The Future of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency: 2015–2035

In this chapter, we consider possible futures for the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under several scenarios. Before beginning, we offer some caveats and disclaimers. “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” This quotation—often credited to physicist Niels Bohr—captures the dilemma of prediction by stating it as a truism. Statistician Nate Silver, who won fame for accurately forecasting the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, argues that in general the record of prognostication in public affairs, the field encompassing the ideas in this book, is particularly poor. For example, in the late 1980s few specialists predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, an event of enormous scale and importance that appears in hindsight to have been imminent and inevitable. More recently on the domestic front political experts generally failed to foresee the rise of the Tea Party, which has roiled the last three American electoral cycles and generated a significant rightward pull on the Republican Party and on U.S. politics more broadly. Psychologist Phillip Tetlock, who examined the record of expert predictions in the arena of public affairs, reports poor results. In his research he found that “expertise . . . had no across-the-board effect on forecasting accuracy.” He observed that egregious prediction errors are surprisingly common, even among experts whose prediction skills are otherwise rated as better than average. About 10 percent of the time events actually occurred that these higher-performing experts had estimated to be impossible, while about 20 percent of the time events failed to occur that these experts had estimated to be sure things. The results were 10 percentage points worse in both directions for the poorer-performing experts in Tetlock’s studies. Given these findings, the predictive limitations of the agency life cycle models we consider in this book are not surprising.

Comparing the Paths of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency and Assessing the Life Cycle Models

In Chapters 4 and 5, we used four organizational life cycle models to develop predictions for the trajectories of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s appropriations over the forty-year period from their births in 1970 through 2010. In this chapter, we review findings from our studies of the CEQ and EPA, and we offer a general assessment of the power of the theoretical agency life cycle models. We also employ a framework we developed for comparing the models and for classifying the key variables in those models. This framework provides a means to move beyond the constraints of the existing literature, in which life cycle models are placed in either the “internalist” or “externalist” camps. We framed our study of the CEQ and EPA with two general views of what happens to public organizations during the process of implementing public law. One view is that the life of the executive branch organization will be relatively stable and untroubled as its leaders and professional staff pursue the organization’s statutorily assigned mission. The underlying presumption here is that all of the important political questions related to the tasks assigned to the agency have been addressed in the public law itself. Consequently, the work of the agencies will be largely technical and uncontroversial. The alternative view is that the political struggle over the passage of the laws the agencies are supposed to implement continues during the implementation stage of the policymaking process. The supporters of the law, inside and outside government, support the agency and its efforts. The opponents of the law, however, not only oppose the agency but also attempt to derail, or at least delay implementation of, the law. Thus, an agency’s trajectory over time, in the form of its resources for and vigor in support of its assigned implementation tasks, will depend in large part on the balance of power, inside and outside government, between those who support and oppose the agency.

The Environmental Protection Agency: 1970–2010

The official birthdate of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is December 2, 1970. On that day the Senate confirmed William Ruckelshaus, President Nixon’s nominee to be the administrator of the new agency, and the “EPA opened for business in a tiny suite of offices at 20th and L Streets in Northwest Washington, DC.” The new agency took over programs and offices related to environmental protection previously operating in the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Food and Drug Administration, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Federal Radiation Council. In this chapter, we examine and attempt to explain what happened to this major regulatory agency over the forty-year period from its birth in 1970 to 2010. In doing so, we test hypotheses that follow from the four categories of theoretical agency life cycle models introduced in Chapter 3. These models differ in their predictions for the trajectories of federal agencies. The biological model predicts that agencies will grow rapidly during their early life before reaching a relatively stable maturity. Over subsequent decades agencies may carry on indefinitely with declining vigor, or be absorbed into other agencies, or die, although scholars debate both the process and probability of agency mortality. The partisan political model predicts a more turbulent life history for agencies in which changing party control of Congress and the White House will buffet government organizations more or less routinely. According to this model, federal agencies will often be caught in the middle of partisan ideological battles over the importance and value of the social functions they were created to address. The incremental model suggests that the best predictor of how agencies will fare in the near future is how they have fared in the recent past. That is, agencies tend to be insulated from external political and economic fluctuations and therefore generally experience relatively minor changes over time to their budgets and operations. The issue-attention model predicts that agencies’ fortunes are tied to the vagaries of current events.

