Global Climate Coalition
1331 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Suite 1500 - North Tower
Washington, DC 20004-1703
Tel: 202.637.3158
Fax: 202.638.1043
Alt. Fax: 202.638.1032
May 3, 1993
Dear Reporter:
A growing number of opinion leaders are questioning the way U.S. environmental policy is
developed. They are asking questions like "What are the priorities?" and "Are we benefiting from the
regulations?" Some critics contend that regulations are sometimes hastily drafted, poorly targeted,
and unnecessarily costly. New regulatory policies often seem to follow on the heels of sensational
media coverage as some legislators rush to respond to the latest "crisis."
Ultimately, the result of this seemingly quixotic and hastily developed environmental policy is a
regulatory approach that is often times ineffective and unnecessarily adds to business costs. There is
also a growing awareness that American business and industry have been playing a critical role in
environmental improvement, spending over $130 billion each year on environmental measures. In a
recent 5-part series on environmental policy, The New York Times reported that "many scientists,
economists and government officials have reached the dismaying conclusion that much of America's
environmental program has gone seriously awry." Enclosed are the first and last articles in that
series, printed with permission from The New York Times.
Efforts to stabilize greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are prime candidates for a worrisome and
potentially regrettable environmental policy. The science is uncertain, and the targets and timetables
are arbitrary, not a scientific benchmark. Further, very little has been done to set the price tam the
initiatives suggested, a fact that was clearly recognized by President Clinton in his Earth Day speech
laiii l when1liaia the ation s commitment to re ucmg greenhousejases must be built on "cost
eff_Elivelmeasures. The President said his Administration's policy on global warming "must be a
clarion call, not for more bureaucracy or regulation or unnecessary costs, but instead for American
ingenuity and creativity to produce the best and most energy efficient technology."
The Global Climate Coalition responded with the enclosed statement, which concurs with the need
for a more thorough economic analysis before billion dollar policy options are endorsed. As the U.S.
works with other nations around the world to respond to claims of global warming, we look forward
to engaging in an open dialogue with the Administration to move toward reducing greenhouse gas
emissions both here and in developing countries and to find solutions that are both good for the
environment and the economy.
Sincerely,

,W,Itutao
John Shlaes
Executive Director

 PRESS OFFICE: (202) 628-3622

NEWS RELEASE
1331 PENNSYLVANIA AVE. NW • SUITE 1500 - NORTH TOWER • WASHINGTON, DC 20004-1703
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Don Rheem
(202) 628-3622
INDUSTRY GROUP ENCOURAGED BY PRESIDENT CLINTON'S CALL FOR
FURTHER ECONOMIC ANALYSIS ON REDUCING GREENHOUSE GASES
The Global Climate Coalition, the leading business
Washington, DC, April 21, 1993
today
reaffirmed
its commitment to work with the Clinton
voice on climate change,
administration to develop a "cost effective" plan that will ensure continued reductions of U.S.
greenhouse gas emissions.
According to John Shlaes, executive director of the Global Climate Coalition, "The president
today committed his administration to taking a hard look at the climate change issue with a
keen eye to the costs of proposed solutions. This new focus on economic analysis is very i
encouraging for business and should be good news for all Americans," he said.
In his first public speech on the environment since taking office, President Clinton this
morning said his administration's policy on global warming "must be a clarion call, not for
more bureaucracy or regulation or unnecessary costs, but instead for American ingenuity and
creativity to produce the best and most energy-efficient technology."
"This approach is what the business community has called for all along," said Shlaes. "The
rigagft werro—concems about greenhouse gases is to maintain a robust economy and unleash
American ingenuity. We believe the president recognizes that the share of the U.S.
.
he decline, and that trend iTiould be
contribution
--,
encouraged."

