Statutory shields against common law remedies should be eliminated, provided the community has participated in determining environmental goals and solutions. Property rights should be respected. When private parties are asked to provide public benefits by altering the use of privately held rights, they should be paid. As we consider elements for a new environmental policy, we do so recognizing that we live in a world that faces many other compelling demands. We hear about health care, safety, retirement security, education, and emerging communities elsewhere that grapple with even more primitive wants and needs.
Global competition is mentioned endlessly, and it is real.
The basic blueprints for the nation's environmental policy are now 25 years old. Not many things that old have survived into today's dynamic world. We no longer have a smokestack economy. But we still have countless smokestack regulations that stand in the way of effective environmental improvement. In prehistoric times, we are told sharks and dinosaurs lived in the same periods.