A workshop proceedings address questions that lead to a better understanding of the interaction between innovation and the environment and explored elements of "best practice" policies that can stimulate innovation for the environment and shift our development path towards sustainability.

The past twenty-five years have seen a significant evolution in environmental policy, with new environmental legislation and substantive amendments to earlier laws, significant advances in environmental science, and changes in the treatment of science (and scientific uncertainty) by the courts. This book offers a detailed discussion of the important issues in environmental law, policy, and economics, tracing their development over the past few decades through an examination of environmental law cases and commentaries by leading scholars. The authors focus on pollution, addressing both pollution control and prevention, but also emphasize the evaluation, design, and use of the law to stimulate technical change and industrial transformation, arguing that there is a need to address broader issues of sustainable development. Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics,which grew out of courses taught by the authors at MIT, treats the traditional topics covered in most classes in environmental law and policy, including common law and administrative law concepts and the primary federal legislation. But it goes beyond these to address topics not often found in a single volume: the information-based obligations of industry, enforcement of environmental law, market-based and voluntary alternatives to traditional regulation, risk assessment, environmental economics, and technological innovation and diffusion. Countering arguments found in other texts that government should play a reduced role in environmental protection, this book argues that clear, stringent legal requirements--coupled with flexible means for meeting them--and meaningful stakeholder participation are necessary for bringing about environmental improvements and technologicial transformations.

Many regulations issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are based on the results of computer models. Models help EPA explain environmental phenomena in settings where direct observations are limited or unavailable, and anticipate the effects of agency policies on the environment, human health and the economy. Given the critical role played by models, the EPA asked the National Research Council to assess scientific issues related to the agency's selection and use of models in its decisions. The book recommends a series of guidelines and principles for improving agency models and decision-making processes. The centerpiece of the book's recommended vision is a life-cycle approach to model evaluation which includes peer review, corroboration of results, and other activities. This will enhance the agency's ability to respond to requirements from a 2001 law on information quality and improve policy development and implementation.

Environmental Technology and Sustainability: Physical, Chemical and Biological Technologies for Clean Environmental Management provides a dependable source of information on the fundamental scientific evidence involved in environmental protection and sustainable development. The book provides the basic natural sciences that underpin the understanding, development and application of environment technologies that support a clean inhabitable world that includes environmental technologies and sustainable, renewable energy systems. It considers the science and technology for environmental benefits, including the development of both smarter, cleaner technologies for environmental protection, conservation, and more. - Provides methods and processes for CO2 Sequestration - Focuses on technologies for reducing greenhouse gases and for biofuel production - Outlines issues surrounding contaminated water and provides solutions for water management - Describes problems facing air pollution, including sources and mitigation - Includes contaminated soil management