![16 Daniel C.Esty and Marian R. Chertow
7. The model employed was that of the civil rights movement, in which sweeping
legal requirements were identified and then given detailed content through test cases in a
variety of contexts.
8. This approach was described in a book edited by Daniel Lerner and Harold Lass-
well called The Policy Sciences: RecentDevelopments in Scope and Method (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1951). LasswelPs A Pre-View of Policy Sciences (New York:
American Elsevier, 1971) represents the elaborated statement of this vision. In addition,
Lasswell worked closely with internationallegal scholar Myres McDougal of the Yale Law
School, and chap. 2 of Lasswell and McDougaPs book Jurisprudence for a Free Society:
Studies in Law, Science,and Policy (New Haven: New Haven Press; Dordrecht, Nether-
lands, and Boston: M. Nighoff, 1992) adds important perspectives.
9. See Garry D. Brewer and Peter deLeon, The Foundations of Policy Analysis (Home-
wood,111.: Dorsey Press, 1983). See also Ronald D. Brunner and Tim W.Clark,"A Practice-
based Approach to Ecosystem Management," Conservation Biology 10, no. 5 (October
1996): 1-12. The recent call for a "comprehensive approach" to climate change echoes
this perspective—see Richard Stewart and Jonathan Wiener, "AComprehensive Approach
to Global Climate Policy: Issues of Design and Practicality,"Arizona Journal of Interna-
tional and ComparativeLaw 83, no. 9 (1992).
10. William Baumol and Wallace Gates, The Theory of Environmental Policy, 2d ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1988).
11. Elinor Ostrom, in Governing the Commons:The Evolution of Institutions for Col-
lective Action (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1990) argues that
those who use common pool resources may devise mutuallyworkable rules and institu-
tions for managing the resources even without government intervention. Similar argu-
ments are reviewed in Daniel Bromley,ed., Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice,
and Policy (San Francisco: ics Press, 1992).
12. See Daniel C. Esty, "Revitalizing Environmental Federalism," Michigan Law
Review 95 (1996): 570-653.
13. Not only are some harms inherentlyglobal in scale, but the geographic reach of
some issues is bigger than we had previously understood, and the scope of the policy
response must be concomitantly larger. For example,recent studies have shown thatheavy
metals such as mercury can travelthousandsofmiles through die atmosphere (see William
Fitzgerald, "Mercury as a Global Pollutant," The World and I [October 1993]: 192), and
the latest ozone (smog) transport modeling shows much greater interstate spillovers than
current policies anticipate.
14. See Stephen Breyer, Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regula-
tion (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1993).
15. P. R, Portney, "Chain-Saw Surgery: The Killer Clauses Inside die 'Contract,'"
Washington Post, 15Jan. 1995: 23.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25175695-250511120008-9fe246a4/85/Thinking-Ecologically-The-Next-Generation-Of-Environmental-Policy-Marian-R-Chertow-Editor-Daniel-C-Esty-Editor-32-320.jpg)
![Industrial Ecology 21
Still, the piecemeal regulatory approach was problematic. Differentiating
pollution by media and class did not per se cause the system to function
poorly. Rather, problems arose because such differentiation led to fragmenta-
tion. In the words of policy scientist Harold Lasswell: "Fragmentation is a
more complex matter than differentiation. It implies that those who contribute
to the knowledge process lose their vision of the whole and concern them-
selves almost exclusively with their specialty. They evolve ever more complex
skills for coping with their immediate problems. They give little attention to
the social consequences or the policy implicationsofwhat they do."5
Within the U.S. environmental protection program, there are several cat-
egories of fragmentation: by type ofpollutant,by life-cycle stage, and by orga-
nizational characteristics.
Fragmentation by type of pollutant pertains to how we regulate different
contaminants. We know now, as we suspected then, that pollution does not
respect legislated boundaries such as air, water, and waste. Sulfur dioxide
released into the air, even by a tall smokestack, does not disappear but can
come back as acid rain that threatens water supplies. If we trap emissions
before they leave the smokestackwe create a sludge that becomes a hazardous
waste disposal challenge. Fragmented law fails to account for instances where
pollution is merely shifted from one place to another rather than reduced or
eliminated.
First-generation environmental laws also led to fragmentation among
the stages of what we now call the product life-cycle—the chain extending
from extraction of materials to manufacturing to distribution to use of prod-
ucts and to their ultimate reuse or disposal. We discovered that regulation
centered on a factory's emissions does little to reduce environmental
impacts caused when the parts or materialsused in that factory have already
been produced by suppliers elsewhere. Nor does a facility-centered
approach address the environmental problems that a product can cause a
firm's customers, whether they are distributors, retailers, or final consumers.
Unfortunately, it is often the regulatory structure itself (in this case particu-
larly the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act [RCRA]) which, because
it focuses on isolating waste, often precludes the simple and organic
exchange and reuse of wastes. These laws severely limit the possibility of
recycling or recovering many hazardous materials even if their reuse gener-
ates clear environmentalbenefit.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25175695-250511120008-9fe246a4/85/Thinking-Ecologically-The-Next-Generation-Of-Environmental-Policy-Marian-R-Chertow-Editor-Daniel-C-Esty-Editor-37-320.jpg)
![34 Charles W. Powers and Marian R. Chertow
6. A very useful two-page diagram that illustratesjust how different these laws were
on issues such as the designation of different federal regulatory agencies, different defini-
tions of effect, approach to risk, and so forth is found in Neurotoxicity: Identifying and
Controlling Poisons of the Nervom System (U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assess-
ment, April 1990).
7. One example was inspired by the public disclosure provisions of the "Emergency
Planning and Community Right to Know Act." The law has led some firms to dispose of
waste by deep well injection rather than find an alternative, environmentally (or economi-
cally) preferable means of disposal because wastedeposited in that waywas not subject to
reporting requirements.
8. In particular, CERCLA seems to have created implicit incentivesfor existing owners
to avoid knowing about possible contamination on their property and for prospective
users to avoid involvementin cleanup issues related to such property. The unintentional
result—until a series of recent initiativesmade as part of EPA'S Brownfieldsagenda—may
well have been a significant rise in abandonmentofurban commercial and industrial prop-
erties. Some experts believe that the actual risks to unwitting urban users of such aban-
doned contaminated properties may exceed the risk averted by the Superfimd program.
Surely the impact of CERCLA on urban blight is well recognized to be an extraordinary
indirect cost of the current Superfund.
9. Philip K. Howard's The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
(New York:Random House, 1994) succeeds in major part because of the poignancy of his
examples from theenvironment.
10. See James McElfish, "Back to the Future," Environmental Forum 12, no. 5
(1995): 14-23. McElfish, it should be noted, believes that the entire contemporary desire
to pursue the next generation of collaborative and holistic environmentalpolicy needs no
additional authorization (though perhaps it could use congressional reaffirmation) since
NEPA provides what is required.
11. See also Reid Lifset and Charles W. Powers, "Industrial Ecology and the Next
Generation Project" (drafted in preparation for the Next Generation workshop on indus-
trial ecology at Yale University, New Haven, March 1996). Lifset, a pioneer of industrial
ecology, is now editor of the first peer-reviewedjournal to serve this new field, fat Journal
of Industrial Ecology (MIT Press), and he very thoughtfully reviewed this chapter.
12. The first main conferencereport on the topic of industrial ecology is from L. W.
Jelinski et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 89 (1992), based on a collo-
quium entitled Industrial Ecology, organized by C. K. N. Patel, held in May 1991 at the
National Academy of Sciences, Washington,D.C.
13. See Suren Erkman's Industrial Ecology: A Historical View (Geneva: Industrial
Maturation Multiplier [IMM], 1997), andJournal of Cleaner Production^ forthcoming,for
the strands industrial ecology has drawn together,particularlyfrom the U.S., Europe, and
Japan. Manyprevious analytictools such as life-cycle costing, energy analysis, and residu-
als management are antecedent to current methods of life-cycle analysis. The call for
papers issued by the newJournal of Industrial Ecology states that it "will address a series](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25175695-250511120008-9fe246a4/85/Thinking-Ecologically-The-Next-Generation-Of-Environmental-Policy-Marian-R-Chertow-Editor-Daniel-C-Esty-Editor-50-320.jpg)
Thinking Ecologically The Next Generation Of Environmental Policy Marian R Chertow Editor Daniel C Esty Editor
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- 7. Thinking Ecologically The Next Generationof Environmental Policy Edited by Marian R. Chertow and Daniel C. Esty Yale University Press New Haven and London
- 8. The Yale Fastback series is designed to providetimely reports on critical issues of the day. Produced on an expedited schedule,Yale Fastbacks are issued simulta- neously in cloth and paper in order to reach die broad- est possible audience. Copyright© 1997 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book maynot be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copy- ing permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of theU.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for die public press),without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Sonia L. Scanlon Set in Bulmer type by Ink, Inc., New York,New York Printed in the United States ofAmerica Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thinking ecologically: the next generation of environ- mental policy/edited by Marian R. Chertow and Daniel C. Esty. p. cm. Includes bibliographical referencesand index. ISBN: 978-0-300-07303-4 1. Environmental policy. 2. Environmental protection. I. Chertow, Marian R. II. Esty, Daniel C. HC79.E5T47 1997 363.7-dc21 97-14996 CIP A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines forperma- nence and durabilityof the Committeeon Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of die Council on Library Resources.
