There's no way I'd want to go back to the way things were handled back in the 1960s. The environmental laws have made big strides in cleaning up the environment.

Of course, this did come at a cost. For example, I've read that modern cars only emit about 1/400th as much pollution as 1960s cars (I wish I could find a reference to where I read that). To do that while meeting higher gas mileage requirements passed in the 1970s, manufacturers had to switch from simple carbs and ignitions to computer controlled throttle body fuel injection, electronic ignitions, and a lot of other sophisticated technology. Combine that with other government mandates and you'll find that the price of cars has increased quite a bit faster than the inflation rate. The cost for compliance is buried in the price of the car.

The same can be said for other costs of environmental cleanup. For example, steel mills used to belch a lot of smoke. They can't do that anymore. The cost of complying with cleanup regulations makes US produced steel more expensive and less competitive with inported steel, so barring tariffs and other trade protections, a lot of American steel workers stood to lose their jobs. If memory serves, several hundred thousand of them did lose their jobs, and a good part of that can be traced back to environmental restrictions.

Some economists state that the cost of corporate taxes and compliance with government mandates makes up as much as half of the price of everything we buy. For the most part, corporations simply become a middle-man tax collector by passing their compliance and tax costs on to the consumers, just as they do for raw materials and other costs associated with producing a product. We all pay the price, it just that it isn't visible. I call these "stealth taxes".

As for future, tighter environmental laws, I believe they should be evaluated on a cost-benefit basis like every other law. We have essentially unlimited desires confronting limited funding, so we need to evaluate what does the most good for the most people. It might be found that the money spent for tighter environmental restrictions could be better spent elsewhere, such as improving highway safety or immunization programs. The marginal gain for the tigher environmental restrictions just might not be worth the cost compared to other uses for the same money.