Fluent Essays

English, Literature and Philology Topic: Environmental Reflection Type of work: Essay Level: College Number of pages: 1 page = 250 Grade: High Quality (Normal Charge) Formatting style: APA Language Style: English (U.S.) Website Region: United States Customer Time: Do we paint too grim a picture of the status of environmental politics in the United States? What might be ways that the polarized politics around the EPA can be changed, such that the agency can fulfill its mission of protecting human health and the environment? USE THE SOURCE PROVIDED -- Quality is Not an Option 443 Chapter Twelve Environmental Politics David M. Konisky and Megan Mullin The EPA was created at a momentous time in US politics. The Vietnam War was escalating, large-scale movements to secure civil rights for African Americans and equal rights for women were ongoing, and political and social unrest was erupting in the streets in large cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to Baltimore. Although we tend to look back at this period of time as one of tumult and crisis, in many important areas of public policy, it was also a period of great optimism and promise. This is certainly the case for environ- mental protection. As Jim Barnes describes in Chapter 1, there was both a rising tide of concern about environmental problems and, just as importantly, a strong collective conviction that the federal government could effectively intervene to solve them. A responsive Congress and executive branch took heed by enacting far-reaching and wide-ranging laws that reshaped environ- mental policy in the United States for the next half century. The newly created EPA would be tasked with implementing these new laws and was buoyed in its efforts by several important features of US politics at the time. First, there was general agreement across party lines, at both the elite and mass public levels, regarding the importance of environmental problems. Second, by historical standards, and despite the previously mentioned political unrest, public trust and confidence in government institutions was high. Third, an emerging set of advocacy organizations had the legal and scientific capacity to help defend the mission of the nascent EPA. And, fourth, there was general agreement about the nature of the problems to be confronted and who should bear responsibility—mainly, large business and heavy industry. This widely shared definition of the problem of environmental degradation helped provide clarity as to the appropriate policy interventions. In sum, the creation of the EPA in December 1970 came during a political moment when the new agency enjoyed broad, bipartisan support, built on a 20_0430_Barnes.indb 443 10/6/20 5:19 AM 444 Chapter Twelve widely held belief that EPA’s mission “to protect human health and the en- vironment” was both important and urgent. These conditions have changed profoundly over the succeeding five decades, such that the politics surround- ing the EPA now interfere with the agency’s ability to effectively carry out its mission. To be clear, as previous chapters in this book have documented, the EPA in many ways has delivered on the promise to improve environmental quality and social welfare for most Americans. But, despite these successes, the agency has become mired in political conflict that now affects nearly every aspect of its work. Some of the conflict reflects broader developments in the American political system, while other aspects are specific to the EPA, its mission, and the policy tools it employs. Taken as a whole, the agency has become a political football, with every major decision seemingly shrouded in controversy. In this chapter, we document changes in environmental politics since the EPA’s establishment and trace the ways that politics have influenced the agency’s ability to administer and enforce environmental laws. Although a wide range of activity external and internal to the EPA can fall under the moniker of “politics,” our discussion will emphasize the most sweeping and consequential change in the American political system during this period— the growth of partisan polarization among elected officials and in the broader mass public. We begin by demonstrating that polarization has been particu- larly pronounced on the issue of the environment. We show how polarization saturates the EPA’s political context, setting the stage for conflict over the agency’s activities within Congress and the courts, between states, among stakeholders and the mass public, and within presidential administrations themselves. The stark partisan divide on environmental regulation has pro- duced swings in policy but also has contributed to enduring changes in EPA budget and authority. Being asked to do more with fewer resources leaves more room for discretion in policy implementation, contributing to environ- mental outcomes that can vary widely across communities. Finally, we dis- cuss the changing nature of the environmental problems that EPA confronts. Because the most pressing contemporary challenges are less visible than those that motivated the EPA’s formation, they do not arouse widespread public demands for action that could help mitigate polarization’s effects. PARTISAN POLARIZATION ON THE ENVIRONMENT The Bipartisanship of the “Environmental Decade” Many scholars of environmental politics and policy refer to the 1970s as the “environmental decade,” bracketed by the enactment of the National 20_0430_Barnes.indb 444 10/6/20 5:19 AM Environmental Politics 445 Environmental Policy Act in 1970 and the passage of the Superfund law in 1980.1 Until that time, responsibility for environmental protection had rested largely at the state and local levels, attracting differing levels of interest and seriousness across jurisdictions.2 For its part, the federal government gener- ally limited its activities to conducting research, providing guidance, and