Environmental Protection, Not Stupidity : Too-strict standards waste tax money needed elsewhere.

Environmentalism isn’t what it used to be. An awareness is building that not every program identifying itself as “good” for the environment delivers real value to society. Many voices are now being raised in favor of more common sense and realism in allocating the burdens and benefits of environmental protection.

So the opponents of environmental legislation have become the environmentalists themselves. The reauthorization of environmental statutes is being stalled on Pennsylvania Avenue not by conservatives, but by liberals. Their fear is that the Zeitgeist no longer favors unqualified environmentalism. The environmentalist imperative to preserve the status quo is best evidenced by their campaign to kill congressional reform of the Superfund law. Likewise, Congress has been stymied in reauthorizing the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Endangered Species Act. Even the bill to give the EPA Cabinet-level status was stopped in its tracks by the environmental side of the aisle.

The tension between balanced and absolute environmentalism has hit a social nerve because a particular form of conservation--the need to save money--has become so urgent. It costs business owners, shareholders, workers and consumers, as well as state and local governments, hundreds of billions of dollars a year to comply with the existing environmental laws enacted by Congress. This money is well spent only if the results are worth it.

There is no question that the public loathes pollution and loves the idea of a green world. But people are starting to object to policies that protect the environment stupidly. Crime can’t be fought, children educated, cancer cured or welfare reformed if environmental-protection money isn’t used wisely. Cleaning up dirt at industrial Superfund sites to edible levels, forcing schools to rip asbestos from behind sealed walls or sacrificing jobs to protect subspecies can seem disproportionate to our more dangerous risks.

Environmental realism seeks to find a balance by enhancing respect for honest science, private property and state and local budgets. There is growing consensus on the common-sense need to assess risks scientifically, compare relative risks and weigh the costs and benefits of government mandates. Some reactionary environmentalists disparage the principles of “risk analysis,” “property rights” and “unfunded mandates” as an “unholy trinity” intended to gut the environment as we know it. But if lawmakers and the public are kept in the dark about real risks and costs, the country will continue to buy environmental protection of the wrong kinds and amounts.

Common sense is also rooted in the Constitution. The Fifth Amendment promises that the government will not take private property for public purposes without paying just compensation. This clause has been increasingly invoked by landowners prohibited from using their property by regulations designed to protect wetlands, species, beaches and green space. These are worthwhile public objectives. But if their cost is too much for the public’s coffers, why should private citizens foot the bill?

The final common-sense standard is a straightforward money question. Congress keeps passing laws that compel state and local governments to spend billions to comply with federal mandates. Goals like safe drinking water and clean air are good and necessary. But as Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) has said, Congress has an insatiable impulse to pass the buck but not the bucks. Governors and mayors just cannot afford these unfunded mandates without depriving their constituents of a lot of other public services. If the federal money isn’t there for the taking, which it isn’t, then the minimum that good government can do is insist on a careful ordering of regulatory priorities. The more mandates, the higher the property, sewer and water taxes--and these don’t hit the rich hardest.

Senior environmental officials in the Clinton Administration are uncomfortable with the Democrat and Republican legislators who want to build these standards into law. This oldthink will not wash in 1994 any more than it did in 1969. Then, the National Environmental Policy Act ordered all federal decision-makers to consider environmental impacts before any major action. Surely it is no less desirable that the major impacts of environmental actions be considered just as carefully.

The new environmental realism will improve, not stifle, environmental protection if results are measured in terms of value received. No one really believes that the billions of environmental dollars spent today are spent well enough.