Enhanced (or engineered) geothermal systems (EGS) for generating electricity may provide significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, if they can be successfully sited. One potential threat to that siting is induced seismicity, which has led to EGS projects being stopped in Switzerland...

Reducing the impacts from climate change requires people to make decisions that may prompt substantial changes in their lives. One possible way to help them is with personalized decision aids. Here we describe a method for evaluating such aids, in terms of how they affect users’ understanding...

A number of proposals have been put forth regarding the proper way to model the societal impact of fatal accidents. Most of these proposals are based on some form of utility function asserting that the social cost (or disutility) of N lives lost in a single accident is a function of N^\alpha. A...

Standards are an effective means for managing hazardous technologies only if three conditions are satisfied: (a) setting general standards is preferable to case-by-case decision making; (b) some general safety philosophy, balancing risk and other factors, can be justified on normative grounds;...

Cognitive psychology is best known, to many environmental economists, through the filter of acrimonious debates over the validity of contingent valuation methods (CVM). Psychologists' views on CVM reflect concerns that are deeply rooted in their profession's history and theories. Although...