Americans strongly want environmental laws but resist paying near-term costs for them

Evidence

The Republican Party seems to understand that the success of its legislative and executive branch efforts to reform environmental law will turn on whether they can avoid interfering with the public’s aspiration for environmental protection. One obvious lesson of the past thirty years is that, although public aspirations for the strictest possible environmental protection laws have remained strong and seemingly uncompromising, a substantial divide remains between those aspirations and the public’s actual commitment to change behavior and absorb short-term economic costs. Americans have shown increasing, not decreasing, appetites for resource consumption and less willingness to sacrifice the short term for the uncertainties of the long term, especially when resource preservation rather than human health protection is at stake. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 1089

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The aspiration-versus-commitment gap explaining three decades of environmental politics is dense and central to the reader’s aim of understanding where environmental law structurally fails.
• XREF: Connects to ch32’s point about environmental protection requiring present sacrifice for unverifiable future gain, and Eco-Justice themes. — connects to: Environmental law’s benefits lag far behind its politics because ecological problems resist quick fixes. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 368; Strict environmental laws coexisted with a thriving US economy — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 1100; Environmental policymaking systematically discounts distant-future and foreign benefits against present domestic costs — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 562 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Environmental policymaking systematically discounts distant-future and foreign benefits against present domestic costs #expands (0.88) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 562
• Strict environmental laws coexisted with a thriving US economy #qualifies (0.82) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 1100
• Environmental protection structurally requires present sacrifice for unverifiable future gain #expands (0.75) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 983