There is a disconnection now, but I think the information revolution has the potential to make some serious changes. And in fact, working in conjunction with the Brainerd Foundation, we're going to be launching an effort toward that in the Pacific Northwest. Speaking of D.C., you've had some background working for the Carter Administration on energy issues in the 1970s, and you had the opportunity to go back into that kind of position with the Clinton Administration. I certainly would not want to be living in Washington, D.C. right now. Particularly, I wouldn't want to be busting my tail 18 hours a day in an administration where there isn't a higher degree of support for most of the things I believe in than I think there is in this administration.
Times are certainly tough.
At the same time, you'd have to be a fool to try to argue that many environmental laws don't have deep and abiding flaws, both in their design and in their implementation. We've created a bureaucracy that is enormously unresponsive to the public, to shifts in evidence. Vested interests develop very rapidly. Now there may be some really creative ways to use market forces that haven't been used in a largely regulatory-oriented environmental protection. Ways to send different kinds of price signals and use those things more creatively, in ways that the Republicans could be enthusiastic about, to build upon the strength of a market economy, instead of constantly having a fight between the regulators and the entrepreneurs.