Read the full interview of Jennifer Sass.
Natural Resource Defense Council senior scientist Jennifer Sass has been investigating corporate influence over government environmental regulations and enforcement.
Question: "What have you found in your research into corporate influence over the regulatory process?"
Answer: "There have been two very significant themes. First, corporations have far too much influence on the policymaking and enforcement process affecting their own products. They're able to wield vast influence over the process by which their own pollution is or is not regulated, and over whether regulations are enforced. And they've become exceedingly thorough at how they do it -- by pressuring regulators, infiltrating the scientific advisory panels that make key recommendations to agencies, attacking studies that demonstrate the harms their products cause, and even creating their own distorted scientific studies to compete with independent ones.
"The second thing that is hard to miss is that while this has been an ongoing problem for many years, the Bush administration has made it much worse, by creating more opportunities for corporate mischief, and by highlighting fabricated, pseudo-science from corporate sources when it dovetails with their policy agenda."
Comment: Right on! JAD
No comments:
Post a Comment