A New Environmentalism: The Need for a Total Strategy for Environmental Protection

• Date: 01 September 2018

48 ELR 10780 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 9-2018

COMMENT

A New Environmentalism:

The Need for a Total Strategy

for Environmental Protection

by Scott Fulton and David Rejeski

Scott Fulton is President of the Environmental Law Institute and a former senior ocial at U.S. EPA,

including General Counsel. David Rejeski directs the Technology, Innovation, and Environment Program at

the Environmental Law Institute and is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

I. Introduction

On the rst Earth Day in 1970, Sen. Edmund Muskie

(D-Me.) called for “a total strategy to protect the total

environment.”1 More than 50 years later, the parameters of

a “total strategy” are at la st coming into view. Environmen-

tal quality ha s no doubt improved, but the pace of change

is leaving in the dust the linear strategies of the past. As

Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum succinctly

put it: “We are moving from a world in which the big eat

the small to a world in which the fast eat t he slow.”2

What constituted a strategy 15 or even 10 years ago—

analyze, pla n, execute—no longer works in operating envi-

ronments that are incre asingly unpredictable, fragmented,

and characterized by high rates of technological change,

big data, crowd communication, young industries, and an

incessant drive for competitive advantage.3 In th is world,

the kinds of government strategy development contem-

plated by the Government Performance and Results Act,4

or annual planning-budgeting cycles, seem both quaint

and prescriptions for strategic failure.

e total strategy of the future needs to create a much

more robust option space for organizations and hedge

against uncertainties. It must build resilience and organi-

zational exibility. It should help reduce surprises while

guarding against organizational stagnation, not just in

government, but in other key sectors, such as businesses,

nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), think-tanks,

and universities.

1. 120 C. R. S11324 (daily ed. Apr. 23, 1974) (Statement of Sen.

Muskie), http://abacus.bates.edu/muskie-archives/ajcr/1974/Earth%20Day.

shtml.

2. Geraldine Beddell, Slow Down, You Move Too Fast, G, Feb. 3, 2001,

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2001/feb/04/featuresreview.

review1.

3. M R  ., Y S N  S: H 

C  E  R A (2015).

4. Pub. L. No. 103-62, Aug. 3, 1993, 107 Stat. 285 (S. 20) (31 U.S.C.

§§1115-1119).

We were once, of course, without any strategy at all.

On the rst Earth Day, we were feeling the consequences.

e Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught re in 1969 (for the

13th time since 1868), and air quality in many metropoli-

tan areas wa s orders of magnitude worse than today’s stan-

dards. Laws were passed to  ll the void, and the rule of law

emerged as our primary strategy.

Laws passed in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s,

like the Clean Air Act (CAA),5 Clean Water Act (CWA),6

Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA),7 and Resource

Conservation and Recovery Act ( RCRA),8 provided a le gal

basis for actions based on a clear bifurcation of actors—

industry and government. In the words of Yale political

scientist David Mayhew, the real story of this period “is t he

prominent, continuous lawmaking surge that la sted from

late 1963 through 1975 or 1976.”9 Command-and-control

regulations provided an externally mandated, top-down

approach well-suited to the hierarchical social and orga-

nizational struct ures prevalent at the time, and to address-

ing the discrete and massive end-of-pipe pollution problem

that then loomed large and obvious.

Tough government enforcement, eective public edu-

cation about pollution, and the introspection invited by

transparency mecha nisms like the Toxics Release Inven-

tory ushered in a new phenomenon in environmental

beha vior.10 In the ea rly 1990s, as a new generation of envi-

ronmentally sensitive leaders came of age, environmen-

tal norms began to be internalized by, and enculturated

within, businesses. is trend was furthered by voluntary

initiatives relying on market/price mechanisms and some

5. 42 U.S.C. §§7401-7671q; ELR S. CAA §§101-618.

6. 33 U.S.C. §§1251-1387; ELR S. FWPCA §§101-607.

7. 15 U.S.C. §§2601-2692; ELR S. TSCA §§2-412.

8. 42 U.S.C. §§6901-6992k; ELR S. RCRA §§1001-11011.

9. D R. M, P  P: H  A G-

 W (2008).

10. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Pro-

gram, https://www.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program (last up-

dated June 27, 2018).

Copyright © 2018 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.