(

Shlaes pointed out, however, that if the president's commitment is intended to go beyond the
existing Framework Convention and establish firm and arbitrary targets and timetables for
emissions reductions, the Global Climate Coalition will vigorously oppose any such
commitment and the economic and regulatory measures that would be necessary to achieve
them. "The wrong course of action could jeopardize the economic health of the nation," he
stressed.
(more)

 •

The Framework Convention on Climate Change signed in Rio last year encouraged all nations
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but stopped short of setting targets and timetables. "All
nations have to work together to reduce emissions," said Shlaes, "because the vast majority of
future emissions will come from developing countries, not the West."
Shlaes pointed out that recent scientific evidence contradicts the predictions of a dangerous
"global warming" trend. "Satellites monitoring global temperatures have indicated no
warming trend since they were launched 15 years ago," Shlaes said, "and other observational
data are in sharp contrast to the predictions of computer models that have been used to
forecast a dangerous warming.
"We are looking forward to the Clinton administration pursuing a course of openness with the
private sector as they develop this plan to be completed by August," Shlaes said.
The Global Climate Coalition is an organization of business trade associations and private
companies established in 1989 to coordinate business participation in the scientific and policy
debate on global climate change
###

 bextut WA Tinto
Copyright 0 1993 The New York Times

NEW YORK SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 1993

$2 beyond 75 miles from New York City

New View Calls Environmental Policy Misguided
By KEITH SCHNEIDER
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, March 20 — A generation after the United States responded to poisoned streams and filthy
air with the world's first comprehensive strategy to protect the environment, many scientists, economists and
Government officials have reached the
dismaying conclusion that much of
America's environmental program has
gone seriously awry.
These experts say that in the last 15
years environmental policy has too
often evolved largely in reaction to
popular panics, not in response to
sound scientific analyses of which environmental hazards present the greatest risks.
As a result, many scientists and public health specialists say, billions ol
dollars are wasted each year in battling problems that are no longer considered especially dangerous, leaving
little money for others that cause far
more harm.
At First, Clear Benefits
In the first wave of the modern environmental movement, starting about
30 years ago, the focus was on broad
efforts to eliminate the most visible
pollution pouring from smokestacks
and sewer pipes — programs with
clear goals that had obvious benefits.
But a second wave began in the late
1970's, with a new strategy intended to
limit visible pollution further — and to
begin attacking invisible threats from
toxic substances.
To that end, states and the Federal
Government began writing sweeping
environmental laws, some of which included strict regulations to insure that
certain toxic compounds were not
present in air, water or the ground at
levels that did not exceed a few parts
per billion, concentrations that could be
measured with only the most sophistil
cated equipment.

The result was a tangle of regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency estimates cost more than
$140 billion a year, roughly $100 billion
spent by industry and $40 billion by
Government,
But what is now becoming apparent,
some scientists and public health specialists say, is that some of these laws
— written in reaction to popular concerns about toxic waste dumps or asbestos in the schools, as examples —
were based on little if any sound research about the true nature of the
threat. Since 1980, for instance, thousands of regulations were written to
restrict compounds that had caused
cancer in rats or mice, even though
these animal studies often fail to predict how the compounds might affect
humans.
And with rare exceptions, Congress
approved new laws without subjecting
them to even rudimentary cost-benefit
analyses. One reason was that during
the 1980's, when the economy seemed
healthier, there was far less pressure
on Congress to consider the cost of
environmental policy.
Overpriced and Misguided?
Now a new Administration intent on
strengthening environmental policy is
settling into office when competition
for scarce financial resources is keen.
At the same time, a wealth of new
research shows that some of the nation's environmental protection efforts
are excessively costly — though no one
knows how much of this money is misspent — and devoted to the wrong
problems.
This view. is the vanguard of a new,
. third wave of environmentalism that is
sweeping across America. It began in

