Holly Buck in an early review of this chapter.

REFERENCES Alexandratos, N., & Bruinsma, J. (2012). World agriculture: Towards 2030/2050 interim report. ESA Working Paper No. 1203, Food and Agricultural Organization, Rome. Retrieved from www.fao.org/economic/esa/esag/en/. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Ausubel, J., Wernick, I., & Waggoner, P. (2008). Dematerialization: Variety, caution, and persistence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(35), 12774 12779. Ausubel, J., Wernick, I., & Waggoner, P. (2012). Peak farmland. Lecture for the 18 December 2012 Symposium in honor of the 80th birthday of Paul Demeny and his retirement as editor

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of Population and Development Review. Retrieved from http://phe.rockefeller.edu/news/ archives/1668. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Ausubel, J. H., Wernick, I. K., & Waggoner, P. E. (2013). Peak farmland and the prospects for sparing nature. In G. McNicoll, J. Bongaarts, & E. P. Churchill (Eds.), Population and public policy: Essays in honor of Paul Demeny, supplement to Population and Development Review (Vol. 38), New York, NY: Population Council. Ayers, R. U., & Ayers, L. W. (Eds.). (2002). A handbook of industrial ecology. Northampton, MA: Edgar Elgar. Bai, Z. G., Dent, D. L., Olsson, L., & Schaepman, M. E. (2008). Global assessment of land degradation and improvement 1: Identification by remote sensing. Report 2008/01 (GLADA Report 5), ISRIC World Soil Information, Wagenigen. Boserup, E. (1965). The conditions of agricultural growth: The economics of agrarian change under population pressure. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Brown, L. R. (2011). World on edge. New York, NY: Norton. Brown, L. R. (2013). Food, fuel, and the global land grab. The Futurist, 47(1). Retrieved from www.wfs.org/futurist/january-february-2013-vol-47-no1/food-fuel-and-global-land-grab. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Brundtland, G. H. (1987). Our common future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. New York, NY: United Nations. Butler, D. K. (1997). Landmines and UXO. The Leading Edge, 16(10). Retrieved from http:// library.seg.org/doi/abs/10.1190/1.1437514. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Catton, W., & Dunlap, R. (1978). Environmental sociology: A new paradigm. The American Sociologist, 13, 41 49. Central Intelligence Agency. (2013). World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, DC. Retrieved from www.cia.gov/library/publications. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Cohen, J. E. (1995a). How many people can the earth support? New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co. Cohen, J. E. (1995b). Population growth and earth’s human carrying capacity. Science, 269, 341 346. Dalby, S. (2009). Security and environmental change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Douglas, I. (2006). The local drivers of land degradation in South-East Asia. Geographical Research, 44(2), 123 134. Doyle, A. (2012). ‘Peak farmland’ is here, crop area to diminish: Study. Reuters, December 17. Retrieved from www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/17/uscrops-idUSBRE8BG0QH20121217. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Dunlap, R. (2002). Paradigms, theories and environmental sociology. In R. Dunlap, F. Buttel, P. Dickens, & A. Gijswijt (Eds.), Sociological theory and the environment: Classical foundations, contemporary insights (pp. 329 350). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Eswaran, H., Lal, R., & Reich, P. (2001). Land degradation: An overview. In E. M. Bridges, I. D. Hannam, L. R. Oldeman, F. W. T. Pening de Vries, S. J. Scherr, & S. Sompatpanit (Eds.), Responses to land degradation. Proceedings of the 2nd. international conference on land degradation and desertification (pp. 20 35). Khon Kaen, Thailand. Food and Agricultural Organization. (2011). The state of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW): Managing systems at risk. London: Earthscan. Forman, R. (2000). Estimate of the area affected ecologically by the road system in the United States. Conservation Biology, 14(1), 31 35.

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Freudenburg, W. R. (1992). Addictive economies: Extractive industries and vulnerable localities. Rural Sociology, 57(3), 305 332. Freudenburg, W. R. (1993). Risk and recreancy: Weber, the division of labor, and the rationality of risk perceptions, Social Forces, 71(4), 909 932. Freudenburg, W. R. (1997). The crude and the refined: Sociology, obscurity, language, and oil. Sociological Spectrum, 17, 1 28. Freudenburg, W. R. (2000). The ‘risk society’ reconsidered: Recreancy, the division of labor, and risks to the social fabric. In M.J. Cohen (Ed.), Risk in the modern age: Social theory, science and environmental decision making (pp. 107 122). New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Freudenburg, W. R. (2005). Privileged access, privileged accounts: Toward a socially structured theory of resources and discourses. Social Forces, 84, 89 114. Freudenburg, W. R. (2006). Environmental degradation, disproportionality, and the double diversion: Reaching out, reaching ahead, and reaching beyond. Rural Sociology, 71(1), 3 32. Freudenburg, W. R., & Collins, M. B. (2012). Recreancy and nanotechnology: A call for empirical research. In B. Herr Harthorn & J. Mohr (Eds.), The social life of nanotechnology (pp. 241 264). New York, NY: Routledge. Gruber, A. (1998). Technology and global change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herman, R., Ardekani, S. A., & Ausubel, J. H. (1989). Dematerialization. In J. H. Ausubel & H. E. Sladovich (Eds.), Technology and environment (pp. 50 69). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Hultman, N., Sierra, K., Eis, J., & Shapiro, A. (2012). Green growth innovation: New pathways for international cooperation. Washington, DC: Global Economy and Development at Brookings, The Brookings Institution. International Committee of the Red Cross. (2011, November 30). Explosive remnants of war. Retrieved from www.icrc.org/eng/war-andlaw/weapons/explosive-remnants-war/overviewexplosive-remnants of-war.htm. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Jackson, T. (2009). Prosperity without growth? The transition to a sustainable economy. London: The Sustainable Development Commission. Malakoff, D. (2011). Are more people necessarily a problem? Science, 29, 554 556. McDonald, R. I. (2008). Global urbanization: Can ecologists identify a sustainable way forward? Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 6(2), 99 104. McManus, D. (2010). Roadwork ahead: The drive towards private investment. Insight Magazine, 1(November), 33. Merriam Webster Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/ carrying%20capacity. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Nowak, P., Bowen, S., & Cabot, P. (2006). Disproportionality as a framework for linking social and biophysical systems. Society and Natural Resources, 19(2), 153 173. Oldeman, L. R. (1994). The global extent of soil degradation. Retrieved from library.wur.nl/ isric/fulltext/isricu_i26803_001.pdf. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Overseas Development Group. (2006). Global impacts of land degradation. Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia. Retrieved from core.kmi.open.ac.uk/download/pdf/2779887. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Owen, J. (2005). Farming claims almost half of the earth’s land, new maps show. National Geographic News. Retrieved from news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/98986731.html. Accessed on August 9, 2013.

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Pielke, R. Jr. (2010). The climate fix: What scientists and politicians won’t tell you about global warming. New York, NY: Basic Books. Prengaman, K. (2013). What is peak farmland? Xylem: An ecology and environment blog. Retrieved from http://kateprengaman.com/what-is-peak-farmland/. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Ramankutty, N., Evan, A. T., Monfreda, C., & Foley, J. C. (2008). Farming the planet: 1. Geographic distribution of global agricultural lands in the year 2000. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 22(1), GB1003, 1 19. Research in China. (2010). China road construction industry report. Retrieved from www. researchinchina.com/Htmls/Report/2011/6053.html. Accessed on August 8, 2013. Rhyner, C., Schwartz, L., Wenger, R., & Kohrell, M. (1995). Waste management and resource recovery. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Rivkin, A. C. (2012). Scientists see promise for people and nature in ‘peak farmland’. The New York Times. Retrieved from dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/scientists-see-promisefor people-and-nature-in-peak-farmland/. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Safriel, U. N. (2007). The assessment of global trends in land degradation. In M. V. Sivakumar & N. Ndiang’Ui (Eds.), Climate and land degradation (pp. 1 36). New York, NY: Springer. Sagarin, R. D., & Turnipseed, M. (2012). The public trust doctrine: Where ecology meets natural resources management. Annual Review of Environmental Resources, 37, 473 496. Santero, N. J., & Horvath, A. (2009). Global warming potential of pavements. Environmental Research Letters, 4(3), 1 4. Schandl, H., & Turner, G. M. (2008). The dematerialization potential of the Australian economy. Socio-economics and the environment in discussion: CSIRO Working Paper Series 2008-13. Canberra, Australia. Seto, K., Fragkias, M., Guneralp, B., & Reilly, M. K. (2011). A meta-analysis of global urban land expansion. PLoS One, 6(8), 1 9.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0023777 Smaller, C., Qui, W., & Liu, Y. (2012). Farmland and water: China invests abroad. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IISD). Sonnenfeld, D. A. (2000). Contradictions of ecological modernization: Pulp and paper manufacturing in southeast Asia. In A. P. J. Mol & D. A. Sonnenfeld (Eds.), Ecological modernization around the world: Perspectives and critical debates (pp. 235 256). Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Spaargaren, G., Mol, A. P. J., & Buttel, F. H. (Eds.). (2000). Environment and global modernity. London: Sage Studies in International Sociology. Spaargaren, G., & van Vliet, B. (2000). Lifestyles, consumption and the environment: The ecological modernization of domestic consumption. In A. P. J. Mol & D. A. Sonnenfeld (Eds.), Ecological modernization around the world: Perspectives and critical debates (pp. 50 76). Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Sumner, W. G. (1896). Earth hunger or the philosophy of land grabbing. In A. G. Kellerin (Ed.), Earth hunger and other essays (pp. 31 64). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sun, J. W., & Meristo, T. (1999). Measurement of dematerialization/materialization: A case analysis of energy saving and decarbonization in OECD countries, 1960 95. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 6(30), 275 294. Sundaram, K. (2012, February 27). India road-building hits record as builders pay to work: Freight. Bloomberg.com. Retrieved from www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-26/

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india-highway-building-hitsrecord-pace-as-contactors-pay-to-work-freight.html. Accessed on August 8, 2013. Sutton, P. C., Anderson, S. J., Elvidge, C. D., Tuttle, B. T., & Ghosh, T. (2009). Paving the planet: Impervious surface as proxy measure of the human ecological footprint. Progress in Physical Geography, 33(4), 510 527. Takacs, D. (2008). The public trust doctrine, environmental human rights, and the future of private property. N.Y.U. Environmental Law Journal, 16, 711 765. Thomas, S. (2008). Urbanization as a driver of change. The Arum Journal, 1, 58 66. Tiffen, M., Mortimore, M., & Gichuki, F. (1994). More people, less erosion. London: ODI. Tuomisto, H. L., & de Mattos, M. J. T. (2011). Environmental impacts of cultured meat production. Environmental Science & Technology, 45(14), 6117 6123. Turner, B. L., & Fischer-Kowalski, M. (2009). Ester Boserup: An interdisciplinary visionary relevant for sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(51), 21963 21965. Turse, N. (2007, August 1). Planet Pentagon: Ownership of the earth, the seas and the skies. Le Monde Diplomatique. Retrieved from www.mindfully.org/Reform/2007/Planet-PentagonEarth1aug07.htm. Accessed on August 9, 2013. United Nations Environment Programme. (2001). Consumption opportunities Strategies for change A report for decision-makers. Geneva: United Nations Environmental Program. United Nations Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit. (2012, April 4). Landmines and unexploded ordnances fact sheet in Iraq. Retrieved from www.iq.undp.org/Publications_ View.aspx?q = SUQ9MjI2Jg%3D%3D7%2FNQ6LqxK04%3D. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Vergara, S. E., & Tchobanoglous, G. (2012). Municipal solid waste and the environment: A global perspective. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 37, 277 309. Retrieved from www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-environ-050511122532. Accessed on August 7, 2013. Waggoner, P. (1994). How much land can ten billion people spare for nature? Report published in cooperation with the Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY. Waggoner, P., & Ausubel, J. (2001). How much will feeding more and wealthier people encroach on forests? Population and Development Review, 27(2), 239 257. Waste Atlas. (n.d.). International Solid Waste Associates. Retrieved from www.atlas.d-waste. com. Accessed on August 9, 2013. World Bank. (2012). What a waste: A global review of solid waste management. Washington, DC: World Bank. Retrieved from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/03/ 16537275/wast-global-review-solid-waste-management. Accessed on August 10, 2013. World Health Organization. (2013). Urban population growth. Global Health Observatory. Retrieved from www.who.int/gho/urban_health/situation_trends/urban_population_groth_ text/en/. Accessed on August 9, 2013.

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APPENDIX: ESTIMATING MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE (MSW) Urban growth rates by country were taken from the World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision, UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs. World Bank data are given in tons (metric) per year, tons per day, and kg per capita per day. “Typical” densities, required to convert to volume, were taken from Charles Rhyner, Schwartz, Wenger, and Kohrell (1995). MSW composition estimates come from the World Bank (2012); countries without data were assigned average composition for their World Bank income classification. The difference between 2012 and the 2025 MSW generation rate was computed and then added to the 2025 rate, providing an estimated 2040 2045 rate. This is based on the ∼15 yr difference between 2012 and 2025, and attempts to “piggy-back” on the more robust World Bank estimates. A linear rate was then applied by year from 2012 2050. Annual MSW generation was then calculated by multiplying the per capita rate by estimated urban populations. Urban growth rates were applied step-wise from 2015 to 2050. For country estimates, total MSW generated was then multiplied by the proportion of waste per country, deposited in open dumps and landfills. Volume was determined by dividing the total tonnage generated by each country’s proportional density. Area was then estimated by assuming dump/landfill heights of 10, 20, and 30 m, respectively. Because the World Bank country list was not complete, global area was determined using a global MSW generation average. A weighted average of the proportion of waste landfilled was determined using individual country data and used to determine area required. The model begins at 2012 with a baseline of zero, and only estimates what the need for space will be, not how much is currently occupied. Following 2015 all periods are calculated in five-year intervals due to the 5-year population estimates. Total area is calculated as sum of prior periods plus first year of period (minimum), or sum of prior periods plus end-of-period generation multiplied by duration of period (5 years) (maximum). This model suggests that new MSW generation will require a significant land area. Transporting solid waste takes money and energy, encouraging waste sites close to urban centers on land that has competing uses (Table A.1).

295

1,221

2,559 4,367

5,833 7,471 9,641 11,833 14,246

2015

2020 2025

2030 2035 2040 2045 2050

MSW, Required Area, 10 m (km2)

2012

Year

Table A.1.

2,916 3,736 4,820 5,917 7,123

1,280 2,183

611

148

MSW, Required Area, 20 m (km2)

1,944 2,490 3,214 3,944 4,749

853 1,456

407

98

MSW, Required Area, 30 m (km2)

4,922 5,762 6,642 7,156 7,814

Increasing Landfill Height

4,171 5,343 6,894 8,462 10,187

1,830 3,122

873

211

Proportion Landfilled, 10 m (km2)

2,085 2,671 3,447 4,231 5,093

915 1,561

437

106

Proportion Landfilled, 20 m (km2)

1,390 1,781 2,298 2,821 3,396

610 1,041

291

70

Proportion Landfilled, 30 m (km2)

3,519 4,121 4,750 5,117 5,588

Proportion Landfilled, Increasing Landfill Height (km2)

Model Results: Area Required for MSW by Variable by 5-Year Periodization.

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FREUDENBURG BEYOND BORDERS: RECREANCY, ATROPHY OF VIGILANCE, BUREAUCRATIC SLIPPAGE, AND THE TRAGEDY OF 9/11 Susan Maret ABSTRACT In this chapter, I suggest three conceptual tools developed by William R. Freudenburg and colleagues that characterize the failure of institutions to carry out their duties recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage are of use beyond environmental sociology in the framing of the September 11, 2001 disaster. Using testimony and findings from primary materials such as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Joint Inquiry hearings and report (2002, 2004a, 2004b) and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004) alongside insider accounts, I discuss how Freudenburg’s tools have the potential to theorize institutional failures that occur in national security decision making. I also suggest these tools may be of particular

William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 21, 201 223 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0196-1152/doi:10.1108/S0196-1152(2013)0000021013

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interest to the U.S. intelligence community in its own investigation of various types of risk and failures. Keywords: 9/11 attacks; William R. Freudenburg; House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States; Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; U.S. intelligence community

INTRODUCTION Known primarily as an environmental sociologist, William R. Freudenburg’s research is informed by critical theory, postructuralism, and institutional ethnography. With their emphasis on power, privilege, legitimation, language, and concern with the construction and limits to knowledge, these schools of thought flow through Bill’s work, especially in his analysis of risk (Freudenburg, 1993, 1996a, 1996b, 2001), and call for the “systematic use of social science in risk analysis” (Freudenburg, 1992, p. 3). As Tom Rudel points out in this volume, during a two decade period, from 1985 and 2005, Bill “created a portfolio of conceptual tools that could be used to analyze the politics of natural resource regulation.” During this period of time, Bill also created conceptual tools that are essentially tied to risk perception, risk communication, and risk aversion in institutional settings recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage the latter constructed with colleague Robert Gramling. These tools do not appear to have widely diffused from environmental sociology into the general social science research literature or the security and intelligence studies literature.1 This is puzzling, especially when one ponders the emphasis on risk assessment in the post-September 11 climate and subsequent recommendations of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism’s World at Risk report (2008), which predicts “it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013” (p. xv). Post-9/11, the U.S. intelligence community, or IC,2 is tasked with establishing “uniform policies, approaches, guidelines, and methodologies for integrating Federal infrastructure protection and risk management activities within and across sectors along with metrics and criteria for related programs and activities” (Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7, 2003).3 Further, it has been suggested that “intelligence itself is a risky means of shifting risks; risky in the sense that its product is often of

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ambiguous value, and its fragile methods can provoke angry and dangerous responses from their targets” (Warner, 2009, p. 24). Risk, as defined in intelligence settings, is 1. The probability that a particular threat will exploit a particular vulnerability of national security that will result in damage to the life, health, property, or the environment. 2. The probability of loss from an attack or adverse incident. It is a function of threat (adversaries’ capabilities, intentions, and opportunities) and vulnerability (the inherent susceptibility to attack). Risk may be quantified and expressed in terms such as cost in loss of life, dollars, resources, or programmatic impact. (Goldman, 2011)4

To this end, I suggest Bill’s conceptual tools (recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage) have a role to play in theorizing terrorism-related disasters that involve national security decision making. Risk plays an important part in these tools, especially in cases where “the lack of organizational commitment to risk management may be a predominant source of real risk” (Freudenburg, 1992, p. 12). Within a narrow band of research, I provide background on these tools, and include commentary from hearings, reports, and insider accounts on the September 11 tragedy. These sources indicate failure to detect the attacks are not only complex, but have a basis in past policies and decisions, and involve a system-wide collapse of communication and subsequent policy actions among multiple federal agencies and bodies. In making this association, I suggest that Bill’s tools are not only of methodological assistance to researchers in investigating system-wide institutional failure as illustrated by the 9/11 case, but can play a part in the IC’s own examination of intelligence and warning failures, perhaps even providing a theoretical foundation for “lessons learned” (Johnston, 2005).5

CONCEPTUAL TOOLS: RECREANCY, ATROPHY OF VIGILANCE, AND BUREAUCRATIC SLIPPAGE As ideal types,6 Bill’s recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage share several elements in common.7 First, there is a focus on information as “any communication or representation of knowledge such as facts, data, or opinions in any medium or form, including textual, numerical, graphic, cartographic, narrative, or audiovisual” (Office of Management and Budget, 1996). If we recall Max Weber’s (1978) work on the significance of the files to the inner workings of the bureaucracy as “efficient machine” (p. 973). Information takes on supreme importance as a gauge of risk and

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uncertainty in institutional decision making, and may exist in such abundance that it is difficult for institutions to sift and filter in order to get at “needed information” (Clarke, 2008, p. 97). Further, as responsibility for decision making is situated within information hives within hives, in the form of agencies, subdepartments, and units replete with formal rules, some secret, some not (e.g., standard operating practices and procedures, forms, directives, classification) there remains an emphasis on data collection, record keeping, and the creation of reports that serve calculation (Weber, 1958, p. 139). Second, Bill’s tools share an emphasis on the total institution and their agencies, subdepartments, and units in not “connecting the dots” relative to risk, threats, and/or warnings. Lastly these conceptual tools infer that a diminishment of trust and confidence in an institution’s policies and actions can occur through identifiable means. The first conceptual tool in Bill’s theoretical trifecta is recreancy. Bill made an interesting choice in selecting this term to convey that “persons entrusted with the operation of systems may have failed to carry out their responsibilities with the necessary vigor” (as quoted in Freudenburg & Jones, 1991, p. 1159), “not getting the job done” (Freudenburg, 1993, p. 916), and “a retrogression or failure to follow through on a duty or a trust” (Freudenburg, 1996a, p. 47). Although Bill drew from etymological roots in his application of recreancy, (the Latin re- (back) and credere, to entrust), the word was used as early as 1602, and also strongly defined as “apostasy, treachery; mean-spiritedness” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2013). The form recreant conveys being “unfaithful to duty or a person” but also “designating a person who admits to having been defeated or overcome; that yields or surrenders; in a condition of surrender or defeat” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2013).8 All of these definitions capture a failure to follow through and faithfully act on a duty; however, by way of additional meanings such as defeat and surrender, recreancy may also suggest an inability to carry out a responsibility through an overpowering, and/or being overwhelmed, perhaps by way of internal institutional dynamics, outside forces, or both. This meaning will take on greater significance in the next section of my discussion. Building on Bernard Barber’s (1983) research on trust, Bill assigned to recreancy failings in technical competence and fiduciary responsibility, “but the term is also intended to describe cases where the failing is neither a matter of (individual) incompetence nor one of self-interest” (1993, p. 917). Utilizing a “Weberian-institutional perspective,” Bill (Freudenburg, 1993) observed that failure to protect the public interest may lead to not only

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challenges regarding authority or “expert control,” but exemptions from public analysis of policies and the information in which they are based. Recreancy therefore also involves a potential reduction in social capital: Credibility refers to believability, not to the broader range of behaviors (and failures to “behave”) that constitute a failure to perform specialized duties in an appropriate manner. Trust is usually exercised or withheld by those who assess the performance of institutional actors, not by the institutional actors themselves. Trustworthiness would come as close as any common word to the meaning that needs to be conveyed, particularly if we think in terms of the two primary considerations in Barber’s discussion of trust relationships (1983) technical competence and fiduciary responsibility. For the interests of the society at large to be properly protected, after all, the relevant specialists and institutions need to be both competent and properly reflective of their responsibilities to the broader collectivity. (Freudenburg, 1993, p. 916)

In formulating the concept of recreancy to describe failings, Bill, much like Weber before him, was acutely aware of the limits of language and need for researchers to create original vocabulary to mirror social phenomena. He argued for “a specialized word if we are to refer to behaviors of institutions or organizations as well as of individuals and, importantly, if the focus of attention is to be on actual behaviors” (1996a, p. 47). Bill (1993) was also attentive to those researchers “who object to the term of recreancy it may be possible to refer instead to institutional failure, although this alternative terminology can convey a meaning that is far less precise” (p. 917). Recreancy then is a useful tool to characterize situations where policies and procedures go awry, and where “the ‘responsible’ person or organization can prove almost impossible to find” (Freudenburg, 1996a, p. 47). Recreancy is especially useful in examining conditions Where a major technological accident does occur and unfortunately, the question seems to be one of when and where, rather than of whether disruptions may be created not just by the accidents themselves, and not just by the experience of risk or threat, but also by subsequent actions that threaten the very system of agreed-upon meanings that allow a complex social system to function. (as quoted in Freudenburg & Jones, 1991, p. 1159)

The second conceptual tool, atrophy of vigilance, is the decline over time in regulatory surveillance. Atrophy of vigilance includes complacency (“it can’t happen here” or groupthink9), concerns with costs and budgets that substitutes for an authentic conversation on risk, and an “expectation for organizational performance to get sloppier over time particularly in the case of rare or ‘unexpected’ problems’” (Freudenburg, 1992; Freudenburg & Gramling, 2011, p. 35).

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First outlined in 1992 in a discussion of “technological risks that are in some way managed by humans and their institutions (governments, corporations, communities) over time” (p. 2), Bill identified four sets of interrelated factors “that are unintended and/or unseen” that may influence organizational functioning (p. 5). As a guidepost, these elements buttress recreancy: individual-level human factors (standard human factors, stochastic human factors, external human factors, pp. 6 9), organizational factors (e.g., “pervasive mindsets” that reflect organizational hubris, bureaucratic attenuation of information flows, diffraction of responsibility, amplified risk taking, the “specialized division of responsibility creates not just the possibility that a single weak link will cause the entire ‘chain’ to fall, but it also increases the possibility that one of more links will be forgotten altogether,” p. 16 ), atrophy of vigilance (e.g., attentiveness and vigilance deteriorate, displacement and routinization occurs, safety measures are relegated to “non-status,” pp. 20 21), and imbalanced distribution of institutional resources. In outlining these critical threads, Bill (1992) reminds us of several key issues: problems “can be created not just by individuals but by institutions, and not just by volitions, but by situations” (p. 5); the complexity of an organization can “create difficulties, oversights, omissions, and lacunae of responsibilities” (pp. 17 18); and that if an institution’s risk management programs had “succeeded in averting the disaster, no one had would ever have ‘known’” (p. 23).10 With the third conceptual tool, bureaucratic slippage, there is a “tendency for broad policies to be altered through successive reinterpretation, such that the ultimate implementation may bear little resemblance to legislated or other broad statements of policy intent” (Freudenburg & Gramling, 1994, p. 222). Slippage therefore involves “disjunctions” between laws and how a particular agency or department performs its duties (p. 222), which can give way to the “potential for considerable bureaucratic slippage between the statement of goals and the reality of implementation” (p. 232). Bureaucratic slippage, according to the authors, is a gradual process that “can resemble the childhood game in which a ‘secret’ is whispered to one person, who then whispers it to the next, and so on; the eventual secret, or the eventual implementation of the policy, can prove to have very little resemblance to the statement that started the process” (Freudenburg & Gramling, 1994, p. 222). In the next section, I provide documentation and direct accounts from 9/11 hearings that give weight to Bill’s conceptual tools. These materials indicate the September 11, 2001 attacks involved multiple failures within

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numerous federal agencies, not only those responsible for intelligence analysis11 and production, but what is termed “finished intelligence” (Central Intelligence Agency, 1999). When the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism under the Clinton administration, Richard A. Clarke (2008) was queried by the 9/11 Commission if he thought the September 11, 2001 attacks were an intelligence failure, he replied: …That it had not been a failure to provide strategic warning that al Qaeda existed and was intent on attacking us. The message had loudly and repeatedly been given to the leadership of the Bush administration, who for all practical purposes ignored it. But 9/ 11 was clearly an intelligence failure at the tactical level, since the intelligence agencies were unable to tell us when, where, how, or who was going to attack us. In short, they provided me with no actionable intelligence, nothing to utilize to preempt the attack. (pp. 118 119)12

A few words on underlying intent of this discussion: My brief descent into the historical record of 9/11 is not designed to be an exhaustive risk analysis of the disaster, nor how Bill’s theories intersect with each finding by committees and commissions that studied the September 11 attacks. In addition, my discussion does not address various conspiracy (alternative) theories surrounding 9/11 but instead documents the “repeated incompetence” (Clarke, 2008, p. 170) over a period of years across federal agencies and presidential administrations in failing to map terrorist events from the first Word Trade Center bombing (1993), the Khobar Towers bombing (1996), Kenyan and Tanzanian embassy bombings (1998), and attack on the USS Cole (2000) to a set of actors. Nor is this discussion focused on blaming one agency, department, or set of individuals. Drawing on Freudenburg’s (1993), “it is not relevant to know whether or not villainy can be discerned, whether at individual or collective levels; instead to use Weber’s words, the key question is simply whether experience shows that the behaviors of specialized individuals and institutions can be counted on” (p. 917).

