Driving Change: Public Policies, Individual Choices, and Environmental Damage

November 2005
Citation:
35
ELR 10791
Issue
11
Author
Trip Pollard

Editors' Summary: Transportation and land development patterns are a primary cause of many pressing environmental problems, including air and water pollution, loss of wildlife habitat and wetlands, and global climate change. These patterns result in large part from individual decisions such as whether to drive, what to drive, how much to drive, and where to live. Yet changing environmentally harmful individual behavior is particularly difficult when the government subsidizes such behavior and when public policies present barriers to less environmentally damaging alternatives. In this Article, Trip Pollard argues that halting subsidies for destructive behavior, removing barriers to less destructive alternatives, and providing more sustainable alternatives would provide individuals with a broader range of less environmentally damaging transportation and housing choices.

Trip Pollard is a senior attorney and leader of the Land and Community Project at the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Article File