GUEST EDITORIAL The road not taken

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GUEST EDITORIAL

The road not taken Two roads diverged in a narrow wood.. . Z took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. I

-Robert Frost

US.environmental policy over the next four years will be strongly shaped by decisions President Reagan and his advisers make during the next few weeks. These decisions obviously include how environmental programs will be treated in the proposed budget and what positions the administration will adopt toward the long list of major environmental statutes that are up for reauthorization. Underlying all these specific issues, however, is a more fundamental choice of direction: Will President Reagan articulate a positive conservative agenda for achieving environmental quality, or will he once again discount it as a low-priority distraction from other issues such as budget reduction, tax changes, and deregulation? Environmental policy today presents a fragile but important opportunity for creative rethinking and improvement. Existing policies have left many environmental problems unsolved, and some existing policies are themselves part of the problem. The regulatory laws of the 1970s have achieved progress in some areas, but they are poorly coordinated and sometimes costly, and some are quite limited in their environmental effectiveness. This rethinking could draw substantially on conservative principles and could make a major positive contribution, if it carries a clear administration commitment to the goals of environmental quality. If that commitment is demonstrated, real reforms could be achieved; if it is not, we could easily see another round of frustrating polarization as everyone digs in to protect the status quo. What might a positive rethinking look like? Risk priorities. EPA Administrator Ruckelshaus put great effort into developing a management system for setting sensible priorities among risks. This foundation can be built on both within EPA and across the regulatory agencies. Cross-media pollution. Fragmented laws and p r e grams for air, water, and land are a serious problem both for business and environmental effectiveness. Basic thinking and experiments have been done, and some further steps could be taken administratively; the most

ambitious agenda would be to use this problem as a framework for considering all the proposed statutory reauthorizations together, but this clearly would require the strongest possible commitment and credibility to succeed. Cutting harmful subsidies. Serious budget balancing gains little from cutting environmental regulation and research budgets, but major savings could come from cutting subsidies that are both economically wasteful and environmentally damaging, such as some water and energy projects and agricultural programs. If free-market principles do matter, here is a place to apply them. Research dkectiom. Environmental research is an essential basis for sensible decisions, but it has been hampered in recent years by short-term regulatory priorities and by budget cuts. The Council on Environmental Quality and the National Science Foundation have recently completed an agenda of long-term research needs, with strong input from the scientific community; if such an agenda is coupled with stable or modestly increased funding, better decisions could result. A positive conservative agenda to achieve environmental protection remains thus far a road little traveled; President Reagan could make a great difference if he chooses to take it. The choice is his, but the opportunity to make it will be brief.

G U 1 3 - 9 3 6 W & 1 1 0 9 1 M l . ~ / O 0 1984 American Chemical S o c i i

Richard N. . L Anrbms is professor of environmental sciences and engineering and director of the Institutefor Environmental Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hi//. Envimn. SCi.Techd..W. 10. NO.1.1985 3