Put the Profit Motive to Work

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.

Introduction

Valuing Clean Air ◽

10.1093/oso/9780197538845.003.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-8

Author(s):

Charles Halvorson

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Federal Government ◽

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

Valuing Clean Air ◽

10.1093/oso/9780197538845.003.0003 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 40-69

Author(s):

Charles Halvorson

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Federal Government ◽

Environmental Governance ◽

Public Welfare ◽

Environmental Interventions ◽

White House ◽

The Public ◽

Richard Nixon ◽

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.

Valuing Clean Air

10.1093/oso/9780197538845.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Charles Halvorson

Keyword(s):

Environmental Concern ◽

Clean Air Act ◽

Responsibility To Protect ◽

Elected Officials ◽

Liberal State ◽

Monetary Approach ◽

Clean Air ◽

Roll Back

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. But revolutions are always contested and the starburst of environmental concern that propelled the Clean Air Act and the EPA coincided with economic convulsions that shook the liberal state to its core. As powerful businesses pressed to roll back regulations, elected officials from both parties questioned whether the nation could keep its environmental promises. Pushing on, the EPA adopted a monetized approach to environmental value that sat at odds with environmentalist notions of natural rights but provided a critical shield for the agency’s rulemaking, as environmental protection came to serve as a key battleground in larger debates over markets, government, and public welfare. The EPA’s success and the potential limits of its monetary approach are evident in the very air we breathe today—far cleaner and healthier as a result of the EPA’s actions, but holding new threats in a rapidly changing climate.

Battles over US waterways policies are ahead

Emerald Expert Briefings ◽

10.1108/oxan-db250786 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

State Level ◽

The United States ◽

Private Land ◽

Weak State ◽

Content Type ◽

Agriculture Industry ◽

Legal Challenges ◽

Clean Air ◽

The Subject

Significance Later this year, the Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection (NWP) rule comes into force, the subject of the group's concern. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalised the rule in late January. The rule redefines which US waters are protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA), and replaces the 2015 Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. Legal challenges meant WOTUS was never implemented, but it still worried agriculture, industry and landowners as it potentially expanded federal anti-pollution oversight to previously unregulated waters and adjacent private land. The NWP is the latest effort in the Trump administration’s environmental deregulation drive affecting climate change, clean air, natural resources extraction, parklands and endangered species. Impacts The greatest beneficiaries of scrapping WOTUS are likely to be mining, construction and chemicals industries. Weak state-level enforcement could reduce wetlands protection by more than a return to pre-2015 levels that the NWP professes. More polluted US rivers could aggravate riparian disputes with Mexico.

Thirty Years of Economics at the Environmental Protection Agency

Agricultural and Resource Economics Review ◽

10.1017/s1068280500004925 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 42 (3) ◽

pp. 436-452 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Al McGartland

Keyword(s):

Environmental Policy ◽

Cost Analysis ◽

Policy Process ◽

Protection Agency ◽

Benefit Cost Analysis ◽

Clean Air ◽

Benefit Cost ◽

Over Time

When the modern era of environmental policy began with creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, economists and economics were little used. Over time, economics became a major contributor to formation of environmental policy. Executive Order 12291 pushed economics into the policy process but also rendered benefit-cost analysis controversial. I report on economics’ role in the policy process over time and examine contributions by economists to environmental policymaking. Advancing benefit-cost analysis is an obvious contribution. I describe other areas in which economists have contributed and highlight milestones for economics at EPA.

Principals, Bureaucrats, and Responsiveness in Clean Air Enforcements

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1958066 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 82 (1) ◽

pp. 213-234 ◽

Cited By ~ 162

Author(s):

B. Dan Wood

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Principal Agent ◽

Protection Agency ◽

Implementation Outcomes ◽

Hierarchy Model ◽

A principal-agent perspective has been employed in recent studies to rediscover the importance of democratic hierarchies in shaping public bureaucratic outputs. I test the robustness of the hierarchy model for explaining outputs from an agency that has often been cast in the image of bureaucratic independence, the Environmental Protection Agency. Examining the effect of the Reagan presidency on EPA outputs for clean air, Box-Tiao models are constructed to explain shifts in the vigor of air pollution enforcements between 1977 and 1985. The analysis shows that the influence of elected institutions is limited when an agency has substantial bureaucratic resources and a zeal for their use. Moreover, under these conditions, bureaucracy can even move outputs in directions completely opposite from what a model of hierarchy would predict. The implication is that for some agencies it is necessary to give greater consideration to the agent in explaining implementation outcomes through time.