- 9. For Sarah, Elana, Thomas, Joy, and Jonathan, who are the next generation
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- 11. Contents Acknowledgments ix Thinking Ecologically: An Introduction Daniel C. Esty and Marian R. Chertow I Foundations for the Next Generation 1 Industrial Ecology: Overcoming Policy Fragmentation 19 Charles W. Powers and Marian R. Chertow 2 Ecosystem Management and Economic Development 37 John Gordon and Jane Coppock 3 Property Rights and Responsibilities 49 Carol M. Rose 4 Land Use: The Forgotten Agenda 60 John TurnerandJason Rylander 5 Sorting Out a Service-Based Economy 76 Bruce Guileandjared Cohon 6 Globalization, Trade, and Interdependence 91 Elizabeth Dowdeswell and Steve Chamovitz II Tools and Strategies for the Next Generation 7 Market-Based Environmental Policies 105 Robert Stavins and Bradley Whitehead 8 Privately Financed Sustainable Development 118 Stephan Schmidheiny and Bradford Gentry 9 Technology Innovation and Environmental Progress 136 John T. Preston
- 12. mii Contents 10 Data, Risk, and Science: Foundationsfor Analysis 150 James K. Hammitt 11 Toward Ecological Law and Policy 170 E.Donald Elliott III Extending the Reach of Next-Generation Policy 12 Coexisting with the Car 189 Emil Frankel 13 Environmental Protection from Farm to Market 200 C. Ford Runge 14 Energy Prices and EnvironmentalCosts 217 Todd Strauss and John A. Urquhart 15 A Vision for the Future 231 Daniel C.Esty and Marian R. Chertow Appendix I: Next Generation Project Participants 241 Appendix II: Contributors 248 Abbreviations 251 For Further Reading 253 Index 263
- 13. Acknowledgments This book emerged from the work of Environmental Reform: The Next Generation Project, sponsored by the Yale Center for Environ- mental Law and Policy. Beginning with a conference celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversaryof Earth Day in 1995, the project evolved from discussions we held with a group ofYale colleagues dedicated to think- ing through a vision of the future. Affectionately known as the Rump Group, Reid Lifset,Jane Coppock, Brad Gentry and William Ellis not only provided stimulatingdiscussion but also devoted their time and expertise to every stage of the project. The basic intellectual framework of the Next Generation Project was enriched by the contributions of a diverse external advisory board unified by their experience and wisdom. Our thanks and appreciation go to Frances Beinecke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Joan Z. Bernstein of the Federal Trade Commission, John Bryson of the Southern California Edison Company, Leslie Carothers of United Technologies, William Ellis of the Yale School of Forestry and Envi- ronmental Studies, ThomasJorling ofInternational Paper, Fred Krupp of the EnvironmentalDefense Fund,Jeffrey Lewis of the Heinz Family Foundation, Thomas Lovejoy of the Smithsonian Institution, Paul Portney of Resources for the Future, Stephen Ramseyof General Elec- tric, William Reilly of the Texas Pacific Group, Robert Repetto of the World Resources Institute, Edward Strohbehn, Jr., of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown, and Enersen, and Victoria Tschinkel of Landers and Parsons. We first test-drove our ideas with the graduatestudents of the Next Generation Seminar at Yale in the fall of 1995. Students from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES), the Yale Law School, and the Yale School of Managementbrought the passions and politics of this generation to the task of plotting a course for the future. We were gratified by their insights and their hard work on term papers. Our thanks go to class members Saleem H. Ali,Jamie Art, Tom Ballan-
- 14. x Acknou>lcdg?nents tine, Todd R. Campbell, Joe DeNicola, Andre Dua, Dave Gait, Martha Gray, Gina Gutierrez, Liza Hartmann, Madeline Kass, Chris Lotspeich, Patrick Martin, Ted McCarthy, Rob Naeser, Astrid Palmieri, David Pinney, Andreas Richter, Yasuko Segawa, Shauna Swantz, Cristin Tighe, Antoinette Wan- nebo, Debra Weiner, Doug Wheat, and Sanghyun Woo, and also to Dini Merz, whose work enriched the course and the project. During that time we identified "module leaders"—experts in a range of fields—who led daylong symposia on the fourteen topics we selected as key components of next-generation law and policy. Webrought in some 250 peo- ple for what turned out to be uniformly interesting, lively, and valuable ses- sions in the winter and spring of 1996. Each symposium became the basis for a chapter in the book. The appendix lists all those who participated, and we owe them our deep thanks for their individual and collective contributions. The module leaders and authors are also listed at the end of the book. We greatly admire their talent and perserverance. Our students worked tremen- dously hard—Steve Dunn and Mike O'Malley proved to be jacks-of-all- trades. We also thank Kate Bickert, Duenna Chris-Anderson, Lisa Kamem- oto, and last, but far from least,Jennifer Thorne. Over the summer of 1996, the authors of the fourteen chapters worked very closely with us to produce the first draft of the manuscript. Josh Slobin and Matt Gubens of Yale College were especially helpful in reviewing and researching a number of topics. Raj Patel edited a working paper on agricul- ture and environment emanating from the agriculture module. Marge Camera at the Law School and Anne Wallis at the School of Forestry and Environ- mental Studies worked on tight deadlines with great patience all though the project. A number of people provided us with especially helpful thoughts, com- ments, and suggestions on the direction of the project. We want to thank in particular Marcia Aronoff, Larry Boggs, MarianneGinsburg, Deborah Gor- don, Robert Perry,Jane Polin, David Rejeski, and Lloyd Timberlake. A two-day symposium in September 1996 was our chance to reconvene the module participants to review the individual chapters, to hear how the overall project was taking shape, and then to announce our findings to the larger community. The second day included very thoughtful talks by Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of NewJersey, Frank Loy, chairman of the League of Conservation Voters, and best-selling author Philip Howard. The open
- 15. Acknowledgments xi discussion sessions with Next Generation authors greatly strengthened the individual chapters that later emerged. Linda Bergonzi Kingand Cheryl Volk helped us film and produce a Next Generation video, assisted by Richard Payne, Andrea McQuay, and Carol Leonetti. Our thanks go to Larry Rogero, Michelle Garland, and a host of others who helped organize the symposium. At that time and throughout the process we benefited from the strong sup- port of Yale Provost Alison Richard, Law School Dean Anthony Kronman, and Forestry and Environmental Studies Dean Jared Cohon. Cynthia Atwood and the late Gary Fryer of Yale's Office of Public Affairs helped us with promotion and media efforts. Preparation of an edited volume is a complex task. Philip Siekman was our principal editor and an ace e-mailer. Thanks as well must go to Tracy Benedict, Jason Brown, Andrew Spejewski, and Jennifer A. McTiernan for helping us push the many pieces of this project forward. We are grateful to Ginger Barber and, at Yale UniversityPress, to Tina Weiner andJohn Covell for their active guidance. Publishing a book is not the end for this far-flung project. Weare dissem- inating the Next Generation message and testingits merits in many workshops and policy forums across the United States and abroad. All of our flinders have made possible the kind of collaborative process needed for policy think- ing. We thank the Association of American Railroads, Avina Foundation, Bechtel Foundation, ERQ Educational Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foun- dation, GE Fund, General Electric Company, die German Marshall Fund of the United States, Hughes Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation. On the very day our first grant was announced we had the wisdom to hireJanet Testa to be the project coordinator, and it would be too simple to say that we couldn't have done it without her. Fourteen workshops, two major conferences, and a manuscript were completed in a very short period, thanks to her warmth, commitment, and professionalism. Finally, partner- ships start at home, and everything we accomplish reflects the love and strength of our spouses, Elizabeth Esty and Matthew Nemerson.
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- 17. Thinking Ecologically:AnIntroduction Daniel C. Esty and Marian R. Chertow ThomasJefferson observed more than two hundred years ago that every generation must reinvent the institutions of society to serve its own needs. A generation has passed and much has changed since Earth Day 1970, which awakened so many Americans to environmental issues and which might be viewed as the starting point for the modern era in envi- ronmental law and policy. Thinking Ecologically looks back at what this "first generation" accomplished and forward to where the next genera- tion ofpolicies should go.1 Like nature itself, the size and shape of environmental problems are constantly evolving. Twenty-five years ago, we faced the challenge of cleaning up rivers so contaminated that one (Cleveland's Cuyahoga) even caught on fire. Air pollution in Los Angeles was so bad that motorists couldn't see three traffic lights in front of them. Toxic waste leached from unlined dumps into schoolyards and basements. Today, we are trying to sort out the long-term effects on our climate of the atmos- pheric build-up ofcarbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Wemust consider the potential environmental impacts of genetically modified organisms. And we are trying to understand the risk ofexposure to trace residues of pesticides that might disrupt endocrine cycles within a human body. As our targets change, so too must our responses. In charting a new course for environmentalpolicy, we build on a firm foundation: the Americanpeople valueand votefor clean water and air, safe disposal of wastes, and the preservation of parks and other special public spaces.2 In poll after poll, some 80 percent of the respondents indicate that they consider themselves to be environmentalists. Although support for environmental protection is broad, the public's enthusiasm for ever- increasing environmentalspending is not unbounded. Indeed, over the last several years, environmentalpolicy has become a bitter battleground, often
- 18. 2 Daniel C.Esty and Marian R. Chertow dominated by extremepoints ofview.On one hand, deregulators have suggested that we eliminate environmentalprograms wholesale. On the other hand, some environmentalists have acted as though no improvements in the current struc- ture ofAmerican environmentalpolicy were necessary or possible. Thinking Ecologically seeks to find not only the middle ground but higher ground. It starts with the premise that the flurry of environmental activity that emerged in the late 1960s and resulted in the enactment of a broad range of federal environmental laws in the 1970s moved us forward considerably. The National EnvironmentalPolicy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Resource Conserva- tion and Recovery Act, and more than a dozen other less well known statutes focused America's attention on a range of important public health and nat- ural resources concerns. To a large extent, these laws worked. Our air and water are cleaner. Significant reductions in pollution from big factory smoke- stacks and effluent pipes havebeen achieved. But the prospects for further progress on the same path are limited. Even where existing policy strategies and tools advanced the cause of environmen- tal protection, there is no guarantee that the same line of attack will provide comparable success in the future. Many of today's environmental problems are different from those tackled over the last several decades. Harms such as ozone layer depletion, climate change, or endocrine disrupters are less plainly apparent, more subtle, and more difficult to address than the black skies or orange rivers of the 1960s. Similarly,some of our residual environ- mental harms represent unresolved problems of the past—automobile exhaust, agricultural runoff, and the loss of habitat to suburbanization—that cannot be solved by clamping down on the emissions of the few thousand largest factories in America.'3 Instead, we must address the effects of thou- sands of smaller firms and farms whose releases are individually small but cumulatively very large. We must also try to affect the choices of 265 million Americans whose decisions about what to buy, where to live, how much to drive, what to throw away,and where to shop profoundly shape the quality of our environment. Whether the harms are new or old, the call for creative thinking and fresh approaches should not be viewed with alarm.When asked recently to evalu- ate the environmental law that he had helped to create as an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in the 1970s, John Bryson, now CEO of
- 19. Introduction 3 Southern California Edison, observed: "It is not surprising that we got some things wrong. We had no models to follow. What is surprising is that we got anything right."4 It is with appreciation for what has been accomplished and openness to the opportunity that now exists to refine and update our policies that this book proceeds. In embarking on a program of environmental reform, it is important to recognize that the American public's overarching goals with regard to environ- mental protection have remained relatively constant. The vision, articulated in the Clean Water Act more than two decades ago, of lakes, rivers, and streams that are fishable and swimmable remains valid today,as does the Safe Drinking Water Act's call for public water supplies free from harmful contaminants.5 Thus, while differences in values lie at the heart of a number of environmental policy controversies, a basic commitment to environmental protection as a central element of quality of life is widely shared across the spectrum of U.S. citizens. What is contested is how to move from first-order environmental goals—clean air and water and basic protection from carcinogens and toxic exposures—to second-order environmental preferences that can be translated into action plans for government, industry, and individual behavior/* This book seeks to reconfigure and reinvigorate the environmental pol- icy debate in America. The ideas and recommendations are the product ofa two-year environmental reform initiative undertaken by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. In the Next Generation Project's two major conferences and fourteen workshops, hundreds of experts from around the world shared their understanding of the successes and failures of our current strategies and their ideas on the direction future policies should take. The contributors to the Next Generation initiative go beyond the usual cast of Washington players. They include dozens ofindividuals who have real-world experience both in making decisions that affect the quality of the environ- ment and in thinking about how these choices might be made differently and better. The pool of experts includes highway planners, city managers, hospi- tal administrators, farmers, environmentalists, consumer advocates, business people, lawyers, academics, representatives of international organizations, planning and zoning commissioners, and scientists, as well as federal and state environmental and natural resource officials.
- 20. 4 Daniel C. Esty and Marian R. Chertow From Environmentalist!! to Ecologicalism The generational perspective that we have taken is deliberate. The environ- mental efforts of the past inevitablyset the stage for the policies of the future. They represent a legacy—both positive and negative—upon which to build. The environmentalism of the last twenty-five years was largely pollution- based and law-driven.7 It often looked disapprovingly at human activities and economic growth because of their harmful pollution side effects, which were thought to be inescapable. Political headway was made by identifyingcrises, from Rachel Carson's "silent spring" to the toxic stew of Love Canal, and finding villains on whom to pin problems. In this regard, the environmental- ism of the 1960s and 1970s was confrontationalin style and polarizing in practice. It can be no surprise that the central policy tool was a burgeoning set of "command and control"mandates. Although the statutoryrequirements and legal test cases of the 1970s and 1980s brought improvements on a number offronts, this approach to environ- mentalism has limitations that are now evident. It compartmentalized prob- lems by environmental media—air, water,waste—and set up a complex struc- ture of separate (and sometimes conflicting) laws and very detailed and often rigid regulations to deal with each new problem uncovered. It encouraged liti- gation, created incentives for movingwith deliberate speed and no faster, and implied a level of absolutism in pursuit of environmental purity that cannot be squared with the public's express and tacitdesire for other social goods. Thinking Ecologically argues for a next generation ofpolicies that are not confrontational but cooperative, less fragmented and more comprehensive, not inflexible but rather capable of being tailored to fit varying circum- stances. We see a need for a "systems" approach to policy built on rigorous analysis, an interdisciplinary focus, and an appreciation that context matters. Fundamentally,we seek an ecologicalism that recognizes the inherent interde- pendence of all life systems. This demands, on the one hand, an expanded view of human impacts on the natural environmentgoing beyond pollution to address more subtle, unpredictable,and harder-to-value problems such as habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. On the other hand, it requires an appreciation of the connectedness of all life systems, including human advancement. This focus on linkagesand an ecological per- spective leads to a more benevolent view of human activities and a belief in the possibility of sustainable development.