CONCEPTUAL TOOLS, MEET THE IC Through Max Weber’s (1978) work on rationality or verifiable certainty,13 and the division and specialization of labor, Bill refined his thoughts on risk and recreancy. In making the following observation, Bill pinpointed

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the possible roots of disaster within a particular element of Weber’s bureaucracy: Society is not so much infallibility as something far more paradoxical. Our current division of labor permits a level of prosperity, prowess, and even physical health and safety, that is altogether unprecedented. The same division of labor, however, may increase societal vulnerability to cases where duties are not being carried out properly whether the “fault” is one of individual actors or of a broader system in which important responsibilities may fall through the institutional cracks. (1993, p. 915)

Although Bill is referring to the failure of institutions to respond to risks and accidents posed by technology in the above quote, recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage each offer an avenue of analysis into information flows and decision making processes relative to risks and threats, autonomy (agency), and action (or inaction). When viewed as a package, these tools offer plasticity to investigators who wish to probe the further reaches of institutional collapse, including historical contexts, knowledge production, internal decision making, policy dynamics, and influence on public trust. While recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage are at the crux of Bill’s research, and applied by him in analysis of institutional policies and environmental disasters, these tools take on a new dimension when applied to the IC and the various categories of failures it may encounter: intelligence, warning, and strategic (e.g., Brauch, 2011; Friedrich, 1972; Grabo, 2010; Greenberg, 2010; House Committee on Government Reform, 2002; Johnston, 2005; Jones, 2010; Macartney, 1988; Marin, 2004; Ransom, 1980; Riebling, 2002; Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 1977, 2002;14 Steele, 2002; Turner, 2005; Weiner, 2007; Zegart, 1999), and particularly the September 11 attacks (e.g., Clarke, 2004, 2008; Diamond, 2008; Edmonds, 2012; National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004; Zegart, 2007a, 2007b).15 Remarkably, a tour of the research literature on the September 11 attacks does not reflect the use of Bill’s conceptual tools in the analysis of the disaster. It is clear, however, that recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage underlie the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (2002, 2004a, 2004b) findings and testimony as reported in the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 and the unclassified version of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004) Final Report. These investigations “explained to the American people how and

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why the U.S. government failed to discover that terrorists, operating from Afghanistan, were infiltrating the United States in order to use a most unconventional resource commercial airplanes as weapons that would kill thousands of people” (Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, 2008, p. xii). Although George Tenet remarked to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2002) that “when people use the word ‘failure,’ ‘failure’ means no focus, no attention, no discipline and those were not present in what either we or the FBI did here and around the world” (p. 136), findings and accounts included in this discussion bear out the bureaucratic miasma preceding the 9/11 attacks. To quote one former CIA analyst, an intelligence failure is a “number of little failures that cluster into an enormous failure” (Mahle, 2004, p. 11). However one chooses to characterize the 9/11 attacks and the sheer inability and ineffectiveness of the federal government to institute emergency measures to prevent the murder of approximately three thousand people, the release of a myriad of chemicals into the environment and subsequent environmental illnesses to first responders and the public, and on and on, it is worth noting when Failures occur, they are likely to involve bureaucratic politics and occur at the policy-intelligence interface, where good intelligence is most important but also most vulnerable. Policymakers and intelligence producers who would avoid future “intelligence failures” need to be aware of the bureaucratic pitfalls inherent in their relationship. (Macartney, 1988, p. 14)

Let us begin linking Bill’s conceptual tools with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, known as the Joint Inquiry. There are two sets of hearings (September, Volume 1 and October, Volume 2) held in 2002 and published in 2004. A classified version of the hearing was declassified in 2002. The Joint Inquiry attempted to identify root causes of the 9/11 attacks. I draw from all three documents below. The first example of recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage have origins in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. At the Joint Inquiry hearing, George Tenet testified that “a common thread runs between the first attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993 and the 11 September attacks” (p. 129). While Tenet identified a link between the 1993 bombings and September 11 attacks, the Joint Inquiry “found no evidence that, before September 11, analysts in the Intelligence Community were cataloguing information regarding the use of airplanes as weapons as a terrorist tactic; sending requirements to collectors to look for additional

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information on this threat; or considering the likelihood that Bin Laden, al-Qa’ida, or any other terrorist group, would attack the United States or U.S. interests in this way” (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2002, p. 214). Ms. Eleanor Hill, Staff Director for the Joint Inquiry, testified that she and her staff interviewed officials at the Department of Defense, Treasury, State, Justice, Transportation, Energy, and private sector organizations regarding the 9/11 attacks. Hill reported to the Joint Inquiry that her staff focused on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI), and National Security Agency (NSA) “where the most extensive universe of potentially relevant intelligence resides” (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, p. 62).16 Hill reported her research team was (emphasis added) Able to determine to date, the Intelligence community did have general indications of a possible terrorist attack against the U.S. or U.S. interests overseas in the spring and summer of 2001 and promulgated strategic warnings. However, it does not appear to date that the Intelligence community had information prior to September 11 that identified where, when, and how the attacks would be carried out. (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, p. 64)17

At the same hearing on September 18, the testimony of Ms. Kristen Breitwiser, co-chairperson of the September 11 Advocates, offers a divergent account. Based on open source, public information, Breitwiser’s comments are a veritable literature review of threats and warnings compiled by a myriad of federal agencies preceding the attack (2004a, pp. 21 47) that implies a multi-tiered institutional collapse. That is, 9/11 did not occur due to the malfunction of one federal agency, subdepartment, hive, or individual in anticipating the finer details of the attacks; numerous federal units across presidential administrations were unable to entirely “grok” a time, place, and extent of the attacks. In his research, Bill used Lee Clarke’s (1999) concept of the fantasy document or “rationality badges, symbols organizations use to signal they are in control of danger…they are usually set in a rhetoric of technical competence” (p. 16) as a vehicle to explore failure through administrative communications. It seem fitting to carry on this tradition with Presidential Decision Directive 62 or PDD-62. This PDD plays a key role in the U.S. government’s inability to insert policy into interagency action to circumvent 9/11 and remains classified (White House, 1998) with sections redacted and released through the Joint Inquiry Report published in December 2002 with additional commentary and documents. The Joint Inquiry identified

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key challenges of PDD-62, a “fantasy document”: that was not widely acknowledged in federal circles as a basis for operations and policy: The DCI’s December 1998 declaration was remarkable for its foresight and aggressiveness. But it could only have effect within a limited sphere because coordinating the U.S. Government’s response to the Bin Ladin threat was not the responsibility of the DCI or the Intelligence Community, but of the President and the National Security Council. In a Joint Inquiry briefing, Mr. (Richard A.) Clarke touched on this issue when he discussed Presidential Decision Directive 62, “Protection Against Unconventional Threat to the Homeland and Americans Overseas.” That PDD was signed by President Clinton in May 1998, before the bombings of the two U.S. Embassies in Africa and before the DCI’s declaration of war. According to Mr. Clarke, the PDD created a tenprogram counterterrorism initiative and assigned counterterrorist responsibilities to specific agencies. Within that effort were the seeds of an integrated, comprehensive government-wide strategy for countering the Bin Ladin threat that could have put the nation on a war footing before September 11. The initiative is perhaps the closest that President Clinton and the National Security Council came between 1998 and the Administration’s departure from office in January 2001 to a coordinated response to the threat. However, the PDD does not appear to have had much impact. It is clearly not as straightforward as the DCI’s declaration and, beyond Mr. Clarke’s [sic, Richard A.] reference to it in his testimony, no other Joint Inquiry witness pointed to PDD-62 as the policy guiding the government’s response to the growing al-Qa’ida threat. (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2002, pp. 234 235)

PDD-62 remains classified (White House, 1998) with sections redacted and released through the Joint Inquiry Report. Its existence is significant for two reasons: first, the discussion of the DCI’s 1998 declaration, when contrasted with testimony from Ms. Hill at the open, public September hearings is stunning. Hill reported that while the NSA was cognizant of Tenet’s December 1998 “declaration of war,” “relatively few of the FBI agents interviewed by the Joint Inquiry seem to have been aware” of the memo (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, pp. 101 102). Ignorance of the Tenet declaration across the federal bureaucracy caused a domino effect that influenced the intelligence abilities of Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) around the country and to “mobilize a public awareness and to harden the homeland” (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, p. 102); and second, PDD-62 is central to understanding distinct terrorism-related duties assigned to specific federal agencies by the National Security Council. For

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example, the Department of Justice was tasked with “apprehension, extradition, rendition, and prosecution” and “countering the foreign terrorist threat in the United States”; the Department of State with “international cooperation”; the CIA with “disruption”; Department of Transportation, transportation security; and the National Security Council in “preventing terrorist acquisition of weapons of mass destruction” and “protection of critical infrastructure and cybersystems” (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2002, pp. 234 235). To further support the notion of a system-wide collapse, we look again to Eleanor Hill and her research team, who reported that While the FAA, the Customs Service, the State Department and INS each had data concerning the 19 hijackers, that data was not related to their terrorist activities or associations. As a result, none of this information would, by itself, have aroused suspicions regarding a planned terrorist attack within the United States. Instead, these agencies had routine information concerning the vital statistics, travel, immigration and medical status of some of the hijackers. (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004b, p. 100)

Moreover, following the September 11 attacks a “focused CIA review of over 1,500 Classified Intelligence Reports that had not previously been provided to the State Department for watchlist purposes resulted in the identification of 150 suspected terrorists and the addition of 58 suspected terrorist names to the watchlist” (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2002, p. 35 36). One of the most dramatic cases of failed interagency (risk) communication reported at the Joint Inquiry hearings was the “Phoenix memo,” or the “Phoenix Electronic Communication” of July 10, 2001, discussed by both Ms. Hill and Ms. Breitwiser. The memo was filed by FBI Agent Kenneth Williams,18 of the Phoenix division, to the Usama Bin Laden and Radical Fundamentalist Unit within the FBI headquarters’ Counterrorism Division and the FBI’s New York Field Office. The memo stated concern that an “inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” were attending civil aviation training in Arizona. The EC also contained recommendations for action (Select Committee on Intelligence and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, p. 437). Ms. Hill concluded that throughout the Joint Inquiry review, her team of investigators “found that the FBI’s ability to handle strategic analytic products, such as the Phoenix EC, was at best, limited…inadequate information sharing within the FBI, particularly between operational and analytic units” (Select Committee on

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Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, p. 437). Further, Hill’s and the Joint Inquiry research team discovered that Given the lack of information sharing across units in FBI headquarters, personnel who saw the Phoenix memo had no knowledge of any prior instances [sic, FBI investigations] involving terrorist groups. Since the prior reporting did not directly relate to alQa’ida, they were unable to evaluate the Phoenix EC in the context of what was known… (Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, p. 438)

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was not given a copy of the Phoenix memo prior to the attacks, “and still did not have a copy two weeks after the matter had become public in early 2002” (Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004b, p. 101). Perhaps the FBI’s recreancy, atrophy, and slippage were in part due to information overload and excessive bureaucratization (Friedrich, 1972, p. 218), “bureaucratic faultlines” “where major agencies have overlapping responsibilities and fundamental differences in outlook” (Lord, 1988, p. 37),19 IC-wide budget cuts imposed by policymakers that influenced information sharing (Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, pp. 161, 218, 615 616) and additional lack of resources, including agents, analysts, linguists, and technology,20 might have also contributed to the inability of the Bureau to respond preemptively to prevent the attacks. Or yet, perhaps it is a case described by former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh of complying with “the rules as they were given to us by the Attorney General and the Congress.” For example, FBI agents were not permitted, “without special circumstances, to visit a suspect group’s Web site or to attend its public meetings. Counterintelligence, domestic terrorism and informant guidelines promulgated years ago and updated with new restrictions curtailed our ability to collect information in national security cases” (Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004b, p. 492). As an unnamed FBI Headquarters agent reported to the Joint Inquiry and this harkens to the etymology of recreancy as defeat and surrender he Witnessed first hand a dedicated group of counterterrorism professionals that have been routinely overwhelmed by large caseloads and continual crisis management. They also confront the daily frustrations posed by limited resources, especially within our analytical ranks, and inadequate technology, which hampers their ability to communicate within FBI headquarters, with our 56 field divisions and 44 legal attaches around the world, as well as with other elements of the law enforcement and intelligence

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community. (Select Committee on Intelligence and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, p. 485)

Recalling our earlier discussion of Bill’s “principles” that influence organizational functioning, this unidentified FBI agent’s account suggests that recreancy can happen on differing levels. Recreancy can reflect an internal failure of institutions to the safeguard its working parts and provide sustenance to its divisions. That is, lack of institutional support within the FBI that addressed the imbalanced distribution of institutional resources (Freudenburg, 1992), led to an overpowering effect, an overwhelming, with subsequent inability of agents to fully respond to the daily, exhaustive management of crises. Another unnamed FBI agent who testified at the Joint Inquiry reported that pre-9/11 “no criminal investigator was able to read any SIGINT information. And that was, in my personal opinion, way too high of a wall with regards to that, because that was something that we relied on from a perspective just to kind of point us in the right direction” (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004a, p. 422). This may seem an insignificant finding, but SIGNIT or signals intelligence, as a category of intelligence is “either individually or in combination all communications intelligence, electronic intelligence, and foreign instrumentation signals intelligence, however transmitted” (Department of Defense, 2010) is intelligence information, and as such, utilized by both the FBI and other members of the IC in the intelligence cycle (planning, collection, processing, production, and dissemination) or the process where information is acquired and converted to intelligence.21 The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, or Kean Commission, validated many of the same details as reported in the Joint Inquiry, such as “the most serious weaknesses in agency capabilities were in the domestic arena…the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FAA, and others” (p. 352). The Kean Commission also observed the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management” (p. 339). Further, the Commission, in a most sociological, Weberian observation, stated that “imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies” (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004, p. 344). The Commission’s Final Report, especially its endnotes, is a litany of failures of imagination by various agencies to meet the challenges of global terrorism across presidential administrations. However, it is critical to list

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further examples from the Commission’s report in order to support the interlocking nature of Bill’s (and Gramling’s) ideas on recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage. First a July, 1995 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) predicted terrorist-related attacks against and in the Unites States and “specified particular points of vulnerability” such as the “White House, Capitol, symbols of capitalism such as Wall Street…” (p. 341); secondly, the Commission substantiated the Joint Inquiry findings that threat reports were issued as early as 1998 (p. 344). Additional examples from the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report include (emphasis added): • FBI officials did not receive the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) the daily intelligence briefing consisting of six issues considered significant by CIA staff (p. 209); the Attorney General, FBI Director, and Richard Clarke, the National Security Council counterterrorism coordinator all received the Senior Executive Intelligence Briefing (SEIB) but not the PDB (p. 255). Further, while Clarke and his staff “had extensive access to terrorism reporting, but they did not have access to internal nondisseminated information” from the NSA, CIA, or FBI (p. 255). • The CIA did not write any analytical assessments of possible hijacking scenarios (vulnerabilities, p. 345). • The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Robert Gates proposed several recommendations in 1992 including “strengthening the national intelligence officer for warning” (p. 346). The Kean Commission “was told these measures languished under Gate’s successors and responsibility for warning related to a terrorist attack passed from the national intelligence officer for warning to the CTC (CIA Counterterrorism Center). An Intelligence Community Counterterrorism Board had the responsibility to issue threat advisories. With the important exception of analysis of al Qaeda efforts in chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons, we did not find evidence that the methods to avoid surprise attack that had been so laboriously developed over the years were regularly applied” (vulnerabilities, p. 347). • Neither the intelligence community nor aviation security experts analyzed systemic defenses within an aircraft or against terrorist controlled aircraft suicidal or otherwise. The many threat reports were passed to the FAA. While that agency continued to react to specific, credible threats, it did not try to perform the broader warning functions we describe here. No one in government was taking on the role for domestic vulnerabilities (p. 347).

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BUILDING ON BILL’S RESEARCH In concluding my brief discussion of Freudenburg’s conceptual tools and their use in understanding the 9/11 disaster, there are two thoughts worth voicing. First, Bill’s numerous works on risk, especially in the areas of risk analysis, risk communication, risk perception, and probabilistic risk assessment (as reported on his Curriculum Vitae, this volume) can not only offer the IC a thoughtful, additional means to reflect on risk but its problematics. Second, and here I close my discussion on recreancy, atrophy of vigilance, and bureaucratic slippage with Bill’s words (2001) on what I believe should be added to his conceptual toolbox: hypervigilance. I am aware, Bill doesn’t mention the concept in his work, but hypervigilance as suggested in the context of post-9/11 carries with it the extreme ends taken by federal and congressional bodies to stem attacks domestically and around the globe. The post-September 11 landscape witnessed not only a massive reorganization of the Executive Branch with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, but deepened intelligence gathering and surveillance through the USA PATRIOT Act, P.L. 107-56, reorganized the IC through the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, P.L. 108458, and granted telecommunications carriers immunity for cooperation with authorities through the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. In addition, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA) Subtitle D. “Counterterrorism,” § 1021 establishes an “Affirmation of Authority of the Armed Forces of the United States to Detain Covered Persons Pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” Under NDAA § 1021(b)(2) a “covered person” is described as an individual who participated in the 9/11 attacks in some way, as well as a “person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.” A lawsuit filed by a group of journalists, professors, and rights activists, Christopher Hedges, et al. v. Barack Obama, et al. (2012), argues that under § 1021(b)(2), a covered person is “an undefined, amorphous and potentially broad class of persons engaged in protected advocacy activity.” As this chapter is published, the results of the lawsuit remain undetermined, but the implications of the “covered person” category raises deep concerns as to the right to political speech and freedom of expression.

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In the wake of these laws and scores of other regulatory and legal advances, increased assaults on civil liberties and human rights have occurred in the United States and abroad. Domestic and international laws have been widely interpreted by various federal, state, and local bodies as to create a type of recreancy not of a failure to meet responsibilities, but recreancy resulting from overzealous attempts to protect the public from risk of catastrophic events. Perhaps I read into Bill’s words, but I can’t help but think he might comment on the current atmosphere so centered on “getting it right this time” that it tramples the very footing on which public trust is based. In lieu of any direct observations from Bill on the matter, I offer final words from our colleague that reflect the essential ingredients of not only managing risk and building public trust, but democracy-building: Instead, most citizens’ calls for “scientific” decisions are actually a request for something else most often, for ways of assuring that “the human element” of societal decision-making will be not just technically competent, but equitable, fair, and responsive to deeply felt concerns. ln most cases, what is important is not just technical expertise, but the broader ability to expect that the “responsible” authorities will in fact behave responsibly making decisions that will not work to the detriment of the broader society for the benefit of the few, for example, and taking care not to ignore the values that affected citizens hold to be most dear. (Freudenburg, 2001, p. 103)

NOTES 1. Kathleen Tierney (2012) does suggest that Bill’s recreancy holds promise in framing “natural disasters, Y2K, terrorism, exotic disease agents, genetically modified organisms and other emerging technologies, sexually predatory Catholic priests, and the operation of global financial markets and institutions” (p. 61). 2. For a complete list of federal agencies that comprise the IC pre-9/11, see Davis (2002); post September 11, see the Director of National Intelligence, http:// www.dni.gov/index.php/intelligence-community/members-of-the-ic 3. See Morgeson and colleagues (2011)’s Doctrinal guidelines for quantitative vulnerability assessments of infrastructure-related risks for a review of “doctrinal guidelines for quantitative vulnerability” including discussion of scenarios and risk methodologies. Also see Department of Homeland Security (2010) Risk lexicon, which is a controlled vocabulary derived from “directives, glossaries, and other procedural or guidance documents. In addition, RMA staff review foundational homeland security policy and doctrine to identify and collect relevant definitions” (p. 3). 4. Risk assessment is defined as: 1. A deliberate, analytical approach to identify which threats can exploit which vulnerabilities in an organization’s specific assets. Variables should be ranked according to predetermined criteria, such as the probability of a threat targeting a specific asset or the impact of a vulnerability being

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exploited by a specific threat. The assessment results in a prioritized list of risks that can be used to select safeguards to reduce vulnerabilities by creating levels of protection. 2. The process of identifying risks to agency operations (including mission, functions, image, or reputation), agency assets, or individuals by determining the probability of occurrence, the resulting impact, and additional security controls that would mitigate this impact. 3. The process of evaluating security risks based on analyses of threats, vulnerabilities, and probable adverse consequences to a facility, system, or operation (Goldman, 2011). 5. The term Intelligence failure is controversial; Mahle (2004) describes it as “to be considered an intelligence failure, the issue must be significant in terms of national security and have an impact on U.S. interests, facilities, and citizens” (p. 11); intel failures are “often used to lay blame on the intelligence community when an unexpected event or action occurs that may have an impact of foreign policy; any misunderstanding of a situation that leads a government or its military forces to take actions that are inappropriate and counterproductive to its own interests…not all intelligence failures are warning failures” (Goldman, 2006; Joint Military Intelligence College, 2001). Warning failure is “often related to the failure to forecast events before they happen” (Goldman, 2006; Joint Military Intelligence College, 2001). Richard A. Clarke (2008) uses the term national security intelligence failure but does not define. Perhaps its roots go to “national security intelligence,” defined as the “collection and analysis of information concerned with the relationship and homeostasis of the United States with foreign powers, organizations, and persons with regard to political and economic factors as well as the maintenance of the United States’ sovereign principles. It embodies both policy intelligence and military intelligence” (Goldman, 2011). 6. Ideal type as outlined by Max Weber as a “conceptual tool to approach reality and in this sense it is ‘conceptual construct’…the introduction of the ideal type is often the first step in analysis” (Swedberg, 2005, p. 120). 7. Bill’s conceptual tools share in common six failures or “pathologies” that can befall organizations. As outlined by Karl W. Deutsch (1968), they are loss of power, loss of intake (loss in the effectiveness of previously existing channels of information from the outside world, or loss of entire channels), loss of steering capacity (or the ability to modify behavior with sufficient speed and precisions), loss of depth of memory, loss of capacity for partial inner rearrangement (rigidity in learning new behavior), and loss of capacity for comprehensive, fundamental rearrangement of inner structure (pp. 221 223). 8. The use of recreancy can be found in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in 1854, and in a sense that both Weber and Freudenburg might have approve, in Dorman Bridgman Eaton’s (1875) The Experiment of Civil Service Reform in the United States. Eaton was critical of “favoritism and party influence” (p. 36) and the failure of civil service reform policies “they cannot, indeed be refuted by any evidence short of that which shall present the facts, the motives, the influences, the policy, the recreancy, the neglects, which led to the abandonment of the experiment” (p. 2). 9. Defined as “a concept that faulty decision making occurs when a group does not consider alternatives and desires unanimity at the expense of quality decisions. Groupthink can lead to seeking out few alternative solutions because there is an illusion of invulnerability” (Goldman, 2011).

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10. For example, recent revelations by NSA Director General Keith B. Alexander during the Senate Appropriations Committee hearings into NSA surveillance. On June 12, 2013, Alexander stated surveillance had prevented “dozens of attacks” (McCarthy, 2013a) and on June 18, he claimed “fifty plots worldwide” were thwarted (McCarthy, 2013b). The question remains if Alexander’s “proactive disclosures” would have been disclosed by federal officials if not for the Snowden leak. 11. Intelligence analysis is the application of individual and collective cognitive methods to weigh data and test hypotheses within a secret socio-cultural context (Johnston, 2005, p. 4). 12. A transcript of Clarke’s (March 24, 2004) testimony is available at CNN, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/24/bn.00.html 13. For an excellent review of Weber’s use of rationality across his many works, see Swedberg (2005). 14. Especially see the testimony of Eleanor Hill, Staff Director, Joint Inquiry, who outlines in detail previous failures within the IC and the Intelligence Committee’s knowledge of a possible threat of an attack in the United States (p. 73). 15. Amy Zegart (2007b) employs adaptation failure or the “rate of change within an organization to keep pace (or lags behind) the rate of change in the external environment” (p. 20) to characterize the IC’s response to 9/11. Zegart states that “many intelligence officers and policymakers recognized the threat, but were unable to get the intelligence reforms they believed were vital several years before 9/11” (p. 21). 16. For history and background of the Joint Inquiry and its researchers, see Best (2003). 17. Former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Cynthia Grabo (2010) defines warning intelligence as a specialized type of knowledge; warning intelligence or “indications intelligence is concerned with those pieces of information which relate to what the enemy is or possibly is preparing to do….an ‘indication’ is a sign, a symptom, a suggestion, a ground for inferring, a basis for believing, or the like” (pp. 9 10). 18. Agent Williams was interviewed by the Joint Inquiry in a closed session. 19. Lord also discusses the “political-military faultlines” that exist between the president, National Security Council, Department of Defense, and the IC. 20. See the testimony of FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (2004b, pp. 485, 490). 21. The FBI has a six-step intelligence cycle (see http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/ intelligence/intelligence-cycle) and other members of the IC, including the CIA and DoD, a five-step cycle (Goldman, 2011). For a critique of the cycle, see Hulnick (2013) and Nolte (2010).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author thanks Bob Gramling Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Jan Goldman, Ed.D., Georgetown

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University, Ivan Greenberg Ph.D., and Peter Phillips Ph.D., Sonoma State University, for their comments and suggestions on this chapter.

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Freudenburg, W. R. (1993). Risk and recreancy: Weber, the division of labor, and the rationality of risk perceptions, Social Forces, 71(4), 909 932). Freudenburg, W. R. (1996a). Risky thinking: Irrational fears about risk and society. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 545, 44 53. Freudenburg, W. R. (1996b). Strange chemistry: Environmental risk conflicts in a world of science, values, and blind spots. In C. Richard Cothern (Ed.), Handbook for environmental risk decision making: Values, perceptions and ethics (pp. 11 36). Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers. Freudenburg, W. R. (2001). Risk, responsibility and recreancy. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 9, 87 108. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1994). Bureaucratic slippage and failures of agency vigilance: The case of the environmental studies program. Social Problems, 41(2), 214 239. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (2011). Blowout in the gulf: The BP oil spill disaster and the future of energy in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Freudenburg, W. R., & Jones, T. R. (1991). Attitudes and stress in the presence of technological risk: A test of the Supreme Court hypothesis. Social Forces, 69(4), 1143 1168. Friedrich, C. (1972). The pathology of politics. New York, NY: Harper Row. Goldman, J. (2006). Words of intelligence: A dictionary. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Goldman, J. (2011). Words of intelligence: An intelligence professional’s lexicon for domestic and foreign threats. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Grabo, C. (2010). Handbook of warning intelligence: Assessing the threat to national security. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Greenberg, I. (2010). The dangers of dissent: The FBI and civil liberties since 1965. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7. (2003, December 17). Critical infrastructure identification, prioritization, and protection. Retrieved from www.dhs.gov/homeland-securitypresidential-directive-7. Accessed on July 14, 2013. House Committee on Government Reform. (2002). Is the CIA’s refusal to cooperate with congressional inquiries a threat to effective oversight of the operations of the federal government? Joint hearing before the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations and the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations of the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, 107th Congress, first session, July 18, 2001. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Hulnick, A. (2013). Intelligence theory: Seeking better models. In M. Phythian (Ed.), Understanding the intelligence cycle (pp. 149 158). Milton Park, Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Johnston, R. (2005). Analytic culture in the US intelligence community: An ethnographic study. Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps64831/ CIA%201929667132.pdf. Accessed on June 17, 2013. Joint Military Intelligence College. (2001, October). Intelligence warning terminology. Washington, DC: Defense Intelligence Agency. Jones, I. (2010). The human factor: Inside the CIA’s dysfunctional intelligence culture. New York, NY: Encounter Books. Lord, C. (1988). The presidency and the management of national security. New York, NY: Free Press.

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Macartney, J. (1988). Intelligence and bureaucratic politics. Declassified, based on a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC. Retrieved from media.nara.gov/dc metro/rg-263/6922330/Box-10-121-2/263-a1-27-box10-121-2.pdf. Accessed on June 19, 2013. Mahle, M. B. (2004). Denial and deception: An insider’s view of the CIA. New York, NY: Nation Books. Marin, S. (2004). Preventing intelligence failures by looking at the past. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 17, 655 672. McCarthy, T. (2013a, June 12). NSA director: Surveillance helped stop ‘dozens of terrorist events’ As it happened. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/world/ 2013/jun/12/edward-snowden-hongkong-live#block-51b8e05ae4b0bf6d0fdbdbc0. Accessed on August 8, 2013. McCarthy, T. (2013b, June 18). NSA chief says exposure of surveillance programs has ‘irreversible’ impact As it happened. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/ world/2013/jun/18/nsa-chief-house-hearingsurveillance-live. Accessed on August 8, 2013. Morgeson, J. D., Brooks, P. S., Disraelly, D. S., Erb, J. L., Neiman, M. L., & Picard, W. C. (2011). Doctrinal guidelines for quantitative vulnerability assessments of infrastructurerelated risks. Volume I. Institute for Defense Analyses IDA Document D-4477. Retrieved from www.dtic.mil/cgi bin/GetTRDoc?AD = ADA558820. Accessed on June 15, 2013. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. (2004). 9/11 report (Final report). Washington DC: Government Printing Office. Retrieved from www. 9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf. Accessed on July 12, 2013. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year. (2012). H. R. 1540. 112th Congress, First session. Retrieved from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS112hr1540enr.pdf Nolte, W. M. (2010). Intelligence analysis in an uncertain environment. In L. K. Johnson (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of national security intelligence (pp. 404 421). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Office of Management and Budget. (1996). Management of federal information resources. Circular No. A-130. February 8. Retrieved from www.whitehouse.gov/omb/circulars_a130. Accessed on July 19, 2013. Oxford English Dictionary. (2013). Recreancy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Ransom, H. H. (1980). Being intelligent about secret intelligence agencies. The American Political Science Review, 74(1), 141 148. Riebling, M. (2002). Wedge: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11, how the secret war between the FBI and CIA has endangered national security. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (1977). Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification: Joint hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, United States Senate, 95th Congress, 1st session, August 3. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (2002). Current and projected national security threats to the United States. S. HRG. 107 597, 107th Congress, 2nd session, February 6. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Retrieved from www.intelligence.senate. gov/107597.pdf. Accessed on August 5, 2013. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. (2002). Joint inquiry into intelligence community activities before and after the

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BREAKING NEWS: WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION DEPLOYED TO FIGHT SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON CLIMATIC CHANGES Margarita V. Alario ABSTRACT In 2001, two important scientific groups, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the National Research Council, published the results of two of the most extensive (and ongoing) research projects on climatic changes. They both express scientific consensus on the fact that anthropogenically induced climatic disruptions are here to stay and that they perhaps represent the most decisive policy issue of our time. A concerted effort to distract and even attack the legitimacy and expertise over this scientific consensus has been quite effective, so much so that to this day, there is no clear federal climate policy in the making. Bill’s (and my) work on “Weapons of Mass Distraction” may prove to be a

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handy analytic tool to understand this blunt attack on the evidence-base scientific consensus. Keywords: Climatic changes; climatic disruptions; diversionary reframing; environmental policy; William R. Freudenburg; legitimacy

INTRODUCTION I heard the news today, oh boy! “The level of the most important heattrapping in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long feared milestone” (Gillis, 2013). This milestone referred to the 400 parts per million of daily gas emissions into the atmosphere. Scientific measures had estimated a balancing number of about 350 ppm, (particles per million) a target already missed. Charles Davis Keeling begun carbon dioxide measures in the Mauna Loa laboratory in the1950s, located at the top of the volcano Mauna Loa, Hawaii. To this day, this laboratory is considered to be the ground zero of monitoring worldwide trend of CO2. At the time, Dr. Keeling found a level of about 315 ppm, the beginning of a research on climatic changes showing a relentless trend, later dubbed the Keeling Curve (Schneider, 2009). More than simply measures of climatic altering emissions in the atmosphere, failure to curve carbon dioxide is a stark reminder of the failures of both national and international negotiating bodies to effectively address what may be the most critical environmental policy challenge of our times. “Weapons of Mass Distraction: Magicianship, Misdirection and the Dark Side of Legitimation” (Freudenburg & Alario, 2007) was a research study on theories of legitimation process and legitimacy within a tradition that goes as far back as the initial work of Max Weber (1978). The historical context of “Weapons of Mass Distraction” was the United States and allies’ war in Iraq in 2003. As a historical note, it is worth remembering that on September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda, a militant Islamist organization founded by the late Osama bin Laden, succeeded in a series of terrorist attacks on US soil. Using two commercial airplanes, suicide attacks destroyed the twin towers in NYC, a third airplane crashed against the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The fourth airplane was forced to crash by the heroic act of the passengers who foiled the attack. From 2001 to 2003 a string of misinformation and confusion followed. How Osama Bin Laden transmuted into Saddam Hussein and how a religious fundamentalist

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collaborated with a radially secular dictator is a masterpiece in the art of magicianship (Piltz, 2011). At the time, the administration of George W. Bush (2000 2008), claimed to have sound intelligence reports that the regime of Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the Bush Administration argued, such weapons of mass destruction represented a threat to the world. United States and its allies’ troops, who entered Iraq in 2003. Hussein was deposed and sentenced to death. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. A closer analysis, though, found “Weapons of Mass Distraction” at work. By that we meant, a timely set of techniques were employed and deployed to misdirect public attention from the fact-finding and fact base understanding of the issue at hand. Little did we know then that such theoretical framework would prove useful to analyze the ongoing political discussion on climate change: the purposeful misdirection and interrogation of the legitimacy or credibility of those social and natural scientists who are calling for a comprehensive environmental policy to address the impact on humanly induced climatic disruptions. As the scientific literature shows, there is consensus that has grown over decades of research. This consensus begun to take shape with the initial congressional testimonies by climatologist James Hansen in 1988, when he was the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And yet, the policy response is missing in action.

WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION REVISITED Social and political scientists have devoted much attention to the issue of legitimacy and legitimation process dating back to Max Weber’s (1978) theory of domination. Even if theories of legitimation as different as Habermas’ Legitimation Crisis (1975) from the Parsonian emphasis on normative consensus; and going as far back as the Hobbesian tradition of “how is order possible?” the tendency is to assume that legitimacy exists. In addition to the above mentioned traditions, it is worth remembering the Frankfurt School’s work on the Kulturindustrie (e.g., Adorno, 1967, 1991; Horkheimer, 1972) as well as Gramsci’s work on hegemony (1971). Let us not forget the work of Foucault (1977a, 1977b) and Schmitt’s postulation of “friend vs. foe” [1932]2004, and Fraser’s work on the public sphere (1990). The list goes on. Our point is almost the opposite. Legitimation can also be secured by what is “missing,” that is, through manipulation,

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distraction and misdirection. These mechanisms, we argued, need more attention. Hence our emphasis on the mechanisms by which the outcomes are best secured by keeping public attention focused on other issues, or by the purposeful misinformation and misdirection. Freudenburg (2006) also referred to this technique as “diversionary reframing.” As the political discussion on climatic disruptions shows, misdirection has effectively called into question the soundness of the evidence-based scientific consensus. As above mentioned, although less studied, it is worth remembering that the issue of misdirection has not gone unnoticed by other social scientists. Misdirection has attracted some attention, particularly in works of “framing” in the studies of social movements, political discourse and mass media, (see Snow, Rochord, Worden, & Bendford, 1986; Freudenburg, Frickel, & Dwyer, 1998; Lakoff, 2004). Or in the case of Gamson and Modigliani (1989), the emphasis has been on “interpretive packages” by which they mean the manipulative uses of certain terms to activate an entire package of interpretations. The work of Herman and Chomsky (1988) on the “propaganda” role of the mass media is also important in this context. All these insights and more are needed, for what we are dealing with here is a robust arsenal of “Weapons of Mass Distraction” so effectively deployed, that the research of Dunlap and his colleagues (2013) has found an extensive and forceful industrial complex of climate deniers. The following quote from the work of Dunlap and Jacques (2013) is revealing: “Books denying climate change evidence are a potent means of manufacturing uncertainty. Most are linked to conservative think tanks, with few authored by individuals with scientific credentials, and fewer still having undergone peer review” (emphasis added).

HOW DO SCAMS (SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY ARGUMENTATION METHODS) WORK? While cities like New York and agreements like the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact are laboriously working to mitigate, build resilience and adapt to climatic disruptions, a survey by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found cities in the United States, by global comparison, to be among the least likely to have plans for adapting to changing weather. As reported by The Economist (2013) according to AIR Worldwide, a catastrophe-modeling firm, the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, a category 4 storm (in the Richter scale, from 1 to 5), the total

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damage was US $1 billion in today’s dollars. If it were to strike today, the damages are calculated to be approximately US $125 billion dollars. And yet, of all misdirection techniques, the jewel in the crown is North Carolina’s legislators’ who “have outlawed ‘scenarios of accelerated sealevel rise unless such rates are … consistent with historic trends’”. I challenge any writer from the tradition of the Theater of the Absurd to come up with a more bizarre piece of fiction writing. This is where the notion of SCAMs (Freudenburg, Gramling, & Davidson, 2008; Freudenburg & Muselli, 2013) proves useful. Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods, cleverly called SCAMs, represents a tactic by which groups, in this case, the industrial complex of climatic change deniers, cast doubts on the scientific methods. As Bill and I (2007) described it once, “attacks on the legitimacy of others might be especially effective in diverting attention away from questions about one’s own legitimacy” (p.158). Or, as Dunlap and Jacques (2013) would put it, SCAM is an effective mechanism to manufacture uncertainty which necessitates further and further research. In other words, the creation of “paralysis by analysis” (Alario, 1998). To be sure, climate change deniers did not invent such tactics. This diversionary reframing has a long history, in general and with regard to environmental concerns and environmental activists, in particular. The case is much more so, if those citizens and scientistcitizens happen to be from the “wrong gender.” Suffice it here to remember Rachel Carlson and Louise Gibbs. For, in addition to being an attack on the legitimacy of their claim, they were also made to appear disqualified as emotional, emotive, irrational women. Today, Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) is cherished and considered to have launched the contemporary American environmental movement. In this work, Carson argued that uncontrolled pesticide use was harming birds so much that she asked readers to evoke a spring without bird songs. The use of the pesticide Dichoro-dipheneytrichloroethane (DDT) in particular was harming other animals and thought to inflict cancer in humans. By 1972, DDT was banned for agricultural uses. Back in 1962, let us not forget, an attack on the science and Carson herself was organized by the Monsanto, Velsicol, and American Cyanamid; in short the whole chemical industry. Her concerns were “over-emotional and irrational.” In 1978, Gibbs found that her neighborhood, Love Canal, on the outskirts of Niagara Falls, NY, was built on top of a toxic waste dump to which she attributed most of the health problems that afflicted this community. Her activism contributed to the enactment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, P.L. 96510, commonly known as a Superfund. In 1980, Gibbs went on to create

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a nongovernmental organization initially called Citizen’s Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste, later renamed Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ). In her initial days of activism, tough attacks on Louis Gibbs’s anti-toxic campaign followed similar lines than those of Carson. Clearly, these diversionary techniques are not new. They are however, quite effective. Hence, there is the much-needed continuous social and political scientific research on them. More specifically, what is needed is to ask not only whether “Big Brother is watching you, but also whether Big Brother can induce you to watch something else” (Freudenburg & Alario, 2007, p.168). Only by doing the kind of research that has been given less attention, will we be able to learn how unveil and reveal these mechanisms. Freudenburg et al.’s work on “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” diversionary reframing, misdirection, among others are a welcome contribution.

CONCLUSION To this day, I continue to use this theoretical framework for its richness, as it builds on a long established theoretical tradition going back to Weber, via Parsons, the Frankfurt School, Schmitt, Habermas, Foucault, and Fraser to mention only a few. Intellectually guided by a great mentor, scholar, and friend, I was part of the “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” and many other collaborations with Bill. I think that this theoretical framework went further than the frameworks of literature on legitimacy and legitimation processes in that it stressed the need to discuss not just the elements on which legitimacy rests, but also those techniques that misdirect and distract from it. As the political battle for a climate change policy continues, such a theoretical framework highlights the importance of studying and understanding strategies and tactics that lead to effective misdirection. Recognizing “Weapons of Mass Distraction” is clearly a way of unveiling serious impediments to policy making. As the work of social scientists (Dunlap, 2013) extensively shows, misdirection, diversionary reframing and manufactured uncertainty have been so effectively deployed that they have been able to confuse an issue that enjoys scientific consensus, creating a de facto paralysis of a much needed federal policy on climatic change. Faced with the challenges of climatic disruptions, policy inaction is an unfortunate outcome. Furthermore, given the super power status enjoyed by the United States globally, this inaction has consequences beyond national boundaries. To bring this inaction to the ground, as estimated by

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the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, “an estimated 32.4 million people in 82 countries were displaced by disasters in 2012 98 percent of them because of climate and weatherrelated hazards like floods, storms and wildfires … the risk of displacement is expected to rise in line with related and interconnected global trends that increase the risk of disaster” (Natural Hazards Observer, 2013). Besides laboring toward the theoretical soundness of “Weapons of Mass Distraction” and other works we coauthored, I remember with fondness the discussions with Bill, the choices of titles, the laughter we shared when we settled on an idea, a possible hypothesis, or a promising concept. I am part of the community that still mourns Bill the mentor, the colleague and above all, the friend.

REFERENCES Adorno, T. W. (1967). Prisms (S. Weber and S. Weber, Trans.). London: Spearman. Adorno, T. W. (1991). The culture industry: Selected essays on mass culture. In J. M. Bernstein (Ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Alario, M. (1998). Global environmental policy. Journal of Risk Research, 1(4), 295 306. Carson, R. (1962). Silent spring. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Dunlap, R. E. (Guest Ed.). (2013). Special issue: Climate change skepticism and denial, American Behavioral Scientist, 57(6). Dunlap, R. E., & Jacques, P. J. (2013, June 13). Manufacturing uncertainty: Conservative think tanks and climate denial books. Retrieved from www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/201 3/06/manufacturing-uncertaintyconservative-think-tanks-and-climate-change-denial-books/. Accessed on August 6, 2013. The Economist. (2013). You’re going to get wet. The Economist, June 15. Retrieved from www.economist.com/news/united-states/21579470-americans-arebuilding-beachfronthomes-even-oceans-rise-youre-going-get-wet. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Foucault, M. (1977a). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York, NY: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1977b). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings (pp. 1972 1977). New York, NY: Pantheon. Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of the actually existing democracy. Social Text, 25/26, 56 80. Freudenburg, W. R. (2006). Environmental degradation, disproportionality, and the double diversion: Reaching out, reaching ahead, and reaching beyond. Rural Sociology, 71(1), 3 32. Freudenburg, W. R., & Alario, M. (2007). Weapons of mass distraction: Magicianship, misdirection, and the dark side of legitimation. Sociological Forum, 22(2), 146 173. Freudenburg, W. R., & Muselli, V. (2013). Re-examining climate change debates: Science disagreement or scientific certainty argumentations methods (SCAMs). American Behavioral Scientist, 57, 777 795.

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Freudenburg, W. R., Frickel, S., & Dwyer, R. (1998). Diversity and diversion: Higher superstition and the dangers of insularity in science and technology studies. International Journal of Sociology Social Policy, 18(5/6), 6 34. Freudenburg, W. R., Gramling, R., & Davidson, D. J. (2008). Scientific certainty argumentation methods (SCAMs): Science and the politics of doubt. Sociological Inquiry, 78(1), 2 38. Gamson, W. A., & Modigliani, A. (1989). Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: A constructionist approach. American Journal of Sociology, 95, 1 37. Gillis, J. (2013). Heat-trapping gas passes milestone, raising fears. The New York Times, May 10. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-levelpasses-long-feared-milestone.html. Accessed on August 5, 2013. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (Q. Hare and G. Nowell-Smith (Eds.), Trans.). London: Lawrence and Wishart. Habermas, J. (1975). Legitimation crisis, translated by Thomas McCarthy Thomas McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon. Herman, E., & Chomsky, N. (1988). The manufacture of consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York, NY: Parthenon Books. Horkheimer, M. (1972). Critical theory: Selected essays (M. J. O’Connell and others, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the Debate: The essential guide for progressives. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Natural Hazards Observer. (2013). Climate refugees? XXXVII(6), 3 5. Retrieved from www. colorado.edu/hazards/o/archives/2013/jul13_observerweb.pdf. Accessed on August 6, 2013. Piltz, R. (2011). Secrecy, complicity, and resistance: Political control of climate science communication under Bush-Cheney administration. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 19, 219 246. Schneider, S. H. (2009). Science as a contact sport: Inside the battle to save earth’s climate. Washington, DC: National Geographic. Schmitt, C. ([1932]2004). Legality and legitimacy (J. D. Seitzer, Trans.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Snow, D. A. E., Rochord Jr. B., Worden, S. K., & Bendford, R. D. (1986). Frame alignment processes, micromobilization and movement participation. American Sociological Review, 51, 464 481. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society (G. Roth and C. Wittich (Eds.), Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

SECTION THREE THE WORK CONTINUES

POWER AND VULNERABILITY: CONTEXTUALIZING “LOW RISK” VIEWS OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND HEALTH HAZARDS Christine Shearer, Jennifer Bea Rogers-Brown, Karl Bryant, Rachel Cranfill and Barbara Herr Harthorn ABSTRACT Research has found a subgroup of conservative white males have lower perceptions of risk across a variety of environmental and health hazards. Less research has looked at the views of these “low risk” individuals in group interactions. Through qualitative analysis of a technology deliberation, we note that white men expressing low risk views regarding technologies for energy and the environment also often express high social risks around potential loss of control. We argue these risk perceptions reflect identification with corporate concerns, usually framed in opposition to government and mirroring arguments made by conservative

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organizations. We situate these views within the broader cultural struggle over who has the power to name and address risks. Keywords: Case study; class; environment; gender; race; risk perception; technology

INTRODUCTION Scholars have identified a subgroup of primarily white males who report lower risk perceptions than any other group across a variety of hazards, particularly those involving technology and the environment what has been called the “white male effect” (Flynn, Slovic, & Mertz, 1994). The effect was noted by sociologist William Freudenburg (with Davidson, 1996) in a review of the literature on gender and risk perceptions, in which they concluded that the effect merited more scholarly attention. Many of the findings on white males with “low risk” views have been established through questionnaires and surveys, with less research examining their views through open-ended questions (Gustafson, 1998) or group discussion. Drawing upon both survey data and group discussion in a series of 2009 science and technology deliberations in the United States, this chapter looks at how white males with low risk perceptions talk about risk with others. This allows for a sociological consideration of how participants themselves define and discuss risks, how their risk perceptions are shaped and reshaped through group interaction, and the examples and arguments they draw upon to inform their discussion. This chapter begins by examining the research on risk perceptions, including the power dynamics embedded in techno-science risk research (Marshall & Picou, 2008; Wynne, 2007). We then examine how these dynamics play out in the public deliberation carried out by the research team. Our analysis suggests that white males who expressed low risk views on the environment and health also often expressed what could be called high social risk perceptions around issues involving potential loss of authority and control (York & Clark, 2010).

RISK PERCEPTION Risk judgments and attitudes reflect personal and social views on the probability and severity of a potential hazard (Slovic, 1999). Some argue that

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risks can be objectively defined and measured, through indices such as mortality rates and probabilities as determined by technological experts (Dietz, Frey, & Rosa, 2002); conversely, this argument suggests that members of the public (nonexperts) have more subjective risk perceptions, due to a lack of information that is available to experts (Cohen, 1998; Cross, 1998). Risk managers have argued that educating people with more information would make their risk perceptions more “accurate,” or aligned with observed data and statistics (Bettman, Payne, & Staelin, 1986), also known as the “deficit model” (Jenkin, 2006; Wandersman & Hallman, 1993; Wynne, 1995). Yet risk perceptions have been found to vary among experts themselves, and could be influenced by how data is presented (Kraus, Malmfors, & Slovic, 1992). Framing outcomes in terms of the probability of survival rather than the probability of death, for example, has been found to affect physicians’ preferences for different lung cancer treatments, despite the survival probabilities being equivalent (McNeil, Pauker, Sox, Jr., & Tversky, 1982). Further, gender variance exists among scientists who specialize in risk (Barke, Jenkins-Smith, & Slovic, 1997; Slovic, Malmfors, Mertz, Neil, & Purchase, 1997).

GENDER Dozens of studies have found that women tend to express higher levels of concern toward technology and the environment than men, a finding reviewed by sociologists Davidson and Freudenburg to examine hypotheses for the underlying dynamics (Davidson & Freudenburg, 1996). They identified the prevailing explanations rooted in gender socialization theory: (a) differences in knowledge, (b) differences in parental roles and concerns, (c) differences in economic roles and concerns, (d) different levels of safety concerns, and (e) differences in levels of trust in institutions. They found no support for the hypothesis regarding differences in knowledge, and low to mixed support for parental roles and economic salience. They found consistent support for the hypothesis that women express greater concern about the health and safety implications of environmental and technological risk, also found in later meta-analyses of the literature (Blocke & Eckberg, 1997; Xiao & McCright, 2012). Davidson and Freudenburg (1996) also found some support for the trust hypothesis: that men are more trusting of technological institutions than women, with a negative association between institutional trust and environmental risk concerns. A 2010 review of the literature on risk and trust

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(Earle, 2010) found that, while there was some variation, most studies define trust as “a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another” (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998). Yet it may be that some men are more likely not just to trust technological institutions, but see themselves as part of them, as suggested by the growing literature on the “white male effect.” Davidson and Freudenburg (1996) also thought the effect merited more attention in the differing level of concern by gender, concluding that the studies reviewed “remind us of the need to go beyond asking only why women worry so much; clearly, the time has also come to ask why at least some White men do not” (p. 332).

THE “WHITE MALE” EFFECT In 1994, Flynn, Slovic and Mertz examined a U.S. national survey in which Americans rated a variety of risks on a scale from 1 to 4. The results showed that white women perceived risks to be much higher than did white men, a result consistent with previous studies. As the authors noted, however, such a gender difference was not true of nonwhite women and nonwhite men, whose perceptions of risk were quite similar. Looking more closely, Flynn et al. (1994) found that the race and gender differences in risk perception in the United States, in fact, were primarily due to 30% of the white male population who judged risks to be extremely low. The “low risk” white males were more likely than the other respondents to have a college or graduate degree, earn above $50,000, be politically conservative, and agree with statements like “if a risk is very small it is OK for society to impose that risk on individuals without their consent” (31.7 vs. 20.8%) and disagree that “the public should vote to decide on issues such as nuclear power” (28.5 vs. 16.7%). Flynn et al. (1994) concluded: “Perhaps white males see less risk in the world because they create, manage, control, and benefit from so much of it” (p. 1106). Other studies in the United States and Europe have suggested that perceptions are related to individuals’ levels of decision power, agency, and control (Baird, 1986; Bord & O’Connor, 1997; Kuyper & Vlek, 1984; Palmer, 2003). Finucane et al. also found white males were less likely to rate a hazard as posing a “high risk,” particularly nuclear plants (Finucane, Slovic, Mertz, Flynn, & Satterfield, 2000), and that white males were “less trusting of government” (p. 170).

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RACE, GENDER, VULNERABILITY, AND RISK Race has been correlated to higher risk perceptions of environmental and health hazards (Cutter, 1981; Jones, 1998; Savage, 1993; Taylor, 1989). Environmental justice scholars have pointed out that people of color may have higher risk perceptions because, statistically, they are more likely to be subjected to higher levels of exposure (Bullard, Mohai, Saha, & Wright, 2008; Di Chiro, 1996; Jones, 1998; Taylor, 2000). Looking at attitudes and beliefs, Satterfield, Mertz, and Slovic (2004) found that views on justice and vulnerability predicted nearly 17% of the variance in risk perceptions among respondents, and that when race and gender were added, 23% of the variance was accounted for. White males also reported lower risk perceptions than other participants within random samples in seven Louisiana parishes in “Cancer Alley” (Marshall, 2004), in Mobile and Baldwin counties on the Alabama coast (Marshall, Picou, Formichella, & Nicholls, 2006), and in Philadelphia (Johnson, 2002), suggesting they perceive lower risk even when levels of potential physical vulnerability are similar to others. Other studies have examined intra-racial variation of risk perceptions on indices similar to the 1994 Flynn et al. study; Rivers et al. did not find a comparable “white male effect” (i.e., a subset of African Americans with low risk views) in their research, but did find that concern for environmental justice was significantly correlated to higher risk views (Rivers, Arvai, & Slovic, 2010). A risk perception study in Sweden found that people who did not identify as native Swedish had higher risk perceptions than native (white) Swedes, as did people reporting previous experience of risk. Feelings of social exclusion and vulnerability were also correlated with higher risk perceptions, leading the researchers to argue that a “social inequality effect” may be a more globally relevant and accurate term than the “white male effect” (Olofsson & Rashid, 2011).

THE CULTURAL THEORY OF RISK PERCEPTION Drawing upon the cultural theory of risk perception (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982; Rayner, 1992), Kahan, Braman, Gastil, Slovic, & Mertz (2007) argued that individuals are embedded in social structures that shape their worldviews, including risk. The cultural theory asserts that individuals’ perceptions of risk reflect and reinforce their visions of how society should be organized, selectively crediting and dismissing claims of societal

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danger (similar to “confirmation bias”) based on cultural biases. Thus debates that may seem to involve technical issues of risk and benefit are actually “the product of an ongoing debate about the ideal society” (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982, p. 36). Kahan et al. (2007) examined the impact of gender, race, and cultural orientations on risk perceptions, measuring people along a “grid-group” typology of cultural bias, with one axis measuring degree of individualistic versus communitarian worldviews, and the other axis measuring hierarchical versus egalitarian orientation (Douglas, 1966; Gross & Rayner, 1985; Rayner, 1992). Studies suggest that perceptions of various types of environmental and technological hazards do vary in patterns that conform to these worldview categories, for both the public and experts (Dake, 1991; Ellis & Thompson, 1997; Jenkins-Smith & Smith, 1994; Marris, Langford, & O’Riordan, 1998; Peters & Slovic, 1996; Steg & Sievers, 2000), which Kahan et al. (2007) also found in their study, leading them to argue that people reject information that threatens their cultural identity and sense of self, called the identity-protective cognition thesis. These studies of risk have highlighted the saliency of gender, race, class, and worldviews in affecting risk perceptions, and have consistently found that individual perceptions of vulnerability and social inequality often lead to higher estimations of risk. Yet while research has considered the effect of cultural worldviews in shaping high and low risk perceptions, it is important to identify and distinguish the larger forces that are in turn shaping and defining cultural values and worldviews. Cultural values are not static, a priori categories, but socially constructed Douglas herself suggested that risk research led by Kahan and others operationalize cultural worldviews along measures that conform more closely to contemporary U.S. politics than her more globally oriented typology of individual and hierarchical values (Douglas, 2003), with some interpreting Kahan et al.’s “hierarchical individualist” to be “akin to [U.S.] conservative Republicans” (Mooney, 2011). Yet if the grid typology is capturing not so much timeless cultural values as contemporary political ideologies, particularly of people in the United States, what is the broader social backdrop from which these values are emerging and being shaped?

POWER AND RISK The defining and recognition of risk is not simply a technocratic calculation, but an exercise of power (Slovic, 1987), in part because it can have

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large economic and political implications for various sectors and manufacturers. Due to the few U.S. regulatory bodies in existence until the progressive movements of the 1960s, most early studies on industrial risks were done by or in conjunction with manufacturers (Markowitz & Rosner, 2002), which were often able to control dissemination of the research (selfreference). Policies and practices of discrimination also ensured that the input of women and people of color was largely excluded from these decision-making processes (Winant, 2001). As public health researchers and, eventually, U.S. regulatory bodies in the early to mid-1900s began conducting their own studies and estimations of risk, some manufacturers responded by trying to cast doubt on the research done outside their control (Shearer, 2011). Industries like tobacco, for example, have spent millions and used a number of strategies to try to create the appearance to the public, courts, and regulatory bodies that risks from cigarettes are minimal or nonexistent (Glantz, 1996). A common tactic is demanding certainty as the only acceptable standard for proof of harm, while simultaneously manufacturing uncertainty (Freudenburg, Gramling, & Davidson, 2008). In this regard, determining the risks posed by risk objects like tobacco smoke became not a neutral scientific exercise, but a battlefield of competing claims of authority, control, and expertise (Shearer, 2011). Shaping public perceptions of risk was an explicit goal of the tobacco industry, as revealed by internal company documents (Glantz, 1996). In his study of tobacco industry tactics, science historian Robert Proctor coined the term “agnotology” to describe the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading data presented as science but not peer reviewed (Proctor & Schiebinger, 2008). Here risk perceptions may be influenced not by a lack of information (like the “deficit model”), but by deliberate misinformation, what others have called the social construction of ignorance (Smithson, 1985). Attempts at misinformation have been particularly documented for tobacco smoke (Proctor, 1997), certain chemicals and toxins (Markowitz & Rosner, 2002), climate change (McCright & Dunlap, 2003), and nuclear weapons (Oreskes & Conway, 2010). Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Michaels has argued an entire “product defense industry” has developed to cast doubt on the existence or severity of environmental and health risks (Michaels, 2008; Michaels & Monforton, 2005), whose message is promulgated through conservative think tanks and media with strong cultural influence, accessed predominantly by those identifying as conservative,

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white, and male (Jacques, Dunlap, & Freeman, 2008). The number of conservative think tanks and media grew in line with the rise of the “New Right” movement of the 1970s (Jacques et al., 2008; Mirowski, 2008; Rich & Weaver, 2000), and generally portray government regulation as antithetical to national economic growth and individual freedom (Freudenburg, 2005). The underlying message is often that people are vulnerable not to environmental and health risks, but to increasing government bureaucracy and loss of individual power and control. In this regard, it is notable that those fitting the “white male effect” in the national sample done by Finucane et al. (2000) were supportive of industry experts, but suspicious of government; their respect for experts and institutions is not indiscriminate (Gauchat, 2012). Thus while studies of the cultural cognition of risk have noted the influence of worldviews in influencing risk perceptions, it is important to note that these worldviews are often influenced by a broader cultural struggle over what constitutes risk. This is important given that how problems are defined (Dietz, Stern, & Rycroft, 1989; Stern et al., 1986) can drive policy (or prevent it) as much as technological risk assessments (Kempton, 1993; Krimsky & Golding, 1992; Savage, 1993). To further explore these issues, this chapter looks at how individuals fitting the “low risk” white male demographic interact with others in a series of 2009 nanotechnology deliberations.

METHODS In July through October 2009, an interdisciplinary research team of social and physical scientists ran six public deliberation workshops in California, building on a 2007 (Pidgeon, Harthorn, Bryant, & RogersHayden, 2009) cross-national U.S. UK study of deliberative engagement about nanotechnologies. Nanotechnology, or nano, encompasses a range of research and technological development taking place at the scale of a billionth of a meter the molecular level and below. The physical, chemical, and optical properties of a material differ at the nano scale, allowing for the creation or production of materials that can enhance the efficiencies of nanomaterials or nano-enabled products. These new properties may generate new benefits as well as new risks, the latter also the subject of ongoing research. The 2009 half-day deliberative workshops focused on applications of nanotechnology in either energy and environment or health and human

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enhancement industries, with gender composition varied systematically between the groups. Pre and postworkshop surveys were administered to assess a range of scaled attitudes and judgments, as well as allow for more open-ended comments from participants. Each workshop consisted of a focus-group size meeting of 9 13 participants, beginning with formal educational presentations on nano and its potential applications. The presentations were followed by an open reading time, in which participants chose from a large range of written materials on nanotechnologies. The group then broke into three smaller group “World Cafe´” tables for facilitated indepth discussions. The workshops concluded with a final hour-long dialogue by the full group. Out of 67 total participants in six workshops, 33 were men and 34 were women. Subjects were recruited without knowing the subject of the deliberation, and all were prescreened to ensure they did not work for a company using nanotechnology. With an aim of democratic inclusiveness, participants matched as closely as possible the demographics of the central coastal California area along race/ethnicity, occupation, age, and income parameters, and were drawn from a diverse set of recruitment points. A slight majority of the participants was white (55%), 22% were Latino, 9% were African-American, 7.5% were Asian-American, and 6% classified themselves as “Other.” A slight majority (55%) had completed college or university with a Bachelor’s degree or higher, 34% completed some college or an Associate’s degree, and 10% had only a high school degree. Age was fairly evenly distributed: 29% were 18 35 years old, 27% were 36 55, and 43% were 56 or older. A majority (58%) of participants reported a family income under USD $50,000.

FINDINGS The all-male deliberation concerning nanotechnology applications for energy and the environment contained the most participants who saw more benefits than risks with nano both pre- and post-deliberation (7 out of 13 before, and 6 out of 13 after, with 5 of these never changing their minds), many of whom were notably vocal in expressing low concern over potential environmental and health risks and dismissing opposing risk views. Three fit the typical “white male effect” demographic in terms of race, gender, reporting higher than average incomes, and identifying as conservative: Bert, Bob, and Jack. Through qualitative analysis, we explore both their

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low perceptions of environmental and health risks, and their high perceptions of certain social risks.

DOWNPLAYING RISK, HIGHLIGHTING BENEFIT One of the most consistent to question the existence and severity of potential health and environmental risks was Bert, a white male, 66 + year old with an above average income who listed his occupational sector as “science based public affairs.” Both pre- and post-survey he reported seeing more benefits than risks with nano, felt “good” or “very good” about the technology, and believed that nanotechnology will have improved our lives in 20 years. Bert also spoke more than the average for the group: 2,298 words versus a group average of 1,624 words. He also interrupted more than other participants: 25 times, compared to a group average of 14 interruptions throughout the entire workshop (research team reference). During the initial word association for the term environment, Bert used the activity as an opportunity to make immediately clear that he regards some scientific research as more legitimate and credible than others: Facilitator:

Any other ideas that just come to mind?

Bert:

This is going to be controversial. There’s a lot of junk science involved in this field.

Bob:

Yeah. And propaganda would go with that.

Although the term “junk science” has become somewhat commonplace, its original usage has been traced to the internal documents of tobacco maker Philip Morris (PM), whose legal team created the term as a way of stigmatizing and discrediting government research on the effects of secondhand smoke (Mooney, 2006). PM was advised by its lawyers to set up a national coalition to “educate” the media, the public, and public officials on the existence and dangers of junk science across a broad range of issues (Monbiot, 2007), setting up the website www.junkscience.com as a platform for attacks against regulation, run by Fox News columnist Steven Milloy (Gelbspan, 2005). Shortly after, many industry and even political representatives started drawing upon the terms “sound” and “junk science” (Mooney, 2006). In asserting the existence of “junk science” at the beginning of the deliberation, Bert is not only showing the possible influence of broader political economic forces on his views, but also making clear that there is much

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science that he regards as illegitimate, creating a conceptual space to question scientific research without necessarily appearing to be antiscience. Bert’s statement about junk science immediately garnered the support of Bob, a white male, 56 65 year old with an above average income who listed his occupation as “Technology Serving Health Care Industry.” Bob legitimized Bert’s view, asserting that there is also a lot of propaganda involved in junk science. Bob often supported Bert’s statements throughout the workshop, and went from being unsure about the risks vs. benefits of nano at pre-survey, to seeing more benefits than risks at post-survey. Bert would go on to question or doubt the legitimacy of several potential risks discussed by other participants. During a smaller group discussion of five participants concerning nanotech science basics, the facilitator a graduate student in chemistry asked the group what they thought about the use of nanorust for pulling arsenic out of water. The first to answer was Mike, a 46 55 year old white male with an annual salary below $35K who listed his occupation as financial consulting, and reported being unsure about the risks and benefits of nanotech both pre- and post-survey: Mike: Facilitator:

But what else will it pull out of the water except arsenic? Well if you use different, different compounds

Mike: Lenny:

Because there are so many compounds that can, what is it, depurify your water, and how do you get it off the magnet? What do you do with it after?

Facilitator:

It is in the magnet, you can

Mike: Facilitator:

Dump it down the drain. Well, you can, I mean arsenic is a normal compound… industrial runoff and stuff makes arsenic too, but you just do not want it to go into the ground through the water table because that is where we all drink from. Yeah, if you are living in an area with high concentrations of arsenic this is probably worth doing, but we have all got low levels of arsenic concentration in our blood right now and it is not hurting us.

