On the Right Track

Growing up during the 1950s in the Cleveland suburbs, within walking distance of Lake Erie, I watched an environmental disaster develop. Some of my earliest memories are of pleasant days at Huntington Beach, a weekend mecca for thousands in the metropolitan area, and watching the lake die gave me a poignant view of the quality-of-life side of the environmental equation.

Pollution: inexorable march

As time passed, the lake became progressively polluted from both industrial and municipal wastes. First, certain areas were prohibited to fishermen, then to swimmers, until finally only the brave (or ignorant) would venture near the water for any purpose. I felt a child's sadness at the great lake's deterioration but hardly any sense of frustration; the general tone at the time, at least as I perceived it, was one of resignation. The lake's death, in short, was thought to be the inevitable price of industrial progress and population growth. (We had no idea of the health hazard to our drinking water or there might have been a panic.)

Occasionally, executives from the industrial plants bordering the lake would appear on television and offer plausible explanations for their inability to control discharges. The technology was not quite ready yet; it would cost too much; profits would suffer; jobs would be lost; the list went on and on. Public officials joined the chorus. Municipal wastes could not be prevented from spoiling the lake: taxes would go up; water bills would rise.

The situation had reached a point of paralysis and would have remained so, in my opinion, without federal environmental legislation. Each business organization and government agency had sound economic reasons for its position, and the broader public interest in terms of quality of life and health was sufficiently vague and so widely diffused among the populace as to prevent it from coming to the fore. Or perhaps vagueness and diffusion are not apt. It was more a case of each individual's desire for environmental protection being dominated by the perceived economic threat posed by environmental laws and regulations. In any case, inertia was so strong that even the simplest, most basic efforts, I feel, would not have been made without legislated change.

Environment's comeback

Admittedly, it's chic for white-collar professionals like me to extol the virtues of environmental laws. As the old quote goes: "It's easy to preach fasting when one has a full belly." But I would like to think that few of us are so naive or uncaring as to ignore the costs in terms of higher product prices, higher taxes, and lost jobs resulting from the changes forced upon America's economic system. The country is entering what is being called a "post-industrial" stage—probably an inevitable passage in our modern competitive world. It is certain, however, that some of our competitive difficulties in heavy industry are caused by environmental restrictions, which are strict compared to the rest of the world. By consequence we will not know the full costs of our environmental policies until years after the fact. It also is certain that, in an effort so broad as protecting the environment, some steps have enacted a penalty too harsh in relation to the benefits gained.

Ultimately, only the experts can judge the benefit-cost ratio in dollar terms. In philosophical terms, however, it seems to me that protecting our environment has been a task that government has performed well. The costs have been substantial but the gains—in both quality and health—have been greater. Federal environmental legislation has furthered the common good in the best sense of that concept.

I realize that such a sweeping conclusion may verge on the unscientific when all the facts have yet to be gathered, but one striking example buoys my confidence: like the news of Mark Twain's death, the reports of Lake Erie's demise turn out to have been grossly exaggerated. If even such a widely acknowledged environmental basket case as Lake Erie can stage a comeback, I am convinced that as a nation we are on the right track to improved environmental quality.