- 21. Introduction 5 The stress on more comprehensive, integrated policymaking is not new. Harold Lasswell argued almost a half century ago for a "policy sciences" approach to public decisionmaking that is contextual, problem-oriented, mul- tidisciplinary, self-aware, and focused on understanding human values.8 Such a perspective has been advanced more recently by scholars and analysts such as Garry Brewer and Peter deLeon, who updated this view in the 1980s, and Ronald Brunner and Tim Clark, who have applied the more comprehensive approach of the policy sciences to natural resource problems in the 1990s.9 To some observers, the call for more comprehensive perspective and greater attention to interconnectedness harks back to innumerable pleas for such virtues in the 1960s. But integrated and broad-scale thinking is possible today in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. To begin with, we have a generation's worth of policy practice and experience to build upon. More important, advances in information technologies make the amassing, assessing, and simultaneous processing ofvast quantities ofdata notjust con- ceivable but ever easier. Thus, although entirely comprehensive policy analy- sis will remain elusive and environmental policymaking contains an irre- ducible dimension of political valuejudgment, our capacity to be more all- encompassing and integrative has evolved dramatically.Weare positioned,as Lasswell urged, to understand the relationship between the parts and the whole of a system and to blend knowledge of the policy process (theory) with the knowledge in that process (practice). An emphasis on interconnectedness has several implications. First, pol- icy thinking needs to be infused with knowledge from outside the environ- mental sphere about real people's real lives. Failing to understand the com- peting desires that citizens everywhere have for a cleaner environment and other things—mobility, economic growth,jobs, competitive industries, and material comforts—leads to policies that are out of sync with the people whose lives they are meant to serve and diminishes the prospects for winning the public and political support necessary to effect change. Second, environmental protection must become everybody's business. At one level, this requires more activism on the part of citizens in their roles as local leaders and as individual consumers—factoring environmental con- siderations into the choices they make for their families and their communi- ties. But at another, perhaps more important, level, all Americans can be drawn into the environmentalpolicy process by ensuring that the prices they
- 22. 6 Daniel C.Esty and Marian R. Chertow pay for goods and services reflect the full costs of any public health or ecolog- ical harms associated with these purchases. In this way,market forces ensure that every citizen becomes a constructive environmentaldecisionmaker, even if he or she never realizes it. In addition, our vision of environmental decisionmaking needs to extend beyond the choices made by EPA or state department of environmen- tal protection officials. The decisions of mayors, transportation system designers,city planners, farmers,wholesale distributors, and business people of all stripes profoundly affect the quality of our environment. They must come to recognize and embrace their responsibilities and opportunities as environmental decisionmakers. Finally, an emphasis on connectedness and a more comprehensive pol- icy perspective requires that we be rigorous in ensuring that our policies deliver "environmental value"—effective and efficient protection across the spectrum of public health and ecological risks we face. First-generation poli- cies often emphasized technology "fixes" and downplayed concerns about economic efficiency. Where problems loomed large, this approach promised (and delivered) relatively quick results. But we now face diminishing returns to this strategy and a need to be more deft in our policy interventions. Long- term public support for environmentalinvestmentsdepends on the programs delivering good value on the money (public and private) put into them. Sim- ply put, we must get the maximum bang for society's inevitably limited envi- ronmental buck. Institutional Realignment One of the central challenges for environmentalpolicymakers is to keep pace with the important elements of institutional realignment that are occurring in society. Notably, the role of government is narrowing, the private sector's responsibilities are broadening, and nongovernmental organizations, from think tanks to activist groups, are increasingly important policy actors. The corporate world is not monolithic with regard to environmental performance. Some companies take environmental stewardship very seri- ously and are among the most progressive forces for environmental progress in the world. Other companies continue to pollute with abandon and toseize public resources (water, air, land) as though they were free for the taking. If
- 23. Introduction 7 the next generation of environmental policies is to be successful, separating the leaders from the laggards in the business world will be essential. With limited resources available,governments must targettheir enforcement activi- ties on those whose performance is not up to par. Redefining the role of government is, perhaps, the central question of our age. Both major U.S. political parties havecalled for a smaller role for the federal government. The environmental dimension of this challenge must be tackled head on. Leaner and more efficient environmental programs are a necessity. But the need for government intervention will not disappear. Quite to the contrary, the triumph of market economics makesall the more clear the need for laws and rules to ensure thatpollution harms do not go unaccounted for. In fact, pollution represents what economists call an externality—a cost that can be pushed out a smokestack or effluent pipe, or otherwise unfairly dumped onto others. Unless government acts to internalize such harms- requiring polluters to control their emissions or pay for the harm they cause—market failure and diminished welfare will result.10 Government intervention is similarly necessary to avoid the tragedy of the commons, where individuals actingin their own rationalself-interest con- sume common resources, such as air or water,at rates thatare unsustainableif replicated by all.11 In some cases, clarifying who has a right to do what—that is, spelling out who has the "property rights"—will lead to workable solu- tions. But in many cases, the government must establish and enforce the bounds of acceptable environmental behavior to ensure optimal social wel- fare and the efficient functioning of our market economy. Recognizing that there is an importantrole for governmentin protecting the environment does not answer the question of what level ofgovernment should act. In fact, "devolution,"as much as "deregulation,"has been the ral- lying cry for some recent environmental reformers. Their concerns about overly rigid policies dictated from Washington that do not match local needs and circumstances often strike a responsive chord. Toxic waste cleanups should be done in ways that meet community interests. And rivers are better managed at the watershed level than by officials hundreds or thousands of miles away.But decentralization is not alwaysthe right policy answer. A more refined line of analysis suggests that environmentalpolicies should match the scale of the problems to which they are addressed.12 Thus, although some of our programs would best be moved to local communities, in other cases
- 24. 8 Daniel C.Esty and Marian R. Chertow (such as ozone layer depletion), the scale of the harm requires intervention at a more overarching level.13 Environmental policy must also be updated to reflect the evolution of "civil society." Americanshave long been participants in a wide range of non- governmental organizations (NCOS), clubs, teams, and religious groups. NGOs play an especially important role in the environmental domain. Indi- viduals united by a common commitment to an environmental resource, whether the Chesapeake Bay,California's Central Valley, the Gulf of Mexico, or even the Amazonian rain forests,canjoin together, wherever they may live, to engage the political process across traditionalgeographic boundaries. A Few Caveats Some of the proposals advanced in this book represent new approaches to environmental policy. Many of the concepts, however, are not novel but rather emerged from our search across the country and around the world for innovative approaches to environmental protection that had not been widely or consistently translated into the policy domain. Thinking Ecologically is not, therefore, a precise game plan for policy reform but rather a menu of ideas that we hope will stimulatecreativethinkingat alllevels of society about how to achieve environmentalprogress. We offer no simple answers, and indeed there are none. The environmental problem is not a single issue but rather a diverse and complex set of public health, habitat conservation, and resource management concerns—requiring an equally diverse set of responses, not only from government at all levels but also from businesses, nongovern- mental organizations, and individuals.The next generation ofenvironmental policymakers will require a bigger toolbox than the last generation, and responsibility for implementing the resulting policies must be placed in broader hands. We recognize, furthermore, that we have not addressed all of the issues that might be considered important to successful environmental policy reform. We have no chapter on environmental equity, nor one on environ- mental education. The important questions of who benefits from environ- mental policies and who suffers from insufficient (or excess) attention to envi- ronmental harms are, however, addressed in various places throughout the volume. Similarly, we think that this entire project is about environmental
- 25. Introduction 9 education. Taken as awhole, we believe Thinking Ecologically will provide an important step forward in public understanding about the issues and the trade-offs inherent in environmental policymaking. Although there is no bright line separating international from domestic environmental protection, we have focussed primarily on U.S. concerns. Nevertheless, several chapters address global issues, and we believe that much of what we discuss in the U.S. context will haveresonance abroad. Foundations for the Next Generation of Environmental Policy This volume begins with a series ofchapters that introduce a set of new foun- dations for ecological thinking and policymaking. In chapter 1, Professors Charles Powers and Marian Chertow examine the current fragmented struc- ture of U.S. environmental policy, which often leads to tunnel vision,14 the cycling of pollution, and regulatory processes that are too narrowly targeted. We "fix" our air pollution problems with scrubbers that create a sludge that becomes a land disposal issue which, ifimproperly handled, may run off into streams, becoming water pollution. Powers and Chertow introduce, as the centerpiece of a next-generation systems-oriented environmental policy, the concept of"industrial ecology," which allows us to gobeyond "pollution pre- vention" toward more comprehensive, life-cycle approaches to environmen- tal protection. They also offer a transition strategy for moving toward a sys- tems approach to environmental protection. Some of the bitterest fights over environmentalpolicy in the last fewyears have arisen in circumstances where survivalof a single species or an environ- mental resource such as a wetland has been pitted againstjobs and economic growth. In chapter 2, Professor John Gordon andJane Coppock advocate an ecosystem approach to environmental policymaking that seeks to optimize both ecological protection and economic growth. They argue that ecosystem management offers a more integrative—ecological—analytic framework that can help decisionmakers channel development and manage across the multi- ple values and resources found on anypiece ofland. Ecosystem management, they observe, is not only an analytic tool but also represents a cooperative process through which divergent interests in the use ofland and variations in the values that individuals and communities place on resources can be accommodated.
