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The 'Private' Approach Works
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16171 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1989 |
2,528 Words |
| Author
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Kent Jeffreys
Kent Jeffreys is an energy and environmental policy analyst
for the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. |
During the presidential campaign, then-candidate George Bush announced that it was his intention to become "the environmental president." While that is certainly a noble sentiment, how is President Bush to accomplish this goal? Unless he replaces the public-works style environmental programs prevalent today with "private works" approaches, he will fail to achieve his aim.
Since the days of Teddy Roosevelt and the original conservation movement, no president has done more to promote the environmentalist agenda than Richard Nixon. The average reader might find such a statement odd, but the record is clear. Whether or not Nixon philosophically supported the concept of a major federal role in environmental policy can be debated. But it is clear that he understood the political value of major federal spending initiatives. President Nixon presided over the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality. His administration also saw the beginnings of many of the major environmental legislative initiatives, such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, that remain the fundamental federal responses to environmental issues.
These attempts to address national concerns over environmental quality utilize what is called a "command-and-control" method of regulation. For example, the federal government establishes not only the levels of permissible emissions, but also the methods to be used in attaining these goals. And no policy is considered complete without a massive infusion of federal dollars. Surely that is not what Bush envisions when he states a desire to be "the environmental president."
This traditional public-works approach to environmental issues is often defended on the ground that governments can marshal large resources and dedicate them to a specific goal, as in war. But marshaling resources is ineffective without an appropriate strategy. Although America had an overwhelming advantage in material resources during the Vietnam conflict, it failed to adopt an appropriate strategy to defend against a communist takeover of South Vietnam. Throwing resources at a problem without an appropriate plan is merely throwing them away.
Another defense of the public-works approach is based on the assumption that environmental policies should be micromanaged by federal agencies because bureaucrats are thought to have more appropriate incentives than private individuals motivated by profit. Much work has been done in the past decade to expose the counterproductive incentives inherent in a
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