"The debate about the environment is not about whether we should protect it, but how we should protect it."
"For the past three decades, environmental policies have focused on empowering the federal government to force people to improve the environment," observe Alex Annett and Angela Antonelli of the Heritage Foundation. "This has resulted in rules and regulations that everyone has an incentive to violate, manipulate, and distort. The country has learned," they claim, "that the command-and-control approach of Washington DC to solving environmental problems causes more problems than it solves."
Annett and Antonelli challenge the federal government "to empower people to take responsibility for the environment and to create positive incentives to solve problems locally. Such an approach," they predict, "would motivate individuals, businesses, local communities, and the states to develop creative and cost-effective solutions for each environmental problem they encounter. It is an approach based on the simple principle that markets stimulate responsible behavior far better than do the one-size-fits-all bureaucratic regulations of big government."
Annett and Antonelli describe this "conservationist" approach as "positive, pro-growth, pro-human, and pro-nature." Conservationists want to "protect people from real risks. Regulations," they insist, "must be based on the most reliable, objective, and unbiased scientific information available in order for society to prioritize the risks to humankind and the environment and to focus limited resources on the worst risks first." Conservationists also want to "enhance the role of the states, local communities, and individuals in environmental protection efforts. States, local communities, and individuals," they contend, "are closest to the problems and often will prioritize the risks and target their resources more precisely."
Annett and Antonelli prefer an environmental approach in which reason rules, rather than ideology, and the end does not suffice to justify the means. "Conservationists realize that all risks are relative, and that creating a society that is 100 percent risk-free is an impossible goal," they observe. "It would be unwise for regulators to act otherwise. Conservationists acknowledge that almost every activity carries some degree of risk, but some risks are greater than others. Furthermore," Annett and Antonelli continue, "the public and private resources available to invest in promoting health, safety, and environmental concerns are limited. Increasingly, the enormous cost of complying with environmental regulations is not justified by the minuscule threat that the regulations are meant to address. Clearly," they conclude, "the risks that face humankind must be prioritized, and the limited resources should be focused on the risks that pose the greatest threat."
Annett and Antonelli emphasize that conservationists "respect property rights" and recognize that, when individuals or groups acquire "ownership of a resource, they invest in taking care of that resource; ownership gives them an incentive to conserve the resources or [enhance] them." Conservationists also seek to "make the polluter pay. People who pollute should be charged a direct cost for their pollution," Annett and Antonelli argue. "They need to be held to tough standards of accountability. Such a policy would provide the incentive for individuals and businesses to reduce the amount of pollution they create."