- 26. 10 Daniel C.Esty and Marian R. Chertow In chapter 3, with a sweeping historical perspective, Prof. Carol Rose reclaims "property rights" as a concept that supports sound environmental policies. Recent debates over the role of property rights have often become tangled in anti-environmentalrhetoric. Rose notes that the five-hundred-year Anglo-American legal tradition lodges property rights not only with landown- ers but also with their neighbors and the community at large, who are entitled not to have harms spilled onto them. But she adds that it may be useful, as society's definition of "harm" evolves and we refine our policy focus, to find some accommodation for landowners whose plans and traditional activities are disrupted by changed conditions or new scientificknowledge. Facilitating the transition to a new set of environmental expectations and requirements helps to avoid the political backlash that mayotherwise ensue. In chapter 4,John Turner andJason Rylander of the Conservation Fund take on the disconnect between environmentalpolicy, which is largely set at the state or federal level, and land use decisionmaking, which largely occurs at the local level. For most of the last twenty-five years, environmental policy- makers have acted as though these two realms of decisionmaking were entirely unconnected. But, obviously, the cumulative effect of local land use decisions is the prime determinant of environmental quality more broadly. We must, they argue, identify new ways to link up local, state, and federal decisionmaking. And we need to draw the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and individual citizens into our quest for better environmental protection and resource management. Our present structure of environmental law and policy focuses almost entirely on the activitiesof manufacturing companies. Yettoday, 76 percent of our gross domestic product is in the services sector. Dr. Bruce Guile and Prof.Jared Cohon argue in chapter 5 that we must update our environmental programs and reorient them to this new economic reality.They see the policy transition from a smokestack economy to a services one entailing both chal- lenges and opportunities. Where once people went to downtown shops and more recently to regional malls, Americans are increasingly buying through catalogs. Does overnight shipping from L. L. Bean via Federal Express trans- late into better or worse environmental outcomes than the past pattern of purchasing? We have not yet even begun to analyze,never mind answer, such questions. The structure of the services economy also creates new points of environmental leverage. For example, when retailing giant Home Depot
- 27. Introduction 11 determines what kind of wood preservatives will be permitted in the lumber it sells, a de facto standard will havebeen set for an entire industry.The right choice in this case could have profound environmental implications. We see an expanding role for this type of nongovernmental policymaking. Not only has the domestic economy been radically transformed in the last twenty-five years, but so too has America's role in the world.AsElizabeth Dowdeswell, executive director of the United Nations Environment Pro- gramme, and international environmental policy expert Steve Charnovitz point out in chapter 6, our society is increasingly global in scope. Expanded trade implies economic interdependence, and a set of inherently global envi- ronmental problems leaves us in a position of ecological interdependence. Dowdeswell and Charnovitz suggest that managingthis interdependence will require improved international environmental institutions and better approaches to pollution problems that arise on a global scale. New and Renewed Tools and Strategies The shift away from the polarities of the past several decades toward a policy- making model that attends to interconnectedness demands new tools and strategies. For several decades, economists have urged the adoption ofmarket mechanisms rather than traditional command-and-control regulatory strate- gies, noting the benefits of aligning the economic incentives of polluters and consumers with environmental goals. Yet,as Prof. Robert Stavins and McK- insey 8c Company consultant Bradley Whitehead spell out in chapter 7, our current regulatory structure still relies largelyon command-and-control man- dates. Stavins and Whitehead review obstacles and opportunities for a range of market mechanisms, from "green fees" to pollution allowance trading sys- tems to pay-as-you-throw garbage regimes designed to encourage safe and cost-effective waste management.They see a need to celebrate the successes of market mechanisms such as the 1990 Clean Air Act's acid rain trading pro- gram, which has helped to reduce the cost of eliminating sulfur from the air by hundreds of millions of dollars, and to expand public appreciation of the benefits ofincentive-based policies. Business has replaced government as the central engine of environmen- tal investment, particularly in the developing world. As business-environ- ment experts Stephan Schmidheiny and Bradford Gentry make clear in
- 28. 12 Daniel C.Esty and Marian R. Chertow chapter 8, next-generation policymakers must find ways to channel private capital flows to ensure investment in environmental infrastructure and adher- ence to appropriate environmental standards in all new factories and other development projects. The scope of the opportunity cannot be overstated. In 1996, for example, China received about 2.5 billion dollars in official (gov- ernmental) assistance from allsources including the World Bank,other multi- lateral development banks, and bilateral aid donors such as Japan and the United States. During that same year, China absorbed more than 40 billion dollars'worth of foreign investment.How this private capital is deployed will have a far greater impact on China's environmental future than the govern- ment monies. Technology innovation offers one of the most promising routes to better and more cost-effective environmental programs. Yet,our current structure of environmental law and policy often deters innovation and retards technology development. Entrepreneur John Preston argues in chapter 9 that part of the problem is a regulatory structure based on technology mandates rather than performance standards. In addition, he identifies a systematic gap in the funding necessary to move new ideas from the early development stage to commercialization. Preston calls for a number of creative strategies for bridg- ing the technology gap and ensuring that U.S. policy promotes innovation and creative thinking. To the extent that our environmentalpolicies must become more refined and analytically rigorous, we will need better science, data, risk analysis, and cost-benefit studies on which to base policy decisions. Public health authority James Hammitt spells out in chapter 10 both the need for improved analytic foundations for environmental policy and the benefits of a more transparent policymaking process that clarifies where the domain of science ends and that of politicaljudgment begins. He identifies the spectrum of tools that areavail- able and observes that although the limitations of science are real, there is no other foundation for good environmental decisions than credible data and analysis. He also notes that today's policymakers must track a wider range of ecological and public health harms than was the case a generation ago. Our structure of lawand implementing policies must become more eco- logical ifcontinued progress is to be made on the environmental front, argues E. Donald Elliott, former general counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. In chapter 11 he calls for a new strategy for environmental regulation
- 29. Introduction 13 that emphasizes "command and covenant." Under this approach, businesses would be required to meet government-determined performance goals but would be freer to determine for themselves how to achieve the established standards. Their success in meeting the requirements would be monitored by independent auditors, similar to those that review the financial statements of companies under Securities and Exchange Commission rules. Limited government enforcement resources could then be targeted toward those fail- ing to live up to their environmental obligations. Broadening the Reach of Next-Generation Environmental Policymaking Most of the decisions that effect environmental quality are not made by offi- cials of the EPAor of state departments of environmental protection. A policy model based on interconnectedness allows us to see that environmental results derive in large measure from decisions made in other realms such as energy, agriculture, and transportation. Thus, one of the central thrusts of the next generation of environmental policy must be to redefine the sphere of environmental decisionmakers to include the actors in these sectors. With this vision in mind, the final chapters of Thinking Ecologically look at how environmental policy might be made in three critical areas. In chapter 12,for- mer Connecticut Transportation Commissioner Emil Frankel explores the range of environmental tensions created by an American society defined by the automobile. He advocates a variety of innovative approaches, from pay- as-you-drive fees to more "intelligent" highways as a way of reconciling Americans' love of cars and their contradictory interests in both mobility and clean air. Prof. C. Ford Runge makes clear in chapter 13 that there has been no "first generation" of environmental policy in the agricultural domain. In the farming realm, the environmental steps that have been taken are minor sub- texts in a plot that revolves around crop subsidies. He urges that basic eco- nomic incentives be brought to bear on farm policy and that the transition away from subsidy-based production be eased by means of a negative pollu- tion tax that would reward farmers who attend to environmental problems. In chapter 14, Prof.Todd Strauss and Enron Corporation executiveJohn Urquhart review the complex relationship between energy andenvironmental
- 30. 14 Daniel C. Esty and Marian R. Chertow policies. They observe that energyprices must be made to reflect environmen- tal harms. They see the deregulation of energy markets creating significant environmental challenges as well as presenting some opportunities. The last chapter of the book offers a vision ofwhat the world might look like in 2020 if the next-generation policies we have introduced take hold. Chapter 15 provides, in addition, a glimpse of how the ideas from the rest of the book could be translated into the fabric of everydaysociety. Paul Portney of Washington-based Resources for the Future has argued that the surgery required for successful environmental policy reform must be undertaken with a laser beam, not a chain saw.15 What is required is the not- so-glamorous job of making dozens of policy refinements. While carrying forward a policy transition is not as flashy as executing a policy revolution, it is likely to produce more durable improvementsto our programs for environ- mental protection. Although it runs counter to the instincts of most politi- cians and manyin the media, there are no "sound bite" solutions to the chal- lenges we face in the environmentaldomain. Given the uncertainties inherent in environmentaldecisionmaking, reg- ulatory reform must be viewed as a process, not an endpoint. Drawing on concepts such as the focus on continuous improvement from total quality management, environmentalpolicymakersmustview theirjob as one of con- stant reassessment and refinement as new information becomes available and data on past policy efforts provides a basis for sharpened future responses. At the core of this process is the need to viewenvironmental challenges compre- hensively and to build bridges from science to politics, from academic theory to practical policy, and across the gulfs that divide the public and government officials. Inspiring the American people to support careful, thoughtful, system- atic, and enduring environmental reform in a context where the enemy is hard to see and progress is measured incrementallyposes a significant chal- lenge. Appropriate and enduring environmentalpolicies rarely emerge from black-and-white visions of reality.Yet finding one's way through the grey area can be slow and excruciating. In establishing an appreciation of the intercon- nections that must be understood for good policymaking—of the ecological- ism required—we hope this book will have made a contribution to the next generation of environmental policy.
- 31. Introduction 15 Notes 1. Although we define the period 1970-95 as the first generation of modern environ- mental law, because it represents an unprecedented burst of national regulatory activity, there were earlier efforts aimed at various conservation, resource, and pollution issues. For a history of America's environmental movement, see Philip Shabecoff, ^ Fierce Green Fire (New York:Hill and Wang, 1993). 2. See Everett Carll Ladd and Karlyn H. Bowman,Attitudes Toward the Environment (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1995). 3. In technical terms, we have done a great deal to address the biggest "point" sources of pollution; we have done much less to control "nonpoint" source emissions. These diffuse harms persist in part because they are hard to see, not easily measured or matched to the ills they inflict, and difficult to prevent or control. Of course, the slow pace of progress stems not simply from inadequate policy tools but also, in some cases, from a lack of political will. 4.John Bryson, speech at the Yale LawSchool,October 1994. 5. We take "fishable, swimmable," and "free from contamination" at face value as broad objectives. Achieving these at any cost, however, is not the spirit of the goals thatwe wish to carry forward. 6. A wide range of projects are under way that aim at regulatory reform, reinventing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and bringing about other environmental change. See, for example: Aspen Institute, The Alternative Path: A Cleaner,Cheaper Way to Protect and Enhance theEnvironment (Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute, 1996); Center for Strategic and International Studies, National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), and the Keystone Center's Enterprise for the Environment Project (report forth- coming, 1997); Competitive Enterprise Institute: Ronald Bailey, ed., The True State of the Planet (New York: Free Press, 1995); Environmental and Energy Studies Institute, Leader- ship Initiative for New Environmental Strategies, "New Strategies—at a Glance" (Washing- ton, D.C., 1996); National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI), Reinventing EPA and Environmental Policy Working Group, the Unified Statute Sector, Integrating Environ- mental Policy: A Blueprint for Twenty-first-Century Environmentalism (Washington, D.C.: NEPI, 1996), and KEPI, Reinventing the Vehiclefor Environmental Management: Reinvent- ing EPA/Environm.ental Policy: First Phase Report (Washington,D.C.: NEPI, 1995); Presi- dential/Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management,Frame- workfor Environmental Health Risk Management, Final Report, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C., 1997); Bruce Yandle, A Positive Agenda for Environmental Policy (Washington, D.C.: Progress and Freedom Foundation, April 1996); Debra S. Knopman, Second Generation: A New Strategy for Environmental Protection (Washington, D.C.: Progressive Foundation's Center for Innovation and the Environment, April 1996); and Office of the Vice President, National Performance Review,Accompanying Report of the National Performance Review^ "Improving Regulatory Systems" (Washington, D.C., September 1993) and "Reinventing Environmental Management" (Washington,D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994).
- 32. 16 Daniel C.Esty and Marian R. Chertow 7. The model employed was that of the civil rights movement, in which sweeping legal requirements were identified and then given detailed content through test cases in a variety of contexts. 8. This approach was described in a book edited by Daniel Lerner and Harold Lass- well called The Policy Sciences: RecentDevelopments in Scope and Method (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1951). LasswelPs A Pre-View of Policy Sciences (New York: American Elsevier, 1971) represents the elaborated statement of this vision. In addition, Lasswell worked closely with internationallegal scholar Myres McDougal of the Yale Law School, and chap. 2 of Lasswell and McDougaPs book Jurisprudence for a Free Society: Studies in Law, Science,and Policy (New Haven: New Haven Press; Dordrecht, Nether- lands, and Boston: M. Nighoff, 1992) adds important perspectives. 9. See Garry D. Brewer and Peter deLeon, The Foundations of Policy Analysis (Home- wood,111.: Dorsey Press, 1983). See also Ronald D. Brunner and Tim W.Clark,"A Practice- based Approach to Ecosystem Management," Conservation Biology 10, no. 5 (October 1996): 1-12. The recent call for a "comprehensive approach" to climate change echoes this perspective—see Richard Stewart and Jonathan Wiener, "AComprehensive Approach to Global Climate Policy: Issues of Design and Practicality,"Arizona Journal of Interna- tional and ComparativeLaw 83, no. 9 (1992). 10. William Baumol and Wallace Gates, The Theory of Environmental Policy, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1988). 11. Elinor Ostrom, in Governing the Commons:The Evolution of Institutions for Col- lective Action (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1990) argues that those who use common pool resources may devise mutuallyworkable rules and institu- tions for managing the resources even without government intervention. Similar argu- ments are reviewed in Daniel Bromley,ed., Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy (San Francisco: ics Press, 1992). 12. See Daniel C. Esty, "Revitalizing Environmental Federalism," Michigan Law Review 95 (1996): 570-653. 13. Not only are some harms inherentlyglobal in scale, but the geographic reach of some issues is bigger than we had previously understood, and the scope of the policy response must be concomitantly larger. For example,recent studies have shown thatheavy metals such as mercury can travelthousandsofmiles through die atmosphere (see William Fitzgerald, "Mercury as a Global Pollutant," The World and I [October 1993]: 192), and the latest ozone (smog) transport modeling shows much greater interstate spillovers than current policies anticipate. 14. See Stephen Breyer, Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regula- tion (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1993). 15. P. R, Portney, "Chain-Saw Surgery: The Killer Clauses Inside die 'Contract,'" Washington Post, 15Jan. 1995: 23.