Postscript: Sustainability and the Environmental Protection Agency

In Chapter 7, we completed our formal examination of environmental politics, policy, and administration. In our analysis throughout the book we examined the histories of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as seen through the lens of conceptual agency life cycle models. In this postscript, we step outside this theoretical framework to offer some thoughts on the path U.S. environmental policy and administration have been taking, in halting steps, toward the ambitious processes and goals of sustainability. In considering the practical implications of this emerging realignment of focus, we use climate change as an example. As we discussed in Chapter 2, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) was a prescient document helping chart new directions in environmental management both in the United States and globally. Although NEPA does not specifically mention sustainability, the act includes text that clearly anticipates current understanding of the concept, declaring it a policy of the federal government “to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.” In 1987 the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development built on this language to define sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” At the 1992 Earth Summit, 178 nations committed to adopting this framework in promoting future development. While this declaration, known as Agenda 21, did not immediately transform global priorities, it did put sustainability on the international agenda. Since then, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a multilateral group of thirty-four nations made up primarily of developed economies, has been particularly active in encouraging member countries to incorporate sustainability into policymaking. Over the past decade or so, sustainability has become a more visible part of the vocabulary of U.S. environmental policy and administration.

Life Cycle Models of Organizations

The executive branch departments and agencies of the national government have the key role in the implementation stage of the policy process. In the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) was assigned the task of providing an annual report on the condition of the nation’s environment, assessing the effects of national, state, and local governments’ efforts to protect the environment, and developing recommendations to improve environmental quality. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was given the primary responsibility for implementing the pollution control laws Congress created between 1970 and 1980, amendments to those laws, and new laws enacted during the next three decades. Some scholars have maintained that the process of implementing a public law is “removed from the hurry and strife of politics,” since the important political and substantive matters have been decided in the law itself. Other scholars, however, describe the implementation stage of the policy process as a continuation of the political struggle that occurred over the creation of the law. The competition between these two views of policy implementation is one factor that makes the study of the “life cycles” of executive branch departments and agencies so important. If the first view is correct, the implementation of a public law should be a relatively smooth process in which the leadership, managers, and professionals in agencies like the CEQ and the EPA carry out their assigned statutory duties. Likewise, the life cycle of the executive branch agency should be relatively stable and long. Finally, absent serious flaws in the design of the policy itself, the prospects for successful implementation of the law might seem to be relatively high. If the alternative view of policy implementation is correct, however, the extent to which implementation of a public law actually occurs is likely to depend heavily on the health, vitality, and even survival of the implementing agency. In turn, the health and vitality of the executive branch agency is likely to depend on the leadership of the agency and the resources that Congress and the president appropriate for it.

The Council on Environmental Quality: 1970–2010

On January 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) into law. In this Act, Congress articulated for the first time a national policy on the environment. The goals of the Act included the promotion of “efforts to prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man.” Congress also created the Council on Environment Quality (CEQ) to assist the president with the implementation of the new law and placed the new agency in the Executive Office of the President. The CEQ was to consist of three members, and it was to be supported by a professional staff selected by the CEQ. On January 29, 1970, President Nixon nominated Russell E. Train to serve as the chair of the CEQ; he also nominated Robert Cahn and Gordon J. F. MacDonald to serve as the other members of the CEQ. One week later, on February 6, 1970, the Senate confirmed the nominations, which officially allowed the new agency to open for business. In addition to ongoing consultations with the president and his advisors, Chairman Train and the other two members of the CEQ had to assemble a professional and administrative staff. In August of 1970, only six months after the CEQ officially opened for business, President Nixon submitted The First Annual Report of The Council on Environmental Quality to Congress. The front section of the Report was “The President’s Message to Congress.” The remainder of the Report, developed by the CEQ, contained the first assessment of the nation’s environment, a list of the underlying causes and effects of existing environmental problems, a review of the national government’s efforts to address those problems over the previous two decades, and recommendations for improving environmental quality and protecting human health that involved changes in policy and administrative structure. It is especially noteworthy that the Report contained a section on the causes and effects of climate change, as well as recommendations for addressing this critical problem. In this chapter, we describe and attempt to explain what has happened to the CEQ over the forty-year period from 1970 to 2010.