Bert:

While Mike is asking about possible downstream effects and how they would be addressed, Bert moves the discussion back to the benefits, and then indirectly downplays Mike’s concern by saying that arsenic is natural and not necessarily harmful. Bert’s contribution effectively moved the discussion from risks to benefits, by leading another participant, Jimmy, to agree and

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say that “arsenic has some beneficial aspects in the body too,” even though the nano application being discussed would likely be used where the heavy metal existed at unsafe levels. Bert would later reassert this view during a smaller group discussion on the potential effects of the industrial use of nanosilver on marine life, where he reminded the group that there are different levels of toxicity, suggesting their concerns were literally exaggerated. At the end of the nanoscience world cafe´, the facilitator asked the group to define nanotechnology. After offering one definition, Bert offered another: “I would sum it up by saying it is a series of related technologies at the molecular level which have the potential to transform human activity in much the same way that electricity has already done. It has very similar potential.” The facilitator then asked the group whether they saw more risks or benefits with nano. Jimmy, a 56 65 year old African American male in the entertainment industry, responded first, but was quickly interrupted twice by Bert: Facilitator:

Jimmy:

What do you guys think about so comparing risk to benefits so do you think there is more risks in nanotechnology or more benefits, or is it?... And now, that is the thing, because that is what is going to standup from this whole presentation

Bert: Jimmy:

We do not know. We need to find out. it is … I am open to the idea that the risks far outweighs no, no, the benefits far outweighs the risks. But the it is kind of

Bert:

The risks we know of.

Bert attempts to influence the group discussion by suggesting that it is too early for any of them to comment on the potential risks, even though Bert is clearly comfortable making broad statements about the potential benefits. Although Jimmy went back and forth on risks versus benefits in these statements, in the survey he reported seeing more benefits than risks both pre- and post-deliberation, but was still open to acknowledging and discussing potential risks. Bert, however, was much more hesitant to openly acknowledge risks. In the final dialogue, for example, the facilitator began the discussion by asking how the participants thought and felt about the nanotechnologies discussed. Bert spoke first: Bert:

Most of the energy conservation technologies using nanotechnology are very probably little have little or no

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health or environmental risk associated with them. I was thinking about electric transmission. Others do have or probably do have and certainly need testing to determine if they do have medical risks associated per se. Cesium oxide, a diesel fuel additive which is very cost effective at, at, at the point where it’s put into use as a transportation fuel but there are some potential medical risks associated with it that may after appropriate research reach the conclusion that the risks outweigh the benefits. That was really the only paper I read. Okay so, so different you’re saying at the level of very specific applications and Indeed, indeed, so some parts, the benefits almost certainly highly outweigh the risks in other applications, other related technologies the risks may after extensive research be determined to outweigh the benefits.

In speaking first, Bert implies an assumed association between nanotechnology and benefits, while positioning risk as an outlier condition that must be demonstrated through “extensive research.” Bob also expressed many low risk views, particularly when it came to threats to the environment. In the initial word association exercise about how energy, technology, and the environment are connected, an 18 25 year old college student of East Indian descent named Sal said that “we are at a point now where if we don’t have any more technological advances we’re all gonna die…. If we do not develop new sources of energy, we’re doomed.” Shortly after, Bob quipped, “It’s comical. It’s kind of a gloom and doom. If we don’t do something about all three of these we are doomed. You know, I mean, Grandma and Grandpa did pretty well.” Bob elaborated on this viewpoint later in the final dialogue: I think in light of the environmental we’ve got a big wake-up call coming when Mother Nature does some things to us that are potentially unrelated to anything we’re doing … . I think it is pretty arrogant to think that we as human beings can do a major paradigm shift in terms of I think it is really arrogant. I think it is misguided.

In expressing this view, Bob is downplaying both the possibility that humans can have large negative effects on the environment, and the idea that new technologies need be deployed to prevent such effects, as insinuated by Sal. Such new technologies might encompass renewable forms of energy, which Bob ridiculed several times in the deliberation, saying at one

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point that “it seemed like solar energy it really has not taken off. Clearly it is inefficient” and, after telling a story about a large number of bird deaths associated with wind turbines, concluded that “I am tickled when it happens because there is no real solution. There is no real answer.” If there are no big environmental risks, and no real solutions anyway, then there is no need for change. Another participant to repeatedly question potential risks was Jack, a 66 + white male retired from the education and service industry. In the final dialogue discussion about environmental applications, some participants expressed concern about unknown effects from using nano in the environment, leading Jack to say about the effects that: Jack:

Bert: Jack:

Yes. It is a whole new set. You don’t say “oh we can’t do it because it’s got this harmful effect.” You say “oh really? What can we do with that harmful effect?” I think what you’re saying one man’s promise is another man’s brass. So then you start building. That’s true.

Jack did not downplay the existence of potential risks; rather, he expressed the view that negative effects offered new opportunities, effectively transforming even potential risks into benefits. Interestingly, Jack went from seeing more benefits than risks pre-deliberation, to more risks after, although it is not apparent in the deliberation where he might have changed his mind. What does seem clear, however, is that Jack thinks risks are inevitable, but should not impede technological and commercial development. While questioning the existence and severity of potential health and environmental risks, Jack and Bert also had low assessments of potential social risks of nanotechnologies concerning inequitable distribution of both risks and benefits. When a facilitator in the final dialogue asked the group about who might benefit from nano applications for environmental remediation and conservation, Bert spoke first: Bert:

Or energy. To varying degrees, everybody.

Jack:

If we don’t benefit, it won’t work.

Facilitator:

What do you mean by that? Maybe you can explain a little bit more. Well most of the things whether it’s packaging whether it’s water or whether its building stronger structures if it doesn’t benefit we won’t do it we won’t support it financially as

Jack:

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consumers. Because as consumers we are, that’s even better than our electoral vote. While other deliberative groups were open to discussing the possibility that new technologies might not be distributed equitably, mirroring existing social inequalities, Bert and Jack offered a vision of a world where everyone benefits and has the power of consumer choice, a power people may or may not actually possess.

LOW RISK, OR DIFFERENT RISKS? Although the views expressed by Bert, Jack, and Bob seem to fit traditional “low risk” perceptions, closer analysis suggests their minimization of risk stemmed from other “social” concerns, such as the risk of consumer backlash. For example, after questioning the existence of toxicity concerns, Bert later said that he hopes nanosensors for detecting toxins do not cause unneeded consumer worry: Bert:

Facilitator: Bert:

These detection devices need to be preset at a level that it doesn’t send an alarm when it detects something one part per billion which is harmless. Right… Depending on the substances and its degree of toxicity at a certain concentration level. Let’s not panic people by having these buzzers go off when they need not.

Jess, a 36 45 year old white male attorney, voiced similar frustrations with consumer concerns and backlash, citing what he saw as exaggerated fears of salmonella: They started a scare back in the ’80s when the egg prices were dropping, they said that the chickens on the east coast were found with salmonella in them. And well, no shit, every chicken has salmonella in it. Every egg has salmonella in it. You cook it to temperature to kill it. You know, but they destroyed all these chickens to raise the price of eggs with this political propaganda crap.

Although appearing to have low risk perceptions of toxins and sickness, the views of Bert and Jess seem to stem from larger frustrations with what they perceive as unfounded consumer concern. Unlike Bert, Bob, or Jack, however, Jess’s statements often suggested distrust of not just government, but also corporations and private industry, and he was unsure about the

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risks versus benefits of nano both before and after the deliberations, expressing higher levels of ambivalence (research team). Another unspoken social risk is government regulation. In a smaller group discussion on nanoscience basics, the participants discussed the potential benefits of new technologies like nano, leading Mike to caution that: Mike:

Can I just say something because I think we will have nano, which is a billionths billionths smaller than we are going to have super nano blah blah blah down the road. We have to explore the technology. What I am concerned about what I have seen in capitalism is we have got you are going to have government regulation okay and I do not what I fear is that, is that the benefits the features and benefits versus the environmental risks are going to be looked at by government agencies that maybe are not making the best decisions or it’s like the czar I mean we are going in this country to a czar everything is a czar but you have to somehow oversee the industry, promote it, but be careful with it. That is all I say.

Bert:

Are we done with this?

Bert’s response to Mike’s comment makes it appear that what Mike said about the need for industry oversight was not worth considering or discussing, and in fact merited a condescending expression of annoyance, cutting off the potential for talking about government regulation of industry or the potential need for regulation, even though the discussion time was not yet finished. Along these lines, Bert later made clear that he believed industry should regulate itself. As the final dialogue moved to discussion of industry and self-regulation, there was disagreement among participants, leading Bert to state that “I have direct experience of self-policing environmental regulation by an industry” and “various government departments oversaw what we were doing voluntarily, and they were happy with what we were doing.” The debate continued, leading the facilitator a professor in anthropology to try and verbally synthesize the various views on how nanotechnologies could be regulated. Bert interrupted her to say, “Let, let me ask everybody here that worked in industrial, major industries and see how they govern themselves.” Jack and Bob raised their hands. By interjecting with this question, Bert cut off the facilitator to try and establish his version of the acceptable criteria for making a determination on the issue of regulation, as well as a visible

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show of who fit that criteria, narrowing the space for debate and, arguably, the potential for other views being expressed and legitimized. Another risk alluded to was the potential for the United States to not fully seek out, capture, and communicate the full benefits of new technologies like nano. During the final dialogue, Bob expressed his dismay over the facilitator citing examples of Europe using nanotechnologies for energy applications, rather than the United States, which could have served as a critique of the United States and the deliberation and facilitator: Bob:

I think you started your whole conversation about Europe is doing this and Europe is doing that. I think the United States needs to show leadership in these areas to solve energy issues and sure they need to show leadership in this, which they typically have done.

Similarly, although Mike was open to discussing the possibility of risks and potential need for regulation, he also saw a risk in not pursuing nanotechnology, stating “we as a country have huge debts now. If we make the right investments, nanotechnology could be one of the industries that helps put us on top again as a country,” and later expressing the hope that nano may “create jobs so people can keep their homes.” Both Bob and Mike allude to the idea that not pursuing new technologies like nano could put the United States and Americans behind politically and economically, a prospect they did not see as desirable or acceptable. While the content of the deliberation suggested there was widespread agreement among the participants that the United States should be pursuing new technologies, there was concern over the manner in which the country did so. In a smaller group discussion about energy, the facilitator asked about different energy applications for nano, leading Jack to say: Jack:

Facilitator: Jack:

Excuse me but you asked, I thought you asked just the right question when you said okay, which of these alternatives do you pursue? Right. And from my point of view the market decides that better than we will.

This led Bert to later say that “[a]s Jack said, I agree with him the market will decide which of these nanotechnologies or variations of each group of associated nanotechnologies will prove profitable.” In asserting that the market will decide and decide best what technology applications to

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pursue, Jack and Bert are addressing an underlying risk that another entity, such as the government or public, would make that determination. The idea that government is not involved in the direction of research and development is later contested, indirectly, by Mike in the final dialogue: Mike:

About technology, how many times does this start off being for a defense application?

Facilitator: Mike:

Virtually all. Or just space, and then it kind of finds a way into everyday life.

Facilitator:

Yeah, military investment is in the U.S. is vital to tech And that is how we stay rich right because of our defense capabilities in this country.

Mike: [Bert raises his hand] Bert:

In my view these technologies properly chosen, properly examined, offered, properly safeguarded will transform our lives, our children’s and children’s lives in the same way that electricity already has.

Mike’s statement challenges the vision being offered by Bert and Jack, among others, of the private and public sector as separate, with the private wholly in charge of determining the direction and shape of technology development. Mike’s disruption of this narrative suggests that if government and thus public funding are involved, people might have a legitimate claim to wanting to discuss the scope and aims of national technological research. Mike also intimates that the United States is wealthy not solely because of the technological innovations of private industry, but the initial pursuit of such innovations by military defense interests. Bert immediately moved the conversation back to general assertions about the transformative power of new technology, glossing over the role that government already plays in technology research and development, particularly military research. Similarly, there is the perceived risk of greater public participation overall in industrial and technological enterprise. At the very end of the deliberation, the facilitator asked if there is a role for the public to play in technology R&D, leading Jack to say no:

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This has been a great group. I’ve learned a lot from everybody here. But to trust the public.

Bert agreed: Bert:

And I trust the public knows that they are not competent on most of these major issues and that’s why they elect governments to deliberate for them. Unfortunately, our governments are mostly incompetent right now so I don’t know who’s going to do the work.

Jack and Bert clearly do not see people as knowledgeable enough to have input into private industry, with Bert also suggesting that he does not see government as necessarily suited for the job either. Thus the earlier assertions by Bert, Bob, and Jack, among others, that potential health and environmental risks are minimal or nonexistent suggest that private industries can effectively address these issues, and the input of neither the public nor government is needed or desirable, particularly since those outside industry may be prone to exaggerated concerns, or “junk science.” Further, the private and public sector are portrayed as separate, and private industry should pursue nanotechnologies, lest the United States fall behind other nations as a wealthy, technological leader, hurting the national economy and American well-being. Assertions that appear on the surface to be low risk views about various potential hazards are, upon closer inspection, often tied up with social risk concerns involving potential loss of power, money, and control.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION We have offered a qualitative analysis of those with low risk views within a public deliberation on nanotechnologies, with an eye toward consideration of the broader forces of power and interest at play. In looking at how those fitting the “low-risk” white male demographic discuss their risk perceptions with other men in a group, we argue that individuals reporting “low risk” views do not necessarily have lower risk perceptions, but different ones. As examples, we cite concerns about the risk of government regulations, the risk of consumer backlash, and the risk of the United States falling behind as a financial or industrial leader. Our analysis also suggests that these risk concerns are often tied to strong beliefs around the free market and

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nationalism, which are themselves tied to broader issues of control and power. In line with the research showing a correlation between vulnerability and higher risk perceptions, it may be that our “low risk” participants perceive individual and social vulnerability lies not with the potential risks posed by nanotechnologies, but with the potential risks posed by the broader public response to nano, such as stifling innovation and economic growth.

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TEMPORAL MYOPIA: A CASE OF PROMISING NEW TECHNOLOGIES, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND INHERENT CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Mary B. Collins and William R. Freudenburg ABSTRACT This chapter examines how the dual role of the federal government in promoting and regulating promising new industrial technologies may evolve to embody an inherent conflict of interest, a condition referred to as the “paradox of partnerships.” Using a temporal perspective to explore relevant paradoxes of partnerships, this research speculates on the parallels of two recent technologies: nuclear power and nanotechnology. We conclude that while government industry partnerships may seem relatively uncontroversial during early phases of technological development, such partnerships can prove problematic years later as the government moves away from its role as a technology promoter and toward its role as an essential regulator. Lessons learned from the downfall of the nuclear power industry suggest that as nanotechnology

William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 21, 259 276 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0196-1152/doi:10.1108/S0196-1152(2013)0000021016

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becomes technically and economically feasible, early government investments may come to look more like entanglements ones that may involve irreconcilable incentives that jeopardize the ultimate rewards. Keywords: Nanotechnology; public private partnerships; risk management; temporal dimensions

INTRODUCTION In recent years, a good deal of excitement has been expressed about “public private partnerships,” which the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy of the National Research Council has called “a vital positive element of public policy, helping to address major challenges and opportunities at the nexus of science, technology, and economic growth” (Wessner, 2002, p. 7). The excitement has been backed up by significant investments in some sectors. For example, as noted by Ogden, Podesta, and Deutch (2008): [T]he U.S. government has spent more than $300 billion in direct expenditures on energy research, development, and demonstration…combined with a variety of indirect financial incentives such as tax credits, loan guarantees, guaranteed purchase, and even equity investments. In addition, the government has adopted a patchwork quilt of regulations designed to speed the adoption of various energy technologies. (p. 1)

These partnerships have received relatively little attention from sociologists. This has limited not just the contributions of sociology to the study of the recent policy developments, but also the extent to which the study of these recent policy developments could contribute to sociology. In particular, closer attention will reveal the importance of the temporal dimensions foreseeable patterns of change over time, that, in this case, relate to how early investments by the government complicate its ability to regulate effectively later on. Such patterns may have been less important in earlier times when technological innovation proceeded at a much slower pace, but they appear to be especially important now given the rapid proliferation of certain emergent technologies. This chapter will illustrate this point as related to the partnerships that have generated such excitement in recent years. Financial support and incentives provided by government to private companies may seem relatively unproblematic during early phases in the development of a promising new technology, but that very participation

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may come to be seen as deeply problematic a few years later, undermining the credibility as well as the effectiveness of subsequent regulatory efforts. The damage, moreover, may prove difficult or impossible to undo. We present an initial analysis of this paradox in three main sections. The first offers a review of two bodies of literature the recent literature on public private partnerships and the broader literature on risk management and technological controversies. In the second section, we will illustrate our points in relation to two cases of promising new technological development. The first involves one of the most exciting and promising emergent technologies in a long time, nanotechnology a case that illustrates the enthusiasm often expressed for governmental involvement in the early development and promotion of a technology. The second will involve a technology that occupied a similar position sufficiently long ago to illustrate the potential paradoxes created by this type of temporal mismatch, namely nuclear energy. In the third and concluding section, we consider implications for future research and theoretical understanding, both as related to society technology relationships and for the discipline of sociology more broadly.

THE PARADOX OF PARTNERSHIPS: A REVIEW OF THE EXISTING LITERATURE Previous research on the positive aspects of public private partnerships usually centers on the idea that governmental support, both financially and in policies that redistribute risks, may be essential for fostering innovation and global competitiveness. Flamm (1988), for example, argues that the U.S. government played an indispensable role in the development of computers, greatly enhancing the pace of computer development during the 1940s and 1950s. He maintains that without government support, the financial risk to the key computer company of the time (IBM) may have been untenable, so the investment and risk-sharing by the government greatly facilitated the emergence of a technology that now shapes society in innumerable ways. Others maintain that government investment in new technology is essential because an alternative approach to fostering change (e.g., regulation) may work to stifle innovation. This argument has been put forth in particularly forceful ways toward present-day efforts to combat global warming; such arguments characterize the energy sector as notably lacking in

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innovation, tracing this to heavy regulation of electric utilities, while government investments in energy research and development have been relatively modest, dropping from $8 billion in 1980 to $3 billion in 2005 (in 2002 dollars). In the words of Shellenberger and colleagues, “The great technological revolutions of the past did not occur via regulatory fiat… Those revolutions happened because we invented alternatives that were vastly superior to what they replaced, and, in remarkably short order, a good deal cheaper. The transition to the clean energy economy will be no different and, like previous technological revolutions, will require substantial public investment to occur quickly and completely” (Shellenberger, Nordhaus, Navin, Norris, & Van Noppen, 2008, p. 104, emphasis added). The National Research Council, meanwhile, blames the relative absence of government support for the slow growth, low productivity, and rising trade deficit that occurred in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as for the loss in “competitive position of key U.S. industries, from steel and automobiles to televisions and semiconductors.” In contrast, “U.S. trade competitors, such as Japan, seemed to have arrived at an economic model different in important respects from the traditional laissezfaire American approach…the close relationship between government and industry in supporting key economic sectors had created substantial benefits for the economy” (Wessner, 2001, p. 26, emphasis added). The National Research Council published yet another analysis in 2002, finding that… “partnerships constitute a vital positive element of public policy, helping to address major challenges and opportunities at the nexus of science, technology, and economic growth” (Wessner, 2002, p. 7). Still, even proponents of government investment in new technologies sometimes note potential pitfalls or limitations. A common concern involves the belief that governments have only limited ability to foster technology commercialization as opposed to supporting research and development. Neoclassical economists often agree, arguing that government should stay well away from issues involving commercialization, which they see as being more appropriately left to the private sector. Such a viewpoint is illustrated by Deutch (2005), who argues that his own former agency, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), enjoyed substantially more success when sponsoring emergent technologies during their R&D phases as opposed to their efforts to encourage commercialization within the private sector during later phases of adoption. While various political factions in the United States argue over the appropriate extent of government regulation in principle, it is broadly taken for granted in modern democracies that industrial processes can

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create environmental risks as well as economic rewards, and that the role of government in environmental regulation is to prevent just such harms. As noted by MacLean (1982), the management of technological risk benefits from centralization under government control for two main reasons. First, the production of technological risk associated with emerging technologies is itself often highly decentralized, resulting from numerous actors engaged in the technological activity in question. Any one actor produces an acceptable level of risk that becomes problematic only when considered cumulatively. Second, the risk associated with emerging technologies is often poorly understood such that long and expensive risk assessments are required. These characteristics make it highly unlikely that decentralized actors will have the desire or the resources to self-regulate. Even in the absence of pressure on the government to support technological innovation directly, a number of theorists have questioned the extent to which regulatory agencies truly protect public interests. At least three bodies of literature have noted that, in advanced technological societies, regulatory agencies face a problem that is often known as “capture” (for discussions that deal with the subject in greater depth and subtlety, see, e.g., Block, 1987; Buttel, 1985; Freudenburg & Gramling, 1994; Sabatier, 1975; Shover, Clelland, & Lynxwiler, 1983; Stryker, 1991). In the first category are authors who are less likely to call attention to “capture” than to express the belief that, despite assurances to the contrary, regulatory agencies were never actually intended to impose a significant degree of real regulation only the symbols or appearance of regulation (see, e.g., Arnold, 1937; Edelman, 1985, 1988). Many but not all of the authors in this first category have Marxist orientations, with the strongest arguments representing “instrumentalism,” or the notion that government institutions in a capitalistic society tend inherently to be “instruments” of the ruling class (Miliband, 1969; also see Poulantzas, 1973; Domhoff, 1978). In many other cases, however, authors with no visible allegiance to Marxist analyses ranging from economists (Freeman & Haveman, 1972; Stigler, 1975) to political scientists (e.g., Edelman, 1964) to sociologists and historians of science (e.g., Wynne, 1982) have noted cases in which policy actors have shown no evidence of having seriously intended their actions to have any thing but symbolic effects. A second approach is seen in work that views governmental entities as having “relative autonomy” from powerful economic interests, although the condition might more accurately be described as circumscribed autonomy. Government agencies and their personnel are seen as having interests of their own, but these actors are also seen as being subject to extreme

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limitations on the range of options for autonomous behavior that are realistically feasible. Perhaps the strongest version of this argument is the “structuralist” perspective associated with Poulantzas (1973), who saw governmental structures in a capitalistic society as having the function of sustaining the overall structure of the system by uniting capitalists while dividing workers. Poulantzas, however, has had relatively little influence on empirical studies of “capture,” perhaps in part because of his belief that “direct participation of members of the capitalist class in the state apparatus and in the government, even where it exists, is not the important side of the matter if the function of the state … and the interests of the dominant class … coincide, it is by reason of the system itself” (Poulantzas, 1973, p. 245, emphasis in original). While Poulantzas’ argument has been criticized for “functionalist circularity” (Buttel, 1985, p. 174), such a criticism is less applicable for other authors within this second general tradition, particularly those who have focused more narrowly on what they see as a fundamental dilemma for government regulators in a capitalistic system. The dilemma has been identified by any number of authors, but it is perhaps most often associated with Habermas (1970, 1975), O’Connor (1973), and Block (1987). The terminology of Habermas is that this dilemma involves a “legitimation crisis,” meaning in essence that the legitimacy of government institutions in a capitalistic system depends on simultaneously dealing with two needs that are not entirely compatible with one another maintaining economic vitality (a consideration that often discourages the imposition of regulations on economic actors) and preventing social dislocations (which often requires the imposition of precisely such regulations). With the notable if nuanced exception of Block (1987), many of the authors working within this tradition, too, see reasons for agencies to emphasize approaches to enforcement that are more symbolic than tangible (see, e.g., Offe, 1984; Schnaiberg, 1980). The third body of literature comes out of the very different tradition of political pluralism, in which political outcomes are seen as being open to influences from a variety of groups, many of which are expected to have interests that differ dramatically from those of large-scale capitalists. It is primarily within this tradition, accordingly, that “capture” by specific interests is likely to be identified as a problem that needs to be explained. Even within this third category, however, the capacity to influence policy outcomes is seen as being unequally distributed. If beneficiaries are few in number and well-organized, while those who are negatively affected are more numerous and harder to organize, it is reasonable to expect

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something akin to “iron triangle” politics, where the beneficiaries and their allies in Congress and the agencies form a relatively stable distributional coalition (Laumann & Knoke, 1987; Olson, 1982; see also: Stryker, 1991). Such a model, also sometimes referred to as “subgovernments” entails alliances between the regulated and the regulator allows the selective withholding of risk information from the public (Hayden, 2002; Swaney, 1995). Existing literature, in short, has often identified potential conflicts between governmental roles as a promoter of industry and as a public protector, but a point that has received less attention to date is that the conflicts can be exacerbated by temporal mismatches: Governmental support for “economically promising” new technologies may be relatively uncontroversial during the early stages of technological development, while the problems relating to such involvement may become much clearer during later stages, as the potential risks and drawbacks of early technological choices become evident. In some ways, this point is not new; instead, the temporal dimension is at least implicit as early as Merton’s (1936) classic discussion of “unintended consequences.” Although Merton did not stress this point, a standard dictionary definition of a “consequence” is an event or implication that “follows” a given action. Some four decades later at a time, intriguingly, when the drawbacks of a “promising” technology were becoming more widely evident O. D. Duncan (1978) argued that “sociologists should pay more attention” to the issue. In his argument, he noted that new technologies tend to be developed in temporal stages. During the earliest phase, he noted, most assessments would focus almost exclusively on the question of whether a new technology was physically feasible that is, whether it could be made to work at all. At a later or second stage, the technologies appearing would tend to be subject to a second kind of examination, having to do with whether the technology could be made to work in a way that would be economically feasible, or profitable. Only after both of those first two issues had been resolved in the affirmative, he noted, would attention usually turn to questions of whether the technology could be made to work in a way that would be socially and politically feasible. The importance of this distinction became significantly clearer over subsequent decades, in studies focusing on what James Short, in his presidential address to the American Sociological Association, described as “risks to the social fabric” (Short, 1984). This predominantly U.S.-based literature presents not so much an opposing view to the arguments put forth by Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990), but a view that is intermediate between those of the two European theorists. Giddens, on the one hand,

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depicts the role of science and of technical experts as being relatively unproblematic, providing the broader citizenry with one important set of inputs for “dialogic democracy.” Beck, by contrast, could scarcely differ more, depicting technological innovation as increasingly eluding the control of social and political institutions in ways that far from creating the preconditions for trust create the belief that technological “progress” is out of control. In the U.S.-based literature on technological risk, by contrast, the central tendency is to see most such technological systems as having worked properly, the vast majority of the time but with even occasional exceptions being profoundly troubling, leading to the creation of Short’s “risks to the social fabric.” In what may be the most explicit statement of this perspective, Freudenburg (1993) traces the reasons back to European social theoretical frameworks of an earlier vintage, deriving largely from Durkheim (1933) and Weber (1946). Much as Durkheim spelled out, Freudenburg argues, the division of labor in society does appear to have permitted tremendous increases in the overall level of expertise and prosperity enjoyed by present-day citizens of the industrialized world but it has done so with one important catch. When Durkheim first called attention to the division of labor, he referred approvingly to what he called “organic solidarity,” seeing the coordination of differing specializations as being relatively unproblematic. With increased specialization, he argued, different kinds of people would come to need each other just as much as do different organs of the body, with the heart and the stomach, for example, each filling its own specialized role. Unlike stomachs, however, humans have the capacity to discern specialized interests that can differ significantly from the needs or interests of the collectivity. Although Durkheim did not treat such possibilities as being problematic, they lie at the core of what Freudenburg calls “recreancy” or “the failure of institutional actors to carry out their responsibilities with the degree of vigor necessary to merit the societal trust they enjoy” (Freudenburg, 1993, p. 909). The importance of recreancy is suggested by Weber’s classic discussion of what it meant to live in a world of “intellectualized rationality.” What made the world a “rational” one, in Weber’s view, was not that the denizens of modernity could be expected to know more about the world around us, but very nearly the opposite. “Unless he is a physicist, one who rides on the streetcar has no idea how the car happened to get into motion. And he does not need to know. He is satisfied that he may ‘count’ on the behavior of the streetcar … but he knows nothing about what it takes to produce

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such a car so that it can move. The savage knows incomparably more about his tools” (Weber, 1946, pp. 138 139). In short, this literature suggests that, far more than was the case for our great-great-grandparents, the citizens of today’s world tend to be not so much in control of as dependent on our technology. We need to “count on” that technology to work properly not just in principle, but also in practice. As a result, we are dependent not just on the technologies, but also on the social relations that bring them into being involving whole armies of specialists, most of whom have areas of expertise that we may not be competent to judge, and many of whom we will never even meet, let alone have the ability to control. Publics must therefore look to the government to interpret expert knowledge from the standpoint of public interest, and to regulate even “promising” technologies with vigor a reliance that may be problematic if the government has already established a role in promoting the technologies in question. Today, moreover, the potential threats from new technology have risen to a level that would have been difficult to foresee in the time of Durkheim and Weber. As noted by Erikson (1994, p. 141), the matter of trustworthiness is especially significant for what he terms A New Species of Trouble: “The ancients feared pestilence, drought, famine, flood, plague, and all the other scourges that darken the pages of the Bible. These miseries trouble us yet, to be sure, but it is fair to say that we have learned ways to defend ourselves against many of the worst of them…The irony, though, is that the technological advancements that have afforded us this degree of protection from natural disasters have created a whole new category of events that specialists have come to call technological disasters…these new troubles… involve toxins: They contaminate rather than merely damage; they pollute, befoul and taint rather than just create wreckage; they penetrate human tissue indirectly rather than would the sources by assaults of a more straightforward kind. And evidence is growing that they scare human beings in new and special ways, that they elicit an uncanny fear within us.” As noted in the literature on risks to the social fabric, in sum, even if present-day technology can be “counted on” to work properly the vast majority of the time, it can be genuinely troubling if some key element of the sociotechnical system sends a “signal” (Slovic, 1987) that matters are not being controlled as safely as they ought to be. “Today’s citizens often discover that when something goes wrong be it a car or a computer or a chemical the ‘responsible’ person or organization can prove almost impossible to find” (Freudenburg, 2001, p. 128; see also Levi & Holder, 1988; Marchant, Sylvester, & Abbott, 2009; Keller, 2007). It is all the more

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disconcerting if the trusted regulator carrying out this important role.