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- 35. o n e Industrial Ecology Overcoming Policy Fragmentation Charles W.Powers and Marian R. Chertow A generation ago the task of environmental protection seemed sim- pler. Pollution of air, water, and land was the unwanted by-product of economic activityand had to be stopped, typicallyby very specificdirec- tives embodied in strong central government regulation. In contrast, a generation later,we comprehend the underlyingissues of environmental protection quite differently. We find thatwe have onlyjust begun to rec- ognize the interconnectedness of ecological phenomena and to see that our past policy and law have often missed the mark or been unrespon- sive to new scientificand technical knowledge.1 Through the lens of the emerging field of industrial ecology, "eco- nomic systems are viewed not in isolation from their surrounding sys- tems but in concert with them."2 What pollution is and how we respond to it are now seen in context. Waste, for example, does not have to be viewed as a problem ifit can be used efficiently by anothercompany as a feedstock. In the broadest sense, environment is seen not as a place removed from the world ofhuman activitybut asintrinsic to "industrial" decisionmaking—whether industry is interpreted narrowly as a particu- lar organization or more expansively as the scope ofhumanactivity. Industrial ecology is a systems approach to the environment.It sug- gests a more comprehensive view of environmental protection than the laws and policies of the 1970s and 1980s, which divided pollution into many separate problems based on categories ofplaces, products, and poi- sons. This chapter explores how industrial ecology,which has its anchor in science, can become a guide to policy. It examinesfirst-generationenvi- ronmental regulation, discusses the systems problems encountered,
- 36. 20 Charles W. Pouters and Marian R. Chertow describes why a policy framework based on industrial ecology could over- come some of the dilemmas identified, and offers a transition strategy, also based on systems thinking, that can move us from where we are now to a more coherent environmentalpolicy approach. Looking Back In 1970, the seeds were sown for both a comprehensive approach to environ- mental policymaking and a much more targeted one. The National Environ- mental Policy Act (NEPA), passed into law that year, took only five pages to make it the policy of the United States government "to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony" and to authorize partnerships and problem-solving collaboration between the public and private sectors to implementthat policy.3 That same year saw passage of the Clean Air Act, which, in the course of hundreds of pages of tightly wound definitions,standards, penalties, and liabilities, focused atten- tion on the problems created for health and welfare in a single medium—air. In the following years, the broad scope of NEPA was largely forgotten in Congress's rush to introduce specific environmental legislation as the answer to a litany of public concerns. The newly formed U.S. Environmen- tal Protection Agency (EPA) was eager to establish a track record of respon- siveness to Congress and the American people.4 The 1970 Clean Air Act was soon followed (and rivaled in complexity) by the 1972 Clean Water Act. With these precedents, calls for other specific legislative responses arose and a welter of new laws, regulations,liability rules, and "guidance" descended. Little attention was paid to overlaps, gaps, and conflicts between different pieces of legislation. There were good reasons, initially, toparse the work ofenvironmental pro- tection into air,water,and wasteand subdivisions ofeach category and into sep- arate classes such aspesticides or hazardousmaterials.Indeed,asweindicate in this chapter, dividing up problems makes them more tractable and accessible. This approach provided a useful startingplace for our modern environmental protection efforts, which in fact have been quite successful.By the mid-1980s, the air was purer. Dying rivers again supported life. Toxic contaminants were stopped before they reached aquifers. Pollution was extracted from the places on which the spotlight ofenvironmental regulationwas shined.
- 37. Industrial Ecology 21 Still, the piecemeal regulatory approach was problematic. Differentiating pollution by media and class did not per se cause the system to function poorly. Rather, problems arose because such differentiation led to fragmenta- tion. In the words of policy scientist Harold Lasswell: "Fragmentation is a more complex matter than differentiation. It implies that those who contribute to the knowledge process lose their vision of the whole and concern them- selves almost exclusively with their specialty. They evolve ever more complex skills for coping with their immediate problems. They give little attention to the social consequences or the policy implicationsofwhat they do."5 Within the U.S. environmental protection program, there are several cat- egories of fragmentation: by type ofpollutant,by life-cycle stage, and by orga- nizational characteristics. Fragmentation by type of pollutant pertains to how we regulate different contaminants. We know now, as we suspected then, that pollution does not respect legislated boundaries such as air, water, and waste. Sulfur dioxide released into the air, even by a tall smokestack, does not disappear but can come back as acid rain that threatens water supplies. If we trap emissions before they leave the smokestackwe create a sludge that becomes a hazardous waste disposal challenge. Fragmented law fails to account for instances where pollution is merely shifted from one place to another rather than reduced or eliminated. First-generation environmental laws also led to fragmentation among the stages of what we now call the product life-cycle—the chain extending from extraction of materials to manufacturing to distribution to use of prod- ucts and to their ultimate reuse or disposal. We discovered that regulation centered on a factory's emissions does little to reduce environmental impacts caused when the parts or materialsused in that factory have already been produced by suppliers elsewhere. Nor does a facility-centered approach address the environmental problems that a product can cause a firm's customers, whether they are distributors, retailers, or final consumers. Unfortunately, it is often the regulatory structure itself (in this case particu- larly the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act [RCRA]) which, because it focuses on isolating waste, often precludes the simple and organic exchange and reuse of wastes. These laws severely limit the possibility of recycling or recovering many hazardous materials even if their reuse gener- ates clear environmentalbenefit.
- 38. 22 Charles W. Powers and Marian R. Chertow Organizational fragmentation has proven to be troublesome in two ways: through the means developed to implementregulations and through the prob- lems of organizational culture that followed. Each law for each medium devel- oped different definitions, standards, and approaches to penalties and liabili- ties as well as different kinds of prescriptiveness, ways to "trigger" regulatory action, and mandates concerning which governmentalagency should do what to whom and when.0 Subsequently, each law developed its own compliance culture: measures, permits, emissions standards, definitions of what is and is not included,and patterns ofliability thatserved to focus people's attention on ways to satisfy specific regulatory requirements rather than on ways to enhance the environment. Calls to "create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony" became the stuff of conservationists' speeches, while the nation plunged into the tasks of enforc- ing, complying with, and litigatingover the new sets oflawsand regulations. By the mid-1980s, the system began to show signs of strain. Experts reported significant volumes of hazardous materialsin placesjust beyond the regulatory spotlight—sometimes in pathways to receptors that were just as worrisome as the ones from which the materials had been diverted. A deci- sion to make an investmentin a longer- or shorter-term "fix" to achieve com- pliance was increasingly tied not to potential benefits to the environment but to careful calculation about whether and when a regulatory proposal would pass and whether regulations would change in response to new data. Adding to the reluctance of the regulated communitywas the awareness that as more and more pollution was cleaned up, the cost of managing or preventing the remaining increments skyrocketed. Confidence that the web oflaws covered the right issues and did so effec- tivelybegan to wane. Environmentalists pointed out that fundamental, long- term threats to the public's health and the environment—such as habitat loss and pesticide exposures—were being overlooked because policymakers focused on too limited a range of issues and were blinded by fragmented pol- icy to cumulative impacts. Slowly at first, then at a more rapid clip, situations came to light in which the existing laws appeared to lead to or encourage practices worse than what was being fixed.7 The perception that some of our laws might even be coun- terproductive began to grow. Typically, the evidence was not dispositive. In most cases, the scientific communityremains split, even today. Do technolo-
- 39. Industrial Ecology 23 gies aimed at reducing the volume often micron-sized particulates lead to the emission ofeven smaller and substantiallymore dangerous ones? Do gasoline additives intended to increase oxygenates to reduce carbon monoxide emis- sions actually cause harm? Do asbestos rules actually tend to increase fiber levels in schools by encouraging inappropriate removal? Are new industrial facilities located in pristine "greenfields" where they require new, costly, and environmentally burdensome infrastructure to avoid possible Superfund lia- bility expenses that might be incurred by rehabilitating existing industrial locations?8 Even if the answers to these questions were not always"yes,"they were all too often "quite possibly." Reclaiming a Long-Term Vision Evolving knowledge of human and ecological systems has helped us under- stand the multiplicity of interrelationships, their complex interactions, and the long-term nature of the risks they pose. A fragmented approach to envi- ronmental policy diverts attention from the careful analysis, integrated per- spective, and creative problem solving required to understand and protect public health and natural resources. As the limitations to the first-generation approach have become more and more apparent, environmentalists and industrialists alike have begun to look at the existing laws as impediments to imagination, to common sense,9 to incentives for broad-based thinking, to efforts to link diverse environmental issues, and to systematicpursuit of envi- ronmental and other social purposes simultaneously. The reemergence of more comprehensive thinking revivesthe overarching goal of NEPA—to create and maintainconditions under which people and nature can exist in produc- tive harmony—which has begun to inspire thinking about a next generation of "ecological"policymaking.10 A central thrust of next-generation environmental policy must be to move beyond the regulatory and organizational barriers that single-media, single-species, single-substance and single-life-cycle-stage approaches create to a more holistic and longer-term consideration of environmental threats. It must resist fragmentation, help overcome cultural barriers, and deal with questions of complex interactions between the economic and natural worlds. It must also resourcefully avoid the problems created by categories that are too limited, tools that are too blunt, and thinking that is too narrow. In one
- 40. 24 Charles W. Powers and Marian R. Chcrtow way, the ecological perspective we seek represents a return to the beginning of the modern environmental era. In fact, twenty-five years oflearning and expe- rience allows us, now, to reopen the door to a more inclusive policy approach. Industrial Ecology and Policy Progress In the quest for better policies, the emerging field of industrial ecology can provide a beacon for next-generation thinking.Industrial ecology emphasizes a systems view.The use of ecology focuses attentionon how the natural world works. It highlights the opportunity to look to the naturalworld for models of efficient use of resources, energy, and wastes. Industrial ecology examines local, regional, and global materials and energy flows in products, processes, industrial sectors, and economies. It focuses on industry in two senses. In its broadest meaning, industry refers to all types of human activity. Industrial ecology studies the connection of people and nature, placing human activity in the larger context of the biophysical environment from which we obtain resources and into which we put our wastes. It also sees industries—that is, corporate entities of all kinds—as key players in environmentalprotection.11 Industrial ecology is a new field: the first major colloquium on the topic was held at the National Academy of Sciences in 1991.12 It has come to embrace several systems concepts and builds on many antecedents.^ It blends optimism about technological development with keen interest in models from the life sciences and grounding in the systems sciences. It rou- tinely relies on certain tools such as design-for-environment (DFE) and life- cycle assessment,14 although it did not create them. Still, industrial ecology has proven to be "an effective framework for applying many existing methods and tools, as well as for developing new ones."15 Although no single declara- tion "explains" industrial ecology, use of the emerging cluster of ideas grouped under its banner by members of the scientific and engineering com- munities has proven fruitful at three levels: Within the firm. Tools such as full-cost accounting and design for envi- ronment have proven to be useful ways of drawing together financial and environmental considerations into one system. As AT&T'S Brad Allenby observes: "In the short-term, Design for Environmentis the means by which the still vague precepts of industrial ecology can in fact begin to be imple-
