Book ID: CBB488007911

Valuing Clean Air: The EPA and the Economics of Environmental Protection (2021)

unapi

Halvorson, Charles (Author)


Oxford University Press
Publication date: 2021
Language: English


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 312

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 airas 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 dictatehow they did so. In Valuing Clean Air, Charles Halvorson examines how the environmental concern that propelled the Clean Air Act and the EPA coincided with economic convulsions that shook the liberal state to its core. Business groups, public interest organizations, think tanks, and a host of other actors, including Ralph Nader, wasted little time after the EPA's creation in identifying and trying to pull the new levers of power. As powerful businesses pressed to roll back regulations, elected officials from both political parties questioned whether the nation could keep its environmental promises. In response,the EPA's staff and leadership practiced a politics of the possible, adopting a monetized approach to environmental value that shielded the agency's rulemaking but sat at odds with environmentalist notions of natural rights and contributed to the elevation of economics as the language and logic ofpolicy. As Halvorson demonstrates, environmental protection came to serve as a central battleground in larger debates over markets, government, and public welfare. For anyone who has wondered where cap and trade came from and how environmental activists came to discuss wetlands protection, air pollution, and fracking in the language of cost-benefit analysis, Valuing Clean Air provides an insightful look at a half-century of the making of US environmentalpolicy.

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Review Jennifer Thomson (October 2023) Review of "Valuing Clean Air: The EPA and the Economics of Environmental Protection". Technology and Culture (pp. 1322-1323). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Antonello, Alessandro
Bevington, Douglas
Brock, David C.
Doyle, Timothy
Elam, Mark
Evans, Joshua
Journals
Environmental History
Chemical Heritage
Diplomatic History
Ethics, Place and Environment
Journal of American Culture
Journal of Baltic Studies
Publishers
University of California, Santa Cruz
Berghahn Books
Praeger
Princeton University Press
Rowman & Littlefield
Tufts University Press
Concepts
Environmental protection
Science and politics
Environmentalism
Environmental policy
Political activists and activism
Air pollution
People
Trump, Donald H.
Nixon, Richard M.
Udall, Stewart
Train, Russell Errol
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Canada
Ontario (Canada)
Soviet Union
California (U.S.)
Pennsylvania (U.S.)
Institutions
United States. Environmental Protection Agency
UNESCO
United Nations Environment Programme
International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN)
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