Yes/no decisions on the basis of environmental impact lead to excess risk aversion, sloppy thinking, and ultimately, technological stagnation. While I agree tha

Yes/no decisions on the basis of environmental impact lead to excess risk aversion, sloppy thinking, and ultimately, technological stagnation. While I agree that we should consider the environment in project planning, the proper way to do that is to use the price mechanism to account for environmental damage. That is, the output of environmental review should never be "no". It should be "the environmental cost of this project is $X billion, and here's a breakdown". Forcing people to quantify their objections will lead to a more honest evaluation of the options.