ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a number of political and technical issues. It shows how this political controversy has generated "a kind of politics of risk assessment" stemming from competing regional views of the relative costs and benefits of acid rain mitigation. The chapter illustrates the contrasting assessments of regional economic costs vs. regional environmental benefits, as well as the differing evaluations of the status of scientific knowledge about the many facets of acid deposition and its impacts. It provides a summary of the latest research on acid deposition, particularly, "the relationship between emissions of SO2 and NOX and acid deposition, and the relationship between "acid deposition and damage to aquatic resources and forests." Members of the scientific community have seen their studies become political tokens in the debate while they themselves have become sometimes willing, sometimes reluctant, political actors in the controversy.
