Seminary Journal 2008 (August) - Virginia Theological Seminary

Hoover Dam on the Colorado River.
VIRGINIA SEMINARY JOURNAL AUGUST 2007
commodity. It’s important to notice,
however, with respect to this strategy,
that while there has been room made
for market forces, the new market
rests upon the same sort of government
establishment of standards as
in the command and control strategy.
Hidden behind the buying and selling
of rights to pollute is still the idea that
pollution itself is a sin. The difference
is that we don’t punish it so much as
try to use it as an incentive. It’s the
classical Enlightenment strategy of
trying to harness and contain human
greed as a force for prosperity.
A third type of environmental
law is the most curious, I think.
This strategy relies entirely on public
knowledge. The most famous example
is the National Environmental
Policy Act, known as “NEPA.” 4 NEPA
requires that the federal government,
before taking any major action with
signifi cant effects, create and publish
an “environmental impact statement”—an
“EIS,” as it is known in
the trade. This document lays out all
the foreseeable environmental effects
of the proposed action. So, for
example, the federal government has
prepared environmental impact statements
on the major federal actions
entailed in operating the dams and
reservoirs that control the water supply
of farmers and cities in the West.
Sitting on the shelves of lots of water
lawyers are many fat volumes packed
with information on the effects to the
environment of the operation of those
dams, as well as what would happen
if they were differently operated. The
truly remarkable thing about NEPA,
though, is that writing and publishing
the EIS is all there is to it. There is no
requirement under NEPA that the government
choose the most environmentally
friendly alternative. In theory, the
4 42 U.S.C. §4321, et seq.
45