the late 1980's among farmers, homeowners
and others who were upset largely by the
growing cost of regulations that didn't appear to bring any measurable benefits. Corporate executives had long been making similar arguments but had gone unheeded, even
during 12 years of Republican rule, because
often they were seen as interested only in
saving money.
Richard J. Mahoney, chairman and chief
executive of Monsanto, the chemical company, said the nation may start listening to
industry now.
"People want to know, even with the environment, what we are getting for our money," he said. "The most positive thing since
•the election is that we are beginning to recognize that we do have finite resources, and one
must make choices."
But leaders of the nation's conservation
organizations believe the new view is misguided.
"We don't need a new paradigm," said
David D. Doniger, a senior lawyer with the
Natural Resources Defense Council. "For 35
years, the policy of the Government has been
that when there is uncertainty about a threat
it is better to be safe than sorry. When you
are operating at the limits of what science
knows, the big mistake would be to underestimate the real danger and leave people unprotected."
Still, in the last few years the wave has
moved into universities, city halls, state capitols and even to the highest levels of the
E.P.A., whose Science Advisory Board in 199C
concluded that environmental laws "are
more reflective of public perceptions of risk
than of scientific understanding of risk."
Law Follows Panic
William K. Reilly, the E.P.A. Administrator at the time, agreed. And in a recent
interview, he argued: "People have a right te
expect that public officials are making the
right choices for the right reasons. We need
to develop a new system for taking action on
the environment that isn't based on responding to the nightly news.
"We're misallocating large amounts of
money," added Mr. Reilly, who is now a
senior fellow at of the World Wildlife Fund,
"What we have had in the United States is
environmental agenda-setting by episodic
panic. We've had Love Canal, Valley of the
Drums, the Exxon Valdez and with virtually

 every case of a new environmental crisis.
there is a new legislative priority and a new
budget allocation. That has created a mix ol
programs that don't respect the biggest risks
to health and ecology."
Richard D. Morgenstern, the acting administrator for policy planning and evaluation al
the EPA., explains the problem this way:
"Our society is very reactive, and wher
concerns are raised people want action. The
problem in a democracy is you can't easil}
sit idly back and tell people it would be bettei
to learn more."
The result, he added, is that "we're now ir
the position of saying in quite a few of ow
programs, 'Oops, we made a mistake.'"
President Clinton is clearly aware of this
view. As Governor of Arkansas, he continually complained as a Federal toxic waste
cleanup project in Jacksonville devoured $2:
million in state, Federal and private money
State officials said nearly a decade of worl,
has produced little more than piles of technical documents, exorbitant legal bills ant
public discord.
Greater Consequences
To be sure, some of the $140 billion the
nation is spending this year pays for environmental programs that are indisputably use.
ful. As an example, few experts question the
value of spending roughly $3 billion each year
on new sewage treatment plants. Many experts, however, question the wisdom of
spending billions of dollars to protect people
from traces of toxic compounds.
The new school of thought has blossomed
as policy makers confront planetary threats
like global warming, ozone depletion and
deforestation in which the consequences of
wrong action are much greater. Unless the
nation rethinks its approach to environmental protection, some experts say, the United
States could repeat its mistakes.
"The President is aware of this dilemma,
and there is leadership in this Administration
for trying to change the way we do business
in every aspect of governing, including environmental protection," said Carol M.
Browner, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. "We have to allow for change to occur as new information
becomes available. This is not an area where
a solution will fit forever."

Policy Now

Costly Solutions
Seeking Problems
Almost everyone involved, including community and local environmental groups,
agrees that the toxic waste program stands
as the most wasteful effort of all. It began 15
years ago when the nation rose in revulsion
over the discovery of seeping chemicals at
Love Canal in New York. Hundreds of people
were evacuated from their homes.
In response, Congress passed two laws:
the Superfund law of 1980 and amendments
to the Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act in 1984. A decade later, those laws have
driven the Government to spend almost $2
billion a year for the Superfund, which cleans