government

lacks objectivity in

FROM THE NUCLEAR TO THE NANOSCALE: CONSIDERING CASES A field of technology development that is the focus of particular excitement today is nanotechnology, a term that applies broadly to applications making use of “nanoscale” particles (NSPs) that are often defined as those in the range of 1 100 nm, or a billionth of a meter. One nanometer “is about one hundred-thousandth the diameter of a human hair (50 100 μm). To put this in perspective, 1,000 nm is about the size of a bacterium, and is about the limit of what is visible through most light microscopes. In contrast, 100 nm is about the size of a virus, a tenth the size of a bacterium. NSPs, like viruses, are invisible even through the best light microscope because they are smaller than wavelengths of light; they can be imaged only with some higher-resolution instruments such as a scanning electron microscope” (Bell, 2007, p. 2). At this incredibly tiny scale, particles take on new and interesting properties, due in part to the fact that the ratio of surface area to mass is dramatically greater than in the case of larger or “normal-sized” particles. Moreover, these physical properties impart dramatic new possibilities for usefulness. Nanotechnological research and development is already providing unprecedented understanding of the basic building blocks of matter and leading to substantial discoveries. According to Roco (2003, p. 181), the “main reason for developing nanotechnology is to advance broad societal goals such as improved comprehension of nature, increased productivity, better healthcare, and extending the limits of sustainable development and of human potential.” For example, it may prove possible to design applications such as cancer drugs that will “fit” with and hence attack cancer cells while having less effect on noncancerous cells. To many observers, the potentially beneficial nature of these goals coupled with the early developmental stage of this technology make it a logical candidate for receipt of public monies. Industrial proponents generally believe that nanotechnology will bring competitive advantages to traditional as well as emerging fields, offering significant opportunities for economic growth to small businesses as well as to large companies and venture capital firms. Some have estimated that the

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annual global impact of products where nanotechnology will play a key role will exceed $1 trillion by the year 2015 creating about 2 million jobs for nanotechnology workers (Roco & Bainbridge, 2010). Roco and Bainbridge take this one step further by assuming that for each information technology worker, another 2.5 jobs will be created in related areas, suggesting that nanotechnology has the potential to create 7 million jobs by 2015. Alongside substantial investments from U.S. companies and state governments, from 2001 to 2012 the federal government invested more than $15 billion in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (Sargent, 2012). Although this will cause coins to flow into the economy, like all coins they will come with two sides. While government investments in nanotechnology have jump-started the development of the field, government activities should also equally prepare society for their future implications and potential risks (Roco, 2003). Most notably, there is wide concern in segments of the scientific community that nanoscale technologies could pose significant risks to human health and the environment during manufacturing, use, or disposal. At present, it is not clear as to the ultimate risks and benefits of particular applications; instead, current data suggest that “it depends” on a variety of factors. In a comprehensive review of the environmental health studies to date, the National Research Council (2006) found that The results of EHS [environment, health, and safety] research to date and data on the EHS impacts of nanotechnology are inconclusive, and that risk assessment protocols have to be further developed and more research has to be done to assess the potential for EHS hazards from nanomaterials. Although there is some evidence that engineered nanomaterials can have adverse effects on the health of laboratory animals, a lack of well-defined controls in experiments attempting to characterize nanomaterials and their effects and a lack of in vitro and in vivo studies contribute to the ambiguity of available data on EHS impacts of nanotechnology development. (p. 11)

This uncertainty greatly complicates attempts to put in place reasonable regulatory regimes or to reconcile the contradictory incentives that government-industry partnerships entail. The perspectives of Merton and Duncan, however, to say nothing of the larger literature on “risks to the social fabric,” would suggest that, as nanotechnology becomes technically and economically feasible, early “government investments” in the development of the technology may come to look more like “entanglements” in industrial activities, involving risks as well as rewards. Given that the key concern here has to do with conflicts that become clear only over time, it may be useful at this point to turn to what

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happened in the case of an earlier revolutionary technology. A particularly useful comparison involves nuclear power which, in its infancy, also seemed to promise true societal advancement, facilitated by a strong public private partnership. As noted by Clarke (1985), however, government involvement in the promotion of that new technology led to what he called “A Case of Institutional Conflict” (see also Baumgartner & Jones, 1991). In recent years, of course, nuclear power and nuclear waste facilities have become deeply unpopular. As noted by three of the most distinguished scientists ever to have addressed the question, “The ability to evoke dread in human beings must be counted as one of the key properties of radioactive wastes, not just a passing fact about human life … Not to know that essential fact about nuclear wastes is like not knowing their half lives, their thermal qualities, or any of their other physical and chemical characteristics” (Erikson, Colglazier, & White, 1994, p. 91). Yet it was not always that way, and it did not get to be that way overnight. Once upon a time, not just during the 1950s, but continuing well beyond the activism of the first “Earth Day” in 1970, nuclear power was widely seen as representing Progress. This view was held not just by the scientific elite, but also by many of the leading environmental activists of the day, including the Sierra Club. Nuclear power plants were seen as being “modern” allowing consumers to enjoy the benefits of “clean” electricity, in turn avoiding the significant hazards to miners, avoiding hazards to communities located downwind of coal-fired power plants, and avoiding river dams, which lead to the loss of scenic canyons and riparian habitats. As in the case with today’s discussions of nanotechnologies, some of the strongest statements in policy debates came from well-known scientists. In a widely reported presentation to a meeting of the Association of Science Writers in 1954, for example, Strauss (1954) predicted that the atom would bring us energy “too cheap to meter.” Rather than sticking to the kinds of carefully qualified if relatively boring statements for which scientists are more often known, Strauss spoke of “unlimited power,” permitting people to “travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds,” bringing longer life spans, and ushering in “an age of peace” (Strauss, 1954, p. 9). Scientists and their speeches, however, were not the only resources brought to bear in “educating” the public; instead, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had a public-relations effort (and budget) that today’s ecosystem scientists and managers can only envy. A press release issued

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by the AEC in the year of the first “Earth Day” noted that more than 40 million people had attended screening of its films during the 1960s, and another 158 million watched the films on television (Ford, 1982). Two years earlier, the AEC’s annual report to Congress observed that nearly 5 million people had seen its exhibits and demonstrations in the previous year alone (Ford, 1982). To note the obvious, these “education” efforts came not just from private industry, but also from the Federal government itself and they did so back in the pre-Watergate years when the government enjoyed considerably more credibility than it does today. As a result, millions of American school children grew up learning about “my friend, the atom,” and many of them (and their parents) did seem to respond to the “education.” In the 1950s, for example, when the Gallup polling organization asked if people would be “afraid to have a plant located in this community which was run by atomic energy,” only 20% of the respondents in a national sample indicated any degree of concern, while 69% said they would not be worried (The Gallup Organization, 1999, p. 29). As spelled out in greater detail in longitudinal (cross-time) analyses of national-level survey data (see, e.g., Freudenburg & Baxter, 1984; Freudenburg & Rosa, 1984; Rosa & Freudenburg, 1993), nuclear technologies continued to enjoy clear majority support, even as late as the 1970s, and even when people were asked about nuclear facilities in their own back yards (Freudenburg & Baxter, 1984, pp. 101 02). The rapid development in the early years, however, proved to be unsustainable, partially due to a regulatory structure that was inadequate to govern such a rapid expansion (Jackson, 2003). In an analysis of events leading to its downfall, Shirley A. Jackson, a former AEC official (Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 2012), noted that public attitudes gradually began to change and the scientific community was unable to assuage building fearfulness due to a lack of expert consensus on the effects of low-level radiation. Public scrutiny and dissatisfaction intensified with more media coverage of potential nuclear dangers. In addition, there was a problem within the AEC itself. As expressed by Jackson (2003) “…its dual responsibility for promoting nuclear power and regulating the safety of operation represented a conflict of interest” (p. 2). A number of examples of this linger in the public memory, including instances in the early 1970s in which the AEC intentionally withheld findings on nuclear dangers from the public and from congressional oversight committees. Jackson (2003) cites one particularly telling example, writing that:

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Reactor safety experts had repeatedly considered a hypothetical nuclear accident in which a loss of coolant might lead to a melting of the reactor core, and the molten fuel might then penetrate not only the steel bottom of the reactor vessel but also the concrete foundation of the containment building, continuing downward into the ground. This scenario, called the “China Syndrome” (because the melted core would presumably be heading through the earth in the general direction of China), was considered implausible primarily because of the ‘emergency core cooling system’ (ECCS), which functions too rapidly and automatically flood the core with water from another source. However, in 1971, simulation experiments run at a test site in Idaho suggested that, during a loss-of-coolant accident, the flow of emergency cooling water might be blocked by high-pressure steam in the leaking reactor vessel, and never reach the core. The timing of this discovery was awkward for the AEC. Utilities were facing power shortages and pressing for a streamlined licensing process to eliminate long delays. The Chairman of the AEC, Glenn Seaborg, was appealing to President Nixon to support a new breeder reactor project. The AEC was worried that a new public debate, focused on reactor safety, might create additional roadblocks for the expansion of the industry. (p. 3, emphasis added)

Events such as this eventually led to the abolishment of the AEC and its replacement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, charged with regulation of safety, and the Department of Energy, charged with promotional activities. However, their true independence of each other may be questionable if, for example, behind the scenes “subgovernments” and other social forces are operational. Other publicity followed and over time, the initial support became a matter of history after some less favorable “education” that took place in the 1970s, including leaking nuclear waste tanks and ending with what Slovic (1987) has called a “signal” event. That event did not take place until almost a full decade had passed after the first “Earth Day,” but when it did, the accident at Three Mile Island, in March of 1979, sent a “signal” to the general public that the system might not have been quite so beneficial and benign as the public had previously been led to believe. In the years since Three Mile Island, not a single study has failed to find majority opposition to a nearby nuclear facility (for more details and analysis, see Freudenburg & Rosa, 1984).

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE Now we seek to ask the following question about this paradoxical partnership that seems built in to our System. Are the recipients of public funding (or proponents of this funding, at the very least) exerting their influence at

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a time when the future drawbacks of the creation of this relationship are not evident? Is the federal government (in this case) unaware of the potential for its financial investment to become problematic in the future when faced with having a regulatory presence? We view this chapter as a way of beginning a broader discussion, not as a way of bringing that discussion to an end. It would be presumptuous to identify “definitive” lessons on the basis of two brief case studies; it is not too soon, however, to note at least one implication from these case studies for the broader discipline of sociology. Particularly in a time of rapidly developing new technologies, it is important to pay much greater attention to the temporal dimension particularly the ways in which policy choices at a given time may constrain or shape the ways in which the management of a technology will be affected over time. In some ways, this conclusion may appear “obvious.” In other ways, however, it requires sociologists to tread on less-than-familiar ground. The vast majority of the powerful concepts of sociology role, status, class, power, and more are ways of thinking about contemporaneous relationships, rather than thinking about changes in those relationships over time. Even sociological textbooks on “social change” will usually discuss the process of change in terms of “stages,” as if one set of contemporaneous social relationships could be stacked on top of another, like so many concrete blocks, rather than being described as more gradual, cumulative, and emergent, as would be the case among historians or ecologists. Still, important sociological advances are available in recent work on “emergent properties” (see, e.g., Molotch, Freudenburg, & Paulsen, 2000; Pred, 1984; cf. Firey, 1947) and on what Becker (1995) termed “inertia.” Those interested in the interaction between technology and society would do well to give attention to such temporal aspects in explaining the ultimate acceptance or failure of promising new technologies. Further, to lessen the chances that nanotechnology will follow the same arc of success and failure as nuclear power, it is important to work collectively toward societal structures that can preserve both government credibility and public trust before it is too late.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For Bill, who taught me the importance of new ideas, many practical academic tasks, and the value of excellent mentorship all things I plan to pay forward, if I am lucky enough to get the chance. This material is based

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upon work supported by the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency under Cooperative Agreement Number DBI 0830117. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Environmental Protection Agency. This work has not been subjected to EPA review and no official endorsement should be inferred. This work also benefited by support from the University of Maryland and National Science Foundation award number DBI-1052875 to the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC).

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DEVELOPMENT, INEQUALITY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY: AN ANALYSIS OF COMPETING HYPOTHESES USING LOCAL AREAS IN THE UNITED STATES Frank M. Howell, William R. Freudenburg (deceased) and Gregory A. Works ABSTRACT Much of the environmental sociology literature calls for economic development to lead to environmental destruction, but growing bodies of work on “ecological modernization” and “environmental Kuznets curves” (EKCs) argue that, beyond a certain point, socioeconomic development can lead to environmental improvement. A third hypothesis (Boyce) argues that inequality may be more relevant than levels of prosperity. Published findings have been sufficiently mixed to warrant more detailed analyses. This chapter considers both cross-sectional and two-wave panel data and the three competing expectations, considering air emissions and toxic manufacturing releases for U.S. counties. Air emissions tend to correlate positively with economic prosperity, supporting the “core”

William R. Freudenburg, A Life in Social Research Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 21, 277 298 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0196-1152/doi:10.1108/S0196-1152(2013)0000021017

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environmental sociology hypothesis, while toxic emissions show greater support for the EKC/ecological modernization hypothesis. The most consistent theoretical support is found among indicators of inequality and power that support the Boyce hypothesis. The findings suggest implications for policy as well as for future research. Keywords: Case study; development; environmental Kuznets curve; social inequality; TRI; voter turnout

PREFACE BY FRANK M. HOWELL This work emerged from the chance meeting between Freudenburg and Howell at a Rural Sociological Society annual conference where Howell was giving a presentation about the methodological issues involved in environmental equity studies. Freudenburg made a critical comment about a scatterplot of percent poverty and toxic releases by pound in U.S. counties regarding the outlier of Santa Barbara, CA. Howell went into depth about the “outlier” and how it could be visualized in 3D space. They spoke in the hallway after the exchange and that was that until both were on a review panel for the USDA Rural Development competitive grants program. Finding a common intellectual bond, both spent evenings on the Potomac over beer and seafood discussing into the night various issues in the environmental justice body of knowledge. They continued this close friendship until Freudenburg’s passing. Having been a cancer survivor himself, Howell knew that Bill needed space and time to focus on his health. A battle royale at a prominent journal over the peer review of this manuscript sat on the back burner. It was submitted to the Social Science Quarterly under Professor Robert Lineberry’s editorship. It went through three reviews, circling back to nearly the same initial draft submitted until the editor simply announced that it was rejected. In retrospect, the peer reviews were more humorous than anything else. One reviewer spent much time on wanting new variables in the model without any theoretical justification, a classic “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation that an editor should reel in. Another was that the authors simply did not know the environmental justice literature. William Freudenburg did not know the EJ literature! Finally, another reviewer thought that the manuscript just did not read well. If anything, Bill’s writing was cogent, clear, and usually of impeccable logic. Bill was livid at the rejection, saying he would never again submit a paper for such

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abuse at the Social Science Quarterly. That unfortunately proved to be true, not because of this review but of his untimely passing. If we were starting this study now, it would be reanalyzed using spatial regression models and more robust modeling methods. Nonetheless, it is with much joy that this manuscript, one of Bill’s final empirical works, is being published in this volume.

INTRODUCTION One of the most important and contentious issues in social science research on the environment involves the relationship between economic activity and environmental degradation. At one end, a relatively extensive body of work largely in environmental sociology argues that increased prosperity leads to increased environmental damage, largely due to increases in the environmental impacts of production and consumption. At the other end, two newer bodies of work, hypothesizing “ecological modernization” and what some proponents term an “environmental Kuznets curve” (EKC) suggest dramatically different outcomes, involving reduced environmental impacts beyond a certain level of prosperity. These outcomes are due to factors such as increased industrial efficiency, the role of an “environmental state,” and increased concerns about environmental matters on the part of a relatively affluent populace. In between, a few authors have called for greater attention to factors other than levels of prosperity, the most notable of which is James Boyce, who emphasizes the role of socioeconomic inequality. This chapter begins with brief reviews of each of these three bodies of work, noting the competing hypotheses to be derived from each. Next, we assess the relative merits of the available hypotheses in terms of their merits in a locally oriented analysis, using two different types of pollution data across counties of the United States. The concluding section offers a brief discussion of this chapter’s implications for future research and for policy.

EXISTING LITERATURE AND HYPOTHESES: CORE LITERATURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY Although the literature in environmental sociology has become large and varied, existing reviews have seen the “core” components of this literature expect that economic growth will lead to environmental problems (Buttel,

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1987; Freudenburg & Gramling, 1989). Perhaps the clearest such statement is found in the work of Schnaiberg (1980) and of Schnaiberg and Gould (1994, p. 53). The latter book, for example, argues that there is “an enduring conflict” between environmental protection and economic growth a point that they suggest to be “the major argument of [their] book” (Schnaiberg & Gould, 1994, p. 94). Their causal logic is that economic producers have a need for ever-increasing profits, which they attempt to achieve by means of ever-growing production, leading in turn to everincreasing environmental impacts a set of factors that Schnaiberg has termed “the treadmill of production.” In another analysis drawing more heavily on biological and ecological models but that reached conclusions largely compatible with those of Schnaiberg, Catton (1980) called attention to a phenomenon in his book, Overshoot. Most animal species are kept in balance with their surrounding ecosystems by predators and by the limited availability of food (as well as by cultural constraints, in the case of human beings). However, both in specific cases where predators have been removed from a natural system and in cases where humans or other species have suddenly discovered or been able to take advantage of “new” resources for which no such cultural constraints had yet been developed, populations have tended to “overshoot” even the expanded carrying capacity of the “new” resource base a phenomenon that has tended to be followed by massive deaths (often by starvation), and hence the experience of a crash or “die-back.” In Catton’s analysis, the phenomenal growth of economic systems during the era of “exuberance” that followed the “discovery” of the western hemisphere, and of the tremendous energy resources available in the nevertheless finite supplies of fossil fuels, showed just such tendencies (Catton, 1980). Similarly, O’Connor (1988, 1991; Foster, 1992) spelled out what he has termed “the second contradiction of capitalism.” While the full argument is quite complex, a useful simplification is that the very need for capitalism to rely on prosperity as a source of legitimation creates an imperative for an ever-increasing exploitation of workers and also of the environment. If “the first contradiction of capitalism” involves the exploitation of workers in the search for producer profit, to the point that the workers are unable to buy the products of capitalism, the second contradiction involves cases where natural resources become so heavily exploited that they, too, can no longer contribute the very kinds of raw materials that capitalism requires for its continued survival, let alone its continued growth. For these three authors, the overall expectation is that increased economic growth should be

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associated with greater environmental harm (for an assemblage of summaries and reviews, see the recent Handbook of Environmental Sociology (Dunlap & Michelson, 2002)).

ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH In recent years, by contrast, at least two bodies of work have begun to express just the opposite set of expectations. One of those bodies of work centered predominantly in economics, calls for the emergence of an “EKC.” The other body of work, centered largely within environmental sociology, and representing to some degree a counterpoint to the “core” literature of the field (see above), calls for the emergence of “ecological modernization.” We will briefly review both bodies of work here, taking them in the same order. EKC: In the original sense, the “curve” suggested by Nobel-winner Simon Kuznets was an inverted curvilinear relationship between income levels and the degree of inequality in a society (Kuznets, 1955). In the past decade, a group of scholars (Beckerman, 1992; Ehrhardt-Martinez, Crehshaw, & Jenkins, 2002; Grossman & Krueger, 1992, 1995; Selden & Song, 1994; Shafik & Bandyopadhyay, 1992) has begun to take this argument much further than did Kuznets himself, postulating the existence of a similar curve with respect to national-level environmental impacts, in what has been called an “environmental Kuznets curve” (or EKC). The EKC perspective postulates that levels of national economic development have an “inverted U-curve” relationship with pollution and environmental destruction. As a number of authors have noted, the problems of environmental destruction might then well be largely self-correcting as higher levels of economic prosperity would be linked to steadily improving environmental conditions. In the eyes of Panayotou (1993), for example, economic growth ought to be seen not as a potential source of threat to environmental quality as has been argued in the “core” literature of environmental sociology but that instead, attention should be focused on achieving rapid economic growth to move quickly through the environmentally unfavorable range of the Kuznets curve-style relationship. At least according to Beckerman (1992), the surest way to improve one’s own environment is to “become rich.” Ecological modernization: The theory of ecological modernization was originally put forth in the German language by Huber (1985, 1991), but

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much of the work involving the underlying arguments has taken place in response to the English-language expositions by Spaargaren and Mol (1992) and by Mol and Spaargaren (1993, 2000). Although ecological modernization theory presents a complex understanding of postindustrial society (for a detailed description, see Mol, 1997; for a more recent review, see Fisher & Freudenburg, 2001), the argument can be broken down into four main components. First, modern science and technology are seen as key sources of innovation for ecological reform. Second, economic and market dynamics are also seen as playing generally beneficial roles. Third, the state is seen as transforming its once-central role, increasingly taking on an advisory rather than preeminent role. Fourth, the theory predicts a reorientation of social movements in response to the modifications of the state and market. Social movement organizations are seen as shifting from the role of critical commentator on political issues to that of being critical participants in ecological transformations. For present purposes, the key argument of the ecological modernization literature is that, in view of the increasingly positive roles in that technological and economic advancements are seen as playing in environmental protection, environmental problems can best be solved through further advancement of technology and industrialization. Spaargaren and Mol (1992) see what they call “super-industrialization” as offering the best option for escaping from the present ecological crises of the developed world. In short, despite the many real differences between the EKC literature and the ecological modernization literature, one of the central arguments of both bodies of work is that economic growth can be expected to play a generally beneficial role in promoting environmental quality, at least once a society has reached a certain level of socioeconomic development. This tenet is in sharp contrast to the expectations spelled out in the “core” literature of environmental sociology. In addition, while both of these arguments have generated a good deal of interest, they could not be said to have generated scientific consensus on either their conceptual or empirical merits. On the one hand, some studies have reported evidence in support of the core arguments, at least for some specific pollutants, albeit with at least one cross-national study finding some evidence for the existence of “turning points” for several pollutants among nation-states that have reached a Gross Domestic Product of approximately US$8,000 per capita (Grossman & Krueger, 1992; for broader reviews, see Ekins, 1997; Fisher & Freudenburg, 2001; Rothman & de Bruyn, 1998). In another analysis that focused on deforestation rates in developing or semi-peripheral nation-states, Ehrhardt-Martinez et al. (2002)

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also found evidence of such a turning point, but at a much lower income level of approximately $1,150 per capita. Thus, there are mixed results on the key argument of a specific form of a curvilinear temporal relationship between economic growth and pollution that the EKC and ecological modernization both expect to observe. Nevertheless, the results to date to not rule out the “curve” for mutual temporal change in economic prosperity and pollution.

ECONOMIC INEQUALITY In light of the stark differences between the core environmental sociology literature and the two more recent bodies of work that point to virtually the opposite expectations, it should not be surprising that other work has called for more refined examinations. Of particular interest is the work that is associated most closely with the ecological economist James K. Boyce (1994). Boyce’s argument actually focuses on the underlying variable that was explicitly addressed by Kuznets, namely inequality, but it does so in a distinctive way as compared to EKC theory. In essence, the Boyce argument has three postulates. First, pollution and environmental degradation often inherently involve inequalities. Second, ceteris paribus, the economic or other benefits created by environmental destruction are most likely to be enjoyed by the powerful while environmental and other costs will be borne by the least powerful. Third, in societies where power is relatively evenly distributed, even those who are less powerful may still have enough ability to prevent their own victimization. The net result, Boyce has argued, is that the degree of inequality in a society should be expected to be a significant predictor of the levels of pollution and other environmental degradation being created. A follow-up article (Torras & Boyce, 1998) did find that specifically for pollution variables that seemed to conform to the so-called EKC. These included measures of political-economic inequality which were found to have significant effects on environmental quality in low-income countries. Still, although this study analyzed several years of pollution monitoring observations drawn from multiple sites within several countries, it used essentially a cross-sectional research design. In summary, the published literature to date includes three relatively distinct hypotheses concerning the relationship between economic growth and pollution. They are: (1) Pollution increases over time with prosperity,

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in essentially a monotonic fashion (the hypothesis of much of the “core” literature of environmental sociology); (2) Pollution increases over time with economic prosperity up to a given point of prosperity, declining thereafter, possibly in an inverted U-curve (the “EKC” hypothesis and the “environmental modernization” hypothesis); and (3) Pollution is greatest, spatially, where levels of political and economic inequality are greatest (the Boyce inequality hypothesis). These theoretical expectations juxtapose two dimensions of the relationships among economic prosperity, inequality, and pollution: time and space. Each differs in the emphasis of one or the other dimension in what it expects to find empirically.

TOWARD A MORE LOCALIZED ANALYSIS As is often the case when the existing literature offers such starkly differing expectations, there has been at least some degree of empirical support for each of these three perspectives, although the existing evidence is probably best understood as having been mixed. As noted by Fisher and Freudenburg (2001, p. 704), the proponents of ecological modernization theory “can legitimately point to cases where something like ecological modernization has taken place, and its critics can point, with equal legitimacy, to cases involving the virtual opposite.” Under the circumstances, “both the theory’s proponents and its critics have met the philosophical condition of existence proof anything that exists is possible but it is equally clear that neither ecological modernization nor the outburst could be considered universal. The task that now faces the scientific community is thus to work toward greater rigor in identifying conditions under which ’ecological modernization’ outcomes are more or less likely” (Freudenburg, 2001, p. 704). As they go on to note, there may be particular value in examining the dynamics that are at work within any given country. For empirically testing these alternative hypotheses, it is important to recognize some of the difficulties of using national-level data, beginning with the potential for aggregation bias (Wong, 1996) or spurious relationships. Nations can obviously differ from one another in many ways, ranging from degrees of adherence to post-materialist values (Brechin & Kempton, 1994; Inglehart, 1975) to mixes of industrial activities. As Roberts and Grimes (1997) have noted, one important concern in policy circles is that some of the world’s most prosperous countries have the appearance of improving their environmental performance, but do so in

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large part because they export some of their most environmentally damaging activities to other, less prosperous nations. Unfortunately, the opposite approach the examination of a relatively small number of case study cities or states clearly involves potential blind spots of its own, ranging from the failure to consider a representative range of variation to an inability to recognize the ways in which the actual outcomes are shaped by the relatively specific idiosyncrasies of individual “cases.” To date, however, relatively little attention has been given to an intermediate approach that of controlling at least for national culture and political system by limiting the analysis to a single nation-state, but extending the tests of the EKC and alternative hypotheses to substate geographies within that nation-state, both over time and across space. In past work, the potential for spatial mismatches in the areal units being used whether nation-states (Roberts & Grimes, 1997; Torras & Boyce, 1998) or U.S. states (Boyce, Klemer, Templet, & Willis, 1999) has largely been either ignored or declared a methodological advantage (Boyce et al., 1999, p. 128). We believe, however, that a focus on such large “units” can also have a number of drawbacks. In terms of understanding the underlying dynamics, a key weakness of using such large units involves the resultant inability to examine any but the broadest connections among pollution releases, socioeconomic development, and inequality (see Frisbie & Kasarda, 1988 for a discussion of spatial processes).1 The work of Torras and Boyce (1998) has indeed extended this work to examine individual U.S. states, but by further extending the spatial disaggregation in this chapter to the county level, it becomes feasible to examine a significant number of key social relationships, that remain inaccessible to analysis when the focus is on larger units of aggregation. In the analysis that follows, we use a more localized level of analysis, U.S. counties, while examining the connections among indicators of socioeconomic development used in previous work (per-capita income), along with measures of social inequality (the Gini coefficient for income and the index of dissimilarity for segregation), and two sets of pollution measures (emissions to air and total releases from manufacturing facilities covered by the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). Following these competing expectations expressed in the three bodies of literature, we examine these four questions: (a) Can the per-capita income “effect” on pollution emissions that has sometimes been observed at national and state levels be replicated at a smaller level of geography, the county?

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(b) Do other indicators of social inequality, such as racial segregation, racial composition, and political power, have significant effects on pollution measures? (c) Are these hypothesized effects also realized in the face of controls for region, urbanization, and population density? (d) Are these relationships observed both for cross-sectional relationships, as has been the case in much of the EKC work to date, and for change in pollution emissions over the recent past (as was illustrated by Carlson, Jeon, & McCubbin, 1997)? The design we use involves both a cross-sectional analysis of 1988 pollution levels and an analysis of change in pollution measures from 1988 through 1998. By using a cross-sectional approach to 1988 pollution data, in combination with a conventional analysis of change between 1988 and 1998, this study inserts an element of temporal change into the specification of the relationship between socioeconomic development, social inequality, and pollution levels.2 We also control on several potentially confounding factors, including racial composition, voter turnout, population density, manufacturing employment, proximity to Metropolitan areas, and region of the United States.

SOURCES OF DATA, MEASUREMENTS, AND ANALYSIS Environmental emissions and releases: To construct variables on the total emissions to the air in U.S. counties in 1988 and 1998, the EPA NETI database was used to extract the sum of all emissions in each county (see Environmental Protection Agency, 2001). These total emissions for 1988 and 1998 were extracted on May 8, 2001, covering all of the available 3,009 counties (out of the total of 3,141 counties) in the United States. Releases of toxic chemicals from the manufacturing sector were taken from the EPA Toxic Release Inventory or TRI database (see Environmental Protection Agency, 2001). The TRI database is intended to represent all manufacturing facilities in SIC codes 20 39 that have at least 10 full-time employees and that use or release significant quantities of any TRI chemicals. The sum of all releases in pounds within each county was used. Independent variables: Independent variables used in the analysis include measures of income inequality, housing segregation, per-capita income,

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racial and ethnic composition of the population, manufacturing employment, voter turnout, urbanization, and proximity to metropolitan areas. Income inequality in 1990 was the Gini coefficient, constructed from income data taken from the 1990 Census STF data files (Bureau of the Census, 1990a). The Index of Dissimilarity for residential segregation, separately comparing African-Americans versus Anglos and Hispanics versus Anglos, was computed using 1990 STF tract-level (see White, 1987). The percentage of a county’s employment in manufacturing was from the Bureau of the Census’ 1990b County Business Patterns. Per-capita income for 1988 and 1998 was taken from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (1990), Regional Economic Information System (REIS), and converted to a natural log form. Voter turnout circa 1990 was the average of the percent voter turnout in counties for the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections. The voter data came from the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (Leip, 2000) which included annual Census population estimates for 1988 and 1992. Population density (persons per square mile in 1990) was obtained from the Census Bureau (2000). The racial composition of counties, including a county’s percentage (non-Hispanic) Black and percentage Hispanic populations, came from the 1990 Census of Housing and Population. Dummy variables representing a county as Metro or Adjacent to Metro were constructed, with the nonadjacent counties being used as the reference category, based upon 1993 Beale codes (Butler & Beale, 1994).

