Abundance

by Ezra Klein

The raft of environmental laws in the 1970s, they said, represented a “Grand Bargain” of sorts.94 “The quid pro quo for a cleaner environment was that development would become slower and more expensive due both to permitting and to the litigation that often ensued. In many respects, this has turned out to be a good deal. Apart from greenhouse gases, which effectively have been unregulated, every major air pollutant has decreased significantly over the past five decades, from carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide to airborne lead and others. Surface water quality has similarly improved substantially since the 1970s.”95 But that bargain has broken down. The problem we faced in the 1970s was that we were building too much and too heedlessly. The problem we face in the 2020s is that we are building too little and we are too often paralyzed by process. And this is not just the view of a few law professors.