up toxic waste sites, and more than $8 billion
more a year on similar programs in other
agencies, even though many of the sites pose
little if any danger.
The Superfund law, which is a foundation
for the Government's toxic cleanup policy,
established a formula for ranking the potential hazards of toxic sites, and then devised a
rigid recipe for cleaning them up.
'Throwing Money at a Problem'
"Does it make sense to spend millions of
dollars cleaning up a site that only has a
tenth of an ounce of contamination?" asked
Dr. Richard Goodwin, a private environmental engineer in Upper Saddle River, N.J., who
has overseen more than 20 toxic waste cleanups. "I say no. All we're doing in most cases
is throwing money at a problem without
improving public health or the environment."
Hugh B. Kaufman, a hazardous waste specialist at the E.P.A. who helped uncover the
problem at Love Canal, said that in the few
'cases in which a site is near populated areas,
"the best thing we can do is evacuate people
if they want, then put up a fence and a flag
that says 'Stay Away.' "
Mr. Kaufman said he knows that his idea
represents a marked change in the traditional view of how the nation should care for its
land. But he and other experts says it does
not make sense to clean up these wastes at
costs that frequently exceed $10 million an
acre.
Even a principal author of the Superfund
law, Gov. Jim Florio of New Jersey, who was
chairman of a House environmental subcommittee in the 1970's, now argues that inflexible rules mean that Superfund resources are
too often devoted to making sites pristine.
"It doesn't make any sense to clean up a
rail yard in downtown Newark so it can be a
drinking water reservoir," he said, speaking
rhetorically.
Toxic waste cleanups are one example of a
program gone awry. Here are others:
Early in the 1980's, Government scientists argued that exposure to asbestos could
cause thousands of cancer deaths. Since asbestos was used as insulation in schools and
public buildings, parents reacted with alarm.
So in 1985 Congress approved a sweeping law
that led cities and states to spend between
$15 billion and $20 billion to remove asbestos
from public buildings. But three years ago,
the E.P.A. completed research that prompted officials to admit that ripping out the
asbestos had been an expensive mistake; the
removal often sent tiny asbestos fibers into
the air. Now, except in cases when the asbestos is damaged or crumbling, the Government's official advice is: Don't touch it.
9 In 1982, high concentrations of dioxin
were discovered in the dirt roads of Times
Beach, Mo., near St. Louis. Residents were
alarmed; the Government had designated
dioxin as one of the most toxic substances
known. The furor came in the middle of a
scandal at the E.P.A.; the agency's chief,
Anne Gorsuch Burford, was accused of not
enforcing environmental law and being too
close to industry. And as that scandal dominated the news, the Reagan Administration
decided to evacuate all 2,240 residents of
Times Beach, a project that cost the Government $37 million. But new research indicates

that dioxin may not be so dangerous after all.
None of the former residents of Times Beach
have been found to have been harmed by
dioxin, and two years ago, Dr. Vernon N.
Houk, the Federal official who urged the
evacuation, declared that he had made a
mistake.
Yet even as enormous sums of money were
being spent on these problems, Washington
was doing little about others. Here are two:
(Mercury, a highly toxic metal, has contaminated thousands of lakes across the nation, poisoning wildlife and threatening human health, state environmental officials
say. Twenty states, including New York,
have warned consumers not to eat lake fish
because they are tainted by mercury, which
can cause nervous system disorders. During
debate on the Clean Air Act, in 1990, Congress
considered limiting mercury emissions from
coal-burning electric plants, but lawmakers
decided not to act because they believed
utilities had already been asked to spend
enough to control acid rain, Senate and House
leaders said.
(lin the last two years, several Federal
agencies have called exposure to lead the
largest environmental threat to the nation's
children. Although some scientists dispute
that, several studies have shown that lead
poisoning in children leads to reduced intelligence, learning disabilities and hyperactivity. The problem is that most houses built
before the 1970's could have some lead-based
paint, and the fear is that children are eating
paint chips or inhaling lead-laden dust. Some
experts have said removing the lead paint
will cost at least $200 billion. This year, the
Government will spend $234 million on the
problem, far less than it spends on cleaning
up toxic wastes.

