About the Author

Lynn Scarlett is Vice President of Research at the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit public policy think tank based in Los Angeles, California. She has written extensively on environmental policy issues, including an award-winning article on recycling costs that appeared in Solid Waste and Power magazine.

Ms. Scarlett was appointed in 1994 by Governor Pete Wilson to chair California's Inspection and Maintenance Review Committee, which evaluates and makes policy recommendations regarding vehicle smog inspection programs. Ms. Scarlett also chairs the "How Clean Is Clean" Working Group of the Washington, D.C.-based National Environmental Policy Institute. She served as a technical adviser to the Solid Waste Association of North America's Integrated Waste Management Project. She also served as an adviser to the Houghton Mifflin "Encyclopedia of the Environment" project, to which she contributed the entry on "source reduction." She is now serving as a member of "Enterprise for the Environment," a task force on environmental reform opportunities chaired by former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus.

Ms. Scarlett has a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She completed her Ph.D. coursework and exams in political science and political economy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.