Strictly, an environmental policy can be defined as a government's chosen course of action or plan to address issues such as pollution, wildlife protection, land use, energy production and use, waste generation, and waste disposal. In reality, the way a particular government handles environmental problems is most often not a result of a conscious choice from a set of alternatives. More broadly, then, a government's environmental policy may be characterized by examining the overall orientation of its responses to environmental challenges as they occur, or by defining its policy as the sum of plans for, and reactions to, environmental issues made by any number of different arms of government.

A society's environmental policy will be shaped by the actions of its leaders in relation to the five following questions:

• Should government intervene in the regulation of the environment or leave resolution of environmental problems to the...