November 8, 2002

Envisioning Less Costly Shades of Green

By MALCOLM G. SCULLY

Controlling pollution isn't cheap. According to "The State of the Nation's Eco-systems," a report released last month by the H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, the United States spent some $120-billion on pollution control and abatement in 1994, the last year for which government estimates are available.

Conservative economists and free-market environmentalists have long argued that much of that money is ill spent, that the potential risks of many