Valuing Clean Air
The EPA and the Economics of Environmental Protection
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
The passage of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 marked a sweeping transformation in American politics. In a few short years, the environmental movement pushed Republican and Democratic elected officials to articulate a right to clean air as part of a bevy of new federal guarantees. Charged with delivering on those promises, the EPA represented a bold assertion that the federal government had a responsibility to protect the environment, the authority to command private business to reduce their pollution, and the capacity to dictate how they did so.
In Valuing Clean Air, Charles Halvorson examines how the environmental concern that propelled the Clean Air Act and the EPA coincided with economic convulsions that shook the liberal state to its core. Business groups, public interest organizations, think tanks, and a host of other actors, including Ralph Nader, wasted little time after the EPA's creation in identifying and trying to pull the new levers of power. As powerful businesses pressed to roll back regulations, elected officials from both political parties questioned whether the nation could keep its environmental promises. In response, the EPA's staff and leadership practiced a politics of the possible, adopting a monetized approach to environmental value that shielded the agency's rulemaking but sat at odds with environmentalist notions of natural rights and contributed to the elevation of economics as the language and logic of policy. As Halvorson demonstrates, environmental protection came to serve as a central battleground in larger debates over markets, government, and public welfare.
For anyone who has wondered where cap and trade came from and how environmental activists came to discuss wetlands protection, air pollution, and fracking in the language of cost-benefit analysis, Valuing Clean Air provides an insightful look at a half-century of the making of US environmental policy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Management consultant Halvorson traces the history of the Clean Air Act and the "regulation of air pollution" in his comprehensive debut. Before the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, the idea that the federal government had a responsibility to keep the environment clean was a far-fetched one, Halvorson writes. The Clean Air Act of 1963 gave the government some control, but it wasn't until the EPA came along that a "sweeping transformation in environmental politics" took place. Halvorson tracks the conception of the agency as the environmental movement grew (and was given a shot in the arm by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring), and describes Richard Nixon's original mandate that it be a "doer," not a "thinker." As the author covers shifts in the face of political bickering and attempts to balance economic concerns with environmental ones, he convincingly makes a case that the politicization of science in policymaking finds its roots in the early days of the EPA. Though it's often academic in tone, readers willing to stay the course will find a solid introduction on how a single, little-known agency became the epicenter of a fight over regulation and the state's role in protecting the planet. Climate-minded readers with an interest in policy will find this a valuable resource.