IS THERE PROGRESS IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY?

Environmental reformers often seek to impose partial, market-like mechanisms into costly, complex new environmental statutes. These mechanisms are likely to offset only a small fraction of the loss in economic welfare created by the rest of the legislation. A far better approach is to write cost-benefit requirements directly into all new legislation. Such requirements, when enforced by the courts, are likely to yield far greater improvements in economic welfare than are the weak market mechanisms found in new statutes such as the 1990 Clean Air Act.