Fledgling policymakers tackle tough issues.

There's sure to be a good idea in there somewhere ...

When nearly 3,000 active and intelligent middle and high school students put their heads together to devise solutions to pollution, cultural diversity, or travel and trade problems--they can come up with some amazing answers. And policymakers might like to take a quick peek and a second look.

Whether it was saving a desert or tracking nonpoint oil pollution, teens from across the nation who engaged in a spring geography competition produced analysis and public policy a lawmaker might use.

As an example, one of the prize winners in the American Express Geography Competition was an in-depth project by four seventh graders to determine whether Arizona laws protecting saguaro cacti and ironwood were sufficiently strict. (The Sonoran Desert, which, in part, surrounds Tucson, Ariz., is the only place on earth where the two species grow.)

When some Tucson citizens contended the laws were not strong enough, the students looked up the statute--"commercial business [shall be encouraged] to salvage native plants to the greatest extent feasible." The teens then conducted public opinion polls, surveyed development and relocation sites, and conducted interviews with experts on planning and the environment.

The students proposed that a bill be introduced in the Legislature that would make it a crime to take or move a saguaro without permission from a landowner, move a saguaro without taking precautions to prevent its death or move or destroy a saguaro in national...