What Is Life Worth?: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11
Author: Kenneth R Feinberg
Just days after September 11, 2001, Kenneth Feinberg was appointed to administer the federal 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, a unique, unprecedented fund established by Congress to compensate families who lost a loved one on 9/11 and survivors who were physically injured in the attacks. Those who participated in the Fund were required to waive their right to sue the airlines involved in the attacks, as well as other potentially responsible entities. When the program was launched, many families criticized it as a brazen, tight-fisted attempt to protect the airlines from lawsuits. The Fund was also attacked as attempting to put insulting dollar values on the lives of lost loved ones. The families were in pain. And they were angry.
Over the course of the next three years, Feinberg spent almost all of his time meeting with the families, convincing them of the generosity and compassion of the program, and calculating appropriate awards for each and every claim. The Fund proved to be a dramatic success with over 97% of eligible families participating. It also provided important lessons for Feinberg, who became the filter, the arbitrator, and the target of family suffering. Feinberg learned about the enduring power of family grief, love, fear, faith, frustration, and courage. Most importantly, he learned that no check, no matter how large, could make the families and victims of 9/11 whole again.
The New York Times - William Grimes
In What Is Life Worth? Mr. Feinberg offers a valuable first-person account of the 9/11 compensation fund and its workings. He makes clear, for the first time, exactly how peculiar the law governing the fund was, and the enormous difficulties, ethical and practical, that resulted from its ambiguous language and hastily written guidelines.
The Washington Post - John Farmer
What is life worth? Feinberg found the answer not in actuarial tables or projected incomes but in the almost limitless capacity of people to love: "Love was often all that survivors could cling to -- a life preserver -- in their effort to get through each day. They had been left behind, but they had been left behind with powerful reserves of love." The Sept. 11 fund began as an airline bailout, but it ended as a vehicle for expressing love. That transfiguration was Feinberg's great professional and, we suspect, personal achievement; we come away feeling that the process of determining what life is worth transformed not just the fund but its special master, too.
Washington Post 8/24/05
"... some times eloquent, at others oddly detached, at all times painfully honest... a rewarding read but not an easy one."
Publishers Weekly
When Feinberg writes that "[t]he cacophony of arguments validated my original preference: to refuse to evaluate individual suffering" midway through this frank memoir, the reader already trusts him enough to know that he is not being crass or unfeeling: he is being honest. By then, Feinberg, a lawyer who has been on two presidential commissions and has done Agent Orange litigation, has established his judicious forthrightness and his dedication to "the success of the fund"-getting as many families as possible to opt in to the trust, which he headed and which was established to award cash to the 9/11 victims, rather than sue the government. The problem: how, and how much? Feinberg's willingness to put himself into the book makes what could have been an alternately dry and self-serving case study crackle with care, frustration, intellectual energy and good writing. Feinberg and his team ran through every argument and counterargument for compensation and its various possible permutations, and he presents the debate, and his ultimate conclusions as head of the 9/11 fund, with an earned conviction and clarity, even on stat-heavy pages. With its combination of a strong personality, undeniably compelling subject matter and a great title, this understated, passionate trek into the dismal terrain is likely to be a major surprise bestseller. Anything but macabre, it ends up, in its own way, celebrating life. (June 13) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Look this: Le fait de Parler Public
The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review
Author: Nicholas Stern
There is now clear scientific evidence that emissions from economic activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels for energy, are causing changes to the Earth's climate. A sound understanding of the economics of climate change is needed in order to underpin an effective global response to this challenge. The Stern Review is an independent, rigourous and comprehensive analysis of the economic aspects of this crucial issue. It has been conducted by Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the UK Government Economic Service, and a former Chief Economist of the World Bank. The Economics of Climate Change will be invaluable for all students of the economics and policy implications of climate change, and economists, scientists and policy makers involved in all aspects of climate change.
Table of Contents:
Preface ixAcknowledgements xi
Introduction xiii
Summary of Conclusions xv
Climate Change - Our Approach
Introduction 1
The Science of Climate Change: Scale of the Environment Challenge 3
Economics, Ethics and Climate Change 25
Ethical Frameworks and Intertemporal Equity 46
Impacts of Climate Change on Growth and Development
Introduction 63
How Climate Change will Affect People Around the World 65
Implications of Climate Change for Development 104
Costs of Climate Change in Developed Countries 138
Economic Modelling of Climate-Change Impacts 161
The Economics of Stabilisation
Introduction 191
Projecting the Growth of Greenhouse-Gas Emissions 193
Climate Change and the Environmental Kuznets Curve 216
The Challenge of Stabilisation 218
Identifying the Costs of Mitigation 238
Macroeconomic Models of Costs 267
Structural Change and Competitiveness 282
Key Statistics for 123 UK Production Sectors 297
Opportunities and Wider Benefits from Climate Policies 302
Towards a Goal for Climate-ChangePolicy 318
Policy Responses for Mitigation
Introduction 349
Harnessing Markets for Mitigation - The Role of Taxation and Trading 351
Carbon Pricing and Emissions Markets in Practice 368
Accelerating Technological Innovation 393
Beyond Carbon Markets and Technology 427
Policy Responses for Adaptation
Introduction 455
Understanding the Economics of Adaptation 457
Adaptation in the Developed World 471
Adaptation in the Developing World 486
International Collective Action
Introduction 507
Framework for Understanding International Collective Action for Climate Change 509
Creating a Global Price for Carbon 530
Supporting the Transition to a Low-Carbon Global Economy 555
Promoting Effective International Technology Co-operation 581
Reversing Emissions from Land Use Change 603
International Support for Adaptation 622
Conclusions: Building and Sustaining International Co-operation on Climate Change 640
Abbreviations and Acronyms 645
Postscript 649
Technical Annex to Postscript 658
Index 673
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