- 41. Industrial Ecology 25 mented in the real world today. DFE requires that environmental objectives and constraints be driven into process and product design, and materials and technology choices."16 Between firms. Crossing firm boundaries has led to sharing of resources such as water, power, and waste across companies in eco-industrial parks.17 This thread is elaborated by General Motors executive turned Harvard pro- fessor Robert Frosch: "The idea of an industrial ecology is based upon a straightforward analogy with naturalecological systems. In nature an ecolog- ical system operates through a web of connections in which organisms live and consume each other and each others' wastes— In the industrial context we may think of this as being use ofproducts and waste products."18 In addi- tion, firms have recognized that their products cross many company bound- aries during their life-cycles from design and manufacture to distribution to use to final disposition. When a company such as Duracell or S. C.Johnson decides to "green the supply chain"--that is,demand oftheir many suppliers that each meet environmentalgoals—they are using a life-cycle framework for environmental improvement. Regionally and globally. Tracking flows of material and energy across regions, economies, and the globe illuminates what happens to the con- stituents ofindustrial and commercial products.19 A study by ValerieThomas and Thomas Spiro of lead in the world economy, for example, plotted the source and use of 5.8 million metric tons of lead consumed annually.20 It showed how much lead was produced, how much was recycled, and how much was "lost" into the environment. It differentiated "one-time" uses such as lead shot discharged directly into the environment from uses in which the lead was more easily recoverable, such as lead used in auto batteries. How does industrial ecology fit with other contemporary concepts con- cerned with improving environmentalpolicy? "Sustainability" and "sustain- able development"—meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability to meet the needs of the future—are the terms that havemost come to represent the long-term vision for the environment in many people's minds.21 Following the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit, sustainability emerged as the internationalgoal for development and environmental conser- vation. And it is the key concept in the national consensus articulated by the President's Council on Sustainable Development.22 Sustainability is abstract
- 42. 26 Charles W. Powers and Marian R. Chertow and thus often fails to help with concrete choices, and it is too vague to help us know when it is being employed indiscriminatelyor even deceptively. But sustainability has captured the imagination and attention of so many and has proven to be so valuable in redirecting people's thinking, that it is an impor- tant focus of next-generation environmentalpolicy. In fact, the authors of the first industrial ecology textbook have linked the two concepts by referring to industrial ecology as the "science of sustainability."23 Some other concepts are good short-term guides to action but may be too narrow or too focused on tools themselves to be adequate guides to pol- icy. Risk analysis, for example, forces decisionmakers to acknowledge the interplay of hazard, pathway, and receptor, the trilogy that must be consid- ered whenever we are concerned with potential harm. Moreover, risk analysis demands that we pay special attentionto data and facts. Despite its politically charged history in contemporary law and policy, risk analysis is a valuable tool and a key component of next-generationpolicymaking (see chapter 10). Still other contemporary concepts highlight aspects of the policy gaps that must be bridged. Reengineering efforts or the ubiquitous focus on "rein- vention" reminds us of the need to think about how we might improve the mechanics of environmental efforts. Similarly, total quality management (TQM) has focused attention on process refinement, systemic failures, and continuous improvement. Pollution prevention has motivated analysis beyond "end-of-the-pipe," but it can become simply a "front-of-the-pipe" approach to reducing emissionsrather than givingdue consideration to opti- mizing all of the "pipes." Ideas incorporating efficiency such as Stephan Schmidheiny's "eco-effi- ciency"or MichaelPorter's "resource productivity" underscore another impor- tant factor—the need not to squander resources, whether natural or financial. These concepts are especially useful at the firm level,perhaps guiding company behavior as the vision ofsustainability guides broader societal approaches. While recognizing the contributionsofother concepts,we see important reasons to focus particular attention on industrialecology. Industrial ecology joins two essential concepts: (1) attention to the natural world as a system (ecology) and (2) attention to the full cycle of human modification of that environment as well as to institutions,the primary instrumentsof that modifi- cation (industry). Industrial ecology has the potential simultaneously to pro- vide immediate guidance for near-term local issues (such as how to achieve
- 43. Industrial Ecology 27 cost-effective reprocessing and reuse of discarded materials) and also to help interpret the long-term significanceof major naturaland economic flows. As Robert Socolow of Princeton University has described it, industrial ecology also positions corporate entities—from service companies to manu- facturing companies to mining corporations to giant agricultural opera- tions—as key players in the protection of the environment. The first-genera- tion view—which sees corporations as reprobates—causes us to miss out on their potential for environmental leadership, especially on the technological aspects of environmental problems. Bylooking to industry for environmental benefit, industrial ecology also emphasizes that industrial processes and design are important determinants of how resources are and can be used. Industrial ecology has largely been viewed as descriptive—a science to characterize how the world works, or,in Robert Frosch's language, to describe "an industrial ecology." Whether and how to use the insights gained for poli- cymaking is much less well developed. Robert White, while president of the National Academy of Engineering, offered a definition of industrial ecology that included both its scientific underpinnings and its implications forpolicy: Industrial ecology is the study of the flows of materials and energy in industrial and consumer activities, of the effects of these flows on the environment, and of the influences of economic, political, regulatory, and social factors on theflow,use, and transformation of resources.24 In White's threefold focus, systems analysis techniques serve as only the first part of the equation, described as "the flows of materials and energy in industrial and consumer activities." The second part requires additional quantitative and qualitative analysis to measure "the effects of these flows on the environment." Finally,the third part is necessary to make connections to policy—"the influences of economic, political, regulatory,and social factors." Following the example of trackinglead mentionedabove, the first part would be the mass-flow analysis, the second part would account for the environ- mental damage lead creates, and the third part would compel us to ask ques- tions such as: "what ifother nationsprohibited leaded gasoline as the United States has chosen to do—what would the impact be?"25 Presumably, now, modeling this policy and its impacts would be withinour reach. In fact, mass-flow analysiscan yield significant policy insight. Using this tool, industrialecologists are finding that not only is the carbon cycle altered
- 44. 28 Charles W. Powers and Marian R. Chertow by human activity,with the potential for global climate change, but the nitro- gen cycle, too, has been disturbed—surprisingly, less by nitrogen oxides emit- ted into the air than by loadings from the agricultural fertilizerswe have been using to feed a growing population.20 While the precise effects are still being examined, this analysis suggests that we may have to refocus our agricultural policy (see chapter 14). Part of the "subversive"power for policy of mass-flow analysis, Socolow says, is that "it treats with indifference both what is easy to regulate and what is hard to regulate."27 Thus, mass-flow analysis identifies where harmful materials are regardless of whether they fall under the regulatory spotlight. Targeting policy attention and inevitablylimited environmental resources on the most damaging instances of environmentalharm wherever they occur is a critical task for the next-generation environmentalprotection program. Over time we can modify our regulatory structure to catch up with our scientific knowledge, pushing the boundaries of our scope of analysis, as described in the final section of this chapter. Another transboundary tool of industrial ecology, life-cycle analysis, yields other policy insights. Life-cycle analysistranscends thefragmentation of the air/water/waste paradigm by tracing the inputs and effluents of all three categories. Using a life-cycle model, analystJohn Schall found, for example, that the environmental impacts of recycling municipal waste were no less than the effects of burning or burying it. However, looking at the whole life- cycle—that is, not only at the waste managementsystem but also at the pro- duction system that precedes it—creates quite different results. Schall found that recycling is valuable not because it is a superior disposal technique but because the environmental impacts of production using recycled materials are an order of magnitude less than when virgin materials are used in the manufacturing process.28 Such knowledgeprovides quite different incentives for producers to become more involved with materials recycling but raises new policy problems because the public sector may be less able to justify recycling as a disposal alternative. In the language of business, a product life-cycle is known as the "value chain,"where firms perform value-creatingactivities from the natural resource beginning to the product end. Value-chainthinking, as David Rejeski shows, can greatly expand the boundaries of environmental learning and manage- ment across functions and across firms. When Motorola needed to eliminate
- 45. Industrial Ecology 29 CFC'S from its production processes, it turned to its chain of suppliers for assistance in finding substitutes. The capacity for environmental problem solving can translate into interfirm agreements or information sharing and can also include the adoption of environmental management systems and common standards across the value chain, as the International Organization for Standardization is promoting through its iso 14000 environmental stan- dard setting process.29 The fact that both mass-flow analysis and life-cycle analysis are so data- intensive may lead some to conclude that industrial ecology requires an unachievable level of comprehensive knowledge before any policy decision is likely to be made. But these tools of industrial ecology confine themselves to being comprehensive along one axis ofa multidimensional equation—tracinga single flow in the case of mass-flow analysis,or the characteristics of an individ- ual product or process in the case of life-cycle analysis.Nonetheless, the effort to understand and connect the industrial and natural worlds is a large and important endeavor that requires us to regularly scan the horizon and funda- mentally reexamine whether we havedefined our policy problems accurately. Political economist Charles Lindblom has written that knowledge is par- tial and policy progress must therefore be incremental. He observes: "Policy is not made once and for all, it is made and re-made endlessly. Policy-making is a process of successive approximations to some desired objectives in which what is desired itself continues to change under reconsideration."30 Oddly enough, our existing regime of environmentallaws makes it difficult to pur- sue this logic. It locks in standards to the picogram and mandates control technologies almost by brand name. Too often it is inflexible and absolute. Perhaps most fundamentally, it has been an obstacle to what the ecologist calls "adaptive behavior," or the organizationalpsychologist calls "learning." A policy model built on industrial ecology, on the other hand, is lesslikely to get stuck. Because it emphasizes the importance of finding and incorporating new data and practices as our understanding ofphysical, biological, and politi- cal phenomena changes, it produces moreflexibleand enduring policy inputs. In fact, the tools of industrial ecology are important mechanisms for problem identification, precisely because they are data-driven and fact-friendly. The next generation of environmentalpolicy will depend heavily on our ability to detect and examineemergingphenomena rather than be blindsided by them. Questions ofpolicy alwaysinclude not only "what shall we do?" but also
- 46. 30 Charles W. Powers and Marian R. Chertow "who shall do it?" The institution that faces the largest challenge is govern- ment, since it must create the rules, not only live by them. But with industrial ecology the business community becomes, in Socolow's words, "a policy- maker, not a policy taker. Industry demonstrates that environmental objec- tives are no longer alien, to be resisted and then accommodated reluctantly. Rather these objectives are part of the fabric ofproduction, like worker safety and consumer satisfaction."31 We must return to the unanswered question ofhow to find an approach that will overcome some of the cultural barriers to change discussed earlier. The metaphor ofsustainability has been evocative.The power ofindustrial ecology is that it offers a connection to a whole system, notjust a fragment. In the dialectic created between human and natural systems, industrial ecology allows us to think past the culture of fragmentation to the specific ends ofpolicymaking. Managing the Transition Policy reform is always a difficult process because of the entrenched power of the status quo. The culture of the existing regulatory system with its daunting complexity, as discussed above, has a powerful impact on the thought pat- terns and the imaginations of all who function within it. Even with its weak- nesses, this culture preserves important values that we are not prepared to lose. The fear that reform might lead to less environmental protection is real and must be confronted. In broad terms, we see three approaches to accomplishing environmen- tal policy reform—"revolutionary," "conservative," and "evolutionary." Some experts advocate policy revolution and press for a complete break with the existing system. Many critics of the initial approach of Congress during 1994-96 saw its proposed reforms as a sweeping deregulatory revolution. Others seek to overcome fragmentation by supporting a single new environ- mental statute to replace all existing environmental law.52 But advocates of a statutory overhaul, even one with a serious commitment to environmental protection, quickly find themselves at sword points with policy "conserva- tives," in this case many environmentalists, who, despite the problems with current laws, are wary of any major change. They see anything more than tin- kering on the margins of the existing system as too risky. The irony is that both would-be revolutionaries and conservatives end up paralyzed.
