Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Charles Halvorson
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Environmental Goods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Space ◽  
Monetary Approach ◽  
Opening Up

From its creation in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) played a key role in struggles over the responsibility, authority, and capacity of the federal government to safeguard the public welfare against the ills of industrial society. But despite this centrality, the EPA largely remains a cipher in modern American history. In opening up the EPA’s history through an examination of the agency’s governance of air pollution from 1970 to the 1990s, this book shows how administrative agencies came to structure core aspects of our everyday lives. The enduring power of the EPA depended on its adoption of a monetary approach to environmental goods, and this book explores the translation of different notions of environmental value into policy as a key space in the evolution of core ideas about the environment and the public welfare.

The Doer

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-69
Author(s):  
Charles Halvorson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Environmental Interventions ◽  
White House ◽  
The Public ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
Clean Air

The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 to administer the Clean Air Act of 1970 and a bevy of other ambitious new environmental interventions marked a high point in Americans’ belief in the capacity of the federal government to intervene in the economy to improve the public welfare. While Richard Nixon intended the EPA to simply implement policies that would be formulated elsewhere, the complexity of developing and enforcing functional policies that could achieve the Clean Air Act’s mandates made the agency’s regulations increasingly key to determining what pollution control looked like in the lives of ordinary Americans and the operations of American businesses. This recognition of the power in implementation sent environmental advocates, business representatives, and White House advisors scrambling to find ways of influencing the decision making of the new agency at the heart of the nation’s environmental governance regime.

scholarly journals Quantifying the Public Health Benefits of Reducing Air Pollution: Critically Assessing the Features and Capabilities of WHO’s AirQ+ and U.S. EPA’s Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program—Community Edition (BenMAP—CE)

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Sacks ◽  
Neal Fann ◽  
Sophie Gumy ◽  
Ingu Kim ◽  
Giulia Ruggeri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Air Pollution ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Analysis Program ◽  
Common Input ◽  
The Public ◽  
Software Packages

Scientific evidence spanning experimental and epidemiologic studies has shown that air pollution exposures can lead to a range of health effects. Quantitative approaches that allow for the estimation of the adverse health impacts attributed to air pollution enable researchers and policy analysts to convey the public health impact of poor air quality. Multiple tools are currently available to conduct such analyses, which includes software packages designed by the World Health Organization (WHO): AirQ+, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA): Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program—Community Edition (BenMAP—CE), to quantify the number and economic value of air pollution-attributable premature deaths and illnesses. WHO’s AirQ+ and U.S. EPA’s BenMAP—CE are among the most popular tools to quantify these effects as reflected by the hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and technical reports over the past two decades that have employed these tools spanning many countries and multiple continents. Within this paper we conduct an analysis using common input parameters to compare AirQ+ and BenMAP—CE and show that the two software packages well align in the calculation of health impacts. Additionally, we detail the research questions best addressed by each tool.

Put the Profit Motive to Work

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-131
Author(s):  
Charles Halvorson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Profit Motive ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Regulatory Review ◽  
Governance Model ◽  
Key Space ◽  
Clean Air ◽  
Democrats And Republicans

As the prosperity of the postwar period ran aground on the shoals of the dislocations of the energy crises and the deteriorating position of American manufacturing, critiques of the supposed inefficiency of large government programs gained ground among both Democrats and Republicans. Under Jimmy Carter, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which had been a champion of a liberal governance model in which experts established direct mandates for businesses to follow, became a key space for the development of market-based alternatives that shifted power back to businesses in the hopes of reducing the costs of achieving public welfare goals, even as the agency took on new authority to protect pristine air through the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. As Carter set out to bring more economic scrutiny to the EPA’s rulemaking through expanded regulatory review processes, environmental advocates were forced to contend with the rising salience of monetary approaches of environmental value.

“We Do Not Consider Ourselves Welfare Cases”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie M. Fousekis
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Head Start ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Compensatory Education ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Poor Children

This chapter explores what happened to child care coalition when the federal government provided new child care funds. Child care did not have the same meaning for federal officials and for the early childhood educators and mothers. The federal government's goal was to provide compensatory education to poor children through programs such as Head Start and to reduce welfare rolls with the Public Welfare amendments to the Social Security Act. Unfortunately, these programs symbolically and practically linked child care to “welfare mothers” and their children. Advocates, who by this time has confidence in their influence, effectiveness, and place in the democratic process, encountered a federal government that considered child care an appropriate service only for the poorest Americans.

scholarly journals Pollutant release registers are key tools to help curb air pollution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony R Walker
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Fine Particulate Matter ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Toxic Release Inventory ◽  
Atmospheric Pollutant ◽  
Industrial Facilities ◽  
The Public

Recent articles highlighting potential weakening of air pollution regulations in the United States should be a cause for concern for public health worldwide. Environmental regulations to curb air pollution, particularly fine-particle pollution, should be based on sound scientific evidence, not politics. Unfortunately, members of the public seldom read scientific articles published in reputable journals, but they do listen to politicians. However, members of the public can learn more about atmospheric pollutant releases, including fine-particulate matter from industrial facilities under ‘right-to-know’ legislation and public disclosure principles, using Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs). PRTRs are a key policy tools designed to curb air pollution and are used widely in many countries and help support enforcement of environmental pollution control regulations. The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) launched the first PRTR, the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) in 1987 and Canada followed suit with the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) in 1993. Whilst PRTRs have been criticised for data accuracy and under reporting, they are still effective tools to curb air pollution through increased public understanding and engagement in decision-making.

scholarly journals Pollutant release registers are key tools to help curb air pollution

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony R Walker
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Fine Particulate Matter ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Toxic Release Inventory ◽  
Atmospheric Pollutant ◽  
Industrial Facilities ◽  
The Public

Recent articles highlighting potential weakening of air pollution regulations in the United States should be a cause for concern for public health worldwide. Environmental regulations to curb air pollution, particularly fine-particle pollution, should be based on sound scientific evidence, not politics. Unfortunately, members of the public seldom read scientific articles published in reputable journals, but they do listen to politicians. However, members of the public can learn more about atmospheric pollutant releases, including fine-particulate matter from industrial facilities under ‘right-to-know’ legislation and public disclosure principles, using Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs). PRTRs are a key policy tools designed to curb air pollution and are used widely in many countries and help support enforcement of environmental pollution control regulations. The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) launched the first PRTR, the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) in 1987 and Canada followed suit with the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) in 1993. Whilst PRTRs have been criticised for data accuracy and under reporting, they are still effective tools to curb air pollution through increased public understanding and engagement in decision-making.

The Costs of Pollution

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-39
Author(s):  
Charles Halvorson
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Quality Standards ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Clean Air ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cost

Animated by the contrast of rising prosperity and declining environmental quality in the 1960s, the modern environmental movement pushed local and state authorities and then the federal government to take responsibility for restoring and safeguarding the environment. Central to that expanded federal role was the establishment of science-based national air quality standards in the Clean Air Act of 1970. Economists too came to focus on pollution as a key threat to public welfare and laid the groundwork in the 1960s for what would become a politically compelling monetization of the costs of air pollution and environmental degradation. But whereas environmentalists tended to describe clean air as a natural right, to be secured regardless of the cost, economists approached clean air as a natural resource, to be managed for its measurable contributions to a monetized notion of public welfare.

Communicating air pollution science to the public and politicians

2006 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 413-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Brimblecombe ◽  
E. Schuepbach
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
The Public
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