The American environmental movement seems to be in decline. After decades of mounting regulation, there is now a shift in Washington toward regulatory reform, cutbacks in administration and enforcement funding, and watered-down rewrites of the country’s leading environmental laws, such as Superfund and the Clean Water Act. Recent polls indicate that public support for the environment is fading as issues like crime prevention and the protection of individual rights capture a greater share of mind. And many of the United States’ largest nonprofit environmental groups have suffered steep falls in both membership and funding since their peak in the early 1990s.

As a result, many corporations are beginning to rethink their approach to environmental management. Historically, most companies took a defensive, compliance-oriented approach to the environment, focusing on delaying regulation and implementing end-of-pipe solutions. Starting in the late 1980s, however, businesses began to recognize the benefits of a more cooperative position; they invested in pollution control measures, appointed environmental representatives to their boards of directors, and agreed to new, more flexible, market-based regulations. Today, having made real progress in protecting the environment, these businesses seem to be getting the message...