The new Republican Congress roared into Washington and set out to change
the rules of environmental policy. Environmental reforms were going to be
based on risk assessment, cost-benefit analysis, less business regulation
and smaller environmental agencies. Congress was going to prune back the
oppressive bureaucracy and get the government off our backs.
Two years later, what has happened? Not much. The budgets of the Environmental
Protection Agency and the Interior Department are little changed from previous
years. The EPA's 1996 budget is only 1.5% less than its 1995 budget.
The flawed Endangered Species Act continues in force unchanged even though
authorization for it has long since lapsed. The Safe Drinking Water Act,
among the least controversial of the nation's environmental laws, has not
been re-authorized. Wetlands reforms are still nothing but a promise. Commitments
to improve individual property rights protections and to give more control
over environmental matters to the states have largely gone unfulfilled.
Congress has even been unable to reform the one law widely cited by both
Democrats and Republicans as perhaps the most flawed environmental program:
Superfund.
So why have the reformers failed? First, there was an image problem. Republicans
focused on the cost to business of environmental regulation. They talked
about dollars and cents, efficiency, and decreased regulation, thus providing
Democrats the opportunity to seize the moral high ground. Defenders of the
status quo frightened the public by painting reforms as the abandonment
of basic environmental protection. Talk about decreased business costs was
no match for talk about threats to "children's health."
Then there were election year politics. The President and Congressional
Democrats calculated that it would be better for their election prospects
to bash Republicans for their lack of compassion than to support positive
bipartisan environmental reforms. Democrats even refused to vote for environmental
policies that they themselves had proposed and supported when they controlled
the Congress.
Then came the pollsters. Republican pollsters found that the vast majority
of voters consider themselves to be environmentalists. They also found
that even Republican voters trust Democrats more than their own party on
environmental issues.
But people who vote based on environmental issues generally think either
that environmental laws need basic reforms that balance human needs with
environmental protection, or that we must protect the environment regardless
of the costs. The former group has largely supported reform efforts. Backing
off environmental reforms threatens to alienate them. Voters in the latter
group don't trust Republican efforts and attempting to gain their support
is a losing proposition.
But the main reason for the failure of Republican environmental reform goes
much deeper. It rests on the first rule of successful politics: you must
present a positive vision for the outcome of your policies. While the reformers
correctly pointed out the excesses associated with current environmental
laws, they neither discussed environmentally appropriate goals nor provided
a blueprint for attaining a better environment. Simply put, they ignored
the "vision thing."
A positive environmental vision for the future is centered upon the solution
to the tragedy of the Commons. You remember the tale: all the village cattle
graze upon a jointly owned common. It is in the interest of each villager
to add more cattle to his herd, since he pays no price to use the common.
Soon there is no grass left on the common, the cattle die, and the village
economy fails.
The solution? Give each villager an ownership stake in his portion of the
common and he will graze only so many cattle as it will support. The village
economy then prospers.
Instead of the government regulating the trout stream, let the trout fisherman
manage the lands and trout will flourish. Let nature conservancies manage
the bird sanctuaries and reap the profits of drilling for oil beneath them,
and oil and fowl will peacefully co-exist. When the government bans the
killing of elephants, poachers take them and the herds dwindle. Let the
natives own the elephants, and hunters are permitted a share, but the herds
will grow under the watchful eye of people who have a stake in their growth.
Free markets produce more wealth, and free people are the best environmental
stewards. Wealthier societies have healthier populations and commit more
resources to environmental protection than do poorer nations. Freedom of
people and markets is not only compatible with environmental health, it
is essential to it.
What the Republicans forgot is that beating up on regulators; no matter
how well deserved; is no substitute for an environmental vision for
the future.
The National Center for Policy Analysis is a public policy research institute
founded in 1983 and internationally known for its studies on public policy
issues. The NCPA is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with an office in Washington,
D.C.