The Path to Policy

When Politics
Mixes With Fear
Even the advocates of change acknowledge that as science evolves, experts may
change their views again on the dangers
posed by these and other substances. But at
the least, "sound science should be our compass," as Mr. Reilly put it two years ago.
After all, it was politics, misinterpreted or
inaccurate scientific findings and a newly
influential national environmental movement that combined to set America down its
present path.
During the 1970's, the United States had
successfully dealt with many obvious environmental problems. When the Cuyahoga
River in Cleveland caught fire in 1969, as an
example, Congress passed the Clean Water
Act. About the same time came the Clean Air
Act, the Endangered Species Act and other
landmark environmental statutes — laws
that are now widely acclaimed.
Partisan Battles
By the late 1970's, many Democrats in
Congress believed the public wanted even
stricter environmental law. But when Ronald

 Reagan was elected in 1980, he promised to
reduce regulation. While the White House
and Congress battled over this, the national
environmental movement, with help from the
newS media, took on the job of warning the
public about new threats and enlisting popular support for new regulations. They were
spectacularly effective at this, and Congress
passed two dozen bills that laid down mandates.
In the 1970's, environmental statutes rarely ran more than 50 pages. In the 1980's, these
bills seldom numbered fewer than 500 pages.
The reason was that Congress wanted to
mandate safety limits so specific that the
Administration could not ignore or evade
them. Mr. Reilly, the former E.P.A. chief,
said he was largely unable to change the
Government's thinking, despite his strong
opinion that environmental policy was on the
wrong course, because "this represented a
pretty significant change of direction."
At the leading environmental groups, staff
members dispute the developing view that
environmental policy is off track.
Legitimizing Pollution?
"It's an effort to legitimize pollution," said
Daniel F. Becker, director of the Global
Warming and Energy Program at the Sierra
Club. "There are powerful forces who have
an economic stake in de-emphasizing environmental damage."
But others who analyze environmental issues said these groups are in danger of
becoming the green equivalent of the military lobby, more interested in sowing fear
and protecting wasteful programs than in
devising a new course.
"We are in danger of losing credibility and
thus losing public support if we don't modify
the whole way we go about protecting public
health and the environment," said Dr. Devra
Lee Davis, a senior research fellow at the
National Research Council of the National
Academy of Sciences.

A Case Study

Making Dirt
Safe Enough to
Eat
Perhaps no environmental program has
come under more criticism than the Superfund and its progeny. The Federal programs
to clear toxic or radioactive wastes will consume more than one-quarter of the roughly
$38 billion that the Federal Government
spends for environmental protection this
year. Experts in and out of the Government
assert, though, that the justification for these
expenditures is often questionable.
Consider the case of Columbia, Miss. The
E.P.A. is overseeing the last phases of a $20
million Superfund cleanup project there.
Like many others around the country, this
one was guided by the Government's assumption that children will eat dirt. Lots of it.
And from that dirt, the Government theorized that they could develop cancer.

