Urban Life

This circa 2000 interview with Barry Commoner is interesting.

The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective. The chief remedial method has been the installation of emission-control systems--devices attached to the pollutant-generating source (such as autos, power plants and incinerators) that trap and destroy the pollutants before they enter the environment.

The fault is not that the control devices have themselves become less efficient since the 1980s. Rather, a countervailing process has overcome their emission-reducing capability. That process is economic growth: year by year, there are more cars and trucks on the road and more energy generated. As long as a control device is not perfect--that is, it does not reduce emissions to zero--this increased activity counteracts the device's ability to reduce environmental pollution, and economic growth becomes the enemy of environmental quality.

It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions. In turn, this economic limitation renders the control system vulnerable to the countervailing effect of increased economic activity. By adopting the control strategy, the nation's environmental program has created a built-in antagonism between environmental quality and economic growth.