German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder kvetched this week that taking steps to protect the environment was causing the cost of highway construction to soar. “I don’t have anything against frogs,” he said as he inspected a just-completed segment of a long-delayed highway, “but the expenditures we make for protecting the environment while building roads are enormous.” Environmentalists succeeded in slowing construction of the Autobahn-20, which runs along the Baltic coast, by raising wildlife and wetlands concerns.
