David Schoenbrod

Interview | When it comes to the environment, David Schoenbrod believes the EPA is the problem and democracy is the solution

When David Schoenbrod was an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, he believed that an unelected "environmental captain," such as the EPA, should make the country's environmental rules.

Now he takes the opposite view. The professor at New York Law School and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute argues that elected legislators should make all environmental law and that the EPA often fails to be an objective, scientifically guided rulemaker.

Mr. Schoenbrod explains why his views changed and how democracy would produce better environmental protection in his book, Saving Our Environment from Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility, and Shortchanges the People (Yale University Press, 2005).