Administrative law has supplanted common law across a broad spectrum of government activity over the last century.

Under common law, if I pollute a stream or the air or land, etc., and it harms your property or health in any way whatever, you can sue for all damages. That includes class action suits which would be fatal to any business to lose. And, into the bargain, the winning plantiffs can force all pollution to stop through permanent court injunctions.

Under administrative law, which is the basis of most environmental and much other federal regulation, this absolute right is compromised by giving polluters what amount to federal licenses to pollute a certain amount. As long as they stay within the permissable pollution guidelines, legally they are safe from any further legal action. (And as we have seen, the political appointers of the chief regulators have a lot to do with what is allowed and what is not, under the very same administrative laws.)

The Byzantine universe of federal regulations means that many immoral and unethical activities continue unabated for decades because (a) they are permitted under current administrative law and/or (b) the regulations in question are so contorted that only a small subset of specialist lawyers actually know what they mean, and those lawyers usually work for the polluters and/or (c) we have an administration predisposed to stack things in favor of the polluters — or all of the above.

In my opinion, the very best way to clean up the air and water is to do away with administrative law, and the easily-corrupted bureaucracies that supposedly “enforce” those laws, and return to common law, with a twist.

That twist would be hard, cold definitions of what constitutes pollution, definitions that are inclusive enough to cover any possible eventuality, and to empower judges and juries to wreak financial havoc on those who violate those laws.

This may never happen, at least under the current government structure, because both polluters and the “issue-preneurs” of environmentalism have vested interests in keeping things as they are. Ending the Star Wars bar-circus of current administrative regulation would force polluters to immediately clean up their acts under tough new common law, and as well put the environmentalist “issue-preneurs” out of business.

Meantime, we continue to be in a worsening environmental crisis. It will not get any better, in my opinion, until we have a cultural shift in favor of transparent, understandable and tough common law treatment of environmental protection.