Some evidence suggested that this was an
exaggerated concern. In 1981, a study for the
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, which has been endorsed by the National Cancer Institute, found that only Ito 3
percent of all cancers in people are caused by
exposure to toxic chemicals in the environment. This finding, however, has had little
influence on Federal policy.
The problem in Columbia was an 8I-acre
site that over its long life had been home to a
lumber mill, a naval turpentine and pine tar
plant and a chemical manufacturer.
Soil tests taken in 1986 showed traces of
compounds the Government defines as hazardous. The concentrations rarely exceeded
50 parts per million, or about two ounces of
chemicals mixed in a ton of soil. But that
level exceeded the Federal limit, and the
E.P.A. placed the land on its list of dangerous
toxic waste sites.
Some experts told the E.P.A. that such tiny
amounts of contamination were harmless.
They said the safest and most economical
way to solve the problem would be to spread
a layer of cleaner soil and call it a day. The
cost: about $1 million.
Most Expensive Solution
But two years ago, the E.P.A. settled on the
most expensive possible solution. The Government ordered Reichhold Chemical, the
plant's former owner, to dig up more than
12,500 tons of soil and haul most of it to a
commercial dump in Louisiana — 450 dump
truck loads, each one costing $7,500.
E.P.A. officials said they wanted to make
the site safe enough to be used for any
purpose, including houses — though no one
was proposing to build anything there. With
that as the goal, the agency wanted to make
sure children could play in the dirt, even eat
it, without risk. And since a chemical in the
dirt had been shown to cause cancer in rats,
the agency set a limit low enough that a child
could eat half a teaspoon of dirt every month
for 70 years and not get cancer.
Last month, the E.P.A. officials acknowledged that at least half of the $14 billion the
nation has spent on Superfund cleanups was
used to comply with similar "dirt-eating
rules," as they call them.
"I don't think any way you look at this it
could be seen as a practical solution," said W.
Scott Phillips, an engineer with Malcolm
Pirnie, an environmental planning company
that manages the cleanup. "It's a lot of
money to spend moving dirt."

 THE NEW YORK TIMES

NATIONAL

FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 1993

Second Chance on Environment
Opportunity to Redefine Core of American Policy on Pollution

By KEITH SCHNEIDER
Special tome New York Times

WASHINGTON, March 25 — Four
laws that help form the foundation of
United States environmental policy are
up for renewal in the next two years,
and leading environmental advocates
in Congress say they intend to use the
opportunity to begin redefining how the nation safeNews
guards its air, land and
Analysis water.
The Clean Water Act,
the Endangered Species
Act, the Superfund law for cleaning up
toxic wastes and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act for disposing
of hazardous chemicals all are under
Congressional review. Calls for change
from lawmakers focus on their desire
for more rigorous science and better
analyses of the costs and benefits. Several leading members said that too
often Congress has moved from panic
to panic and not developed a uniform
approach to consider risks.
"Costs are out of sight," and the
benefits from many recent environmental programs are not apparent,
said Representative Mike Synar, the
Oklahoma Democrat who is chairman
of a House subcommittee on the environment. Now, he added, "we have a
chance to end the quilt-patch form of
environmental lawmaking."
Senator John H. Chafee of Rhode
Island, the ranking Republican on the
Senate Committee on Environment
and Public Works, said current policies
had already controlled 90 percent of
the pollution. "But now there is increasing recognition of the costs," he
said. "It will cost twice as much or
three times as much to get the last
little percent. Do we want to do that?"
Others in Congress, notably Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, see it as their job to
make sure that cost savings do not
compromise safety.

Several members of Congress said
that one lesson of environmental policy-making in the 1980's was that acting
on the basis of being safe rather than
sorry had unintended consequences.
Not the least of them has been many
costly rules that are not producing
measurable improvements in public
health or the environment.
There is a higher premium on preventing such mistakes in the 1990's,
and not only because of scarce financial resources. With even larger global
environmental problems becoming apparent from climate change to deforestation, the nation could make even bigger mistakes if it acts aggressively
without a measured, careful analysis of
the consequences.
4 Laws as One Program
This week, Senator Max Baucus, the
Montana Democrat who heads the
Committee on Environment and Public
Works, began a series of hearings to
develop a comprehensive and effective
environmental program.
Mr. Baucus's effort is the first time a
Congressional committee has attempted to consider four separate laws as
related parts of a unified program of
environmental protection. In an interview, he said that it was too early to
make specific recommendations about
amending the laws, but he also said
that all would undergo some changes.
Senator Baucus and Representative
Synar said their work was guided by
two main questions.
First, what should lawmakers and
regulators do after they discover a new
environmental problem that seems
dangerous — but before careful scientific analysis has shown the degree of
risk? Many environmentalists say
waiting for more data might mean that
the Government reacts only after people have begun dying.
Second, what should be done about
regulations enacted over the last 15
years that set inordinately strict standards for toxic compounds in air, water

