Environmental impacts and economic costs : A study of pulp mill effluent in British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this thesis I study the economic cost of the environmental impacts of pulp and paper mill effluent in British Columbia. The thesis is not a benefit-cost analysis of the industry. Rather, my primary objective is to assess what the process of trying to estimate the costs reveals about the difficulties and limitations in the economic analysis of environmental damages. I review the environmental impacts of pulp mill effluent in British Columbia. There is a great deal of uncertainty in many respects about these impacts, but it is clear that in some cases they have been significant. A considerable body of literature addresses the theory and methodology of how to measure such impacts in economic terms. I draw upon this literature in four case studies of certain environmental impacts and specific types of economic damage. The case studies examine 1) dissolved oxygen reductions in Alberni Inlet and the impact on sport salmon fishing; 2) chlorinated dioxin contamination in Howe Sound and commercial shellfishing ground closures; 3) chlorinated dioxin contamination in the Columbia River and the impact on sport fishing; and 4) fish tainting at Kitimat and its effect on the Haisla people. In each case study, I estimate a range of values for the economic cost of the specific environmental impact in question. In each, there are significant and difficult questions which must be addressed. I conclude by noting that there are many instances where credible economic value estimates of environmental damages can be derived. Even partial and incomplete estimates can be helpful in demonstrating that the environment is an important source of economic value. However, the case studies suggest that five potentially severe sets of problems will invariably accompany economic analysis of environmental impacts. The first four -- complexity, uncertainty, site-specificity and limited information — are typical of most studies of environmental issues, but economic analysis adds a new dimension to each. The fifth set of problems is unique to economic analysis. These difficulties limit the ability of economists to undertake comprehensive analyses of the environment or environmental degradation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".