Nature Unbound: Bureaucracy vs. the Environment [Paperback]

What if what we think we know about ecology and environmental policy is just wrong? What if environmental laws often make things worse? What if the very idea of nature has been hijacked by politics? What if wilderness is something we create in our minds, as opposed to being an actual description of nature? Developing answers to these questions and developing implications of those answers are our purposes in this book. Two themes guide us—political ecology and political entrepreneurship. Combining these two concepts, which we develop in some detail, leads us to recognize that sometimes in their original design and certainly in their implementation, major U.S. environmental laws are more about opportunism and ideology than good management and environmental improvement.

Kenneth J. Simis currently employed as an analyst with STRATA, an energy and environment think-tank. Ken specializes in environmental policy and has particular experience working with NEPA and the Clean Water Act. He has worked as a policy specialist at the university level and spent many years working for a private environmental consulting firm. Ken received both a Master’s degree in geography and a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Utah State University.Randy T Simmonsis Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute of Political Economy at Utah State University’s Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, and former Mayor of Providence, Utah. Professor Simmons’s books include the award-winningBeyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure,Aquanomics: Water Markets and the EnvironmentandThe Political Economy of Culture and Norms: Informal Solutions to the Commons Problem. A contributing author to various volumes such asRe-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy,he is the author of scholarly articles that have appeared in numerous journals, lƒE