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DLC | Blueprint Magazine | February 7, 2001
Five Essentials of Second Generation Environmentalism
How To Get Citizens, Businesses, and Experts Involved
By Debra Knopman
The Second Generation of Environmental Improvement Act creates an atmosphere
of innovation along with greater accountability for results. Some of its
essential elements are below.
Target environmental priorities. Too many of the past pilot
programs initiated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
the states have lacked clear goals for environmental improvement like
reducing exposures to high-risk chemicals or reducing the tonnage of smog-causing
compounds. Second generation legislation would focus on climate change,
smog, polluted runoff, and other top priorities.
Encourage risk-taking. Under existing laws, the EPA and the
states are constrained in their ability to try new ideas. For example,
according to a new National Academy of Public Administration study, the
EPA was reluctant to give Massachusetts the authority to cut the time
dry cleaners have to hold on to environmental records in return for cleaning
up their chemical emissions. Yet without the Massachusetts program, dry
cleaners would remain outside the reach of regulators. The second generation
bill would clear up the ambiguity over federal and state experiments that
are either stretching the legal limits of existing law and regulation
or, for lack of boldness, not stretching those limits enough. The legislation
would also reward regulators and agencies that make significant efforts
to advance innovative strategies.
Equip citizens, regulators, and investors with better environmental
information. For any strategy -- new or old -- to be credible, the public
needs access to understandable measures of results and knowledge of who
is accountable for those results. Not until the Toxics Release Inventory
hit full stride in the mid-1990s was the full power of information disclosure
recognized. The information technology revolution has opened the door
to more direct and reliable methods of monitoring environmental performance.
Second generation legislation would overhaul monitoring and public reporting
by companies and government facilities and provide agencies and states
with the funds to do the job. Further, if companies, states, and communities
commit to producing timely, accurate, publicly available data from air,
water, and other monitoring, they can earn the public's trust to meet
standards by means of their own choosing.
Support the growth of civic environmentalism. Federal agencies
with different legal mandates and bureaucratic traditions continue to
have difficulty working together to help communities and regions solve
their own particular environmental problems. Nowhere is this dysfunction
more noticeable than in the continual clash between new federal spending
on transportation, flood control, and other public works, and regional
efforts to curtail the ill effects of suburban sprawl. Second generation
legislation would strengthen the federal contribution to civic efforts
to solve local or regional environmental problems through better coordinated
agency actions, technical assistance, and enforcement actions.
Identify market-based incentives. Whether through prescriptive
regulation or market-based approaches like emissions trading, government
implicitly sets the price of a clean and healthy environment. In today's
rapidly changing New Economy, regulators should press for incentives that
send a clear price signal to businesses and others to continuously improve
their environmental performance. Second generation legislation would provide
a legal platform to test and evaluate different incentive structures for
different industries and places.
Invest in change. Unfortunately, no one knows the real
price of innovation and information improvements, although $300 million
to $500 million over five years would be a reasonable starting point.
Depending on the desired level of commitment and duration, Congress should
give EPA and the states adequate funds to give innovation and information
upgrades a chance to succeed -- without undermining the foundation of existing
environmental law and siphoning resources needed for permitting, compliance
assistance, and enforcement. A safety net of credible enforcement of existing
law must be maintained.
Debra Knopman is director of the Progressive Policy Institute's (PPI) Center for Innovation & the Environment.
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