The natural economic choice of analytical technique is cost-benefit analysis (CBA). However, the use of CBA in environmental policy raises a number of difficult issues (Foster, 1997). Quantitative analytical techniques in general, and CBA in particular, find it difficult to adequately treat the ethical dimension of environmental policy making, which may make them controversial or inappropriate. Issues where this dimension is prominent may be more amenable to participatory and deliberative forms of analysis (Stagl, 2006), which may in turn lead to what Zerbe and Dively (1994) have called a "cost-oblivious” model of environmental decision making. Agents in breach of these regulations cannot defend themselves by showing that the benefits derived from so doing exceed the costs of the damage incurred, however great the margin between cost and benefit.