- 47. Industrial Ecology 31 Evolution emerges as the most viable reform approach. Coherent change can best be accomplished through evolving efforts of informed trial and error where the successful new policy species survive and others do not. This approach—perhaps conceived of as nature's way of reform—anticipates mis- takes and failures in light ofproblems ofcomplexity and the rule of unintended consequences. This ecological model implies that fundamental policy restruc- turing can be accomplished while leavingthe current legislativeand regulatory system in place. The old gives wayto the new onlyas space and time to test and refine successful reforms permit. Industrial ecology fits with a basic natural metaphor—that we shed the old coat only when the new one isready. The proposal to have two competing sets of environmental policies operating in tandem may seem incomprehensible to some observers. Envi- ronmental advocates may fear that the dual system will be manipulated by polluters. At the same time, the regulated community is also likely to view dual programs warily,fearing that any new programs will simply add to their regulatory obligations.33 Both concerns can best be confronted by retaining the existing legal structure, but at the same time consciously starting to replace it with a new system that focuses, through the lens of industrial ecol- ogy, on building up new approaches and, ultimately, new policies. Regulated entities must be encouraged to conceive, propose, and test a diverse set of new practices: the key building blocks of a policy transition. The experiments may be conducted at the facility level but should offer the promise to alter significantlythe way in which resources or materials across an industry are used. A practice, as discussed here, is a procedure for solving a generic dilemma. It is both an operation and a perspective on how widely it will be effective or on why the operation is likely to be significant in other venues.34 Xerox, for example, has established an innovativecovenant with its customers for lease and buy-back arrangements for photocopying machines designed to facilitate better recycling of its products at the end of their useful lives. Xerox's initial work was very specific; but it is, in the process, establish- ing a practice about the relationship between equipment producers and their customers that can be employed by others. In fact, it is part of a whole move- ment in industrial ecology that advocates leasing as a way to assure longer- lived assets.35 As a result of many discrete experiments, our stockpile of linked and linkable practices will grow over time. The aggregationofproblems solved by
- 48. 32 Cliarles W. Powers and Marian R. Chertow the new practices will begin to call into question the wayexisting lawhas con- ceptualized a problem, will encourage the adoption of a new approach, and will ultimatelyrequire new policy. The new and old systems inevitablywill clash, since some of the prac- tices developed will conflict with existing law. Waivers from existing rules should be granted for new practices so long as they are more protective than existing alternatives. Of course, this may not be easy to determine. To date, the several EPAprograms thatprovide for tests of alternative approaches have been understandably timid. Thus far,we havelittle experience with the regu- lar issuance of waivers designed to permit activities that yield a better envi- ronmental result than the already existing, legal ones.36 Westill must explore what will be entailed ifwe activelyseek to grant waivers of the scale and scope suggested by adoption of the goals of industrial ecology. Any evolutionary approach must be guided by its larger goal. It is essen- tial that the alternative regime not be seen as a process to grant site-by-site, facility-by-facility, or instance-by-instance "releases" from normal require- ments. Indeed, one criterion for agreeing to consider and monitor a new practice should be that it is a candidate for becoming a routine alternate way of addressing a recurring type of environmental managementchallenge. Eco- nomic actors at every level must be encouraged to develop and implement projects intended to become practices that attain better and less costly envi- ronmental results in the spheres in which they operate. Here, the old com- mand-and-control system is both the motivator (because the regulated com- munity will be anxious to escape its oppression) and the equalizer (because the old system will continue to apply to all regulated entities that do not obtain the exemption). Industrial ecology is not a panacea for environmentalpolicy. Manyof the difficulties in environmental policymaking are challenges of governance, knowledge, values, and cost that transcend questions ofanalyticalframework. But with a process ofincremental advances building on past advances and on a systems-based understanding of the problems we face, we may be able to create an environmental management system founded in industrial ecology that wins the confidence of policy revolutionaries and conservatives, as well as those in the vast middle ground. As the number of successfully imple- mented practices grows, they will begin to replace the current system, both informally and formally, through regulation and legislation. Industrial ecol-
- 49. Industrial Ecology 33 ogy offers an analytic framework for the accumulation of such practices which, when stitched together, can become the fabric of a new environmental policy needed in a world where the interactions between nature and human society daily become more complex. As those practices are given the status of public policy, we can shed our frayed air-water-waste coat and be on a new path to a sustainable America. Notes 1. See Myron F. Uman, eel., Keeping Pace with Science and Engineering: Case Studies in Environmental Regulation (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993), a vol- ume from the National Academy of Engineering, for examples of how regulation has not been able to keep up with increases in knowledge. 2. T. E. Graedel and B. R. Allenby, Industrial Ecology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Pren- tice Hall, 1995). 3. The National Environmental Policy Act, which has become a relatively ineffective environmental policy tool, still offers a useful vision ofhow environmental policy should be made. In particular, it seeks to assure: (1) intergenerational equity ("fulfill the responsibili- ties for each generation as trustee of the environment for succeedinggenerations"); (2) envi- ronmentaljustice ("assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive and esthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings"); (3) beneficial use ("attain the widest range of beneficial uses of the environment without degradation, risk to health or safety, or other undesirable and unintended consequences"); (4) ecological diversity and individual liberty ("preserve important historic, cultural, and natural aspects of our national heritage and maintain, wherever possible, an environment which supports diversity and variety of individual choice"); (5) prosperity ("achieving a balance between population and resource use which will permit high standards of living and wide sharing of life's amenities"); (6) conservation ("enhance the quality of renewable resources and approach the maximum attainable recy- cling of depletable resources"). SeeJ. McElfish and E. Parker Rediscoveringthe National Environmental Policy Act (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Law Institute, 1995). 4. According toJames E. Krier and Mark Brownstein,"On Integrated Pollution Con- trol," Environmental Law 22 (1991): 121, whether or not air/water/waste was the best organizing principle for EPA, media-specific bills had been enacted by Congress and the objective of EPA'S first administrator, William Ruckleshaus,was to establish the agency as a responsive player. "Ruckleshaus thought that it would be too unsettling, confusing, and time-consuming to begin the new Agency's life with efforts to revamp this fragmented (non)system in favor of an approach organized around administrativefunctions—such as research, monitoring, standard-setting, enforcement, and the like." 5. Harold D. Lasswell, "From Fragmentation to Configuration," Policy Sciences 2 (1971): 439-46.
- 50. 34 Charles W. Powers and Marian R. Chertow 6. A very useful two-page diagram that illustratesjust how different these laws were on issues such as the designation of different federal regulatory agencies, different defini- tions of effect, approach to risk, and so forth is found in Neurotoxicity: Identifying and Controlling Poisons of the Nervom System (U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assess- ment, April 1990). 7. One example was inspired by the public disclosure provisions of the "Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act." The law has led some firms to dispose of waste by deep well injection rather than find an alternative, environmentally (or economi- cally) preferable means of disposal because wastedeposited in that waywas not subject to reporting requirements. 8. In particular, CERCLA seems to have created implicit incentivesfor existing owners to avoid knowing about possible contamination on their property and for prospective users to avoid involvementin cleanup issues related to such property. The unintentional result—until a series of recent initiativesmade as part of EPA'S Brownfieldsagenda—may well have been a significant rise in abandonmentofurban commercial and industrial prop- erties. Some experts believe that the actual risks to unwitting urban users of such aban- doned contaminated properties may exceed the risk averted by the Superfimd program. Surely the impact of CERCLA on urban blight is well recognized to be an extraordinary indirect cost of the current Superfund. 9. Philip K. Howard's The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America (New York:Random House, 1994) succeeds in major part because of the poignancy of his examples from theenvironment. 10. See James McElfish, "Back to the Future," Environmental Forum 12, no. 5 (1995): 14-23. McElfish, it should be noted, believes that the entire contemporary desire to pursue the next generation of collaborative and holistic environmentalpolicy needs no additional authorization (though perhaps it could use congressional reaffirmation) since NEPA provides what is required. 11. See also Reid Lifset and Charles W. Powers, "Industrial Ecology and the Next Generation Project" (drafted in preparation for the Next Generation workshop on indus- trial ecology at Yale University, New Haven, March 1996). Lifset, a pioneer of industrial ecology, is now editor of the first peer-reviewedjournal to serve this new field, fat Journal of Industrial Ecology (MIT Press), and he very thoughtfully reviewed this chapter. 12. The first main conferencereport on the topic of industrial ecology is from L. W. Jelinski et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 89 (1992), based on a collo- quium entitled Industrial Ecology, organized by C. K. N. Patel, held in May 1991 at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington,D.C. 13. See Suren Erkman's Industrial Ecology: A Historical View (Geneva: Industrial Maturation Multiplier [IMM], 1997), andJournal of Cleaner Production^ forthcoming,for the strands industrial ecology has drawn together,particularlyfrom the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Manyprevious analytictools such as life-cycle costing, energy analysis, and residu- als management are antecedent to current methods of life-cycle analysis. The call for papers issued by the newJournal of Industrial Ecology states that it "will address a series
- 51. Industrial Ecology 35 of related topics" and then lists material and energy flow studies (industrial metabolism); technological change; dematerialization and decarbonization; life-cycle planning, design and assessment; design for the environment; extended producer responsibility (product stewardship); eco-industrial parks (industrial symbiosis); product-oriented environmen- tal policy; and eco-efficiency. 14. "Life-cycle assessment is an objectiveprocess to evaluate the environmental bur- dens associated with a product, process, or activityby identifyingand quantifying energy and material usage and environmental releases, to assess the impact of those energy and material uses and releases on the environment,and to evaluate and implement opportuni- ties to effect environmental improvements. The assessment includes the entire life cycle of the product, process, or activity,encompassing extracting and processing raw materials; manufacturing, transportation, and distribution; use/re-use/maintenance; recycling; and final disposal." Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, A Technical Frame- workfor Life-Cycle Assessment (Washington, D.C.: SETAC and SETAC Foundation for Envi- ronmental Education, Inc.,January 1991),chap. 10. 15. See Battelle, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, "The Source of Value: An Executive Briefing and Sourcebook on IndustrialEcology" (February 1996), 3.2. 16. Quoted in Ernest Lowe and John Warren, The Source of Value: An Executive Briefing and Sourcebook on Industrial Ecology (Richland, Wash.: Pacific Northwest Labo- ratory, 1996), 3.11. 17. Nicholas Gertler andJohn Ehrenfeld, "A Down to Earth Approach to Clean Pro- duction," Technology Review, February-March 1996. 18. Robert Frosch, "Industrial Ecology: A Philosophical Introduction," Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences 89, no. 3 (1992). 19. The systematic tracing of materials and energy flows from extraction of materials from the earth through industrial and consumer systems to the final disposal ofwasteswas named "industrial metabolism" by Robert Ayres, its founder. See, for example, Robert Ayres, "Industrial Metabolism," in Technology and Environment, ed. Jesse H. Ausubul and Hedy E. Sladovich (Washington,D.C.: NationalAcademy Press, 1989). 20. Valerie Thomas and Thomas Spiro, "Emissions and Exposure to Metals: Cad- mium and Lead,"Industrial Ecology and Global Change, ed. Robert Socolow et al. (Cam- bridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1994). 21. The most frequently referred to source on this isWorld Commission on Environ- ment and Development, Our CommonFuture (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 22. President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD), Sustainable America: A New Consensusfor theFuture (Washington, D.C., February 1996). 23. Graedel and Allenby,Industrial Ecology. 24. Robert White, preface to Allenby and Richards, Greening. 25. Robert Socolow and Valerie Thomas,"The Industrial Ecology ofLead and Electric Vehicles,'1 'Journaloj'IndustrialEcology l,no. 1(1997). 26. Robert Ayres, William Schlesinger, and Robert Socolow, "Human Impacts on
- 52. 36 Charles W. Powers and Marian R. Chertow the Carbon and Nitrogen Cycles," in Socolow et ah, Industrial Ecology and Global Change, 121-55. 27. Robert Socolow, "Six Perspectives from Industrial Ecology," in Socolow et al., Industrial Ecology and GlobalChange, 3-16. 28.John Schall, "Does the Solid Waste ManagementHierarchy Make Sense?" Program on Solid Waste Policy Working Paper no. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Program on Solid Waste Policy, 1992). 29. David Rejeski, "Clean Production and the Post Command-and-Control Paradigm," in Environmental Management Systems and CleanerProduction (forth- coming). 30. Charles Lindblom, "The Science of 'Muddling Through,'"Public Adminis- tration Review 19 (1959): 79. 31. See NEPI, ReinventingEPA and Environmental Policy Working Group, the Unified Statute Sector, "Integrating EnvironmentalPolicy: A Blueprint for 21st Cen- tury Environmentalism" (Washington,D.C.:NEPI, 1996). 32. Socolow, "Six Perspectives," 12-13. 33. See, for example, Frederick Anderson, "From Voluntaryto RegulatoryPol- lution Prevention," in Allenby and Richards, Greening, 98-107. Anderson con- cludes that the regulated community should limit implementation of programs not required by regulation—irrespectiveof their salutary effect on the environment—to situations where the programs can bejustified solely on economic grounds, and that they should carefully weigh those benefits against the likelihood that they will gener- ate regulatory experience that enables rapid deployment of a second and unprece- dentedly "intrusive regulatorysystem" for pollution prevention which will simply be cobbled together with the existing system. 34. Prof. Tim W. Clark, Yale University, personal communication, 1997. See also Ronald D. Brunner and Tim W. Clark,"A Practice-based Approach to Ecosys- tem Management," Conservation Biology 10, no. 5 (October 1996): 1-12, which describes the need for the buildingand testing of practices at the level of the ecosys- tem in a parallel way to the need described here for new practices compatible with industrial ecology. Brunner and Clark (p. 2) explain the need to be evolutionary because "ecosystem contexts are far too diverse,complex, and dynamic for anyone to understand completely, completely objectively, and once and forall." 35. See,for example, Lowe and Warren, "Product Life-Extension and theSer- vice Economy," Source of Value, chap. 4. 36. The Sustainable America report did stress that site-specific waiver pro- grams would require far more regulator time and effort (andauthority and discre- tion, incidentally) than would normal compliance and enforcement efforts.