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Rise of Environmental Protection in the 1970s, and the Political Drama of the Next Three Decades

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was approved unanimously in the Senate and with near unanimity in the House of Representatives in December 1969. President Nixon signed the act into law on January 1, 1970. The new statute was both brief and farsighted. In fewer than 3,500 words the congressional authors of NEPA articulated for the first time a national policy on the environment, set in motion an innovative regulatory process centered on environmental impact statements, institutionalized public participation in federal environmental decision making, and introduced the requirement that the president report annually to Congress on the nation’s environmental status and trends. NEPA also included a provision that established a new agency, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), in the Executive Office of the President. The CEQ’s assigned statutory role was to implement the environmental impact statement process, prepare the president’s annual environmental report on the condition of the environment, develop policy proposals for solving environmental problems, and coordinate efforts across the federal government to address environmental concerns. As stated in the law, NEPA is designed to “encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment”; to “promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man”; and to “fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations.” The references to promoting harmony between people and the environment, protecting the biosphere, and affirming the nation’s responsibility for environmental stewardship illustrate an understanding of the scope, scale, and significance of environmental matters that was significantly ahead of its time. The language in NEPA quoted above anticipated by twenty years the concern for the Earth’s biosphere and the concept of environmental sustainability that would become more widely articulated in the run-up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Moreover, NEPA has had an enduring global impact. By the law’s fortieth anniversary, a majority of U.S. states had established their own environmental impact statement requirements and more than 160 nations worldwide had adopted similar legislation.

Environmental Politics, Policy, and Administration in the United States

A variety of human activities produce pollutants, many of which pose risks to human health, the natural environment, and the Earth’s biosphere. These activities, however, may have important economic and social purposes. For example, coal-fired utility plants emit a range of dangerous substances from their tall smokestacks, many of which fall back to Earth hundreds of miles downwind. These pollutants make breathing difficult for people who have asthma and heart disease, and they damage forests, lakes, rivers, and the ecosystems of which they are a part. Yet, the electrical power generated at these plants is used to run factories, provide heat and air conditioning for office buildings, light homes, and sustain the Internet. Likewise, the internal combustion engines in automobiles and trucks emit harmful pollutants from their exhaust pipes that cause smog in urban areas and contribute to global climate change. Yet these vehicles give people the means to travel, conduct their social lives, commute to work, and move goods to markets. These two examples illustrate the underlying contradictions, tensions, and fault lines upon which environmental politics, policy, and administration are built. Human activities that generate pollutants create benefits and impose costs. The distribution of those benefits and costs differs by areas of the country, by sectors of the economy, and among many groups and individuals within our society. For example, oil companies, automobile manufacturers, and private utility companies that own coal-fired power plants have traditionally been among the fiercest opponents of efforts to limit pollutants that degrade air quality. Environmental groups, public health groups, and elected officials in urban areas and the states of the Northeast and West Coast have been among the strongest supporters of air pollution controls. Opponents of efforts to limit pollution generally contend that such limits lead to increased prices and lost jobs. Utility companies do incur costs when they purchase and install air pollution control equipment. Those costs are passed on to manufacturing firms, tenants in office buildings, and homeowners in the form of higher electricity bills.