ABSTRACT
The basic environmental problem that Bill Clinton confronted in his first year in office was the legacy of recent political history: the fact that for all but four of the first twenty-three years of its life, the US environmental program was controlled by Republican presidents. However, while Clinton has at least made an effort to deal with some of the economy's structural weaknesses, he has thus far ignored equally fundamental flaws in the nation's environmental program. The environmental program that the Clinton administration inherited was created in the early 1970s in response to intense public concern, dramatized by Earth Day 1970. The twenty-three-year extort to improve the environment has tested the capabilities of A Tale of Two Strategies, albeit inadvertently. A control approach to environmental improvement is inherently self-limited. The strategy of prevention cures the conflict between environmental quality and economic development that is inherent in the control strategy.