encouraging (but not compelling) performance standards. During the environmental decade, the US environmental protection sys- tem was remade. Congress enacted more than a dozen major statutes, in areas ranging from air and water pollution to chemicals and pesticides to waste management and contaminated site remediation. Table 12.1 lists the major statutes assigned to the fledgling EPA during this time, each of which receives more detailed attention elsewhere in this book.3 Collectively, these federal programs are striking for their scale, ambition, and largely prescrip- tive approach to addressing environmental problems. Table 12.1. Major Statutes Enacted from 1970–1980 National Environmental Policy Act (1970) Clean Air Act (1970) (amended in 1977) Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments (Clean Water Act, 1972) (amended in 1977) Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act (1972) Safe Drinking Water Act (1974) Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (1976) Toxic Substances Control Act (1976) Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (1980) The newly enacted laws are also remarkable for the bipartisan support they received. In the modern era, most consequential laws are passed on par- tisan votes, often relying on arcane rules of budget reconciliation that enable Congress to bypass the supermajority voting constraints of the US Senate.4 By comparison, the laws of the environmental decade garnered substantial levels of support from both sides of the political aisle. As illustrations, the legislation that eventually became the 1970 Clean Air Act passed the House by a vote of 374-1 and the Senate by a vote of 73-4 (the final legislation passed each chamber by voice vote),5 the 1972 Clean Water Act passed the House by a vote of 366-11 and a Senate vote of 74-0,6 and the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act passed the House by a vote of 367-8 and the Senate by a vote of 88-3.7 The ambition of many of these laws is attributable to competition between President Richard Nixon and Democratic Senator Edwin Muskie, who engaged in a “tit-for-tat” legislative negotiation, each at- tempting to one-up the other in order to appeal to an electorate with a growing 20_0430_Barnes.indb 445 10/6/20 5:19 AM 446 Chapter Twelve environmental consciousness. Even when President Nixon faltered, vetoing the Clean Water Act in 1972 out of concern for its “staggering” cost ($24.6 billion to cover the federal share of upgrading wastewater treatment plants),8 113 Congressional Republicans voted with their Democratic colleagues to override the veto.9 The bipartisanship of the environmental decade, however, was short-lived. US politics has become more polarized in the decades that have followed, both among political elites and in the general public. This polarization shapes the EPA’s relations with its external stakeholders, with important implica- tions for its agenda, the policy tools it uses to advance its goals, and the reac- tions to its activities. The Rise of Partisan Polarization Political scientists studying the ideological composition of Congress have shown that the middle of the twentieth century was a period of unusually low levels of party conflict. Republicans and Democrats overlapped in their roll call voting more than at any other time before or since.10 The environmental decade occurred during the end of this period of depolarization. Since that time, political elites have become more divided—the parties are both inter- nally more homogeneous and farther apart from one another. Issues that pre- viously had split politicians along regional lines started to become absorbed into partisan conflict. Many factors have contributed to the rise of partisan polarization. A start- ing point is the 1960s civil rights reforms, which produced a realignment of the South in which conservative, white districts came to be represented by Republicans rather than by Democrats. Meanwhile, expanded opportunities for participation by Black and Latinx politicians and voters resulted in some districts electing more liberal Democrats than they had before. The decisions these politicians made once in office, combined with broader changes in the political, social, and economic environments, reinforced patterns of polariza- tion and spread its effects across regions and issues.11 Rising inequality, the growing residential segregation of Americans by party, changes in electoral rules, and the fragmentation of media all have played a role.12 Polarization is sharpest among elected office holders and other political elites but over time has spread to ordinary Americans who identify with one of the parties. Issues that have low salience, or importance, are more susceptible to becoming polarized.13 Thus, as the environment has become less of a priority to the American public, partisans have more readily taken up positions to match those of political elites. There is little evidence to in- dicate growing divides in policy attitudes among the broader mass public, 20_0430_Barnes.indb 446 10/6/20 5:19 AM Environmental Politics 447 which raises important questions about representation as politicians and their partisan supporters become more polarized.14 Increasingly, politicians have incentive to respond to the more extreme preferences of those who vote in primaries rather than to the median voters in their districts.15 It is important to note that the overall divergence in party positions across issues has not been symmetric—Republicans have moved farther to the right over recent decades than Democrats have moved to the left.16 This asym- metric polarization is particularly evident on the environment. With the base constituencies of the Republican party growing more hostile toward govern- ment power, regulation, and threats to the fossil fuel economy, it has become politically risky for Republican politicians to take overtly