Environmental Nihilism

Abstract

Information is the lifeblood of environmental law. Pollution control standards depend on data about public health and technical information about the availability and effectiveness of abatement technologies. Pesticide and chemical registrations rely on studies about efficacy and potential adverse impacts. Environmental remediation requires surveying contaminated sites to identify the location and prevalence of hazardous substances. Enforcement efforts, whether initiated by regulatory agencies or through citizen-suits, depend on monitoring the waste streams of regulated industries and the conditions of environmental systems. Accurate and abundant information is a prerequisite for these elements of environmental law and many others, and information disclosure rules are themselves an important, quasi-regulatory element of the architecture of environmental law. This list of some of the components of environmental law suggests the contours of the field for purposes of this essay. Environmental law, as I use the term, addresses the effects of human activities on the environment, often striking a delicate balance between environmental protection and other competing interests. Precisely defining the boundaries of the field is unnecessary for my present purposes, because the subject of this essay is the information that animates substantive regulatory provisions rather than the particulars of those provisions.9 Information also informs political debate and inspires the public to demand change. Environmental law is the subject of ongoing reevaluation in Congress and the executive branch, although the importance of accurate information is rarely called into question. Rather, contest over environmental