Congress, science, and environmental policy

Attempts to legislate solutions to environmental problems have been unsatis factory in a number of important ways. Most commentators have attributed th e environmental laws' poor track record to failures of agencies and the jud iciary that frustrate the administration of the laws. In this article, howe ver, Professor Wendy Wagner shifts the focus to those who write the laws es tablishing environmental policy, the members of Congress. As Professor Wagn er explains, the development of effective environmental legislation poses u nique scientific challenges to Congress. Rather than failing to appreciate the importance of scientific data to solving environmental problems, howeve r Congress has put too much emphasis on scientific data-operating under the mistaken belief that science, alone, can provide the solutions to environm ental problems. Professor Wagner begins by defining the limited usefulness of scientific fi ndings to the development of effective environmental legislation and by exp laining the reasons such limits exist. She then explains the reasons Congre ss has, to this point, failed to recognize these limits. The author examine s the three prevailing models of congressional decisionmaking and explains that under each theory Congress has political reasons to overrely on scienc e. Professor Wagner explains that Congress's continued dependence on science i mposes a variety of costs on society and acts as a significant hindrance to effective environmental legislation. To avoid these problems in the future , she offers two suggestions for reform. The first reform proposal is desig ned to attack the problem from within Congress by educating legislators as to the existence of scientific uncertainties and the problems created by th ese knowledge gaps. The second reform, to be pursued concurrently with the first, attempts to lessen the courts' insistence, in review of agency rulem akings, on scientific evidence, especially when such evidence is not availa ble.