Our current environmental problems are less visible, more subtle, and more difficult to address -- fertilizer runoff from thousands of farms and millions of yards; emissions from gas stations, bakeries, and dry cleaners; and smog pouring out of tens of millions of motor vehicles. Like nature itself, the size and shape of our environmental problem set constantly evolves -- so, too, must the strategies, approaches, institutions and tools chosen to address it.

For two years the Next Generation Project of Yale's Center for Environmental Law and Policy has taken on the challenge of formulating ideas for updating environmental policy intellectually and operationally. This reform effort has brought together hundreds of experts from around the world in a series of fourteen workshops and two major conferences to share thinking about the direction of future policies. The results of the Project have been compiled in a new book, Thinking Ecologically: The Next Generation of Environmental Policy (Yale University Press, 1997).

The most resounding conclusion of the study is that the world of the 1960s and 70s is gone. Government ruled that first generation of environmental policy: it initiated, implemented, enforced, and adjudicated what was to be done to curb pollution. Today, both major political parties are calling for smaller government. Calls to "reinvent EPA" or simply to "devolve" or "deregulate" are, however, off track. The "next generation" of environmental programs requires far more than better government performance.

Now we recognize that the vast majority of environmental decisions are made by non-environmental actors, not the EPA or its state counterparts. Environmental quality depends fundamentally on choices made in transportation, agriculture, energy use, land use and on matters of international trade and competitiveness. Today's critical "environmental" decisionmakers include mayors, transportation system designers, route planners for overnight packaging companies, energy marketers, farmers, and trade negotiators.

The players have changed in other ways. Environmental protection cannot be boiled down to a struggle between the "good guys" (environmentalists) and the "bad guys" (big industry). Business is not monolithic with regard to environmental performance. Some companies take environmental stewardship very seriously. Other entities -- both large and small businesses, some farms and even government operations -- still pollute with abandon. Separating the leaders from the laggards is critical to targeting limited pollution management resources effectively.

In addition, our current laws focus almost entirely on manufacturing facilities. But 75 percent of the US economy today is in the services sector -- telecommunications, health care, banking, insurance, and distribution, among other key areas. While less obviously pollution intensive than smokestack industries, this new economic base raises a new set of environmental management issues.

Ecological decisionmaking must become everybody's business as each of us considers where to shop, what to buy, how much to drive, where to live, and what to throw away. The success of recycling programs across the country demonstrates the potential for mobilizing the public. And even those who pay no attention to the environment can be influenced by the invisible green hand of market forces if prices come to reflect more fully the public health and ecological harms and benefits of the goods and services. Let's make products that pollute cost more. Making producers and consumers pay for the environmental harms they cause would raise awareness and offer an incentive for environmentally conscious actions.

Our structure of environmental law violates the basic principles of ecology, which emphasize the connectedness of natural systems. A regime of separate laws for air, water, and waste no longer squares with our understanding of reality or environmental policy needs. The challenges we confront today -- atmospheric build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the potential environmental impacts of genetically modified organisms, and the risk of exposure to trace residues of pesticides that might disrupt endocrine cycles within a human body -- were not even contemplated by "first generation" environmental laws.

We need a "systems" approach to policy built on a strong science base, rigorous analysis, an interdisciplinary focus and an appreciation that not all ecosystems are the same. Emissions from one factory are different from those of any other factory and that which harms one river may not be equally harmful to another. Context matters as we lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive, effective, and efficient regulatory structure. The emerging field of industrial ecology explores technological and natural systems together and looks at products and processes from cradle-to-grave. Another systems concept, ecosystem management, calls for "adaptive" land management -- programs that can change based on knowledge of specific places and phenomena.

Inspiring the American people to support careful, thoughtful, and enduring environmental reform in a context where the enemy is hard to see and progress is measured incrementally poses a significant challenge. To some observers, the call for more comprehensive analysis and greater attention to interconnectedness may hark back to the innumerable pleas of the 1960s for such virtues. However, integrated and broad-scale thinking is possible today in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. Now we have a base of policy practice and experience to build upon. Advances in information technologies make the amassing, assessing, and simultaneous processing of vast quantities of data not just conceivable but ever easier. Let us build on the productive legacy of the last generation as we move carefully, but confidently into the next.