Jul 25 2017

You already know the answer

(Houston) – July 24, 2017

Everyone in the environmental business—all of us:  environmental groups, lawyers, consultants, EHS personnel, and agency staff—we all depend on regulatory complexity for our livelihood.

The more complicated the system, the more we as environmental professionals are needed to help untangle the complexities and shepherd people through its twists and turns.  And the more opportunities to argue over what the complexity means.  That is why it is such an incredible personal challenge for us to want to understand simplicity and pursue its ends.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”— Upton Sinclair

 

A few thoughts.

• The regulatory system is unlikely to become so simple before we die that we cannot make a living at it.
• A legacy of a simpler environmental regulatory system better serves most of our children and grandchildren than a complicated system that a few of them can make a living on.
• If we are talented and hard-working, there is no need to be intimidated by simplicity.
• We can work within the complexity of the system while advancing simplicity.  Ultimately the question should be;  “what is in the best interest of the companies we serve, the environment, and humankind?”  Complicated systems do not better serve these interests even if they benefit us more personally.  We might as well be honest with ourselves and others about this.

We do not live on bread alone.  And there is plenty of bread in simplicity.

 

Jed Anderson, Attorney with the AL Law Group and candidate for TCEQ Commissioner