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

by Charles Halvorson

Overview

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. 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 of policy. 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 environmental policy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197538869
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/06/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Charles Halvorson won the Bancroft Dissertation Award for his PhD at Columbia University. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University and currently works in management consulting.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Save EPA Chapter 1: The Costs of Pollution Chapter 2: The Doer: Power in Implementation Chapter 3: A Balancing Act: Regulatory Review Chapter 4: Putting the Profit Motive to Work: Regulatory Reform Chapter 5: Are You Tough Enough? Deregulation Chapter 6: Markets for Bads: Cap-and-Trade and the New Environmentalism Epilogue: The EPA and a Changing Climate Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"Management consultant Halvorson traces the history of the Clean Air Act and the 'regulation of air pollution' in his comprehensive debut....As the author covers shifts in the face of political bickering and attempts to balance economic concerns with environmental ones, he convincingly makes a case that the politicization of science in policymaking finds its roots in the early days of the EPA....Readers willing to stay the course will find a solid introduction on how a single, little-known agency became the epicenter of a fight over regulation and the state's role in protecting the planet. Climate-minded readers with an interest in policy will find this a valuable resource." — Publishers Weekly

"The Clean Air Act and its progeny were intended to remedy tractable environmental concerns. However, from its inception, the Environmental Protection Agency (as the enforcer) has been challenged by the business community and others over the means of achieving environmental compliance in light of other priorities, including economic productivity. These challenges are rooted in growing opposition to environmental protection by Republican voters and elected officials, the politicization of science, entrenched belief among some in the efficiency of markets over regulations, and the growing monetization of environmental benefits. Halvorson explicitly discusses his argument's relevance for current debates over climate change. Moreover, he offers cogent overviews of the dominant themes of environmental protection policy...since the 1970s by zeroing in on divergent regulatory styles of presidential administrations spanning Richard Nixon to Donald Trump." — Choice

"Protecting the environment has become an essential but thankless responsibility of government, and Charles Halvorson's Valuing Clean Air astutely shows why the Environmental Protection Agency is no one's hero despite considerable success in controlling pollution." — Adam Rome, author of The Genius of Earth Day

"In the face of intense opposition to regulation during the Reagan Administration and beyond, dedicated EPA staff employed economic theory—especially market-based solutions and monetary approach to environmental value—to salvage their agency's mission and improve environmental quality. Charles Halvorson takes us inside the EPA, providing the finest analysis yet of its administrative policymaking and the politics of the possible. Valuing Clean Air is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand how the United States created environmental regulation in the neoliberal era." — David Stradling, author of Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland

"Valuing Clean Air sets aside the usual focus on partisan politics to provide a lucid and compelling explanation for how the rising tide of market-based environmental policy transformed the work of the Environmental Protection Agency, contributing to the successful fight against acid rain, but also undercutting the agency's ability to tackle the largest challenge of all—climate change." — James Morton Turner, Wellesley College

"As the United States is poised to reengage with the imperative of tackling climate change, Charles Halvorson brings forward a vital history of American efforts to curb air pollution since the 1960s. Halvorson brilliantly shows how an initial bipartisan coalition to improve air quality splintered amid the economic stagnation of the 1970s and waxing critiques of technocratic regulation from both the right and the left. The resulting experimentation with market-based regulatory approaches has continued to divide environmental activists and business interests alike, and Halvorson's analysis of those evolving conflicts is a must-read for historians, political scientists, legal scholars, and policy-makers." — Edward J. Balleisen, co-editor of Policy Shock: Recalibrating Risk and Regulation after Oil Spills, Nuclear Accidents, and Financial Crises

"Valuing Clean Air offers much of interest to readers of this journal." — Jennifer Thomson, Technology and Culture Volume 64, number 4

"In Valuing Clean Air, Charles Halvorson provides us with not only an excellent history of the EPA itself -a subject about which environmental historians have written surprisingly little -but also a history of the broader political shifts that defined and reshaped the agency and its policies over the course of the late twentieth century." — Keith Mako Woodhouse, H-Environment Roundtable Review

"Halvorson's new book is a great success. In it, he analyzes the evolution of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), unpacking in the ideas, interests, and assumptions that undergird different proposals for evaluating and regulating air pollution. It is an exceptionally well-researched and written history... Halvorson's deeply contextualized history of the EPA is breath of fresh air, and while its value goes beyond just the history of the EPA, it is undoubtedly the best single history of the EPA that is out there right now." — Leif Fredrickson, H-Environment Roundtable Review

"This is first and foremost an institutional history-and a very good one... Halvorson clarifies that he sees this institution, the EPA, as having a collective consciousness: the agency has agency." — Jackie M.M. Gonzales, H-Environment Roundtable Review

"This book is a thought-provoking contribution to the historiography of the struggle against industrial pollution in late 20th century America. What made it thought-provoking for me was Halvorson's effort to frame his narrative around what he sees as humanity's need to minimize the economic cost of pollution regulation and abatement... This is an intriguing way to think about what was important about the battles that shaped the fight against industrial air pollution in America in the 1970s through the 1990s." — Christine Meisner Rosen, H-Environment Roundtable Review

"In Valuing Clean Air, Charles Halvorson provides us with not only an excellent history of the EPA itself -a subject about which environmental historians have written surprisingly little -but also a history of the broader political shifts that defined and reshaped the agency and its policies over the course of the late twentieth century." — Keith Mako Woodhouse, H-Environment Roundtable Review

"Halvorson's new book is a great success. In it, he analyzes the evolution of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), unpacking in the ideas, interests, and assumptions that undergird different proposals for evaluating and regulating air pollution. It is an exceptionally well-researched and written history... Halvorson's deeply contextualized history of the EPA is breath of fresh air, and while its value goes beyond just the history of the EPA, it is undoubtedly the best single history of the EPA that is out there right now." — Leif Fredrickson, H-Environment Roundtable Review

"This is first and foremost an institutional history—and a very good one... Halvorson clarifies that he sees this institution, the EPA, as having a collective consciousness: the agency has agency." — Jackie M.M. Gonzales, H-Environment Roundtable Review

"This book is a thought-provoking contribution to the historiography of the struggle against industrial pollution in late 20th century America. What made it thought-provoking for me was Halvorson's effort to frame his narrative around what he sees as humanity's need to minimize the economic cost of pollution regulation and abatement... This is an intriguing way to think about what was important about the battles that shaped the fight against industrial air pollution in America in the 1970s through the 1990s." — Christine Meisner Rosen, H-Environment Roundtable Review

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