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Many perceive the predominantly command-and-control structure of regulatory policy to be overly restrictive and inefficient in achieving America's emerging environmental goals. In response, the U.S. government has introduced several voluntary programs to develop innovative, beyond-compliance environmental management solutions through the collaboration between government agencies and regulated entities. Yet, these programs have not gained widespread acceptance. This article analyzes the cognitive and institutional barriers to that acceptance by looking specifically at two programs—Project XL and Habitat Conservation Plans. These barriers act out of force of habit, creating a resistance to change and a rejection of new forms of regulatory policy. The authors argue that policy change requires a shift in how individuals think and how institutions guide that thinking.

In the early months of 2020, the deadly Covid-19 disease spread rapidly around the world. In response, national and regional governments implemented a range of emergency lockdown measures, curtailing citizens' movements and greatly limiting economic activity. More recently, as restrictions begin to be loosened or lifted entirely, the use of so-called contact tracing apps has figured prominently in many jurisdictions' plans to reopen society. Critics have questioned the utility of such technologies on a number of fronts, both practical and ethical. However, little has been said about the ways in which the normative design choices of app developers, and the products that result therefrom, might contribute to ethical reflection and wider political debate. Drawing from scholarship in critical design and human–computer interaction, this paper examines the development of a QR code-based tracking app called Zwaai ('Wave' in Dutch), where its designers explicitly positioned the app as an alternative to the predominant Bluetooth and GPS-based approaches. Through analyzing these designers' choices, this paper argues that QR code infrastructures can work to surface a set of ethical–political seams, two of which are discussed here—responsibilization and networked (im)permanence—that more 'seamless' protocols like Bluetooth actively aim to bypass, and which may go otherwise unnoticed by existing ethical frameworks.

The debate over the relationship between economic development and environmental protection has polarized into the opposing perspectives of win-lose (distributive bargaining) or win-win (integrative bargaining) outcomes, reminiscent of the debate that occurred within the negotiations field 15 years ago. The authors argue that such polarization is unnecessary and inaccurate. Conflict between economics and the environment is neither purely win-win nor win-lose, but rather, it is a mixed-motive situation. In presenting this argument, the authors draw from the negotiations and managerial decision-making literature. Further-more, they consider some strategies for exposing mixed-motive solutions to environmental problems in the future.