Many governments continue to create policies concerned with environmental, economic, and social matters as separate issues. As a result, strategies for economic development often ignore the need to maintain the ecosystem on which long-term development depends. The result is gridlock and a sustained lack of leadership in dealing with global environmental issues. A related problem is an unwillingness to deal with problems when the solutions might involve substantial costs in the short-term or might affect certain industrial sectors disproportionately. The political costs of risking these consequences are simply too high. Compounding these challenges is the fact that even governments in highly developed economies have trouble dealing with an issue as complex and as large as the global environment in addition to issues that are often considered more central or of higher priority. It is also safe to say that good science is not always the motivator for the laws and policies.