Environmental management is rife with unreconciled extremes. On one side is a rousing rallying-cry that is almost entirely irrelevant to everyday business concerns; on the other, a reactive compliance devoid of vision or synthesis of any kind. In many companies, both sides are present simultaneously: vision is unhitched from practical decision making, and decision making is uninformed by any unifying vision. As a result, despite the massive amounts of management attention they receive, environmental issues are still misunderstood and mismanaged.

Current wisdom about the environment can be characterized as a set of beliefs with which most managers would probably agree:

• Environmental costs have rocketed, but the worst is almost over.
• Costs are uncontrollable and nondiscretionary.
• Regulations fall uniformly on all competitors in an industry.
• Just do the right thing, and the rest will follow.

These beliefs reflect a generation of hard-earned experience. They seem to be founded in reality and to work reasonably well in preventing costly disasters. They provide practical guidance in making difficult decisions. They give management a vision that has proved helpful in leading companies forward and guiding the public relations efforts that play such an integral...