ABSTRACT
Technological advances need not be dramatic to have long-range effects. Thomas Jefferson’s curved moldboard on the horse-drawn plow was a technological advance with far-ranging consequences, malign as well as benign. Since the technology that causes environmental problems bears both good and evil fruit, the focus will be on the ways in which the legal system deals with the effects of technology rather than on control of the technology itself. The best available technology standard at issue in the du Pont case is an example of the many efforts by environmental statutes to “force technology,” that is, to require a level of pollution-control technology beyond current practice. The environmental impact statement, in Barry Commoner’s view, serves to balance a reductionist scientific view with the ecosystems view contained in the environmental impact statement, whereas the court helps those threatened by the project to counter the economic motives that stimulate the proposed project.