METHODS OF ANALYSIS Our analyses use cross-sectional and change models, both estimated through ordinary least squares (OLS) procedures with transformations of non-normal variables. First, we estimate cross-sectional regression models with the following specification: Ln (Pollution) = fn (socioeconomic development, income inequality, housing segregation, population composition, voter turnout in national elections, employment in manufacturing, population density, and proximity to Metro area). The model is estimated separately for emissions to air and for total chemical releases by TRI manufacturing facilities. Second, to examine the relationship between socioeconomic development, social inequality, and changes in pollution level, with controls for the potential confounding factors identified above, we estimate models of

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change, doing so separately for emissions to air and for total chemical releases by TRI manufacturing facilities, and for changes in per-capita income. Following suggestions on the specification of change models (Allison, 1990; Dalecki & Willits, 1991; Liker, Augustyniak, & Duncan, 1985; Saris, 2001), these models have the following specification: Difference in Ln (Pollution 1988 1998) = fn (socioeconomic development, income inequality, housing segregation, population composition, voter turnout in national elections, employment in manufacturing, population density, proximity to Metro area, and Ln Pollution 1988). This difference model allows us to examine the change in pollution as a function of the initial level of per-capita income and measures of social inequality and the other non-income factors. The 1988 (or lagged) value of the pollution indicator is included to reduce floor and ceiling effects (Dalecki & Willits, 1991). Third, to examine the relationships between changes in socioeconomic development and pollution within the scope of a two-wave panel design, we estimate two additional models. One is a quadratic regression, visualized through a scatterplot, of the 1988 1998 change in pollution by changes in per-capita income. For the two-wave panel of counties observed in 1988 and 1998, this model allows us to inspect the functional form of the development pollution relationship (Saris, 2001). A second model is an extension of the first, but adds the initial level of per-capita income to the equation: Difference in Ln (Pollution 1988 1998) = fn (Chg. in per-capita income 1988 1998 + per-capita income 1988 + pollution 1988).

RESULTS Cross-sectional models: The cross-sectional regression results are summarized in Table 1 for air emissions and toxic releases from manufacturing facilities. Four patterns of results are noteworthy. One, socioeconomic development, social inequality, population composition, urbanization, and region of the United States are associated with from one-fourth (26% for TRI releases) to just under one-half (45%) of the variation in these pollution indicators for 1988. Two, per-capita income has a significant and modest positive net effect on both measures of pollution. The standardized regression coefficient of per-capita income is 0.328 for air emissions, and 0.281 for TRI releases. Three, social inequality has significant effects on pollution, in a direction consistent with the Boyce hypothesis. Income inequality (Gini) has significant positive relationships both with air

4.834*** 0.878*** −0.047 0.000** 0.006*** 0.012*** 0.003*** −0.010*** 1.247*** 0.635*** 0.072** 0.256*** 0.480*** 0.065

0.210 0.193 −0.009 0.044 0.100 0.153 0.063 −0.085 0.328 0.335 0.040 0.079 0.195 0.039 R2 = 0.450

Beta

0.017 0.212 0.05 0.248 0.097 0.224 −0.003 −0.197 0.391 0.499 −0.154 0.181 0.167 0.018

r

9.322*** 2.461*** 0.231 0.000** 0.017** −0.003 0.041*** −0.043*** 3.702*** 1.756*** 0.349** 0.224 0.157 −0.441**

−27.831

B

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Note: N for total emissions to air = 3,009. N for TRI emissions = 2,059. ID: Index of Dissimilarity.

−3.283

(Constant)

Gini for Income, 1990 ID: Blacks, 1990 ID: Hispanics, 1990 Pop. Density, 1990 % Black, 1990 % Hispanic 1990 % Man. Employ, 1988 Voter-Turnout % 1990 LN PCI 1988 Metro, 1993 Adj. Metro, 1993 Northeast West South

B

Total Emissions to Air

0.116 0.154 0.011 −0.066 0.086 −0.010 0.240 −0.101 0.281 0.310 0.060 0.024 0.017 −0.081 R2 = 0.263

Beta

Total TRI Releases

−0.104 0.187 0.111 0.092 0.068 0.006 0.129 −0.087 0.325 0.388 −0.135 0.137 −0.004 −0.038

r

Multiple Regression Results for Total Emissions to Air and by TRI Manufacturing Facilities By Country During 1988.

Independent Variables

Table 1.

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emissions (Beta = 0.210) and with TRI releases from manufacturing facilities (Beta = 0.154). Segregation for African-Americans has a positive effect both on air emissions (Beta = 0.193) and on TRI releases by manufacturing facilities (Beta = 0.154). The strength of local political culture, as measured by average voter turnout in national elections, has small but negative effects on both pollution indicators (Beta = 0.085 for air; Beta = 0.101 for manufacturing). Four, metropolitan counties have higher emissions to air and by TRI manufacturing facilities, even after all other independent variables are controlled. Population density appears to be largely a reflection of the metropolitan classification status, and population composition (percent Black) has some positive association to pollution levels, net of these other factors. These cross-sectional results seem to be generally consistent with those of Torras and Boyce (1998), showing that both socioeconomic development and social inequality are related to monitored pollution levels. The results are generally stronger for emissions to air than for manufacturing releases. The findings suggest that the Torras and Boyce findings at the state level may be mirrored at smaller or more localized levels, such as the county, in cross-sectional analyses. Change models of pollution for 1988 1998: We turn now to an analysis of change in these pollution indicators. Table 2 contains a reduced model Table 2. Regression of Difference in Pollution Indicators on Per-Capita Income in 1988, Changes in Per-Capita Income 1988-98, and Pollution Indicator in 1988. Independent Variables Model I. Air emissions (Constant) LN Air Emissions, 1988 LN PCI, 1988 Chg. LN PCI, 1988-98 R2 = 0.187 Model II. TRI manufacturing releases (Constant) LN of TRI Releases, 1988 LN PCI, 1988 Chg. LN PCI, 1988-98 R2 = 0.166

B

Beta

r

−0.266 0.464 0.200

−0.093 0.310 0.093

−0.416 0.038 0.045

−0.404 −0.109 0.046

−9.294 −0.151*** 1.048*** 0.954***

−0.189 −0.358** 0.396 0.988*

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Note: N for Total Air Emissions = 3,009; N for TRI Manufacturing Releases = 2,059.

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of the difference in natural logs of air emissions and releases by TRI manufacturing facilities, regressed on the initial level of pollution in 1988, percapita income in 1988, and the change in the natural logs of per-capita income between 1988 and 1998, reflecting a difference model (Liker et al., 1985; Saris, 2001). The key results in this table involve the regression coefficients that relate changes in per-capita income to changes in air pollution, controlling for the levels that existed a decade earlier. This effect is both significant and positive for air emissions (Beta = 0.200). By comparison, the effect of the initial level of per-capita income has a standardized coefficient that is twice as high as the influence of the change in per-capita income (Beta = 0.464). What these results for air pollution suggest is that: (1) “cleaner” areas in 1988 had less growth in air pollution over the next ten years (i.e., “dirtier” areas may have gotten “dirtier”); (2) areas of growing economic prosperity, also experienced more air pollution growth; but ironically; and (3) “richer” areas in 1988 had much more growth in air pollution over the following 10 years. These results are not as apparent for changes in toxic chemical releases by TRI manufacturing sites. For TRI manufacturing emissions (1) growth in income has a weak effect on growth in emissions; (2) local economic prosperity in 1988 has no effect on subsequent change in TRI emissions; and (3) the strongest association is that “dirtier” manufacturing areas in 1988 experienced less growth in TRI emissions over the next ten years (and perhaps even declines in emissions). This interpretation is borne out with the full models summarized in Table 3. These results tend to parallel those for the cross-sectional model in several ways but also add important effects from other variables. For changes in emissions to air, almost 40% of the variation is associated with prosperity, inequality factors, and previous emission levels. Percapita income has a significant and positive effect on emissions (Beta = 0.313), consistent with the environmental sociology hypothesis, much as in the reduced-form analysis in Table 2. The strength of local political culture, as measured by voter turnout, has a much stronger effect on changes in air emissions (Beta = 0.318) than was found in the crosssectional analyses, while local or county-specific measures of income inequality (Gini) and housing segregation fail to have noteworthy effects. Metropolitan counties saw greater growth in air emissions, while counties in the southern region experienced particularly clear reductions in emissions over the decade (Beta = 0.410). For changes in manufacturing releases, by contrast, per-capita income, social inequality, and population composition have little effect on changes

0.631* 0.231*** 0.288** 0.000 0.004*** −0.006*** 0.000 −0.021*** 0.696*** 0.376*** 0.064*** −0.288*** 0.186*** −0.403*** −0.227***

0.047 0.087 0.091 −0.008 0.121 −0.127 0.012 −0.318 0.314 0.340 0.061 −0.152 0.130 −0.410 −0.389 R2 = 0.392

Beta −0.284 0.170 0.153 0.058 −0.031 −0.179 0.048 −0.049 0.313 0.297 −0.082 0.019 0.108 −0.283 0.212

r

a

Pollution indicator = respective lagged variable; Emissions to air and Total TRI Releases. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Note: N for total emissions to air = 3,009. N for TRI emissions = 2,059.

−4.202

(Constant)

Gini, 1990 ID: Blacks, 1990 ID: Hispanics, 1990 Pop. Density, 1990 % Black, 1990 % Hispanic 1990 % Employees Mfg, 1988 % Voter-Turnout, 1990 LN PCI 1988 Metro, 1993 Adj. Metro, 1993 Northeast West South LN Pollution, 1988a

B

Change in Total Emissions to Air, 1988 1998

3.726 0.363 0.350 0.000 0.007 −0.010 −0.014*** −0.031*** 0.583 −0.015 −0.006 −0.420 0.606** −0.261 −0.382***

−1.040

B

0.053 0.026 0.019 −0.016 0.041 −0.033 −0.097 −0.084 0.051 −0.003 −0.001 −0.055 0.076 −0.056 −0.413 R2 = 0.192

Beta

0.089 −0.056 −0.037 −0.021 0.008 0.040 −0.145 −0.028 −0.108 −0.123 0.037 −0.098 0.092 0.002 −0.404

r

Change in Total TRI Releases, 1988 1998

Multiple Regression Results for Total Emissions to Air and by TRI Manufacturing Facilities By County During 1988.

Independent Variables:

Table 3.

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in toxic releases from manufacturing. The noteworthy exception involves the strength of local political cultures. Net of other factors, counties with higher rates of voter participation also saw greater decreases in manufacturing emissions over the decade in question. Regional variations in models of change for 1988 1998: Our final analysis involves an examination of pollution levels across regions, extending the regression results from Table 2 to consider the potential curvilinear form of the relationship that is hypothesized in the EKC literature. Fig. 1 contains a bivariate quadratic regression of the difference in the natural logs of total air emissions from 1988 to 1998 on the difference in natural logs of percapita income observed at the same two points in time, estimated for all counties and for each Census region.3 Thus, a negative difference in logs is a percentage decrease in either emissions or income, with a positive difference suggesting a corresponding growth over the decade for either indicator. The United States and all four regions do exhibit a visible inverted curvilinear relationship between change in PCI and air emissions. However, it is striking that the quadratic equation for the South does exhibit a form consistent with the “EKC” hypothesis. These results suggest that more investigation into these regional variations may well be in order. To further examine these results, we estimated the full change model for each of these four regions. Due to space limitations, we do not present them here (table available from authors). They tend to amplify the striking regional distinctions shown in Fig. 1. The explained variance is much higher for the South (52%) than for the other regions (ranging from 35% in the Northeast and Midwest to 28% for the West). There is a moderate positive effect on change in air emissions by per-capita income in every region except the West. The most consistent variable effect across the four regions is average voter turnout, being negatively related to changes in air emissions, but strongest in the South ( 0.325) and weakest in the Midwest ( 0.136).

DISCUSSION In this chapter, we have examined the EKC hypothesis along with the competing hypotheses that have been generated by the environmental sociology literature and by James Boyce (1994), doing so in the context of U.S. counties. Our results provide greater support for the environmental sociology hypothesis (calling for pollution levels to increase more or less monotonically with per-capita incomes) than for EKC hypothesis (calling for

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Fig. 1. Scatterplot of Change in (log) Air Emission By Change in (log) Per-Capita Income, 1988 1998 Quadratic Regression Fit by U.S. Region Shown. Source: EPA, BEF, and authors’ calculations.

pollution to increase up to a given level of income and then to decrease thereafter), save for one exception. The counties in the southern region of the United States did show a strikingly curvilinear pattern, a finding that could be seen as being in accordance with the EKC hypothesis. Finally, in what may be the most consistent set of findings, multiple measures of inequality, particularly the strength of local political culture, tend to show patterns that are consistent with the Boyce hypothesis, with higher levels of emissions being found in counties having higher levels of inequality and lower voter turnout levels. It may well be that it is unwise to assume that pollution experiences will be relatively homogeneous across an entire nation-state. In fact, our analysis suggests that, in addition to local areas, subregions may play a more important role in pollution levels. The kind of curvilinear effect called for by the EKC hypothesis is found for the southern region in particular. Finally, the indicators of development and social inequality appear to influence pollution at a county level (through cross-sectional regression models) and temporally (through change models). While the results that we have presented here do suggest some optimism about the EKC and competing hypotheses at a local level, the results are

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sufficiently mixed to suggest that the actual relationships between economic prosperity and pollution levels are more complex than has been suggested in the literature to date. The EKC hypothesis and the available theoretical alternatives to it all tend to suggest the need to consider both space and time within an integrated framework. A more formal test of the relevant hypotheses awaits a clearer specification of the problem within a spatiotemporal modeling framework as well as a clear articulation of the appropriate geographical unit within which to study the phenomena (Openshaw, 1984), something we anticipate should be well within the grasp of the field over the years that lie ahead.

NOTES 1. For instance, we can imagine a nation with pollution relatively clustered in one subregion and wealth in another, without regard to the former putting the latter at more than marginal risk. While this may appear at first to be an extreme example, it is a clear weakness of the EKC hypotheses in their present state that the underlying causal mechanisms have not been well-developed. In fact, when applied to a given country, this inverse association between wealth and pollution is precisely what the environmental justice literature and Boyce predicts. The design we use involves both a cross-sectional analysis of 1988 pollution levels and an analysis of change in pollution measures from 1988 through 1998. By using a cross-sectional approach to 1988 pollution data, in combination with a conventional analysis of change between 1988 and 1998, this study inserts an element of temporal change into the specification of the relationship between socioeconomic development, social inequality, and pollution levels. 2. Previous designs in the literature have tended either to be cross-sectional (Boyce et al., 1999) or to involve (informal) pooled cross-sectional time series (Grossman & Krueger, 1995; Roberts & Grimes, 1997; Scruggs, 1998). It is telling as to the mismatch between theory and methods that the EKC hypothesis was effectively offered as a time-series model, which Boyce later revised to include implications of spatial dimensions (Boyce, 1994). Ironically, virtually no studies that we have reviewed in this genre of investigation have used formal time-series models to specify the EKC hypothesis more directly. 3. The use of 1988 1998 differences in the logs of per-capita income and air emissions is a way to capture change within the scope of a two-wave panel (i.e., four variables measuring PCI and emissions at two points in time are reduced to two “difference” variables in this scattergram). One reviewer commented that this specification is inconsistent with the EKC and shows a naivete´ on our part since there may be industry-specific changes related in different ways to PCI, etc. We feel that within the two-wave panel design, this quadratic regression of change in air emissions on change in per-capita income is a reasonable, albeit not definitive,

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specification. This is especially so since, as our literature review shows, very few studies have examined the EKC hypothesis using a time-series design (which does measure actual change) and the vast majority of studies utilize cross-sectional data (which only measures differences among observations at a single point in time). Saris (2001), among others, underscores this research design point but we agree that future studies should more definitively examine the EKC specification using a true change design. This will address the question of how “sensitive” the EKC hypothesis is to alternative specifications.

REFERENCES Allison, P. D. (1990). Change scores as dependent variables in regression analysis. Sociological Methodology, 20, 93 114. Beckerman, W. (1992). Economic growth and the environment. Whose growth? Whose environment? World Development, 20, 481 496. Boyce, J. K. (1994). Inequality as a cause of environmental degradation. Ecological Economics, 11, 169 178. Boyce, J. K., Klemer, A., Templet, P. H., & Willis, C. E. (1999). Power distribution, the environment, and public health: a state-level analysis. Ecological Economics, 29, 127 140. Brechin, S. R., & Kempton, W. (1994). Global environmentalism: A challenge to the postmaterialism thesis? Social Science Quarterly, 75(2), 245 269. Bureau of the Census. (1990a). 1990 Census Summary File 3 CD-ROM discs. Retrieved from www2.census.gov/census_1990/1990STF3.html. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Bureau of the Census. (1990b). County business patterns: 1990. Retrieved from www.census. gov/econ/cbp/download/90_data/index.htm. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Bureau of the Census. (2000). Density using land area for states, counties, metropolitan areas, and places. Retrieved from www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/density.htm. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Bureau of Economic Analysis. (1990) Regional economic information system (REIS). Retrieved from www.bea.gov/regional/reis/. Accessed on August 8, 2013. Butler, M. A., & Beale, C. L. (1994, September). Rural-urban continuum codes for metro and nonmetro counties, 1993. Staff Report No. 9425. Agriculture and Rural Economy Division, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Buttel, F. H. (1987). New directions in environmental sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 13, 465 488. Catton, W. R., Jr. (1980). Overshoot: The ecological basis of revolutionary change. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Carlson, R. T., Jeon, Y., & McCubbin, D. R. (1997). The relationship between air pollution emissions and income: U.S. data, Environmental and Development Economics (2, 433 450). Dalecki, M., & Willits, F. K. (1991). Examining change using regression analysis: Three approaches compared. Sociological Spectrum, 11(2), 127 145. Dunlap, R. E., & Michelson, W. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of environmental sociology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

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Ehrhardt-Martinez, K., Crehshaw, E. M., & Jenkins, J. C. (2002). Deforestation and the environmental Kuznets curve: A cross-national investigation of intervening mechanisms. Social Science Quarterly, 83(1), 226 243. Ekins, P. (1997). The Kuznets curve for the environment and economic growth: Examining the evidence. Environmental Planning A, 29, 805 830. Environmental Protection Agency. (2001). The national emissions inventory. Retrieved from www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/eiinformation.html. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Fisher, D. R., & Freudenburg, W. R. (2001). Ecological modernization and its critics: Assessing the past and looking toward the future. Society and Natural Resources, 14, 701 09. Foster, J. B. (1992). The absolute general law of environmental degradation under capitalism. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 3, 77 82. Freudenburg, W. R. (2001). Risk, responsibility and recreancy. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 9, 87–108. Freudenburg, W. R., & Gramling, R. (1989). The emergence of environmental sociology. Sociological Inquiry, 59(4), 439 52. Frisbie, W. P., & Kasarda, J. D. (1988). Spatial processes. In N. J. Smelser (Ed.), Handbook of sociology (pp. 629 666). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Grossman, G. M., & Krueger, A. B. (1992). Environmental impacts of a North American free trade agreement. Princeton, NJ: Woodrow Wilson School. Grossman, G. M., & Krueger, A. B. (1995). Economic growth and the environment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110(2), 353 377. Huber, J. (1985). Die Regenbogengesellschaft. O¨kologie und Sozialpolitik. Frankfurt am Main: Fisher Verlag. Huber, J. (1991). Unternehmen Umwelt. Weichenstellungen fu¨r eine o¨kologische Marktwirtschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Fisher Verlag. Inglehart, R. (1975). Post-materialism in an environment of insecurity. American Political Science Review, 75, 880 900. Kuznets, S. (1955). Economic growth and income inequality. American Economic Review, 45, 1 28. Leip, D. (2000). Atlas of U.S. presidential elections. Retrieved from uselectionatlas.org. Accessed on August 9, 2013. Liker, J. K., Augustyniak, S., & Duncan, G. J. (1985). Panel data and models of change: A comparison of first difference and conventional two-wave models. Social Science Research, 14, 80 101. Mol, A. P. J. (1997). Ecological modernization: Industrial transformations and environmental reform. In G. Redclift, & M. Woodgate (Eds.), The international handbook of environmental sociology (pp. 138 149). London: Edward Elgar. Mol, A. P. J., & Spaargaren, G. (1993). Environment, modernity and the risk society: The apocalyptic horizon of environmental reform. International Sociology, 8(4), 431–459. Mol, A. P. J., & Spaargaren, G. (2000). Ecological modernization theory in debate: A review. In A. P. J. Mol & D. A. Sonnefeld (Eds.), Ecological modernisation around the world: Perspectives and critical debates (pp.17 49). Essex: Frank Cass. O’Connor, J. R. (1988). Capitalism, nature, socialism: A theoretical introduction. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 1(1), 11 38. O’Connor, J. R. (1991). On the two contradictions of capitalism. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 2, 107 109. Openshaw, S. (1984). Concepts and techniques in modern geography. Norwich: Geo Books.

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Panayotou, T. (1993). Empirical tests and policy analysis of environmental degradation at different stages of economic development. Working Paper WP238. Technology and Employment Programme, International Labour Office, Geneva. Roberts, J. T., & Grimes, P. E. (1997). Carbon intensity and economic development 1962 91: A brief exploration of the environmental Kuznets curve. World Development, 25(2), 191 198. Rothman, D. S., & de Bruyn, S. M. (1998). Probing into the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Ecological Economics, 25, 143 145. Saris, W. E. (2001). The relationship between income and satisfaction: The effect of measurement error and suppressor variables. Social Indicators Research, 53, 117 136. Schnaiberg, A. (1980). The environment: From surplus to scarcity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Schnaiberg, A., & Gould, K. A. (1994). Environment and society: The enduring conflict. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Scruggs, L. A. (1998). Political and economic inequality and the environment. Ecological Economics, 26, 259 275. Selden, T. M., & Song, D. (1994). Environmental quality and development: Is there a Kuznets curve for air pollution estimates? Journal of Environmental Economic Management, 27, 145 162. Shafik, N., & Bandyopadhyay, S. (1992). Economic growth and environmental quality: Time series and cross-country evidence. Policy Research Working Paper No. 904. World Bank, Washington, DC. Spaargaren, G., & Mol, A. P. J. (1992). Sociology, environment, and modernity: Ecological modernization as a theory of social change. Society and Natural Resources, 5, 323 44. Torras, M., & Boyce, J. K. (1998). Income, inequality, and pollution: A reassessment of the environmental Kuznets curve. Ecological Economics, 25, 147 160. White, M. J. (1987). American neighborhoods and residential segregation. New York, NY: Russell Sage. Wong, D. (1996). Aggregation effects in geo-referenced data. In S. L. Arlinghaus (Ed.), Practical handbook of spatial statistics (pp. 83 106). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

ROBBING NATURE’S BANK: PREFACE William R. Freudenburg May 14, 2009. Yesterday, my doctors told me that I have a rare and usually fatal cancer, meaning that I don’t know how much time I have left on this earth. This morning, I decided that one of the things I want to do with that time is to finish this book about the earth, and about what we humans are doing to it. I have spent about 35 years in studying relationships between humans and the environment. For at least half of that time, I have been increasingly bothered by an assumption that seems to permeate almost all environment-society writing and that is clearly wrong. My goal, during whatever time I have left, is to spell out the reality of the situation as clearly as I know how. As will be spelled out more fully in the following pages, that assumption goes by several names, ranging from “the Tragedy of the Commons” to the “IPAT equation.” The common theme in all of them is the assumption of rough proportionality between levels of environmental harm and levels of economic activity; that there are too many of us and that we all use too much. In some senses, that view has to be true. There are over 300 million residents of the United States alone, and 300 million multiplied times almost anything will wind up being a pretty big number. We should all recycle, and do a better job of insulating our homes, and do more walking and less driving. With all due respect to the many authors who have worked so hard on all the other books in the “environment” sections of bookstores, though, even if all of us were to do our best to take on the “X simple things I can do to save the earth,” we would scarcely put a dent in the bigger problem. As I will spell out in later chapters, the things we can do as individuals wind up missing about 90% of all environmental problems. Yes, I mean that literally about 90% of the problems. The reason that most of us still don’t know that is that we’ve never really stopped to see the bigger 299

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picture. My hope is that this book can paint that picture clearly enough to help everyone to keep it in focus over the years ahead. If you pay careful attention the next time some politicians intone, solemnly, that they don’t accept that old assumptions about a need for tradeoffs between economic growth and environmental protection, you’ll notice something strange. Quite a few of them will then go on, in the next sentence or three, to say that they oppose one environmental policy or another precisely because (they claim) it would in fact involve such a tradeoff, being harmful for “jobs” or “the economy.” You will also notice that organized interest groups are forever attacking environmentalists for not caring a bit about jobs and working people and environmentalists will often respond, indignantly but ineffectively, that they are, too, concerned about jobs. As will become clear in the following pages, I have learned a great deal from my fellow academics, but on this point, they are no better. Instead, they write learned commentaries, noting that one such dispute or another is “proof” that capitalism cannot coexist with environmental quality, or that it illustrates what one respected book called The Enduring Conflict between environment and economy.1 Liberals and conservatives may not agree on much, but ironically, with some variations, they do both tend to agree on this particular package of erroneous assumptions. Politically conservative commentators tend to see the creation of environmental harms as being an unfortunate but necessary side effect of prosperity, meaning that environmental protection is too expensive to be affordable and that environmentalists just don’t care about the economy. Critical or leftist commentators generally share the view that environmental protection is expensive, differing only in seeing environmental damage as additional evidence of the drawbacks of capitalism. Although nearly everyone agrees on the supposed conflict between “jobs” and the environment, however, that expectation has everything going for it except one. At least in every case where someone has managed to look at the actual numbers, the expectation has proved to be dead wrong. This book, accordingly, is intended to let out the truth about a littleknown secret. The most environmentally damaging activities tend to have had an actual economic importance that is almost vanishingly small. The dirtiest industries of the economy aren’t found on the cutting edge of the economy they’re closer to the manufacturers of buggy whips and if the dirtiest few firms within those industries were “only” as bad as the average or median firms in their own industries, the total amounts of pollution from the dirtiest industries in the economy could be reduced by anywhere from 60% to 95%, depending on the industry in question.

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If the findings are that clear, why don’t we do something about it? Partly because the heavy polluters certainly wouldn’t have any reason to bring the facts to our attention and partly because the rest of us still assume that what we face is a Tragedy of the “Commons,” and that we’re all more or less equally responsible for environmental problems. For years, major polluters have defended themselves by claiming that they bring vital economic benefits the economy as a whole and even environmental thinkers who are otherwise very smart have usually gone along with those claims. In fact, the big polluters’ actual “contributions” to the economy have been more or less in line with the “benefits” that could have been delivered by a string of bank robberies. A few people really do make out like bandits, but for the economy as a whole, the net effect is more likely to be negative and I mean negative economically, as well as environmentally. The process amounts to the removal of money from the many, for the benefit of the few. In the name of helping “the economy,” those few bandits are robbing nature’s bank, and the rest of us along with our children, and with the environment wind up being poorer as a result. [To be finished later …] But events would conspire to see that Bill would finish neither this preface, nor the book that it introduces. First, there was the cancer, Cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, rare but extremely malevolent. In June, 2009 Bill had surgery and after recovery started a series of chemo and radiation regimes that would go on until November of 2010. They did limit his strength and endurance, but never impaired his intellect. Then there was Macondo! On the April 20, 2010 the oil giant BP had a blowout from its Macondo well that was being drilled on block 252 in the Mississippi Canyon area in the Gulf of Mexico, about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Gas from the well exploded on the Deepwater Horizon, a semisubmersible drilling rig that BP was leasing from the drilling company Transocean, killing eleven members of the crew and setting the rig on fire. The Deepwater Horizon sank two days later starting an uncontrolled venting of crude oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico, from the high pressure reservoir that had been taped by the well. Bill and I had researched and written about offshore oil for decades (Freudenburg & Gramling, 1993, 1994; Gramling, 1996) and we knew that the push to exploit the deep waters of the Gulf lay with questionable policy decisions starting with the Nixon Administration and reinforced by most2 subsequent administrations and congress. We also knew that BP had a

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long history of breaking the rules, cutting corners and in general using its clout to improve its bottom line. As the enormity of the gushing oil well began to emerge we became determined not to let this simply be seen as an industrial accident, one of the potential prices to be paid for economic prosperity. By June we were writing a book. The summer of 2010 went by in a blur (at least for me), but by the end of August we had a manuscript and a publisher. An incredible publisher, MIT Press, which compressed a normal seven month production time frame into seven weeks! This, of course, required our immediate attention and turnaround times of only days for the various drafts through September and much of October. The book (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2011) actually came out in late October and Bill died two months later on December 28, 2010. Hopefully this volume will address some of Bill’s concerns. Bob Gramling

NOTES 1. Extensive citations will be provided later, but the book title is from Schaiberg and Gould (1994). 2. Carter being the exception emphasized conservation over increasing production.

WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG’S CURRICULUM VITAE WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG Updated July, 2013

ADDRESS University:

Dehlsen Professor of Environment and Society Environmental Studies Program University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Phone: 805-893-8282 Fax: 805-893-8686

PERSONAL Born 1951, Norfolk, Nebraska Married, one child EDUCATION 1974

B.A.

Integrated Studies/Communication University of Nebraska-Lincoln -Phi Beta Kappa -Degree with Distinction -“Superior Student” Ranking

1976

M.A.

Sociology, Yale University

1977

M.Phil

Yale University

1979

Ph.D.

Sociology, Yale University

EMPLOYMENT 2002 2010

Dehlsen Professor of Environment and Society Environmental Studies Program, University of California Santa Barbara

303

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1991 2002

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Professor, Department of Rural Sociology and Institute of Environmental Studies (IES), University of Wisconsin-Madison.

1986 1991

Associate Professor, Department of Rural Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

1984 1985

Visiting Associate Professor, University of Denver.

1983 1984

American Sociological Association Congressional Fellow, Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives.

1983 1986

Associate Professor, Department of Rural Sociology, Washington State University.

1978 1983

Assistant Professor, Departments of Sociology and Rural Sociology, Washington State University.

