The Abundance Agenda: Seizing The Opportunity For Bipartisan Progress

"The question for the environmental law profession over the coming decades, in my view, is not what will you stop but what will you build?" This was the charge recently proffered by Ted Nordhaus, President of the Breakthrough Institute, to the future generation of environmental lawyers at Lewis and Clark Law School. "A second key question," he continued, is "what parts of the enormous environmental regulatory edifice that we have built up in this country are you ready to get rid of so that we can build that world?"

According to the proponents of the "Abundance" movement—the rapidly growing, bipartisan collection of thinkers and policymakers who believe it is time to think big and not be afraid of change—environmental law is at an inflection point. A perfect topic for the inaugural column of the newly digitized Environmental Forum, which is itself at an inflection point, too. As a Forum columnist who has been exploring similar themes over the last decade, I can't