The Environmental Case: Translating Values Into Policy

Answers to environmental issues are not black and white. Debates around policy are often among those with fundamentally different values, and the way that problems and solutions are defined plays a central role in shaping how those values are translated into policy. The Environmental Case captures the real-world complexity of creating environmental policy, and this much-anticipated Fifth Edition contains fifteen carefully constructed cases. Through her analysis, Sara Rinfret continues the work of Judith Layzer and explores the background, players, contributing factors, and outcomes of each case, and gives readers insight into some of the most interesting and controversial issues in U.S. environmental policymaking.

Judith A. Layzer was professor of environmental policy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) until her death in 2015. She earned a Ph.D. in political science at MIT. After four years at Middlebury College in Vermont she returned to MIT, where she taught courses in science and politics in environmental policymaking, ecosystem-based management, food systems and the environment, urban sustainability, energy and environmental politics, and public policy.

Layzer’s research focused on several aspects of U.S. environmental politics, including the roles of science, values, and storytelling in environmental politics, as well as on the effectiveness of different approaches to environmental planning and management. A recent project asked: Do urban sustainability initiatives significantly reduce cities’ ecological footprints? And which aspects of “green cities” are most effective at reducing cities’ environmental impacts? In addition to The Environmental Case, Layzer was the author of Natural Experiments: Ecosystem-Based Management and the Environment (2008) and Open for Business: Conservatives’ Opposition to Environmental Regulation (2012).

Layzer was an athlete as well as a scholar. In addition to having finished five Boston marathons, she shared nine national championship titles and one world championship trophy with her teammates on Lady Godiva, formerly Boston’s premier women’s Ultimate Frisbee team.

Judith A. Layzer

1961–2015

Dr. Sara R. Rinfret is currently a Professor of Public Administration and Associate Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs at Northern Arizona University. She has more than a decade of higher education administrative experience and is a nationally recognized scholar in regulatory policy, environmental policy, and public administration. She previously served as the Acting Dean for the Alexander Blewett School of Law, Chair of the Department of Public Administration and Policy, and the Director of Master of Public Administration at the University of Montana. To date, she has published 8 books and more than 40 peer reviewed articles, and several book chapters. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Specialist Program in public administration and studied with scholars at the University of Aarhus (Denmark, 2016). She holds an MPA from the John Glenn College of Public Affairs (Ohio State), and PhD in political science from Northern Arizona University.