Environmental regulation expanded rapidly after 1960
- wilderness
- regulation of pollution
- protecting wild animals
- as the world gets more complex people don't have enough information to protect themselves so it is helpful for the goverment to protect them
- businesses who want to do the right thing often can't afford to unless regulation requires their competitors to also minimize harm
- the government's traditional role is to do things for the public good (or in the public interest)
- issues that involve the
problem of the commons are best solved by government regulation
3
First Earth day: 1970
- idea caught on and grew
beyond what was planned
- not a protest march (like the ones against the Vietnam war) but a teach in and celebration
- primarily a local event
- compare Focus the Nation
- lots of people turned out--proof that public opinion had become strongly concerned about the environment
- thought something ought to
be done
- created the Council on
Environmental Quality
- required environmental
impact statements for all major new projects of the federal government
- how did this work, say for a new dam
- before construction starts you must study what the impact will be on the environment
- the results of that study must be made available to the public
- the law does not say what you have to do if the impact will be harm to the environment
- but it gave opponents
data to use
- plan to build a commercial
passenger plane that would fly faster than the speed of sound
(supersonic planes for military use already existed)
- the government funded background research and development of a prototype (test version) to show US leadership in the cold war
- this research project was
cancelled--Congress voted not to fund it any more--in 1970
- why?
- even with the government paying for the research, industry was not very interested--it wasn't clear it would be economical. Would cost more to operate--how many people are willing to pay twice as much to fly to Europe in 3 hours instead of six hours?
- US version was faster and
more expensive to operate than the French-British version
- this was a time when there were increased protests about noise pollution around airports
- SST will be fairly noisy taking off and landing
- bigger problem--the sonic boom whenever flying faster than the speed of sound
- because the public wouldn't put up with this you were only going to be able to fly supersonic over water, not over land
- we can build this
technology, but we don't want it--we said no to progress for
environmental reasons
- British and French built the Concorde
- commercially used
- not very profitable
- developed technology
useful for other planes
- recently taken out of
service, no plans to replace it
proposed US SST
Also in 1970, creation of the Environmental Protection Agency
- a single agency to enforce environmental regulations instead of scattered groups in different agencies
- enforcement of pollution regulation required expertise and special equipment
- define how pollution laws
would be enforced and test to find violations
- people though compliance would now be taken seriously
- but there was a lot of controversy
- Love Canal
- PCBs in Lake Hartwell
Key example of
a new law: Endangered Species Act of 1973- there were already lists of
endangered species
- Fish and Wildlife Service would evaluate what species were in danger
- people aren't allowed to
hunt them
- people are prohibited from damaging those species defined as endangered
- you cn't build things even
on private property that would threaten the species
- Tellico
Dam and the snail
darter (a small fish)
- people tend to be concerned only with charismatic megafauna
- didn't protect ecosystems but rather you might have to save the ecosystem so the animal wouldn't go extinct
- is this the best kind of
law to protect the environment? It is the kind most likely to get
public support
- previous pollution laws had
left enforcement to the states
- Water Pollution Control Act of 1948 put responsibility on local government, Clean Water Act of 1960 was similar.
- Even the Clean Air Act of 1963 let the states decide when to act
- Endangered Species Act was
enforced by the Fish and Wildlife Service
- write a good law--get
experts involved in writing the law
- you have to decided what kinds of pollutants to include
- how will you define the limits?--what amount of some chemical is safe?
- who is going to implement this
- then the law has to be passed and signed (this where a lot of lobbying goes on)
- the agency that is going to implement the law needs to figure out specific rules and procedures
- if companies need to get permits you need a procedure to issue permits
- set up an enforcement system--enforcement is not done by the police, but by special agencies who hire people with the necessary expertise
- penalize the people who don't follow the law
- you can end up in a court fight about any of these issues
- regulations make a
difference, but there are a lot of variables that go into how much of a
difference
- "Americans looked at the cost of their postwar prosperity and collectively determined that something had to be done to improve their living conditions as much as their standard of living." (p. 113)
- other people began to question the cost, were annoyed by changes
- some developed more radical views
- early 1970s a wide range of
people worked together for the environment, over time that got lost
- average retail price of
gasoline rose from 38 cents to 55 cents a gallon
- long lines at gas stations, limits on purchasing
- new emphasis on conservation
- set your thermostat to 68
- turn off lights
- maximum speed limit of 55
- small-scale programs to develop alternative energy
- this was one of several
forces making the economy weaker
- RARE II--15 out of 36 million acres to be preserved as wilderness
- reauthorization of Endangered Species Act
- growing opposition to environmental regulation on the basis of cost