In the late 1990s, the Massachusetts Office of Technical Assistance for Toxics Use Reduction (OTA), a nonenforcement agency of the commonwealth of Massachusetts dedicated to the on-site provision of pollution prevention assistance, developed a sector-based program intended to demonstrate a fast path to a common-sense environmental regulatory system. The program, funded by the U.S.

This Dialogue offers three quantitative facts, drawn from long-term experience in toxic chemical control in the United States. Each one documents failure, on a large scale, of conventional federal policy to protect human health against toxic chemical hazards in the environment. Each also disproves some of the core assumptions of that policy. Individually and together, these three facts pose a deep challenge to the policymaking community, not only for toxic chemical control but for environmental regulation broadly.

The recent flurry of scholarship and debate¹ over the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in environmental policymaking is still largely academic. However strongly the academy feels one way or the other, the role of CBA in environmental policymaking does not appear to be changing dramatically. Even the Senate confirmation of the controversial John Graham to an important Office of Management and Budget (OMB) post² is not likely to substantially change policy, given the scrutiny his decisions will now receive. Undoing the U.S.

Introduction

Imagine a world where the air, even in major cities, poses no serious health threat, even during the summer. Lakes once dead from acid rain have begun to recover. And trees and crops no longer die from air pollution. Many large cities and all rural areas have taken down their transmission wires, because the owners of homes, apartment buildings, factories, and offices rely upon fuel cells or upon solar power produced on-site. We may be too late already to avoid serious disruption from global warning, but this world would, over time, ameliorate climate change as well.

This Article addresses how well forestry law in the United States promotes sustainable development, with special attention to the trends of the past decade. The role of law in shaping forest management decisions has been a contentious issue in this recent period, and forestry has been at the forefront of public concern about sustainability of natural resource management generally. Therefore, the problems and opportunities for forestry law to promote sustainable development are indications of the weaknesses and strengths of the overall U.S. legal regime.

Introduction

The Agenda: "To Make International Trade and Environment Policies Mutually Supportive in Favour of Sustainable Development."¹

Introduction

This Dialogue seeks to respond to Prof. Jim Chen's recent Article in the Environmental Law Reporter, Diversity and Deadlock: Transcending Conventional Wisdom on the Relationship Between Biological Diversity and Intellectual Property.¹ In that Article, Professor Chen highlights the role of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)² in protecting biodiversity. This Dialogue argues that the CBD is an inherently ineffective mechanism to protect biodiversity.

Environmental regulation in the United States has been characterized by short-term decisions with unknown or unanticipated long-term public health consequences. Some propose to use our inability to predict possible long-term consequences of environmental health regulation as a justification for replacing risk assessment with the "precautionary principle" as the dominant paradigm for making regulatory decisions.