Sensitivities of NO<sub>x</sub> transformation and the effects on surface ozone and nitrate

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ◽

10.5194/acpd-13-21961-2013 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 13 (8) ◽

pp. 21961-21988 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

H. Lei ◽

J. X. L. Wang

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

Surface Ozone ◽

Ozone Production ◽

Transformation Rate ◽

Concentration Change ◽

Air Quality Measurements ◽

Clean Air ◽

Industrial Regions ◽

Odd Nitrogen

Abstract. As precursors for tropospheric ozone and nitrate aerosols, Nitrogen oxides (NOx) in present atmosphere and its transformation in responding to emission and climate perturbations are studied by CAM-Chem model and air quality measurements including National Emission Inventory (NEI), Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET) and Environmental Protection Agency Air Quality System (EPA AQS). It is found that not only the surface ozone formation but also the nitrate formation is associated with the relative emissions of NOx and volatile organic compounds (VOC). Due to the availability of VOC and associated NOx titration, ozone productions in industrial regions increase in warmer conditions and slightly decrease against NOx emission increase, which is converse to the response in farming region. The decrease or small increase in ozone concentrations over industrial regions result in the responded nitrate increasing rate staying above the increasing rate of NOx emissions. It is indicated that ozone concentration change is more directly affected by changes in climate and precursor emissions, while nitrate concentration change is also affected by local ozone production types and their seasonal transfer. The sensitivity to temperature perturbations shows that warmer climate accelerates the decomposition of odd nitrogen (NOy) during the night. As a result, the transformation rate of NOx to nitrate decreases. Examinations on the historical emission and air quality records on typical pollution areas further confirm the conclusion drawn from modeling experiments.

Pinellas County Resource Recovery Facility Capital Replacement Project: “Securing a Retrofit Investment — A Capital Replacement Initiative”

9th Annual North American Waste-to-Energy Conference ◽

10.1115/nawtec9-116 ◽

2001 ◽

Author(s):

R. Peter Stasis ◽

Robert E. Henson ◽

Ronald D. Larson

Keyword(s):

Resource Recovery ◽

The United States ◽

Waste To Energy ◽

Air Pollution Control ◽

Operating Life ◽

Pinellas County ◽

Clean Air ◽

To Come ◽

Capital Replacement

Abstract The Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) promulgated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1990 set new emission standards for Waste-To-Energy (WTE) plants throughout the United States. Pinellas County, Florida, has achieved compliance with the new emission guidelines by completing an Air Pollution Control Retrofit to their Resource Recovery Facility (PCRRF) in 2000. Pinellas County, the owner of the PCRRF, now faces the challenge of preserving this investment for the years to come. This paper describes the additional investments being made by Pinellas County as part of the Capital Replacement Project (CRP) to extend the operating life of PCRRF.

Two Cheers for Air Pollution Control: Triumphs and Limits of the Mid-Century Fight for Air Quality

Public Health Reports ◽

10.1177/0033354919834598 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 134 (3) ◽

pp. 307-312 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Merlin Chowkwanyun

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Los Angeles ◽

Pollution Control ◽

Scientific Evidence ◽

Early Years ◽

Air Pollution Control ◽

Local Experience ◽

The Us ◽

This article analyzes the early years of 20th-century air pollution control in Los Angeles. In both scholarship and public memory, mid-century efforts at the regional level were overshadowed by major federal developments, namely the Clean Air Act and creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Yet the mid-century local experience was highly consequential and presaged many subsequent challenges that persist today. The article begins with an exploration of the existential, on-the-ground misery of smog in Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s. The article examines the role that scientific evidence on smog did and did not play in regulation, the reasons smog control galvanized support across various constituencies in the region, and, finally, some of mid-century air pollution’s limits.

What Do Economists Have to Say about the Clean Air Act 50 Years after the Establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency?

The Journal of Economic Perspectives ◽

10.1257/jep.33.4.3 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

pp. 3-26 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Janet Currie ◽

Reed Walker

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Air Quality ◽

Clean Air Act ◽

The United States ◽

Economic Research ◽

Protection Agency ◽

The Past ◽

Air quality in the United States has improved dramatically over the past 50 years in large part due to the introduction of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce it. This article is a reflection on the 50-year anniversary of the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, describing what economic research says about the ways in which the Clean Air Act has shaped our society—in terms of costs, benefits, and important distributional concerns. We conclude with a discussion of how recent changes to both policy and technology present new opportunities for researchers in this area.