or the ground? Most were based on
rodent studies now perceived to be
flawed, and even scientists who conducted the studies say that as many as
two-thirds of the compounds deemed
carcinogenic would present no danger
to humans.
William K. Reilly, head of the Environmental Protection Agency in the
Bush Administration, said one problem
was the air of crisis that surrounded
every new environmental concern.
'Cost Considerations'
"It is far past time when we become
mature enough as a nation to address
an environmental issue, mobilize to
support it, and do so without acting in
an emergency atmosphere," he said.
"Not everything is a crisis that has to
be corrected tomorrow. And we need to
make clear that cost considerations
are relevant to any remedy. Cities just
aren't going to keep spending more on
cleaning up toxic dumps, for instance,
than they are on their schools."
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
Democrat of New York, has introduced
a bill that would require the Govern-:
ment to amass much stronger scientific proof and convene expert panels to
consider a new environmental rule before it is issued.
Environmentalists call that thinking
a recipe for disaster.
"As a scientist, we always hope to
have more research to answer complex questions," said Dr. Adam Finkel
of Resources for the Future, an environmental research group in Washington. "But in 1993 we don't have the
scientific basis for rejecting the current approach, which says we should be
prudent when faced with uncertainty."
Many experts also assert that, just
as damage from forest fires is reversible, so too is damage from many pollutants. At the same time, the National
Cancer Institute and the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta say that even after a generation

 of study, there is no confirmed evidence that pollutants are causing epidemics of cancer, birth defects or other
chronic diseases.
The cancer institute says about
500,000 people die from cancer each
year. Some institute officials estimate
that between 1 and 3 percent of those
deaths resulted from environmental
pollutants. That would be between 5,000
and 15,000 people. Other scientists say
that exposure to the panoply of chemicals in the environment causes other
affects in people, among them infertility and nervous system disorders.
Experts urging the most conservative course say environmental poisons

Lawmakers hope
to avoid costly
rules that provide
little benefit.
may be causing as many as 15 percent
of all cancer. The higher number takes
into account research indicating that
farm and factory workers exposed to
high levels of toxic substances are dying at higher than normal rates from
certain types of cancers.
Senator Moynihan believes research
like this can be improved and put to
better use.
"We're entirely capable of moving
on to a more productive period of environmental protection that is based on
clear factual assessments of what produces risks to human health and the
environment," he said.
If the Government decides to undo
existing regulations it faces years of
work, following much the same process
of hearings and notification periods
that led to the rules.
"Once something is decided as being
a threat, it is very hard to recognize
that new information suggests that it's
not," said Carol M. Browner, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Whatever new approach Congress or
the Clinton Administration takes in the
next two years, leading lawmakers say

they want to be careful not to weaken a
number of regulations that are widely
believed to provide valuable protections for public health. High on that list
are the landmark environmental laws
passed in the 1970's like the Clean
Water Act and the laws establishing
protection for public lands.
But environmental experts say
many other programs do not offer
clear benefits. With this in mind, Mr.
Synar and other lawmakers have begun talking about some principles they
hope to use as they consider the four
major laws that are up for renewal:
rIRequire the Government to consider the cost of a regulation before it is
issued. Several environmental statutes, including the 1972 Clean Water
Act, prohibit the Government from taking costs into account.
9 Increase spending on problems now
regarded as more important, like protecting endangered plants and animals, and reducing financing for less
dangerous problems, like cleaning up
toxic waste sites.
flGive businesses and cities more
flexibility to decide how to comply with
environmental standards, ending the
expensive and rigid approach demanded under most laws.
Even as they work toward these
goals, the lawmakers said they were
fully aware that 15 years from now that
it was likely that Congress would look
back and see that other kinds of mistakes had been made. But at least, they
said, in the 1990s the United States
would have begun to take more methodical steps based on better science
to solve environmental problems.