pro-environment stances. While the Democratic party has moved left in seeking over time to more aggressively address environmental risks, Republicans have made a bigger leap by challenging the core of EPA scope and authority. This fun- damental partisan conflict dominates every aspect of the agency’s political environment. Polarization in Congress With respect to the environment specifically, consider first polarization in Congress. The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has been tracking congressional voting behavior on the environment in a systematic way since 1970. Each year, the LCV identifies a series of votes on what the organization considers to be important environmental decisions, and then tracks whether members of Congress vote to support the organization’s position. For ex- ample, in 2017, among the votes that the LCV included in its scores was the confirmation vote of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and several votes to allow oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.17 The LCV then aggregates these votes into a single score for each representative and senator. Figure 12.1 shows the average score for members of each politi- cal party, separately for the House and Senate, from 1970 to 2018. The rise in polarization is striking. The difference in average scores between Repub- licans and Democrats during the environmental decade was approximately twenty percentage points. Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this margin began to widen, and over the last decade, the split has grown to as large as eighty points. Although interest group scores may exaggerate differ- ences due to the strategic selection of the votes analyzed, studies of a broader set of votes have found similar levels of polarization.18 The stark polarization that now characterizes US national politics is also prevalent at the state level, in some cases even more strongly in state leg- islatures than in Congress.19 Increasingly, American politics is becoming 20_0430_Barnes.indb 447 10/6/20 5:19 AM U.S House Year Democrats Republicans 100 80 60 40 20 0 1970 1974 1978 1984 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018 LC V Sc or e U.S Senate Year Democrats Republicans 100 80 60 40 20 0 1970 1974 1978 1984 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018 LC V Sc or e Figure 12.1. League of Conservation Voter Scores, 1970–2018. Author-generated 20_0430_Barnes.indb 448 10/6/20 5:19 AM Environmental Politics 449 nationalized, with shared partisanship as a force that binds people together more than local issues or regional loyalties.20 One implication of this nation- alization is that the political climate around the EPA at the state level begins to resemble its contentious nature at the national level, further complicating the agency’s efforts to effectively carry out its mission. We discuss the rela- tionship between the EPA and the states in greater depth later in the chapter. Polarization in the Mass Public Large differences in environmental attitudes also exist among self-identified partisans in the general American public. A common measure of Americans’ preferences toward the environment is their views about the allocation of government resources. Figure 12.2 displays the trend in one such measure. The General Social Survey (GSS), a national survey conducted by the Na- tional Opinion Research Center, has since 1972 included a question that asks a nationally representative sample of Americans whether the federal govern- ment is spending too much, too little, or about the right amount of money on the environment. These data show a pattern of polarization that resembles the voting pattern of members of Congress. What had been modest differences between the opinions of Republicans and Democrats during the 1970s and 1980s rose sharply in the 1990s, and polarization continues to grow through today. The bottom panel of Figure 12.2 demonstrates that among the mass public, environment stands out as an issue of unusually high polarization. During the 1970s and 1980s, the difference between Democrats and Republicans in beliefs about spending on the environment ranged from about five to fifteen percentage points, which is similar to that for education, health, drugs, cities, and foreign aid. However, over the past thirty years, the partisan difference has increased to about twenty-five to thirty points, while remaining about the same for these other issues. Polarization on government spending on the environment is now among the most divisive issues included on the survey, comparable only to military spending and issues of race and welfare. Noticeable in this figure is the short period of time around 1990 when partisans converged in their support for environmental spending. In 1988, Republican candidate and incumbent Vice President George H.W. Bush spotlighted environmental issues during his presidential campaign, declaring on the shores of Lake Erie, “I am an environmentalist. Always have been . . . and I always will be.”21 Less than six months after taking office, President Bush proposed ambitious revisions to the Clean Air Act to address acid rain and urban smog. With his leadership, the set of amendments eventu- ally passed Congress with overwhelming majorities and broad Republican 20_0430_Barnes.indb 449 10/6/20 5:19 AM Year 80 60 40 20 0 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 B el ie fs a bo ut s pe nd in g on th e en vi ro nm en t ( % ) Too little Too much Democrats Republicans Conditions of Blacks Environment Welfare Health Education & Foreign Aid Cities Drugs Drugs Crime Military Year 40 20 0 -20 -40 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 % D em oc ra ts - % R ep ub lic an s w ho b el ie ve th at s pe nd in g is to o lo w Figure 12.2. Government Spending Priorities, 1970–2018. Author-generated 20_0430_Barnes.indb 450 10/6/20 5:19 AM Environmental Politics 451 support. Separate