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U.S. Environmental Policy and Politics: From the 1960s to the 1990s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Michael E. Kraft
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Green Bay
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Environmental policy and politics in the United States have changed dramatically over the past three decades. What began in the late 1960s as an heroic effort by an incipient environmental movement to conserve dwindling natural resources and prevent further deterioration of the air, water, and land has been transformed over more than three decades into an extraordinarily complex, diverse, and often controversial array of environmental policies. Those policies occupy a continuing position of high visibility on the political agenda at all levels of government, and environmental values are widely embraced by the American public. Yet throughout the 1990s environmental policies and programs were characterized as much by sharp political conflict as by the consensus over policy goals and means that reigned during the early to mid-1970s. As the twenty-first century approaches, there is considerable value in looking back at this exceptional period to under-stand the nature of the transformation and its implications for the future.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2000

References

Notes

1. This article draws from my text Environmental Policy and Politics (New York, 1996)Google Scholar , a new edition of which is in progress for Longman, to be published in 2000); Kraft, Michael E. and Vig, Norman J., “Environmental Policy from the 1970s to 2000: An Overview,” in Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Vig, Norman J. and Kraft, Michael E. (Washington, D.C., 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and Mazmanian, Daniel A. and Kraft, Michael E., eds., Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1999)Google Scholar.

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3. The role of disasters as catalytic or focusing events in agenda setting is assessed in Birkland, Thomas A., After Disaster: Agenda Setting, Public Policy, and Focusing Events (Washington, D.C., 1997).Google Scholar Birkland investigates the impact of natural disasters, oil spills (both the Exxon Valdez and the Santa Barbara incidents), and nuclear accidents in altering the environmental policy agenda.

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47. United Nations, Agenda 21: The United Nations Programme of Action from Rio (New York, 1992)Google Scholar ; World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (New York, 1987)Google Scholar ; National Commission on the Environment, Choosing a Sustainable Future (Washington, D.C., 1993)Google Scholar.

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49. See, for example, , Sitarz, ed., Sustainable America, and Hempel, “Conceptual and Analytical Challenges in Building Sustainable Communities.”Google Scholar

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52. See , Mazmanian and , Kraft, Toward Sustainable Communities, and Sexton, Ken, Marcus, Alfred A., Easter, K. William, and Burkhardt, Timothy D., eds., Better Environmental Decisions: Strategies for Governments, Businesses, and Communities (Washington, D.C., 1999).Google Scholar

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56. Environmental Protection Agency, National Air Quality and Emissions Trends Report (Research Triangle Park, N.C.: Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, January 1998).Google Scholar

57. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Water Quality Inventory: 1996 Report to Congress (Washington, D.C.: Office of Water, April 1998).Google Scholar See also Knopman, Debra S. and Smith, Richard A., “Twenty Years of the Clean Water Act,” Environment 35 (January-February 1993), 17-20, 3441Google Scholar ; and Council on Environmental Quality, Environmental Quality: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report (Washington, D.C., 1997), chap. 13Google Scholar.

58. For a brief review of the evidence, see Kraft and Vig, “Environmental Policy from the 1970s to 2000”; Davies and Mazurek, Pollution Control in the United States; and Council on Environmental Quality, Environmental Quality.