Offices and Professional Positions Held American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Western Regional Representative of the Rural Sociological Society, 1979 1981, 1982 1986. National Representative of the Rural Sociological Society, 1981 1982. Secretary, Section K (Social, Economic and Political Sciences), 1986 1993. Chair-Elect, Chair, and Retiring Chair, Section K (Social, Economic and Political Sciences), 1994 1997. American Sociological Association (ASA) Elected Council Member, ASA Section on Environmental Sociology, 1980 1983. “Energy and Society” Editor, Environmental Sociology, 1979 1983. Representative to the American Sociological Association Section Board from the Section on Environmental Sociology, 1979 1982, 1989 1991. Chair, “Ad Hoc Committee on Environmental Sociology in Non-Academic Settings,” ASA Section on Environmental Sociology, 1980 1981. Contributing Editor, Environmental Sociology, 1979 1985. Chair-Elect, Section on Environment and Technology, 1987 1989. Chair, Section on Environment and Technology, 1989 1991. Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) Co-Founder (with Robert Wilkinson), 2004 2005 Founding/Interim Secretary, 2008 2009 President-Elect, 2009 2010

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Council on Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) Task Force on Introduction/Spread of Pests of Plants and Animals, 1982 1987. International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) Char, Nominations Committee, 1984 1985. Representative to Society for Risk Analysis, 1987 1992. Member, Nominations Committee, 1991 1992. National Academy of Sciences/Engineering (NAS/NAE) and National Research Council (NRC) Panelist, Exploratory Committee on the Future of Nuclear Power, 1984. Participant, Independent Review of Emergency Planning and Community Right-toKnow Act of 1986 (“SARA Title III”), 1990. Member, Committee to Review Adequacy of Scientific Information for Oil and Gas Development on the Alaska Outer Continental Shelf, 1991 1994. Member, Committee to Review Low-Level Nuclear Waste Decision-Making, New York State, 1993 1997. Member, Exploratory Committee on Research in Pristine Environments, 1995. Member, Committee on Long-Term Disposition of Department of Energy Nuclear Sites (“Remediation of Buried and Tank Wastes”), 1997 2000. Participant, Workshop on “Earth Systems Engineering,” 2000 National Academy of Sciences/Engineering (NAS/NAE) and National Research Council (NRC), continued: Panelist, Committee on Staged Approaches to Repository Siting, 2001 Panelist, Project on Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities for Decision Making Risk Analysis and Policy Association (RAPA) Elected Member of Council, 1997 1999 Rural Sociology Society (RSS) Secretary, Natural Resources Research Group, 1980 1981. Chair, Natural Resources Research Group, 1982 1983. National Program Chair, 1983 1984. Council Member, 1983 1984. Chair, Natural Resources Research Group Nominations Committee, 1984 1985. Program Committee Member, 1986 1987. Local Arrangements Chair, 1986 1987. Nominations Committee Member, 1989 1990. Vice President, 1993 1994. Council Member, 2000 2002.

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Awards Committee Chair, 2001 2002. President-Elect, 2003 2004. President, 2004 2005. Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Representative, Social Science Agricultural Agenda Project, 1986 1989.

U.S. Department of Energy Member, Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Advisory Committee (EMAC) and Environmental Management Advisory Board (EMAB), 1992 1994. Work Group Chair, Project to Develop National Science and Technology Roadmap for Long-Term Stewardship, 2001 2002.

U.S. Department of the Interior Member, U.S. Minerals Management Service, Scientific Advisory Panel on the Outer Continental Shelf, 1983 1990 (Chair, Socioeconomic Subcommittee, 1986 1990).

Awards National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 1975 1979 Congressional Fellowship, American Sociological Association, 1983 1984 Award of Merit, Natural Resources Research Group, Rural Sociological Society, 1992 Distinguished Contribution Award, Section on Environment and Technology, American Sociological Association, 1996 Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1998 Award for Best Article of 1999 2000, Pacific Sociological Association (for “Forty Years of Spotted Owls”) Award for Best Article of the Year, Section on Political Sociology, American Sociological Association (for “History Repeats Itself, but How?”), 2001 Honorable Mention, 2002 Robert Park Award, Section on Community and Urban Sociology, American Sociological Association (for “History Repeats Itself, but How?”) Winner, Inaugural Frederick Buttel Award for Outstanding Article of 2004 2006, Rural Sociological Society (for “Privileged Access, Privileged Accounts,” 2005), 2006 “Outstanding Professor” Award winner, Residence Halls Association and Office of Residential Life, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006 2007 Excellence in Research/Theory Award, Rural Sociological Society, 2010

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PUBLICATIONS Books 1984

Freudenburg, William R. and Eugene A. Rosa, eds. Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Are There Critical Masses? Boulder, CO: American Association for the Advancement of Science/Westview Press.

1984

McKell, Cyrus M., Donald G. Browne, Elinor C. Cruze, William R. Freudenburg, Richard L. Perrine and Fred Roach, eds. Paradoxes of Western Energy Development: How Can We Maintain the Land and the People If We Develop? Boulder, CO: American Association for the Advancement of Science/Westview Press.

1993

Freudenburg, William R. and Ted I. K. Youn, eds. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy: A New Perspective on Problems and Policy. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

1994

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. Oil in Troubled Waters: Perceptions, Politics, and the Battle over Offshore Oil. Albany, NY: State University of New York (SUNY) Press.

1999

Freudenburg, William R. and Ted I. K. Youn, eds. Institutional Failure in Environmental Management. Stamford, CT: JAI Press.

2000

Leschine, Thomas et al. (Freudenburg listed sixth of fourteen authors). Long-Term Institutional Management of U.S. Department of Energy Legacy Waste Sites. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

2008

Wilkinson, Robert and William R. Freudenburg, eds. Equity and the Environment. San Diego, CA: JAI Press.

2009

Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling, Shirley Laska and Kai Erikson. Catastrophe in the Making: The Engineering of Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow. Washington, DC: Island Press.

2011

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America. Cambridge: MIT Press.

2013

Lee, Kai N., William R. Freudenburg and Richard B. Howarth. Humans in the Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Studies. New York: W.W. Norton (in press).

Refereed Journal Articles 1977

Burstein, Paul and William R. Freudenburg. “Ending the Vietnam War: Components of Change in Senate Voting on Vietnam War Bills.” American Journal of Sociology 82 (5): 991 1006.

1978

Burstein, Paul and William R. Freudenburg. “Changing Public Policy: The Impact of Public Opinion, Antiwar Demonstrations and War Costs on Senate Voting on Vietnam War Motions.” American Journal of Sociology 84 (1): 99 122.

1981

Freudenburg, William R. “Women and Men in an Energy Boomtown: Adjustment, Alienation, and Adaptation.” Rural Sociology 46 (2): 220 244.

1982

Freudenburg, William R. “Balance and Bias in Boomtown Research.” Pacific Sociological Review 25 (3): 323 338.

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1982

Freudenburg, William R. “Course Outline: Social Impact Assessment.” Impact Assessment Bulletin 1 (2): 100 105.

1982

Freudenburg, William R., Linda M. Bacigalupi and Cheryl Landoll-Young. “Mental Health Consequences of Rapid Community Growth: A Report From the Longitudinal Study of Boomtown Mental Impacts.” Journal of Health and Human Resources Administration 4 (3): 334 352.

1982

Freudenburg, William R. and Kenneth M. Keating. “Increasing the Impact of Sociology on Social Impact Assessment: Toward Ending the Inattention.” The American Sociologist 17 (2): 71 80.

1983

Freudenburg, William R. and Darryll Olsen. “Public Interest and Political Abuse: Public Participation and Social Impact Assessment.” Journal of the Community Development Society 14 (2): 67 82.

1983

Bacigalupi, Linda M. and William R. Freudenburg. “Increased Mental Health Caseloads in an Energy Boomtown.” Administration in Mental Health 10 (4): 306 322.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. “Boomtown’s Youth: The Differential Impacts of Rapid Community Growth Upon Adolescents and Adults.” American Sociological Review 49 (5): 697 705.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. and Rodney K. Baxter. “Host Community Attitudes Toward Nuclear Power Plants: A Reassessment.” Social Science Quarterly 65 (4): 1129 1136.

1984

Olsen, Darryll and William R. Freudenburg. “The Public Interest and Technology Assessment: Two Dozen Eternal Truths About People and Technology Revisited.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 26 (1): 93 95.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. “Probablistic Risk Assessment and Social Impact Assessment: The Need for Cross-Fertilization.” Impact Assessment Bulletin 3 (2): 44 46.

1985

Freudenburg, William R. “Succession and Success: A New Look at an Old Concept.” Sociological Spectrum 5 (3): 269 289.

1985

Freudenburg, William R. and Rodney K. Baxter. “Nuclear Reactions: Public Attitudes and Public Policies toward Nuclear Power Plants.” Policy Studies Review 5 (1): 96 110 (Special issue on Energy Policy).

1985

Freudenburg, William R. and Kenneth M. Keating. “Applying Sociology to Policy: Social Science and the Environmental Impact Statement.” Rural Sociology 50 (4): 578 605 (Special 50th Anniversary Issue).

Reprinted in Brian Vargus, ed. Tools for Sociology. Acton, MA: Copley, 1986.

Reprinted in Joseph DeMartini, ed. Sociology and Public Policy. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1987. 1986

Freudenburg, William R. “The Density of Acquaintanceship: An Overlooked Variable in Community Research?” American Journal of Sociology 92 (1): 27 63. Featured in H. J. Loether and D. G. McTavish, Descriptive Inferential Statistics: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1988.

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1986

Freudenburg, William R. “Social Impact Assessment.” Annual Review of Sociology 12: 451 478.

1986

Freudenburg, William R. “Sociology in Legis-Land: An Ethnographic Report on Congressional Culture.” Sociological Quarterly 27 (3): 313 326.

1988

Freudenburg, William R. “Perceived Risk, Real Risk: Social Science and the Art of Probabilistic Risk Assessment.” Science 242 (4875): 44 49. Reprinted in Susan L. Cutter, ed. Readings in Environmental Hazards. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. Reprinted in Sally Lerner, ed. Environmental Resources & Society. Waterloo, ON: University of Waterloo Press, 1993. Reprinted in L. W. Chambers Self-Learning Modules for Defining and Measuring Community Health. Hamilton, ON: Canadian Public Health Association, 1997.

1989

Freudenburg, William R. “Social Scientists’ Contributions to Environmental Management.” Journal of Social Issues 45 (1): 133 152 (Special issue on “Managing the Environment”).

1989

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “The Emergence of Environmental Sociology.” Sociological Inquiry 59 (4): 439 452.

1990

Gramling, Robert and William R. Freudenburg. “A Closer Look at ‘Local Control’: Communities, Commodities, and the Collapse of the Coast.” Rural Sociology 55 (4): 541 558.

1990

Llewellyn, L.G. and William R. Freudenburg. “Legal Requirements for Social Impact Assessments: Assessing the Social Science Fallout from Three Mile Island.” Society and Natural Resources 2 (3): 193 208.

1991

Freudenburg, William R. “A ‘Good Business Climate’ as Bad Economic News?” Society and Natural Resources 3 (4): 313 331. Reprinted in Baleshwar Thakur, ed. Resource Management in Developing Countries. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co., 1992.

1991

Freudenburg, William R. “Rural-Urban Differences in Environmental Concern: A Closer Look.” Sociological Inquiry 61 (2): 167 198.

1991

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert E. Jones. “Criminal Behavior and Rapid Community Growth: Examining the Evidence.” Rural Sociology 56 (4): 619 645.

1991

Freudenburg, William R. and Timothy R. Jones. “Attitudes and Stress in the Presence of Technological Risk: A Test of the Supreme Court Hypothesis.” Social Forces 69 (4): 1143 1168.

1992

Freudenburg, William R. “Nothing Recedes Like Success? Risk Analysis and the Organizational Amplification of Risks.” Risk: Issues in Health and Safety 3 (1): 1 35. Excerpted in Environmental Health and Safety Digest 1 (1): 15 17. Reprinted in V. Bier, ed. Expanding Human Performance Envelopes: Tools for Industry. Madison, WI: Center for Human Performance in Complex Systems, 1998.

1992

Freudenburg, William R. “Addictive Economies: Extractive Industries and Vulnerable Localities in a Changing World Economy.” Rural Sociology 57 (3): 305 332.

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1992

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Community Impacts of Technological Change: Toward a Longitudinal Perspective.” Social Forces 70 (4): 937 955.

1992

Freudenburg, William R. and Susan K. Pastor. “Public Responses to Technological Risks: Toward a Sociological Perspective.” Sociological Quarterly 33 (3): 389 412.

1992

Freudenburg, William R. and Susan K. Pastor. “NIMBYs and LULUs: Stalking the Syndromes.” Journal of Social Issues 48 (4): 39 61.

1992

Gramling, Robert and William R. Freudenburg. “Opportunity-Threat, Development, and Adaptation: Toward a Comprehensive Framework for Social Impact Assessment.” Rural Sociology 57 (2): 216 234.

1992

Gramling, Robert and William R. Freudenburg. “The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in the Context of U.S. Petroleum Politics.” Industrial Crisis Quarterly 6 (3): 175 196 (Special issue on the Exxon Valdez spill and its aftermath). Reprinted in J. Steven Picou, Duane A. Gill and Maurie J. Cohen, eds. The Exxon Valdez Disaster: Readings on a Modern Social Problem. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 1997. Reprinted in Sarah Brabant et al., eds. Readings in General Sociology. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1998.

1993

Freudenburg, William R. “Risk and Recreancy: Weber, the Division of Labor, and the Rationality of Risk Perceptions.” Social Forces 71 (4): 909 932. Reprinted in Richard Houtman, ed. Een Hertovering van de Wereld? Rotterdam: Erasmus Universiteit, 1997. Reprinted in Richard Altschuler, The Living Legacy of Marx, Durkheim and Weber: Applications and Analyses of Classical Sociological Theory by Modern Social Scientists. New York, NY: Gordian Knot Books, 1998.

1993

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Socio-Environmental Factors and Development Policy: Understanding Opposition and Support for Offshore Oil.” Sociological Forum 8 (3): 341 364. Reprinted in Sarah Brabant et al., Readings in General Sociology. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1998.

1993

Freudenburg, William R. “Heresy, Intuition, and Natural Gas: Observations on ‘Intuitive Toxicology’.” Comments on Toxicology 4 (6): 493 500.

1993

Clarke, Lee and William R. Freudenburg. “Rhetoric, Reform, and Risk.” Society 30 (5): 78 81.

1994

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Natural Resources and Rural Poverty: A Closer Look.” Society and Natural Resources 7 (1): 5 22.

1994

Freudenburg, William R. and Scott Frickel. “Digging Deeper: Mining-Dependent Communities in Historical Perspective.” Rural Sociology 59 (2): 266 288. Reprinted in Craig R. Humphrey, Tammy L. Lewis and Frederick H. Buttel, eds. Environment, Energy and Society: Exemplary Works. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2003.

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1994

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Bureaucratic Slippage and Failures of Agency Vigilance: The Case of the Environmental Studies Program.” Social Problems 41 (2): 214 239.

1994

Freudenburg, William R. and Julie A. Rursch. “The Risks of ‘Putting the Numbers in Context’: A Cautionary Tale.” Risk Analysis 14 (6): 949 958. Reprinted in Ragnar E. Lofstedt and Lynn Frewer, eds. The Earthscan Reader in Risk and Modern Society. London: Routledge, 1997.

1995

Freudenburg, William R., Scott Frickel and Robert Gramling. “Beyond the SocietyNature Divide: Learning to Think about a Mountain.” Sociological Forum 10 (3): 361 392.

1996

Davidson, Debra J. and William R. Freudenburg. “Gender and Environmental Risk Concerns: A Review and Analysis of Available Research.” Environment and Behavior 28 (3): 302 339.

1996

Freudenburg, William R. “Risky Thinking: Irrational Fears About Risk and Society.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 545 (1): 44 53.

1996

Freudenburg, William R., Cynthia-Lou Coleman, James Gonzales and Catherine Helgeland. “Media Coverage of Hazard Events: Analyzing the Assumptions.” Risk Analysis 16 (1): 31 42.

1996

Freudenburg, William R., Scott Frickel and Robert Gramling. “Crossing the Next Divide.” Sociological Forum 11 (1): 161 75.

1996

Frickel, Scott and William R. Freudenburg. “Mining the Past: Historical Context and the Changing Implications of Natural Resource Extraction.” Social Problems 43 (4): 601 623.

1996

Gramling, Robert and William R. Freudenburg. “Environmental Sociology: Toward a Paradigm for the 21st Century.” Sociological Spectrum 16 (4): 347 370.

1996

Gramling, Robert and William R. Freudenburg. “Crude, Coppertone®, and the Coast: Developmental Channelization and the Constraint of Alternative Development Opportunities.” Society and Natural Resources 9 (5): 483 506.

1997

Freudenburg, William R. “The Crude and the Refined: Sociology, Obscurity, Language, and Oil.” Sociological Spectrum 17 (1): 1 28 (1995 MSSA plenary address).

1997

Freudenburg, William R. “Contamination, Corrosion, and the Social Order: An Overview.” Current Sociology 45 (3): 19 39 (Lead article for special issue on “Technological Disasters and Social Change”).

1997

Freudenburg, William R. and Ted I. K. Youn. “Introduction: A Variety of Social Problems and Institutional Failures.” Research in Social Problems and Public Policy 6: 1 11.

1998

Freudenburg, William R., Scott Frickel and Rachel Dwyer. “Diversity and Diversion: Higher Superstition and the Dangers of Insularity in Science and Technology Studies.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 18 (5/6): 3 32 (Lead article in special double issue on “Technology and Society”).

1998

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Linked to What? Economic Linkages in an Extractive Economy.” Society and Natural Resources 11 (6): 569 586.

312 1998

WILLIAM R. FREUDENBURG’S CURRICULUM VITAE Freudenburg, William R., Lisa J. Wilson and Daniel O’Leary. “Forty Years of Spotted Owls? A Longitudinal Analysis of Logging-Industry Job Losses.” Sociological Perspectives 41 (1): 1 26. Named “Best Article of 1998 2000” by Pacific Sociological Association. Reprinted in Leslie King and Debrorah McCarthy, eds. Environmental Sociology: From Analysis to Action. New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

1999

Freudenburg, William R. and Margarita Alario. “What Ecologists can Learn from Nuclear Scientists.” Ecosystems 2 (4): 286 291.

1999

Freudenburg, William R. and Ted I. K. Youn. “Institutional Failure in Environmental Management: Toward a Fuller Understanding of Social Problems and Public Policy.” Research in Social Problems and Public Policy 7: 3 18.

1999

Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling and Rachel Schurman. “Natural Resource Extraction and Rural Economic Prospects: A Closer Look.” Western Planner 19 (8): 6 8.

2000

Molotch, Harvey, William R. Freudenburg and Krista Paulsen. “History Repeats Itself, but How? City Character, Urban Tradition, and the Accomplishment of Place.” American Sociological Review 65 (6): 791 823. Named “Best Article of 2000” by American Sociological Association’s Section on Political Sociology. Honorary Mention, 2002 Robert Park Award, American Sociological Association’s Section on Community and Urban Sociology.

2000

Freudenburg, William R., Lisa J. Wilson and Daniel O’Leary. “Spotting the Myths about Spotted Owls: Claims of Causality, Burdens of Proof, and the ‘Cause’ of Rain in Seattle.” Sociological Perspectives 42 (2): 335 354.

2001

Fisher, Dana and William R. Freudenburg. “Ecological Modernization and Its Critics: Assessing the Past and Looking toward the Future.” Society and Natural Resources 14 (8): 701 709.

2001

Freudenburg, William R. “Risky Thinking: Facts, Values and Blind Spots in Societal Decisions about Risks.” Reliability Engineering and System Safety 72 (2): 125 130.

2001

Freudenburg, William R. “Risk, Responsibility and Recreancy.” Research in Social Problems and Public Policy 9: 87 108.

2002

Freudenburg, William R. “Navel Warfare? The Best of Minds, the Worst of Minds, and the Dangers of Misplaced Concreteness.” Society and Natural Resources 15 (3): 229 237.

2002

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “How Crude: Advocacy Coalitions, Offshore Oil, and the Self-Negating Belief.” Policy Sciences 35 (1): 17 41.

2002

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Scientific Expertise and Natural Resource Decisions: Social Science Participation on Interdisciplinary Scientific Committees.” Social Science Quarterly 83 (1): 119 136.

2002

Freudenburg, William R. and Lisa J. Wilson. “Mining the Data: Analyzing the Economic Effects of Mining on Rural Communities.” Sociological Inquiry 72 (4): 549 575.

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2002

Paulsen, Krista, Harvey Molotch and William R. Freudenburg. “Data Happen, But How?” American Sociological Review 67 (6): 917 924.

2003

Alario, Margarita and William R. Freudenburg. “The Paradoxes of Modernity: Scientific Advances, Environmental Problems, and Risks to the Social Fabric?” Sociological Forum 17 (2): 193 214.

2004

“Can We Learn from Failure? Examining U.S. Experiences with Nuclear Repository Siting.” Journal of Risk Research 7 (2): 153 169.

2004

Fisher, Dana R. and William R. Freudenburg. “Post Industrialization and Environmental Quality: An Empirical Analysis of the Environmental State.” Social Forces 83 (1): 157 188.

2005

Freudenburg, William R. “Seeding Science, Courting Conclusions: Reexamining the Intersection of Science, Corporate Cash, and the Law.” Sociological Forum 20 (1): 3 33.

2005

Freudenburg, William R. “Privileged Access, Privileged Accounts: Toward a Socially Structured Theory of Resources and Discourses.” Social Forces 94 (1): 89 114.

2006

Alario, Margarita and William R. Freudenburg. “High-Risk Technology, Legitimacy and Science: The U.S. Search for Energy Policy Consensus.” Journal of Risk Research 9 (7): 737 753.

2006

Freudenburg, William R. “Environmental Degradation, Disproportionality, and the Double Diversion: The Importance of Reaching Out, Reaching Ahead, and Reaching Beyond.” Rural Sociology 71 (1): 3 32.

2006

Gramling, Robert and William R. Freudenburg. “Attitudes Toward Offshore Oil Development: A Summary of Current Evidence.” Ocean & Coastal Management 49 (7/8): 442 461.

2006

Haberl, H. et al. (Freudenburg listed ninth of twenty authors). “From LTER to LTSER: Conceptualizing the Socioeconomic Dimension of Long-term Socioecological Research.” Ecology and Society 11 (2): 13. [URL:http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/ vol11/iss2/art13/].

2007

Alario, Margarita and William R. Freudenburg. “Atoms for War, Atoms for Peace: Probing the Paradoxes of Modernity.” Sociological Inquiry 77 (2): 219 240.

2007

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Wilkinson. “Equity and the Environment: A Pressing Need and a New Step Forward.” Research in Social Problems and Public Policy 15: 1 18.

2007

Freudenburg, William R. and Margarita Alario. “Weapons of Mass Distraction: Magicianship, Misdirection, and the Dark Side of Legitimation.” Sociological Forum 22 (2): 146 173.

2007

Freudenburg, William R. and Debra Davidson. “Nuclear Families, Nuclear Risks: The Effects of Gender, Geography and Progeny on Attitudes toward a Nuclear Waste Facility.” Rural Sociology 72 (2): 215 243.

2008

Freudenburg, William R. “Rethinking Threats to Scientific Balance in Contexts of Litigation and Regulation.” Environmental Health Perspectives 116 (1) 142 147.

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2008

Freudenburg, William R. “Thirty Years of Scholarship and Science on Environment Society Relationships.” Organization and Environment 21 (4): 449 459.

2008

Freudenburg, William R. “The Social Sciences and the Fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM): Toward the Building of Improved, Two-way Bridges.” Research in Social Problems and Public Policy 16: 279 300.

2008

Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling and Debra Davidson. “Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs): Science and the Politics of Doubt.” Sociological Inquiry 78 (1): 2 38.

2008

Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling, Shirley Laska and Kai Erikson. “Organizing Hazards, Engineering Disasters? Improving the Recognition of Political-Economic Factors in the Creation of Disasters.” Social Forces 87 (2): 1015 1038.

2009

Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling, Shirley Laska and Kai Erikson. “Disproportionality and Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.” Social Science Quarterly 90 (3): 497 515.

2009

Freudenburg, William R. “Sociology’s Rediscovery of the Environment: Setting the Stage.” Sociological Inquiry 79 (4): 505 508.

2010

Alario, Margarita and William R. Freudenburg. “Environmental Risks and Environmental Justice, or How Titanic Risks are not so Titanic After All.” Sociological Inquiry 84 (4): 500 512.

2010

Freudenburg, William R. and Violetta Muselli. “Global Warming Estimates, Media Expectations, and the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge.” Global Environmental Change 20 (3): 483 491.

2011

Robert Gramling, William R. Freudenburg, Shirley Laska and Kai T. Erikson. “Obsolete and Irreversible: Technology, Local Economic Development and the Environment.” Society and Natural Resources 24 (6): 521 534.

2012

Gramling, Robert and William R. Freudenburg. “A Century of Macondo: United States Energy Policy and the BP Blowout Catastrophe.” American Behavioral Scientist 56:48 75.

2013

Freudenburg, William R. and Violetta Muselli. “Re-examining Climate Change Debates: Science Disagreement or Scientific Certainty Argumentations Methods (SCAMs).” American Behavioral Scientist 57: 777 795.

2013

Gramling, Robert and William R. Freudenburg. “The Growth Machine and the Everglades: Expanding a Useful Theoretical Perspective.” Society and Natural Resources 26: 642 654.

Book Chapters 1979

Freudenburg, William R. “An Ounce of Prevention: Another Approach to Mitigating the Human Problems of Boomtowns.” In U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (ed.) Energy Resource Development: Implications for Women and Minorities in the Intermountain West. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.

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1981

Freudenburg, William R. “A Social Impact Analysis of a Rocky Mountain Energy Boomtown.” In John E. Carlson, William R. Lassey, and Marie L. Lassey (eds.) Rural Society and Environment in America. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

1982

Freudenburg, William R. “Social Impact Assessment: Issues for the 1980s.” In Don Dillman and Daryl J. Hobbs (eds.) Rural Society in the U.S.: Issues for the 1980s. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

1982

Freudenburg, William R. “The Impacts of Rapid Growth on Social and Personal WellBeing of Local Community Residents.” In Bruce A. Weber and E. Howell (eds.) Coping With Rapid Growth in Rural Communities. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Reprinted in C. S. Yadar, ed. Perspectives in Urban Geography. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co., 1985. Reprinted in Sally Lerner, ed. Environmental Resources & Society. Waterloo, ON: University of Waterloo, 1993.

1982

Freudenburg, William R. “The Social and Economic Impacts of Oil Shale Development: Research to Support Decisions.” In K. K. Petersen (ed.) Oil Shale: The Environmental Challenges II. Golden, CO: Colorado School of Mines Press.

1983

Freudenburg, William R. “Theoretical Development in Social Impact Assessments.” In S. Yarie (ed.) The Social, Economic and Cultural Impacts of Natural Resource Development. Anchorage, AK: University of Alaska Press.

1983

Freudenburg, William R. “The Promise and Peril of Public Participation in Social Impact Assessment.” In Gregory A. Daneke, Margo Garcia and Jerome Delli Priscoli (eds.) Public Involvement and Social Impact Assessment. Boulder CO: Westview Press.

1984

Farhar-Pilgrim, Barbara and William R. Freudenburg. “Nuclear Energy in Perspective: A Comparative Assessment of the Public View.” In William R. Freudenburg and Eugene A. Rosa (eds.) Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Are There Critical Masses? Boulder, CO: Westview Press/American Association for the Advancement of Science.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. “An Overview of the Social Science Research.” In C. M. McKell et al. (eds.) Paradoxes of Western Energy Development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press/American Association for the Advancement of Science.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. and Eugene A. Rosa. “Are the Masses Critical?” In William R. Freudenburg and Eugene A. Rosa (eds.) Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Are there Critical Masses? Boulder, CO: Westview Press/American Association for the Advancement of Science.

1984

Rosa, A. Eugene and William R. Freudenburg. “Nuclear Power at the Crossroads.” In William R. Freudenburg and Eugene A. Rosa (eds.) Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Are there Critical Masses? Boulder, CO: Westview Press/American Association for the Advancement of Science.

1985

Freudenburg, William R. “Waste Not: The Special Impacts of Nuclear Waste Facilities.” In James G. McCray et al. (eds.) Waste Isolation in the U.S., Vol. 3: Waste Policies and Programs. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

1986

Freudenburg, William R. “Assessing the Social Impacts of Rural Resource Developments: An Overview.” In Pamela Elkind-Savatsky (ed.) Differential Social Impacts of Rural Resource Development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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1986

Freudenburg, William R. “Federal Regulation and Scientific Research.” In Lambert N. Wenner (ed.) Social Science Information and Resource Management. Washington, DC: U.S. Forest Service.

1986

Freudenburg, Wiliam R. “Theoretical Antidotes to the Problem of Selecting Variables.” In John Petterson (ed.) Monitoring Sociocultural and Institutional Change in the Aleutian-Pribilof Region. Washington, DC: U.S. Minerals Management Service.

1987

Freudenburg, William R. “Rationality and Irrationality in Estimating the Risks of Nuclear Waste Disposal.” In Roy G. Post (ed.) Waste Isolation in the U.S.: Technical Programs and Public Participation. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

1987

Freudenburg, William R. “Heresy and the Plow: Diversity, Efficiency and the Future of the Land-Grant System.” In Neil Schaller (ed.) Social Science Agricultural Agenda Project. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture.

1987

Freudenburg, William R. “Social Science in the U.S. Forest Service: The View from Another Perspective.” In Lambert N. Wenner (ed.) Social Science in a Resource Management Agency: A Look at the Road Ahead. Washington, DC: U.S. Forest Service.

1989

Freudenburg, William R. “A Closer Look at the NIMBY/LULU Syndrome.” In Morton G. Wacks (ed.) Waste Management ’89. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

1990

Freudenburg, William R. “Public Perceptions of Offshore Oil and Gas Development: The Roles of Risk and Rationality.” In Katherine L. Mitchell, et al. (eds.) Offshore Oil and Gas: Risks and Benefits. Los Angeles, CA: U.S. Department of Interior, MMS POCS Office. Report #14-12-0001-30327.

1992

Freudenburg, William R. “Heuristics, Biases, and the Not-So-General Publics: Expertise and Error in the Assessment of Risks.” In Dominic Golding and Sheldon Krimsky (eds.) Theories of Risk. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

1992

Freudenburg, William R. “The Role of Human Error in the Estimation and Management of Risks.” In Harvey J. Clewell III (ed.) Chemical Risk Assessment in the DoD: Science, Policy, and Practice. Cincinnati, OH: American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists.

1993

Clarke, Lee and William R. Freudenburg. “Risk Communication, Recreancy and Organizational Effectiveness.” In Leon N. Moses and Dan Lindstrom (eds.) Transportation of Hazardous Materials: Issues in Law, Social Science and Engineering. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

1993

Freudenburg, William R. “Two Decades Later: Progress and Paradox in Socioeconomic Impact Assessment.” In Stephen G. Hildebrand and Johnnie B. Cannon (eds.) Environmental Analysis: The NEPA Experience. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers.

1993

Rosa, Eugene A. and William R. Freudenburg. “The Historical Development of Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Implications for Nuclear Waste Policy.” In Riley E. Dunlap, Michael E. Kraft and Eugene A. Rosa (eds.) Public Reactions to Nuclear Waste: Citizens’ Views of Repository Siting. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

1994

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Rural Communities.” In Ruth A. Eblen and William R. Eblen (eds.) The Encyclopedia of the Environment. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

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1994

Freudenburg, William R. “Mega-Events in Mini-Communities: Lessons for Social Planning from the U.S. Energy Boomtowns.” In Roel Puijk (ed.) OL-94 og Forskningen. Lillehammer, Norway: Kopinor.

