Top 10 Things To Know About Environmental Policy
1. Environmental policy is extremely controversial for three main reasons:
 Citizens may love the environment, but not enough to alter the way they live in
order to protect and enhance it. Ex/ It is more convenient to drive your own car,
but taking the bus reduces smog pollution.
 Environmental issues are surrounded by uncertainty. Ex/ Scientists do not know
how large and significant the greenhouse effect is, whether it will lead to global
warming, and what should be done about it.
 Much environmental policy takes the form of entrepreneurial politics.
2. Environmental issues illustrate all four types of policy making:
 Entrepreneurial politics: an organized public is to benefit at the expense of a well
organized group
 Majoritarian politics: an unorganized public it to benefit at its own expense
 Interest group politics: two organized groups with a material stake in the outcome
fight over who will pay and who will benefit
 Client politics: an organized group gets a benefit; an unorganized public must pay
3. Environmental policy making is adversarial and reinforced by federalism and the
separation of powers. How uniform national air quality standards are achieved is left to
the states, and anybody who wants to wield influence over environmental policy had an
opportunity to do so.
4. Entrepreneurial politics has played a dominant role in most environmental issues.
 The success of policy entrepreneurs in sensitizing public opinion on these matters
and due to the growth of a variety of public-interest lobbies with close ties to the
media, environmental issues lend themselves to entrepreneurial politics.
 Entrepreneurial politics created the environmental movement in the 1970’s.
 Global warming is an example of entrepreneurial politics.
5. Automobile pollution is considered to be in the arena of majoritarian politics.
 Provisions to the Clean Air Act of 1970 meant that in any area where smog was
still a problem, there would have to be rules restricting the public’s use of cars. It
would be necessary to redesign automobile engines, or to install catalytic
converters.
 The public will support tough environmental laws when somebody else pays; the
public will not give as much support when it believes that it is paying.
6. Acid rain has largely been a case of interest group politics.
 Burning fuel containing high amounts of sulfur is one source of acid precipitation.
It is concentrated in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions of the U.S.
 How much of the acidification is man-made and how much is naturally occurring?
This controversy provides support for each side in the interest group battle.

Interest group politics lacks moral fervor of entrepreneurial politics and does not
reflect streams of public opinion.
7. Agricultural pesticides fall into client politics.
 EPA cannot evaluate all pesticides on the market because testing chemicals is
vastly expensive and time consuming, and pesticides have many beneficial uses.
 The use of pesticides contributes to American farmers’ productivity.
 Farmers are organized and well represented in Congress.
 Client politics protects the use of pesticides by displaying the trivial effects they
have on long-term human health problems (cancer).
8. The main difficulty in creating environmental policy stems from the uncertainty among
scientists. This uncertainty leads to the discrepancies in determining the problem and
setting goals to achieve.
9. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an agency of the federal government
designed to protect human health and the environment by writing and enforcing
regulation. It was created by President Nixon in 1970, during the beginning of the
environmental movement.
10. Notable environmental laws:
 Clean Air Act passed in 1970- Sets goals and standards for the quality and purity
of air in the U.S. (amended in 1977 and 1990)
 Clean Water Act passed in 1972- Establishes and maintains goals and standards
for U.S. water quality and purity (amended in 1987 and 1990)