Civic Environmentalism

Civic environmentalism is a new approach to solving environmental problems that combines the most effective elements of both command-and-control regulation and free-market environmentalism. While regulation succeeds in focusing attention onto a particular problem and setting national standards of environmental protection, it often fails to craft effective, cost-minimizing solutions. The free-market approach encourages the most flexible, specialized fixes, but often distributes environmental protection unevenly. Civic environmentalism allows a role for government in setting national standards, but would leave the actual work of environmental protection up to collaborative efforts between industry and local governments.Such anapproach would incorporate market-oriented policies to encourage private property owners to contribute to the public good of environmental protection. Civic environmentalism is designed to provide greater levels of accountability at the local level while allowing better environmental protection at lower costs than federal regulation.

Civic environmentalism synthesizes the strengths of the federal government in making environmental policy and the unique abilities of state and local governments.

Civic Environmentalism

• "New Thinking on Environmental Policy: Civic Environmentalism for Today's Environment," August 1, 2003
• "Civic Environmentalism: Developing a Research and Action Agenda," Dr. Marc Landy and Dr. Charles T. Rubin, June 30, 2003
• "New Thinking on Environmental Policy," Jeff Kueter, February 1, 2003
• "Civic Environmentalism: A New Approach to Policy," Dr. Marc Landy and Dr. Charles T. Rubin, December 15, 2001
• "The Principle of Compromise," Dr. Charles T. Rubin, May 15, 2001
• "Decentralization of Environmental Policymaking: Civic Environmentalism in Theory and Practice. Proceedings of the Civic Environmentalism Working Group Conference," August 19, 2000
• "Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists," Peter Huber, January 1, 2000
• "Our Response to the Sierra Club Attack on Environmental Education," Dr. Jeffrey Salmon, May 22, 1998
• "We're All 'Corporate Polluters' Now," Dr. Jeffrey Salmon, The Wall Street Journal, July 2, 1997