1996

Freudenburg, William R. “Strange Chemistry: Environmental Risk Conflicts in a World of Science, Values, and Blind Spots.” In C. Richard Cothern (ed.) Handbook of Environmental Risk Decision Making: Values, Perceptions, and Ethics. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

1997

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Foreword.” In Paul H. Landis (ed.) Three Mining Towns: A Study in Cultural Change. Middleton, WI: Social Ecology Press.

1998

Freudenburg, William R. “Tools for Understanding the Socioeconomic and Political Settings for Environmental Decision Making.” In Virginia Dale and M.E. English (eds.) Tools to Aid Environmental Decision Making. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.

1998

Freudenburg, William R. “Dealing with those Pesky, Low-Probability Disasters.” In Constance Perin and John S. Carroll (eds.) Organizational Analysis in High-Hazard Production Systems: An Academy-Industry Dialogue. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

1999

Freudenburg, William R. “The ‘Risk Society’ Reconsidered: Recreancy, the Division of Labor, and Risks to the Social Fabric.” In Maurie Cohen (ed.) Risk in the Modern Age. London: Macmillan.

1999

Freudenburg, William R. “Tools for Understanding the Socioeconomic and Political Settings for Environmental Decision Making.” In V.H. Dale and M.R. English (eds.) Tools to Aid Environmental Decision-Making. New York: Springer.

1999

Freudenburg, William R. and Frederick H. Buttel. “Expert and Popular Opinion Regarding Climate Change in the United States.” In Rob Coppock, Elaine McGarraugh, Sybille Rushton and Robert D. Tuch (eds.) Climate Change Policy in Germany and the United States. Bonn: German-American Academic Council Foundation.

2000

Freudenburg, William R. “Social Constructions and Social Constrictions: Analyzing the Social Construction of ‘The Naturalized’ as well as ‘The Natural’.” In Gert Spaargaren, Arthur P. J. Mol and Frederick H. Buttel (eds.) Environmental Sociology and Global Modernity. London: Sage.

2000

Freudenburg, William R. “The ‘Risk Society’ Reconsidered: Recreancy, the Division of Labor, and Risks to the Social Fabric.” In Maurie J. Cohen (ed.) Risk in the Modern Age: Social Theory, Science, and Environmental Decision-Making. London: Macmillan.

2001

Freudenburg, William R. “Reactors and Reactions: Toward a Rational Understanding of Nuclear Power and the Public.” In Norma Berkowitz and Michael Patrick (eds.) Chernobyl: The Event and the Aftermath. Madison, WI: Focus.

2002

Finsterbusch, Kurt and William R. Freudenburg. “Social Impact Assessment and Technology Assessment.” In Riley E. Dunlap and William Michelson (eds.) Handbook of Environmental Sociology. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

2002

Rosa, Eugene A., and William R. Freudenburg. “Risk, Sociological Aspects of.” In Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Bates (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences. New York and Amsterdam: Pergamon.

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2003

Freudenburg, William R. “Institutional Failure and the Organizational Amplification of Risks: A Call for Further Research.” In Roger Kasperson, Nick Pidgeon and Paul Slovic, (eds.) The Social Amplification of Risk. London: Cambridge University Press.

2003

Freudenburg, William R. and Richard S. Krannich. “Boomtowns.” In Karen Christensen and David Levinson (eds.) Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World, vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

2003

Freudenburg, William R. and Richard S. Krannich. “Resource-Dependent Communities.” In Karen Christensen and David Levinson (eds.) Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World, vol. 3. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

2003

Krannich, Richard S. and William R. Freudenburg. “Waste Facility Siting.” In Karen Christensen and David Levinson (eds.) Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World, vol. 4. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

2004

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Public Reaction to Offshore Oil.” In Cutler Cleveland (ed.) Encyclopedia of Energy, vol. 5. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

2004

Freudenburg, William R. “Toward Resolving the Conflicts between ‘Environmental State’ versus Environmental Collision Perspectives: Considering the ‘Double Diversion’.” In Seejae Lee (ed.) Globalization, Localization and the Environment. Seoul, Korea: Seoul National University.

2007

Freudenburg, William R. “Disproportionality and Development: Reconsidering the Relationship Between Environmental Protection and Economic Vitality.” In Wenjuan Gong (ed.) 2007 Beijing International Conference on Environmental Sociology. Beijing, China: Renmin University Press.

2008

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert C. Wilkinson. “Equity and the Environment: A Pressing Need and a New Step Forward.” In Robert C. Wilkinson and William R. Freudenburg (eds.) Equity and the Environment. San Diego, CA: JAI Press.

2012

Freudenburg, William R. and Mary B. Collins. “Recreancy and Nanotechnology: A Call for Empirical Research.” In Barbara Herr Harthorn and John Mohr (eds.) The Social Life of Nanotechnology. London: Routledge.

Technical Reports, Magazine/Newspaper Articles, and Minor Publications 1976

Freudenburg, William R. A Preliminary Social and Economic Assessment of the Basalt Waste Isolation Project. Seattle, WA: Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers.

1977

Freudenburg, William R. “Attitudes Toward Coal Development in the North Fork Valley.” In Thorne Ecological Institute, General Contractors (eds.) Final Report on Socioeconomic Data: Orchard Valley Mine, Paonia, Colorado, pp. 95 106. Boulder, CO: Thorne Ecological Institute.

1980

Cluett, Christopher, Marjorie Green, Michael Wood, William R. Freudenburg, Paula Coutz, Karen Pugliesi, Clifford Staples, and Robert Wisniewski. A Preliminary Social and Economic Assessment of the Basalt Waste Isolation Project. Seattle, WA: Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers.

1980

Freudenburg, William R. “Report From the Ad Hoc Committee on Environmental Sociology in Non-Academic Settings.” Environmental Sociology 22 (Summer): 4 14.

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1981

Freudenburg, William R. “Environmental Sociology in Non-Academic Settings: Where Do We Go From Here?” Environmental Sociology 27 (Fall): 7 16.

1981

Wisniewski, Robert L. and William R. Freudenburg. The Socio-Environmental Impacts of Energy Development of Local User Groups and Water Resource Planning: Nuclear Energy Development in the Twin Harbors Regions. Pullman, WA: Washington Water Research Center.

1982

Freudenburg, William R. “Report from the 1982 ASA Session on ‘Sociologists in Government’.” Environmental Sociology 31 (Fall): 19 20.

1982

Freudenburg, William R. “The Sociology of Natural Resources: Where We’ve Come From, Where We’re Headed.” Natural Resources Research Group Newsletter 2 (1): 1 2.

1982

Freudenburg, William R. and Stan L. Albrecht. “Participant Observation Analyses.” In Steve H. Murdock, John K. Thomas and Don E. Albrecht (eds.) Handbook for Assessing the Social and Special Effects of Nuclear Repository Siting. Washington, DC: Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation, U.S. Department of Energy.

1983

Freudenburg, William R. “The Annual Meeting of a Professional Society: Problems, Possibilities and Procedures.” The Rural Sociologist 3 (6): 409 410.

1983

Meidinger, Errol and William R. Freudenburg. “The Legal Status of Social Impact Assessment: Recent Developments.” Environmental Sociology 34 (Summer): 30 33.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. “The Culture of Annual Meetings: A Review and Synthesis.” The Rural Sociologist 4 (3): 156 158 (Introduction to special symposium).

1984

Freudenburg William R. and Timothy R. Jones. “The Annual Meeting: A Plea for Promptness.” The Rural Sociologist 4 (1): 71 72.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. and Timothy R. Jones. “A Preview of the 1984 Annual Meeting.” The Rural Sociologist 4 (2): 146 147.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. and Timothy R. Jones. “From Cow Chips to Computer Chips: Rural North America in the Information Society.” The Rural Sociologist 4 (3): 168 170.

1986

Freudenburg, William R. “Nothing as Practical as a Good Theory: The Importance of Explicit Logical Systems in the Selection of Socioeconomic Monitoring Variables.” First National Symposium on Social Science in Resource Management: 197. Corvallis, OR: National Park Service Cooperative Park Studies Unit.

1987

Freudenburg, William R. “Social Sciences in the AAAS: The Bad News … The Good News.” American Association for the Advancement of Science Section K Newsletter 6: 2 6.

1988

Freudenburg, William R. “The RSS Local Arrangements Committee: A Report and Analysis.” The Rural Sociologist 8 (5): 414 428.

1989

Freudenburg, William R. “The Sociology of Risk Communication: An Introduction.” In Proceedings: Annual Conference of the American Water Works Association (June): 897 900. Los Angeles.

1989

Freudenburg, William R. “Social Factors in Risk Communication.” In Proceedings: Ninth Annual Gulf of Mexico Information Transfer Meeting, pp. 214 220. New Orleans, LA: U.S. Department of the Interior.

1990

Freudenburg, William R. “OCS Operations and Risk Perception: The Role of Social Science.” In U.S. Minerals Management Service (eds.) Proceedings of Third Atlantic

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Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Region Information Transfer Meeting, pp. 87 95. Washington, DC: U.S. Minerals Management Service. 1991

Clarke, Lee and William R. Freudenburg. “Risk Communication, Recreancy and Organizational Effectiveness.” In Leon Moses and Robert Neuschel (eds.) Hazmat Transport ’91: A National Conference on the Transportation of Hazardous Materials and Wastes, pp. 4.37 4.51. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ.

1991

Freudenburg, William R. “Offshore Oil as a Context for the Study of Risk Perceptions.” In John Woolley and Harvey Molotch (eds.) Southern California Educational Initiative Socioeconomics Report, pp. B.83 B.91. Santa Barbara, CA: Univ. Calif.-Santa Barbara.

1992

Freudenburg, William R. “Environmental Research.” Environment, Technology, and Society 68 (Summer): 1, 3 4.

1992

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. The Perceived Risks of Offshore Oil and Gas Development: Results of a Pilot Study. Herndon, VA: U.S. Minerals Management Service.

1992

Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling and Loren Lutzenheiser. “Environmental Research.” Environment, Technology and Society (68): 1, 3 4.

1993

Freudenburg, William R. “Heresy, Intuition, and Natural Gas: Observations on ‘Intuitive Toxicology’.” Comments on Toxicology 4 (6): 493 500.

1994

Freudenburg, William R. and Robert Gramling. “Middle-Range Theory and CuttingEdge Sociology: A Call for Cumulation.” Environment, Technology and Society 76: 1, 3 7.

1996

Molotch, Harvey and William Freudenburg. Santa Barbara County: Two Paths. Final Report to U.S. Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service, Pacific OCS Region, Contract No. 14-35-0001-30663.

1996

Nevarez, Leonard, Harvey Molotch and William Freudenburg. San Luis Obispo County: A Major Switching. Final Report to U.S. Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service, Pacific OCS Region, Contract No. 14-35-0001-30663.

1996

Paulsen, Krista, Harvey Molotch and William Freudenburg. Ventura County: Oil, Fruit, Commune and Commute. Final Report to U.S. Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service, Pacific OCS Region, Contract No. 14-35-0001-30663.

1997

Freudenburg, William R. “Gross, Levitt, Waste Wars and Witches: Diversionary Reframing and the Social Construction of Superstition.” Technoscience 9 (Spring): 26 29.

1997

Freudenburg, William R. and Lisa J. Wilson. Deliverable #4: Discussion of Uncertainty, Final Environmental Impact Statement. Prepared under contract with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, in connection with proposed Crandon Mine.

1997

Freudenburg, William R. and Lisa J. Wilson. Deliverable #5: Review of Literature on Local Hiring, Comparable Projects. Prepared under contract with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, in connection with proposed Crandon Mine.

1997

Freudenburg, William R. and Lisa J. Wilson. Deliverable #6: Review of Closure Impacts Section, with Revision or Expansion as Appropriate. Prepared under contract with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, in connection with proposed Crandon Mine.

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1997

Freudenburg, William R. and Lisa J. Wilson. Deliverable #8: Qualitative Assessment of Long-Term Hiring Projections and Analysis of Cyclic Employment-Unemployment Impacts. Prepared under contract with Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, in connection with proposed Crandon Mine.

1998

Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling and Rachel Schurman. “Natural Resource Extraction and Rural Economic Prospects: A Closer Look.” Western Planner 19 (8): 6 8.

1998

Freudenburg, William R. and Lisa J. Wilson. Deliverable #9: Develop an Analysis of Sociocultural Impacts. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

1998

Freudenburg, William R. and Lisa J. Wilson. Deliverable #10: Assess Likelihood of ‘Net Positive Economic Impacts in Area Reasonably Expected to be most Affected’. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

1999

Freudenburg, William R. “Dancing, Diving, or Dealing with the Environment in Sociology: A Devil or a Deep Blue Sea?” Environment, Technology and Society (Invited as one of two introductory articles for a new “point/counterpoint” series).

2002

Freudenburg, William R. “Why We Can’t Drill Our Way to Energy Independence.” Washington Post, April 24.

2005

Fisher, Dana, and William. R. Freudenburg. “Ecological Efficiency, Disproportionality and Methodological Precision: On the Importance of Linking Methods to Theory.” Social Forces [https://socialforces.unc.edu/epub/rejoinders/].

2007

Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling, Shirley Laska and Kai Erikson. “Katrina: Unlearned Lessons.” World Watch 20 (6): 14 19.

2008

Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling and Debra Davidson. “SCAMming Environmental Policy: Using Uncertainty as a Weapon Against Reforms.” World Watch 21 (3): 7 11.

2009

Freudenburg, William R. “Polluters’ Shell Game: The Worst Polluters Are Hiding Their Minuscule Contribution to the Economy.” World Watch 22 (1): 17 21.

2009

Gramling, Robert and William Freudenburg. “Pay, Baby, Pay: Before the U.S. Responds to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Campaign Rhetoric with More Offshore Energy Exploration, It Should Revise Reagan-era Leasing and Royalty Rules That Cost the Treasury Billions.” Miller-McCune 2 (4): 40 46.

2010

Freudenburg, William R. “Opinion: Translating Science.” The Daily Climate, March 15. [http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2010/03/translating-science].

Reviews 1978

Freudenburg, William R. “Sociological Impact Assessment of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Development of Coal Resources in Central Utah.” Prepared for Edward S. Davidson, United States Geological Survey, Salt Lake City, Utah. In Final Environment Statement: Development of Coal Resources in Central Utah. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey: IX.158 IX.171.

1978

Freudenburg, William R. “Comments on the West-Central North Dakota Regional Environmental Impact Study.” In Final West-Central North Dakota Regional Environmental Impact Study of Energy Development: Revisions to Draft Study and

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Response to Public Comments. Billings, MT: Bureau of Land Management and the State of North Dakota: 147. 1979

Freudenburg, William R. Likely Social Impacts of ‘Oil Shale R, D & D Program Management Plan’ of June 25, 1979. Prepared for Richard Hertzberg, Office of Fossil Energy Programs, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

1981

Freudenburg, William R. Social Impacts of the Proposed MX Missile System upon the Human Environment. Prepared for Ballistic Missile Office, U.S. Dept. of the Air Force.

1981

Freudenburg, William R. The Social Effects of Coal Development in the West. Prepared for Dr. Paul B. Myers, U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

1982

Freudenburg, William R. “Socio-cultural Impacts of the Prototype Oil Shale Leasing Program: Technical Review of the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.” Prepared for John Singlaub, White River Resources Leader, U.S. Bureau of Land Management. In Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Prototype Oil Shale Leasing Program. Denver, CO: Bureau of Land Management.

1983

Freudenburg, William R. The Social, Cultural and Psychological Impacts of the Early Winters Alpine Winter Sports Development. Prepared for Roland Whited, Headquarters Office, Okanogan National Forest.

1983

Freudenburg, William R. Essential Elements of Information for Use in Legislative Information Tracking System by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Prepared for Dr. Lynn Llewellyn, Division of Program Plans, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. “Assessment of Social and Economic Impacts in Draft Environmental Statement Related to the Operation of WPPSS Nuclear Project #3, Docket 50-508, Washington Public Power Supply System.” Prepared for Annette Vietti, Division of Licensing, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

1984

Freudenburg, William R. “Review of Socioeconomic Data Base Report for Mississippi: Technical Report (ONWI-499, December 1984).” Prepared for Ronald J. Forsythe, Nuclear Waste Program Manager, State of Mississippi.

1985

Freudenburg, William R. “Identification of Social Impacts in Draft Environmental Impact Statement: Federal Prototype Oil Shale Tract C-a Offtract Lease.” Prepared for B. Curtis Smith, U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

1985

Freudenburg, William R. “Assessment of Socioeconomic Impacts in Draft Environmental Assessments (EAs), Richton Dome Site and Cypress Creek Dome Site, Mississippi.” Prepared for Ronald J. Forsythe, Nuclear Waste Program Manager, State of Mississippi.

1986

Freudenburg, William R. Review of “Disasters and Mental Health: An Annotated Bibliography.” Contemporary Sociology 15 (3): 442.

1989

Freudenburg, William R. Review of “Ranching, Mining and the Human Impact of Natural Resource Development.” Contemporary Sociology 18 (1): 90 92.

1993

Freudenburg, William R. “Review of Risky Business: Genetic Screening and Exclusionary Practices in the Hazardous Workplace.” American Journal of Sociology 99 (3): 836 838.

2004

Freudenburg, William R. “Our Town.” Review of “Newcomers to Old Towns” by Sonya Salamon. Contexts 3 (May 2004): 64 65.

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GRANTS AND FUNDING “Preliminary Assessment of Boomtown Impacts.” Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Preliminary Research Grant, December 1976, $400. “The Human Side of Coal Energy Development.” National Science Foundation, Dissertation Improvement Grant, 1977 1979, $4,600. “Preliminary Assessment of the Socio-Economic Impacts of Basalt Waste Isolation.” Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers, 1979 1980, $6,100. “The Socio-Environmental Impacts of Energy Development on Local User Groups and Water Resource Planning.” Washington Water Research Center, Research Grant, 1980 1981, $10,043. “Longitudinal Study of Boomtown Mental Health Impacts.” Colorado Oil Shale Trust Fund, Research Grant, 1972 1979, $6,000. “Longitudinal Study of Boomtown Mental Health Impacts.” Western Rural Development Center, Research Grant, 1980 1984, $6,000. “Methodologies for Nuclear Waste Repository Impact Assessment.” Western Rural Development Center, Research Contract, 1981 1982, $15,005. “Congressional Fellowship.” American Sociological Association, 1983, $1,500. “Study Planning for Preparation of Socioeconomic Impact Report.” Washington Department of Ecology, 1985 1986, $34,938. “Social Consequences of Large-Scale Developments in Rural Communities.” U.S. Department of Agriculture/Cooperative State Research Service, 1986 1991, $65,000. “Perceptions of Risks from Offshore Oil and Gas Development.” U.S. Department of Interior, Washington, D.C., 1990 1991, $24,870. “Mining in Wisconsin: Extractive Activities in Comparative Perspective.” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative State Research Service, 1992 1996, $74,000. “The Social, Economic and Historic Analysis of Offshore Oil Development in Southern California.” U.S. Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service, 1993 1996, $186,891. “Poverty, Prosperity and Natural Resources in Wisconsin.” U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1996 2000, $98,000. “Oil, Communities and the Environment in the Shetland Islands and Alaska.” National Science Foundation, 1997 2000, $49,000. “Socioeconomic Impacts of the Proposed Crandon Mine.” Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 1997 2000, $24,540. “Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Grant, ‘Human Dimensions of Social and Aquatic System Interactions’.” National Science Foundation, Co-PI on Multi-year training project, approximately $2.6 million total funding, 1998 2004. (with Dana Fisher:) “Testing the Theory of Ecological Modernization: Implementation of the Kyoto Protocol for Global Climate Change as a Natural Experiment.” National Science Foundation, January 2000 August 2001, $17,035.

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(with Lisa Wilson:) “Research Travel Grant: Mining in the Upper Peninsula.” Michigan Technological University, January August 2000, $500. (with Lisa Wilson:) “The Forgotten Characteristic: How Mineral Extraction Affects Mining Communities.” Dissertation Improvement Grant from Rural Sociological Society, July 2000 May 2001, $9,451. “Instructional Improvement Grants” to improve graphics and readings for “Environmental Studies 1.” May December 2005, $1,000 and $700. (with Robert Wilkinson, Gail Osherenko, Anita Guerrini and Susan Stonich:) “Critical Issues in America: Equity and the Environment.” September 2005 June 2006, $25,000. (with Andre Nel, Arturo Keller, Barbara Harthorn, and approximately twenty other senior collaborators:) “University of California Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (UC CEIN).” National Science Foundation/ Environmental Protection Agency, under Cooperative Agreement Number EF 0830117, October 2009 September 2014, $24,000,000 (with Robert Wilkinson:) “Critical Issues in America, Forty Years After Earth Day: Looking Back, Looking Ahead.” September 2009 August 2010, $40,000.

EDITORIAL SERVICE Co-Editor in Chief, Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 1992 present.

OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICE Reviewer for the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Interior, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Social Sciences Research Fund Committee (New Zealand), the Environmental Assessment Review Council (Canada), state agencies in Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Sociological Association, American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Great Plains Research, Human Organization, Industrial Crisis Quarterly, Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Risk, Risk Analysis, Rural Sociology, Science, Social Forces, Social Problems, The Social Science Journal, Social Science Quarterly, Society and Natural Resources, Sociological Forum, Sociological Quarterly, Sociological Inquiry, Southern Rural Sociology, The American Sociologist, and roughly two dozen university and commercial presses. Reviewer for tenure/promotion cases at roughly sixty colleges/universities.

William R. Freudenburg’s Curriculum Vitae

OTHER HONORS AND REFERENCES Listed in numerous reference works, including Contact: Energy Who’s Who in America Who’s Who in Social Sciences Higher Education Who’s Who in Science and Engineering Who’s Who in the World

PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIPS (ALPHABETICALLY): American Association for the Advancement of Science American Society for Environmental History American Sociological Association Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences International Association for Impact Assessment International Rural Sociological Society International Sociological Association Law and Society Association Risk Analysis and Policy Association Rural Sociological Society Society for Applied Anthropology Society for Risk Analysis Society for the Study of Social Problems Society of Environmental Journalists

325

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Margarita V. Alario, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and in the Environmental Sciences Major at University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. Her research interests are social scientific theories of risk, environmental policy including energy, and natural resources governance and conflict. Jennifer Bea Rogers-Brown, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of sociology at Long Island University. Her research considers the intersections between gender, technology, food, the environment, and activism. Karl Bryant, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in sociology and women’s studies at the State University of New York. His research is in the overlapping areas of gender, sexuality, childhood studies, science studies, and the sociology of knowledge. Mary B. Collins received her Ph.D. in environmental science and management from the University of California and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on the mechanisms by which sociopolitical power disparities influence the creation of ecological harm and environmental injustice, and their relationship to socioecological vulnerability. Rachel Cranfill is a graduate student in the Department of Linguistics and was a graduate fellow at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UC Santa Barbara. Her primary research interests include language and gender in math and the sciences, and the linguistic construction of expertise. Ben Currens has a joint undergraduate degree from Cornell University in Development Sociology and Geological Sciences. He is currently a graduate student at The University of Kentucky in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science where he is conducting research on the impact of nascent climate change on ground waters, particularly those used as human water supply sources.

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Debra Davidson, Ph.D., is a professor of environmental sociology in the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, at the University of Alberta. Her areas of research and teaching cover vulnerability and transition at the intersections between energy, climate change, agriculture and societies. Her recent publications include articles in Science, British Journal of Sociology, Society and Natural Resources, and a coauthored book with Mike Gismondi, Challenging Legitimacy at the Precipice of Energy Calamity (Springer, 2011). Riley E. Dunlap, Ph.D., is a regents professor and Laurence L. and Georgia Ina Dresser professor in the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University, and one of the founders of the field of Environmental Sociology. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychological Association, he is also past-president of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Environment and Society and past-chair of the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Section on Environment and Technology. He is currently chairing the ASA’s Task Force on Sociology and Global Climate Change. In 2012, he received William R. Freudenburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences. Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D., is a professor of environmental psychology in the environmental and sustainability programs at Ramapo College of New Jersey. His work focuses on the social and psychological impacts of environmental contamination and undesired environmental change and the steps needed to redirect toward a sustainable society. Books include Contaminated Communities: Coping with Residential Toxic Exposure (2nd ed., Westview, 2004), the coedited Cultures of Contamination: Legacies of Pollution in Russia and the United States (Elsevier, 2007) and Disaster by Design: The Aral Sea and Its Lessons for Sustainability (Emerald, 2012). William R. Freudenburg (deceased), Ph.D., the subject of this memorial volume of Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, held the position of Dehlsen professor of environment and society in the environmental studies program at the University of California, Santa Barbara until his death December 28, 2010. For additional details about Bill’s incredibly rich scholarly life, see Riley E. Dunlap and Debra J. Davidson’s (2011) Tribute, published in The Rural Sociologist at http://www.es.ucsb.edu/sites/www.es. ucsb.edu/files/sitefiles/people/FreudenburgTribute_TRS.pdf; also see Bill’s Curriculum Vitae (this volume).

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Scott Frickel, Ph.D., is an associate professor of sociology and Boeing distinguished professor of environmental sociology at Washington State University. He predominantly works on environment, science, and the politics of knowledge. His current research projects include a relational sociology of interdisciplinarity, a comparative environmental sociology of cities, and the political sociology of science, with a specific focus on the impacts of disasters on scientific networks and knowledge practices. Charles Geisler, Ph.D., is a professor of Development Sociology at Cornell University. He has cofounded and led the New Enclosures Research Working Group (2010 present) and coleads the Contested Global Landscapes Theme Project of the Institute for Social Sciences at Cornell. Several of his coedited books explore land-society relationships: The Community Land Trust Handbook (Rodale, 1982); Land Reform, American Style (Rowman & Allanheld, 1984); Setting Priorities for Land Conservation (National Academy Press, 1993); Property and Values (Island Press, 2000); and Accumulating Insecurity (University of Georgia Press, 2011). Currently his research focuses on the public trust doctrine, violence land politics, and “post-property.” Robert Gramling, Ph.D., is an environmental sociologist and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is the author or coauthor of four books and numerous journal articles. His research focuses on coastal communities and natural resource development, coastal restoration, and on natural and technological disasters and recovery and been funded by a number of agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior. He has served on National Academy of Science committees and scientific committees for state and federal agencies, including National Marine Fisheries Service, Northwest Power Planning Commission, and the states of Alaska and Louisiana. Daina Cheyenne Harvey, Ph.D., is on the faculty of the College of the Holy Cross, where he is an assistant professor in the sociology and anthropology department and a member of the environmental studies program. His work focuses on the urban and environmental conditions that result in both acute and chronic suffering and that produce eco-disparities in everyday life. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled A Long Suffering: Life in the Ninth based on the long-term aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures in the Lower Ninth Ward.

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Barbara Herr Harthorn, Ph.D., is a director of the NSF Center for Nanotechnology in Society and professor of anthropology and sociology at UC Santa Barbara. Her research broadly examines culture and health, inequality, gender, and technological risk and perception. Her publications include The Social Life of Nanotechnology (Routledge, with John Mohr, 2012) and Risk, Culture & Health Inequality: Shifting Perceptions of Danger and Blame (Greenwood/Praeger, with Laury Oaks, 2003). Thomas A. Heberlein, Ph.D., began his career as an environmental sociologist in 1971, earning a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of WisconsinMadison. He spent a year at the University of Colorado working with his mentor, Gilbert White, and teaching in the sociology department before joining the Department of Rural Sociology at Madison. He served as department chair, director of the Center for Resource Policy Studies and Programs, and in the Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies before retiring in 2001. Since retiring, he has published more than 30 articles and chapters. His capstone book, Navigating Environmental Attitudes, was published in 2012 by Oxford University Press. For the past 10 years he has been a visiting professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umea˚, Sweden. He divides his time between Stockholm and Madison. Frank M. Howell, Ph.D., is a professor Emeritus at Mississippi State University and an adjunct professor of sociology at Emory University. He is the editor-in-chief of Spatial Demography and series editor of Spatial Demography at Springer Media (The Netherlands) with Jeremy R. Porter (CUNY-Brooklyn). He is the coauthor of Geographic Sociology (Springer Media) with Jeremy R. Porter. Susan Maret, Ph.D., is a lecturer at the School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University. Her research is concerned with types of secrecy, including government secrecy and access to information, the role of information in citizen science, science shops, NIMBY, LULU, and its relationship to risk perception, human rights, and environmental justice. She is the editor of Government Secrecy (Vol. 19), Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, and with Jan Goldman, Ph.D., Government Secrecy: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Greenwood Press/Libraries Unlimited). She blogs at bkofsecrets.wordpress.com

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331

Thomas K. Rudel, Ph.D., studies the social dimensions of landscape changes in the Americas, both North and South. His research has focused on metropolitan expansion in the United States and forest losses in the Ecuadorian Amazon. He is currently carrying out field research on the social drivers of changing pastures in the Amazon and writing a book on environment society relations, tentatively titled The Environmental Cage. He is a professor in the Departments of Human Ecology and Sociology at Rutgers University. Ann Ruzow Holland, Ph.D., works with institutions, governments, nonprofit and for-profit organizations as a freelance consultant and advisor. Ann founded, and acted as executive director of Friends of the North Country, Inc., a regional leader in sustainable development. Ann has served as an adjunct faculty member at SUNY Plattsburgh (New York) in the Political Science, Geography and Environmental Science Departments. Since 2011, Ann has served as an Environmental Studies Department adjunct at Antioch University New England (New Hampshire) where she teaches a graduate course in research methods. Christine Shearer, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar in earth systems science at UC Irvine. Her research focuses on environmental sociology, particularly energy and climate change, and has appeared in academic and media publications including Climatic Change, National Geographic, and the New York Times. She is author of Kivalina: A Climate Change Story (Haymarket Books, 2011), which began as a dissertation chaired by Dr. William R. Freudenburg. Andrew Varuzzo is a student at the College of the Holy Cross where he is majoring in environmental studies. He is currently beginning research on the environmental impacts of the tourist economy in the Turks and Caicos Islands. He works as the assistant programming manager at the Worcester Tree Initiative, a local nonprofit dedicated to rebuilding Worcester’s urban forest. He hopes to pursue research on society-environment relationships after leaving Holy Cross. Gregory A. Works is a principal at Works & Works Consulting in Belleville, Illinois. He is staff member in the Institutional Research Department at St. Louis Community College. He was formerly with the Empire State United Way in San Bernardino conducting research to

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support their giving program. His career began as a staff member in the spatial analysis laboratory at Mississippi State University directed by Frank M. Howell. Ted I. K. Youn, Ph.D., in sociology (Yale University) is an associate professor of education and sociology at Boston College. His research focuses on the sociology of higher education and the social reproduction of elites. Most recently he is completing a book manuscript, Uncommon Advantages: Generations of America’s Best and Brightest. He has published a number of articles on organizational analysis of educational organizations and organizational decision making in educational organizations.