The states were as significant a setting for environmental politics as was the nation. But the state level of action was often obscured by the greater emphasis on national politics and the universal context of science and technology.

Ideally it would be desirable to have a firm grasp of environmental affairs in all fifty states and to reach some generalizations about their pattern. Such would be a more than herculean task. Yet since the focus of this analysis is the interaction between interests arising from the smaller levels of social life in the community, on the one hand, and the larger world of economic and technical organization, on the other, it is appropriate to dwell more pointedly on the states.

We shall do this in two ways. First we shall examine the balance and pattern of environmental and developmental forces within the states. Much depended on the strength of environmentalists' influence in each state and the outcome of their struggle with developmental forces. We shall be especially interested in the interaction between community and state as each side of the political controversy sought to use either community autonomy or state authority in carrying out its objectives.

Second, we shall be interested in state environmental initiatives. Although national laws provided a certain minimal uniform level of action, some states took up initiatives that represented considerable environmental innovation. These often constituted a threat to those who sought to limit environmental action; they, in turn, sought to use federal authority to restrain state policies that were more restrictive than federal ones.