Walter Williams has an excellent column this week about the ways in which the environmental movement affects politics.

I care about the environment–no one wants to live with dirty air and polluted water.  But there are always costs to environmental restrictions.  A smaller, more fuel-efficient car is also less likely to protect its occupants in an accident.  Lowering arsenic in drinking water that is already at an acceptable level may save a few dozen lives in America each year–but could that extra money have been spent by struggling families, or on cancer research, or by a businessman to employ poor workers?

Many environmental restrictions come with few or unknown benefits and present exorbitant public cost, which is really cost to individuals.