from President Bush’s effort in signaling that environ- ment could be bipartisan issue, other events around this time—especially the historic 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and the heavily marketed global celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day—raised the salience of the environment without igniting partisan division. By 1992 President Bush had changed his political strategy to more often emphasize the economic costs of environmental protection, and the gap in opinion among partisans in the mass public not only reemerged, but quickly escalated.22 Wider divides in opinion about the environment do not signal rising levels of public concern. In fact, just the opposite seems to be true. Whereas public opinion polls during the 1970s revealed widespread concern about environ- mental quality, the environment now barely registers in most surveys that ask Americans to indicate the most important problems facing the country. For example, in a poll conducted by the Gallup Organization in 1975, fifty-three percent of Americans identified “reducing pollution of air and water” as one of top three problems requiring action in the United States. This represented a thirty-six percent increase from 1965 and trailed only “reducing crime” among the issues identified.23 By comparison, across the first three months of 2019, only three to four percent of Americans mentioned environment or pollution in response to a similar inquiry from Gallup.24 The receding salience of public opinion toward the environment may a reflect a version of what economist Anthony Downs referred to as the “issue-attention cycle”—the tendency for surges of public attention to an issue to recede after collective realization of the costs and challenges of fully addressing it.25 Polarization in External Political Climate Three key elements of the external political climate around the EPA have transformed over the last fifty years in ways that further politicize environ- mental policy-making. First, the appointment process for federal judges has become a political battleground, with important implications for the scope of EPA authority. Second, the density of interest groups and other information providers seeking to influence EPA policy has increased, creating a more ac- tive and antagonistic set of stakeholders that engages with the agency. And, third, changes in the structure of the news media have fragmented audiences and set up competing narratives about environmental policy issues. We dis- cuss each in turn. Although politics have always influenced judicial selection and decision- making, polarization has expanded its importance. Ideological consistency is now the primary consideration for presidential nominations to federal courts, 20_0430_Barnes.indb 451 10/6/20 5:19 AM 452 Chapter Twelve and ever since the 1987 blocked Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, nominees now consistently receive close ideological scrutiny. Polarization and divided government contribute to confirmation delay,26 and overall rates of confirmation have fallen: whereas approximately ninety percent of ap- pellate court nominees were confirmed in the 1970s, only about half were confirmed under President George W. Bush.27 Interest groups have become more active in nomination politics, and nominees are now more ideologically extreme.28 These developments have an impact on judicial decision-making. Judges very often reach decisions about legal questions that are in line with their predispositions and policy preferences.29 This is especially true in the absence of other constraints, such as fidelity to precedent for the lower courts. In an analysis of environmental decisions by the DC Circuit Court from 1970 to 1994, legal scholar Richard Revesz found that the partisanship of a judge’s appointing president was a strong predictor of the judge’s votes, especially if the judge had a co-partisan on the panel and the case was unlikely to be reviewed by the Supreme Court.30 The selection of more ideological judges through more ideological processes produces courts that are more divided along ideological lines. For the Supreme Court in recent years, this has meant a large proportion of cases decided by a one-vote margin. In the lower courts, expectations about the ideological direction of a court ruling may influence the behavior of environmental agency personnel who seek to avoid litigation over their decisions.31 Regarding the changing interest group community, the EPA was estab- lished during a period in which the number of interest groups was beginning to skyrocket. In 1970, an estimated 4,000 groups were based in Washington, DC—double the number that had existed in 1950—and the number continued to grow, reaching about 17,000 in 2010.32 The composition of groups has changed as well, with particular growth in the number of citizen groups (as distinct from labor unions or business-oriented groups, such as trade associa- tions), especially in the area of the environment. During the agency’s early years, environmental movement pressure originated mostly from a few major organizations—the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environ- mental Defense Fund (EDF, now Environmental Defense), and the Sierra Club—that had deep expertise and sharp focus on agency activities. These groups participate through the entire policy process—from legislative nego- tiation and enactment through the regulatory process, the courts, and state implementation. They play an important role inside the Democratic party and often represent the environmental movement to the broader public. Now there are myriad groups with a wide range of priorities, goals, strategies, and capacities pushing the EPA toward a stricter regulatory approach. 