[Thorfinn]

pritchke: But it possibly could mean that the plant will produce more so the end result will be the same amout of waste just less waste for the amount produced.

So? The simple fact is that population is growing, so we will need to produce more. What is the downside of producing more goods to support the growing population, yet producing no more waste than before?

BTW, though CEOs could propose new capital expenditures, by and large, that all comes through the board of directors, and thus through the stockholders. CEOs are employees -- they cannot ignore the directives of the board without risking being fired. It is not a matter of being too cheap, but simply that the cost-benefit comes out as a loss, and a CEO who did that too often would have little in the way of job security.

Timber, surely you are not proposing ABA as an unbiased source, are you? After all, when Bush told ABA, "Thanks for your recommendations, but if my judicial nominees agree with your assessment, it is purely coincidence", they took it rather poorly. ABA makes a ton of money from environmental litigation. It has a vested interest in very strict regulations, the more vague, the better.

Also, the "race to the top" sounds good, but reveals the utter fantasy world in which government people live. What would happen if Congress mandated the same thing in computers? Any time you buy a new computer, you have to buy a top-of-the-line model? Not only do you put all the discount computer suppliers out of business, since by law, they could not peddle their wares, but you have priced a significant fraction of the population out of having a computer at all, other than the old clunker you currently have. The exact same thing happens in vehicle safety -- as new safety features were mandated, the price of cars went up, making less affluent people keep their older cars longer, tying them together with baling wire and duct tape, since they simply cannot afford a new one with all the whiz-bang safety features. These older cars are often poorly maintained, and the net result is that the roads are even less safe than they were before the regulations.

Similarly, in business, since CAA mandates only latest and greatest technology (FWIW, remember that Hooker Chemical disposed of its wastes in the latest and greatest methods, and Manville Asbestos provided the latest and greatest fire protection for decades), only those companies who have sufficient output can afford to upgrade. The net result is that the only companies who can afford the latest and greatest are the big established companies. It is latest and greatest type government regulations that drives towards oligopoly, not some inexorable fact of capitalism.