Are DLC policies partly the reason environmental laws have been gutted? [View All]

[madfloridian]

I was doing a search to see if I could find a good source for the premise that Ed Feulner and the Heritage Foundation gave start-up money to the DLC in 1985. I still have just found the LaRouche quote, and I don't quote him.

However, I did find this on my search. It is an article by a Debra Knopman in Feb. 2001 in the DLC Blueprints Magazine. I found the link from the long article in my 2nd post.

License to Innovate
An Agenda to Modernize the Tools of Environmental Protection
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=2979&kaid=116&subid=150

SNIP..."First generation regulation continues to work adequately for some types of industrial pollution control, but it is too slow and inflexible to capture technological innovation in quick-moving markets. It is also too prescriptive to engage landowners and deal with small, diffuse sources of pollution and too narrow to mesh well with land use, energy, transportation, and agriculture policies..."

SNIP...."This is why the new administration should champion second generation environmental legislation to give regulators, businesses, and communities license to innovate and experiment with tools better suited to solve today's environmental problems. Paired with this license to innovate should be a commitment to improve measures of air, water, land, and biological quality, as well as measures of government and private environmental performance. This can be achieved through the Second Generation of Environmental Improvement Act, soon to be re-introduced in Congress.

The Political Challenge of Altering the Status Quo

The political challenge for the new administration is to figure out how -- not whether -- to make further environmental progress on the heels of a decade of partisan acrimony and legislative gridlock. Conservatives need to acknowledge the public's desire for progress, while liberals must accept the fact that government needs new and more versatile tools to solve today's changed array of environmental problems...."

(This next paragraph seems to advocate the Bush agenda of letting the industries police themselves. I may be misreading. Sounds a little like doublespeak. Industries do not do well policing themselves.)

SNIP..."Second generation legislation, by contrast, recognizes that the next wave of progress in reducing industrial pollution will likely come from sector-specific strategies that set clear environmental targets. Achieving these goals will rely more heavily on market-based incentives to reduce pollution, leaving technology choices to the private sector. Getting there must involve the entire industrial chain of manufacturers, suppliers, and customers. To work, it should reward pollution prevention, process innovation, and product redesign....." END SNIP.

I will put the environmental article I found in the next post. It is very long and interesting.