20_0430_Barnes.indb 452 10/6/20 5:19 AM Environmental Politics 453 Environmental advocacy organizations have greatly expanded their ca- pacity. Data collected by political scientists Frank Baumgartner and Beth Leech indicates that there were 119 environmental groups with a combined staff of 316 people at the beginning of the 1960s; by the mid-1990s, these numbers had increased to more than 300 groups and 3,000 staffers.33 As of 2005, this number had grown further to more than 560 such groups.34 Other estimates place the total even higher. In his study of environmental orga- nizations, political scientist Christopher Bosso estimated that the full-time staffs of twenty-five major groups in 2000 combined to more than 7,600 people.35 Alongside this growth in environmental groups has been a proliferation of organizations that are often outwardly hostile to EPA’s core mission. In response to government expansion during the 1960s and early 1970s, the business community became more politically active and organized to advo- cate for business-oriented tax cuts, deregulation, reductions in social wel- fare spending, and contraction of labor union rights.36 New organizations, such as the Business Roundtable in 1972, and strengthened existing enti- ties, such as the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, helped to forward these goals. Corporations also started investing in lobbyists; in 1971, 175 companies had registered lobbyists in Washington, DC, whereas by 1978, almost 2,000 corporate trade associa- tions had lobbyists. Similarly, the number of political action committees associated with businesses increased from fewer than 250 in 1974 to over 1,100 in 1978.37 Thus, just as the EPA was finding its feet as a new federal agency, the business community was ramping up its efforts to challenge the regulations the agency was unveiling. These increases have continued in the decades since. For example, as of 2010, the number of federal political action committees (PACs) exceeds 4,500, nearly 40% of which are affili- ated with business firms. In a typical election year, PACs associated with businesses and trade associations account for about two-thirds of all PAC contributions to federal candidates.38 At the same time that businesses were becoming more politically active, the conservative political movement that had emerged in the 1950s and 1960s became institutionalized in the form of think tanks such as American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, and legal organizations including the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Mountain States Legal Foundation.39 These business groups and conservative movement or- ganizations generally were not established as a direct response to the EPA or environmental policy, but their agendas of promoting limited government and free enterprise often conflict with the EPA’s efforts to administer the laws Congress assigned to the agency. Moreover, their efforts have been buttressed 20_0430_Barnes.indb 453 10/6/20 5:19 AM 454 Chapter Twelve by the political movement that challenges federal environmental policy in the domain of private property rights and Western public lands management. Although this movement—monikered the Sagebrush Rebellion and the Wise-Use Movement, in different iterations—directs its objections primarily toward other federal agencies (e.g., Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service), it mobilizes activism and funding toward challenging environmental regulation in broad terms, contributing to contestation in the EPA’s political landscape. As political scientist Judy Layzer has shown, the business community has worked in concert with the conservative movement to construct and disseminate an anti-regulation storyline that challenges EPA decision-making.40 Their efforts have included a well-documented disinfor- mation campaign aimed at debunking the science about climate change,41 which further contributed to the spread of competing narratives about the EPA and its activities. These competing narratives have been enabled by changes in the news me- dia—the third important element of the EPA’s external context. Over recent decades, fragmentation in media audiences has reduced the public’s inciden- tal exposure to political news and allowed people to select news sources that cater to their political predispositions. As audiences for broadcast television news and print newspapers have declined, Americans have more opportunity to select the media they consume—opting in to partisan news programming, or opting out of news consumption altogether.42 The online news media en- vironment fragments audiences not only by partisan orientation but also by interest in particular news topics.43 While online, specialized media outlets proliferate, traditional outlets for delivering content of general interest are disappearing: over the course of just the last 15 years, an estimated 1,400 American cities and towns lost a newspaper,44 which in itself may contribute to polarization.45 Major changes in media sources covering the environment have occurred as part of these broader developments. According to data provided by the So- ciety of Environmental Journalists, a professional association for journalists reporting on the environment, overall membership has risen since the early 1990s. However, as shown in Figure 12.3, the number of newspaper journal- ist members has declined significantly, from 358 in 1995 to 170 in 2019.46 The content of environmental coverage has also changed. Studies of reporting on climate change, for example, have found that reporting tends to amplify extreme viewpoints, instead of emphasizing convergent agree- ment.47 One illustration is that reporters have tended to give an equal voice to individuals doubting the merits of climate science, even when they express viewpoints outside the mainstream.48 20_0430_Barnes.indb 454 10/6/20 5:19 AM Environmental Politics 455 CONSEQUENCES OF PARTISAN POLARIZATION FOR THE EPA Legislative Gridlock The consequences of the changing political climate for …