February 28, 2017
Although federal oversight of United States forests dates back to Congressional action in 1876, environmental policy became a significant federal issue in 1905, when President Theodore Roosevelt created the United States Forest Service (USFS). Today, the USFS oversees 155 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments.
Thus, for well over a century, federal oversight has helped preserve our nation’s wildlife and natural beauty for future generations.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), signed into law on January 1, 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon, requires the federal government to use “all practicable means to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.” Under NEPA, the role of environmental policy includes promoting “efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man.”
Also established in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) consolidated in one federal agency “federal research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities to ensure environmental protection.”
Since the 1980s, support for national environmental policies has seemingly waned. Smog-free cities, waterways that don’t smell or catch on fire, and waste management that fosters recycling have become the norm for most Americans, and concern over resource depletion has apparently lost much of its priority status in the public mindset.
Newer technologies such as hydraulic fracturing (fracking) have resulted in lower energy prices, encouraged the notion that fossil fuel production has an unlimited future, and decreased commitments to a low-carbon transition that prioritizes renewable energy and clean fuels.
In a global environment, issues such as climate change seem to be at the mercy of ever-shifting political winds. Faced with skepticism about the validity of climate science, Americans have been reluctant to embrace the behavioral changes and economic sacrifices necessary to effectively address its serious impacts. Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus about the crisis of climate change, the science and impacts of climate change continue to be questioned.
Federal environmental policies help ensure that all Americans have the same protection. In the New Yorker, Philip Angell, an EPA special assistant appointed in 1970, the statutes give EPA “the primary authority to set standards and enforce them if the states won’t do it. The whole point was to set a federal baseline.” Moreover, he notes, environmental regulations such as the Clean Air Act compel EPA to act on environmental problems such as climate change, about which little was widely understood in 1970.
With a supportive administration, conservative Republicans are emboldened to dismantle much of the federal protection of the environment, claiming that states are better equipped to address environmental issues. However, states are often easily swayed by businesses in the interest of fostering a “business-friendly” climate, while air pollution and other threats to health and the environment are unlikely to respect such boundaries as state lines.
National environmental policies serve to create a level playing field for states. Rolling back national environmental policies in favor of making states the primary regulatory authorities fails to take into account the critical issues at the core of EPA and federal environmental policies.
To assert that “for every new regulation enacted, at least two existing ones” should be removed threatens not only the environment but civil rights and any other social issues that many states have historically failed to protect. Nevertheless, Trump says, “This will be the largest ever cut by far in terms of regulations. If you have a regulation you want…the only way you have a chance is we have to knock out two regulations for every new regulation.” And according to White House press spokesman Sean Spicer, in 2017 the cost of any new regulation must be completely offset by those eliminated.
With weak federal regulation, will mining companies again be allowed by local governments to dump toxic waste in waterways? From the perspective of a federal regulatory regime, such action would be termed illegal, and the company would be heavily penalized. But in light of the new administration’s views on regulation and the primacy of states’ rights, which course will we follow: acknowledge the environmental and health costs of dumping waste, or permit the free dumping rights of mining companies? And, how will the costs be measured?
By Athena Lee Bradley (with editorial input from Robert Kropp)
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