- 53. t w o Ecosystem Management and Economic Development John Gordon andJane Coppock Protecting nature and developing the economy have often been viewed as separate, ifnot opposing, activities.Frequently it has seemed to come down to an either/or choice: either seal off an area from economic development to protect threatened species or support the economy by putting as few environmental constraints as possible on new projects. Environmental regulation has been seen as the creation ofa centralgovern- ment that showed little or no understanding of its effect on people's liveli- hoods. Economic development has been perceived as being carried out with littleor no regard for the damageit was doing to vital or irreplaceable natural systems. These views have lent themselves to caricature as "jobs versus the environment," or "loggers versus spotted owls," or "dams ver- sus snail darters," and in extreme cases have resulted in heated conflict. Economic and environmental opportunities have been lost. Money and time have been wasted in endless court battles. A new,less fractious, more collaborative approach to settling these disputes is clearly needed and has been developing in pockets around the United States. This new approach takes seriously the need both to protect habitat and to promote economic growth. It looks for ways to simultaneously achieve protection and development using policy tools to connect, not separate, them.An integrated policy approach represents a significant break with the past,where"pristine"environmentsand eco- nomic growth maximizationwere both held to be sacred, and attempts to bring them closer together were viewed as threatening. Discovering how to avoid the cost of separating environment and economy without
- 54. 38 John Gordonand Jane Coppock endangering either value is at the heart of the search for new approaches, and is an important foundation for the next generation of policy. Some of the ferocity of the battles over environment and development has resulted from a lack of appropriate concepts and practical tools to analyze the circumstances scientifically and to handle them politically and socially. Ecosys- tem managementis both a concept and a tool thatmakesthe extensive develop- ments in ecological science applicable and usable for people in the field. New methods ofdispute resolution haveadvanced the process ofcollective decision- making.Without these tools, people insist on prohibition and separation as the only means ofprotection on both sides. With these tools it becomes possible to create a common knowledge base, encourage a comprehensive perspective, and establish the dialogue necessary to begin to build trust. What is the larger goal? With regard to both human and natural systems, "caring for the present without destroying the future" seems to capture the essence ofwhat manypeople value. Increasingly in the United States, we must try to achieve that goal within a finite landscape and with a growing human population. In previous eras, conflicts over the same piece of territory could be resolved by going elsewhere, to a new patch ofground. Wesolved our con- flicts by doling out land to whomever wanted it or appeared to need it. We must now choose how much ofour land to occupy, to develop, or to preserve in order to have both the economic opportunity and the environmental qual- ity that the vast majority of citizens want. Often, the same tract of land must accommodate both preservation and development. The shift in attitude we are starting to see toward environment and development may represent the tangiblerealization that the United States has begun to resemble other, more crowded countries. Increasing competition for scarce environmental and economic resources means that it is unlikely that constituencies willget everythingthey want. In light of this very different assumption, the next generation of environmental policy must use new tools to identify and focus on the still plentiful circumstances in which environ- ment and economy can coexist profitably. Ecosystem Management One important vehicle for achieving greater integration is a broad, systems- based approach that looks at the overall structure and behavior of a given
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- 56. Then I searched and searched again On the table, but in vain, And I fussed and fumed And felt about the floor. And I rose up in my wroth, And I shook the tablecloth, And turned my pockets Inside out once more! “This will not do,” I said, “I must not lose my head!” So I went and tore the cushions From my chair, Shook all my rugs and mats, And shoes and coats and hats, And crawled beneath the Sofa in despair!
- 58. Then I said, “I must keep cool!” So I took my two-foot rule And I poked among the Ashes in the grate. And I paced my room in rage, Like a wild beast in a cage, In a furious, frightful, frantic, Frenzied state! At last, upon my soul, I lost my self-control And indulged in language Quite unfit to hear; Till out of breath—I gasped And clutched my head—and grasped That pencil calmly resting on My ear! Yes, I found that pencil stub! But my thought—Aye, there’s the rub In vain I try to call it Back again. It has fled beyond recall, And what is worst of all ’T will turn up in some Other fellow’s brain! So I denounce forthwith Any future Jones or Smith Who thinks my thought—a Plagiarist of the worst. I shall know my thought again When I hear it, and it’s plain It must be mine because I thought it first!
- 61. THE CUSSED DAMOZEL. A lover sate alone All by the Golden Gate, And made exceedynge moan Whiles he hys Love didde wait. To him One coming prayed Why he didde weepe. Said he, “I weepe me for a maid Who cometh notte to mee.” “Alas! I waite likewise My Love these many years; Meseems ’t would save our eyes If we should pool our tears.” And so they weeped full sore A twelvemonth and a daye, Till they could weepe no more, For notte a tear hadde they. Whenas they came to see They could not weepe alway, Each of hys Faire Ladyee ’Gan sing a rondelay.
- 62. “My Love hath golden hair,” Sang one, “and like the wine The red lips of my Fair.” The other sang, “So’s mine.” “My Love is wondrous wise,” Sang one, “and wondrous fine And wondrous dark her eyes.” The other sang, “So’s mine.”
- 63. “My Love is wondrous proud, And her name is Geraldyne.” “Thou liest!” shrieked aloud The other. “She is mine!” “She plighted ere I died Eternal troth to me.” “Good lack,” the other cried, “E’en so she plighted me!” “Beside my bier she swore She would be true to me, For aye and evermore, Unto eternityee.” The twain didde then agree, In their most grievous plight, To fly to earth and see The which of them was right. Alack and well-a-daye! A-well-a-daye alack! Eft soons they flew away, Eft sooners flew they back. For when they had come there They were not fain to stay, To Geraldyne the Faire Her silver weddyng daye.
- 67. As I sit, inanely staring In the Gas-log’s lambent flame, Far away my fancy’s faring To a land without a name,— To the country of Invention, Where I roam in ecstasy, Where all things are mere pretension, Nothing what it seems to be. Folded in a calm serenic, On a jute-bank I recline, Where, mid moss of hue arsenic, Millinery flowers entwine. Cambric blooms—glass-dew beshowered, Gay with colors aniline, Ever eagerly devoured By the mild, condensed milch kine. Now the scene idyllic changes From the meadows aniline, And my faltering fancy ranges Down a dismal, deep decline, Scene of some age past upheaval, Where no foot of man has fared, To a Gas-log grove primeval, Where I find me, mute, and scared Of—I know not—Goblins, Banshees, And the ancient Gas-trees toss Gnarled and flickering giant branches, Hoary with asbestos moss. Now I come to where are waving Painted palms, precisely planned, Rearing trunks of cocoa shaving, By electric zephyrs fanned,
- 68. y e ect c ep y s a ed, Soothing me with sound seraphic Till I sink into a swoon, Dreaming cineomatographic Dreams beneath an arc-light moon.
- 69. Cupid’s Fault. Once Cupid, he Went on a spree And made a peck of trouble, “Ah ha!” cried he, “Two hearts I see!” Alack, the rogue saw double. There was but one; What has he done? How could he be so stupid? Into one heart Two arrows dart— O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid! In truth ’t is sweet When “two hearts beat As one”—but what to do When in one heart Two arrows smart And one heart beats as two?
- 71. ust two minutes more! O Tempus, stand still, Stand still, I implore, One moment, until I have time to reflect On what I would say. ALL ABOARD! Scene: a railway station. Give me time to collect My senses, I pray, Until I have said What my courage was mounting To say, when instead I was stupidly counting The moments that fled! O Tempus! you’re flying! A plague on this parting, This sighing, goodbying, This smiling and smarting; A plague too upon This—Heavens! it’s starting! Good bye!— There, she’s gone!
- 72. KILLING TIME.
- 73. The air was full of shouts and cries, Of shrill “Ha-ha’s,” and “Ho’s,” and “Hi’s,” And every kind of whistle, And the sky was dark with flying things— Golf-sticks, balls, engagement-rings, Novels, rackets, and billiard-cues, Cameras, fishing-rods, and shoes, And every sort of missile. The ground was black with a seething mass Of people of every kind and class— Matrons, men, and misses, Ladies and gentlemen, old and new, Lads and lasses, and children too, Elderly men with elderly wives— Hustling and bustling for their lives. “I wonder what all this is?” Said I: “I fear that it may be Another case for the S. P. C. ’T will bear investigation.” I dropped my book and joined the race, And struggling into the foremost place, Behold, the object of the chase Was an aged man with wrinkled face! I was filled with indignation. His frame was bent and his knees aknock, His head was bald but for one lock, And I cried with anger thrilling, “This thing must stop; ’t is a disgrace An aged gentleman to chase.” Then everybody laughed in my face. “This,” they cried, “is a different case; It’s only ‘Time’ we’re killing.”
- 74. Then it was I observed two things That grew from his shoulders—two big wings! And I joined in the people’s laughter. Tho’ killing is often out of place, A circumstance may alter a case. So I took my pad and pencil-case, And for want of a missile, in its place I tossed these verses after.
- 75. The Mermaid Club. The Mermaid Culture Club request That you will kindly be On such and such a day their guest At something after three.
- 76. Then came (it did look like a joke) Essays on bonnet, hat, and toque: Said I, “They must be mocking.” And when at length a mermaid rose, And read a thesis to expose The latest novelty in hose, I felt my reason rocking. But when at last the thing was o’er, And I was back again on shore, I fell to moralizing. And as remembrance came to me Of other clubs not in the sea, Of essays read by ladies fair Upon the “why” and “whence” and “where,” I wrote at once that “I should be Most charmed,” and donn’d my best Dress diving-suit,—a joy to see,— And at their club-house ’neath the sea Arrived at “something after three” Promptly (unpunctuality Is something I detest). The President, a mermaid fair, Sat by a coral table, And read an essay with an air Intelligent and able Upon—but you will never guess The subject—it was nothing less Than sunshades and umbrellas. I really did my very best To keep from laughing—as their guest. That it was hard must be confessed When next the meeting was addressed On shoes, and which would wear the best— Tan slippers or prunellas.
- 77. Said I, “It’s not surprising.”
- 78. pon a time I had a Heart, And it was bright and gay; And I gave it to a Lady fair To have and keep alway. She soothed it and she smoothed it And she stabbed it till it bled; She brightened it and lightened it And she weighed it down with lead. ANGEL’S TOYS. A SONG. She flattered it and battered it And she filled it full of gall; Yet had I Twenty Hundred Hearts, Still should she have them all.
- 79. I’ve often wondered—have n’t you?— What all the little angels do To while eternity away, When grown-up angels sing and play Upon their harps with golden strings, And lutes and violas and things. What do they do? What do they play To while eternity away? After much pondering profound, Perhaps an answer I have found— I give it you for what it’s worth. The people now upon this earth, Who neither quite deserve to go Above hereafter, nor below— The prig, the poser, and the crank; The snob, who thinks of naught but rank; The gossip and the fool—in short, All nuisances of every sort— Will change into amusing toys For little angel girls and boys. The braggart will confer a boon By changing to a toy balloon; The snob tuft-hunter and the bore To shuttlecock and battledore Will turn; the highfalutin wights The angel boys will fly as kites; The gossip then will cease his prattle, And be an angel baby’s rattle; The prig—but you have got me there. Whether in heaven, or elsewhere, ’T is quite impossible to see What kind of use the prig can be; By what inscrutable design, Or by what accident divine, Or what impenetrable jest He was evolved, can ne’er be guessed.
- 83. A lady on the lonely shore Of a dull watering place Once met a Tigress weeping sore, Tears streaming down her face. And knowing well that safety lay In not betraying fear, She asked in quite a friendly way, “What makes you weep, my dear?” The Tigress brushed a tear aside; “I want a man!” she wailed. “A man! they’re scarce!” the lady cried; “I fear the crop has failed! There is but one in miles, and oh, I fear that he is wed!” The Tigress smiled. “I am, you know, A man eater,” she said. “You eat them!” cried the maid, then ceased In horror and amaze, Then sat her down to show the beast The error of her ways. “Men are so scarce,” she urged, “I fear There are n’t enough to go Around—now is it right, my dear, That you should waste them so? I weep to think of all the men You’ve spoiled ere now,” said she. “And if you eat the rest, why, then What will be left for me?” The hours flew by; she took no rest Till t ili ht h t l t
- 84. Till twilight, when at last The contrite beast with sobs confessed Repentance for the past. “Go,” said the maid, “take my advice; I know what’s best for you; It’s cheap and filling at the price; Go seek the oyster stew!” The Tigress lies unto this day Upon an oyster bed. The Lady—so the gossips say— Is shortly to be wed.
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