Revesz R L
New York University School of Law, USA.
Columbia Law Rev. 1999 May;99(4):941-1017.
The loss of human life resulting from environmental contaminants generally does not occur contemporaneously with the exposure to those contaminants. Some environmental problems produce harms with a latency period whereas others affect future generations. One of the most vexing questions raised by the cost-benefit analysis of environmental regulation is whether discounting, to reflect the passage of time between the exposure and the harm, is appropriate in these two scenarios. The valuations of human life used in regulatory analyses are from threats of instantaneous death in workplace settings. Discounting, to reflect that in the case of latent harms the years lost occur later in a person's lifetime, is appropriate in these circumstances. Upward adjustments of the value of life need to be undertaken, however, to account for the dread and involuntary nature of environmental carcinogens as well as for higher income levels of the victims. By not performing these adjustments, the regulatory process may be undervaluing lives by as much as a factor of six. In contrast, in the case of harms to future generations, discounting is ethically unjustified. It is simply a means of privileging the interests of the current generation. Discounting raises analytically distinct issues in the cases of latent harms and harms to future generations. In the case of latent harms, one needs to make intra-personal, intertemporal comparisons of utility, whereas in the case of harms to future generations one needs to define a metric against which to compare the utilities of individuals living in different generations. Thus, the appropriateness of discounting should be resolved differently in the two contexts.
环境污染物导致的人员死亡通常不会与接触这些污染物同时发生。一些环境问题会在一段潜伏期后产生危害，而另一些则会影响子孙后代。环境监管成本效益分析中提出的最棘手问题之一是，在这两种情况下，为反映接触与危害之间的时间间隔而进行贴现是否合适。监管分析中使用的人命估值来自工作场所瞬间死亡的威胁。在这些情况下，贴现是合适的，因为它反映了在潜在危害的情况下，失去的年份在一个人的生命后期才会出现。然而，需要对生命价值进行向上调整，以考虑环境致癌物的可怕性和非自愿性，以及受害者的较高收入水平。如果不进行这些调整，监管过程可能会将生命价值低估多达六倍。相比之下，在对子孙后代造成危害的情况下，贴现在伦理上是不合理的。这仅仅是偏袒当代人利益的一种手段。贴现在潜在危害和对子孙后代的危害这两种情况下提出了分析上截然不同的问题。在潜在危害的情况下，需要在个人内部进行跨期效用比较，而在对子孙后代的危害情况下，需要定义一个指标，以便比较不同代人的效用。因此，贴现的适当性在这两种情况下应分别解决。
