Environment: A Coming of Age

The environmental concern is coming of age. While 1970 was a year of growing environmental consciousness during which much of the legal and administrative apparatus was created, 1971 has been a year of serious-minded, more detailed, and more sophisticated attention to environmental problems. The excitement of 1970 has crested, but in its wake we have both instruments for attacking our problems and a far more knowledgeable, if somewhat less agitated, public. Events of the past year provide evidence that environmental concern and action will not be merely ephemeral, as some had feared.

At the federal level, the major environmental agencies were all created during 1970 (see Resources, Jan-1971, pp. 14-17). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—largely a regrouping of older agencies such as the Weather Bureau and the Coast and Geodetic Survey—has not been associated with the more newsworthy environmental issues of the year, although important work on ocean pollution progresses under its auspices. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) emerges as the most freewheeling of the agencies, concentrating on new policy overtures and on topical issues requiring attention. It has been the most articulate environmentalist voice within the government. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enjoyed its first full year of operation in 1971 and proved to be an active operating agency. A proposed department of natural resources, intended to embrace EPA, NOAA, and the major federal resource agencies, has not prospered in Congress.

Two documents issued during the year—the President's message on the environment and the Second Annual Report of the CEQ—give a clue to the direction in which official policy is moving. The President's message called for a wide variety of environmental measures aiming to control pollution, deal with emerging problems, and influence land use. The proposals were unspectacular, perhaps reflecting the calmer mood of 1971, but they were responsive to some of our most urgent environmental problems. Congressional action has been sluggish on these, as on other matters during the year, so few of the proposals have made their way into law.

Among the proposals most interesting to economists were those for emissions charges on sulfur oxides and for a special tax on leaded gasoline. Both proposals incorporate the principle that the price of goods "should be made to include the cost of producing and disposing of them without damage to the environment."

With respect to water quality, the emphasis in the President's message was placed on readier availability of funding for municipal waste treatment facilities and on the establishment and enforcement of standards and regulations. Water quality standards would be supplemented by effluent limitations, and new industrial plants would be required to use the best available technology to preserve water quality. The effluent charge approach, favored in the case of the air pollutants mentioned above, was conspicuously avoided for water.

Senator Muskie carried this penchant for the regulatory method still further in a bill adopted by the Senate. The Muskie bill would control pollutants at the source, requiring all industrial plants to use the best available water pollution control technology by 1976 and both industry and municipalities to eliminate all discharges to water by 1985. Though mindful of the wrath of the environmental lobby, the Administration nonetheless has opposed this measure as too costly.

Pesticides also received primary attention in the President's message. They would be divided into three categories and their use controlled accordingly. Those designated as for general use would be available to the public. Restricted use pesticides would be applied only by an approved applicator, while a still more restrictive category, "use by permit only," would be made available only upon the advice of an approved pest control consultant. The presumption is that many of our problems with pesticides stem from careless or excessive use and that if this can be controlled they need not be banned entirely. Assuming that competent and conscientious "applicators" and "consultants" do their jobs, at least some of the worst abuses of pesticide use can be avoided in this way.

The message also dealt with oil spills, ocean dumping, recycling paper, control of toxic substances, noise, power plant sitings, and international cooperation. A major emphasis went to land use planning and public lands management (see "Land Use Policy" and "The Public Lands," this issue) and to natural environments, parks, and historic sites. All in all, it represents a rather broad approach to environmental issues.

The Second Annual Report of the CEQ coming out in August further reflected the new sophistication on environmental affairs. While it reinforced the points made in the President's message and reported on the gamut of government activities in the field, it also provided a fresh and well-done treatment of economic issues relating to the environment.

The Report described for the first time a serious effort to estimate some of the costs of pollution and to juxtapose them against the costs of control. Pollution abatement costs, heavily qualified with respect both to concept and coverage, were estimated to be about $105 billion for all kinds over a six-year period, 1970-75, or $18.3 billion on an annualized basis by 1975. Solid waste would be the most costly to manage—41 percent of the total—while air and water pollution standards could be met for $62 billion over the six years. It was figured that an annual cost of $4.7 billion by 1975 would suffice to eliminate most of the air pollution damages that now run to about $16 billion per year. The Report went on to note that by 1975 the annual costs would amount to about 1.4 percent of GNP, and it discussed the impact of such costs on different groups in the economy attaining environmental goals. Both the regulatory approach and the effluent charges method of meeting environmental standards were discussed; the Report stressed that they are not mutually exclusive but can be combined so as to reinforce one another, making use of the best features of each (see "Effluent Taxes," this issue).

The Report is a thoroughly civilized document, well-written, broad-ranging, thought-provoking, and full of solid recommendations. It mirrors as well as anything can the more substantial basis for environmental action in 1971.

Concern about the environment arose spontaneously outside the government. While government has moved quickly to provide an institutional framework for dealing with these problems, the vitality and effectiveness of citizen concern remain striking. In the American tradition of voluntarism, we have been unwilling to leave it all to the government. By the nature of environmental problems, however, there is a limit to what we can do as individuals or in association to correct environmental ills—we can be effective only if there is the authority of law to support required action. In this circumstance our irrepressible citizens have become adept at using the courts and administrative procedures in ways that permit a direct voice to the public in deciding issues. Both the courts and the agencies have adapted to this, some more readily than others; the impressive aspect is the degree of flexibility shown. Administrative procedures provide for public participation in decision making, and in many cases environmental groups have been successful in establishing the standing that permits them to sue in the courts to prevent or overturn decisions they oppose or to require correction of unacceptable conditions. (Some of the more notable cases are discussed in 'Environmental Skirmishes," this issue.)

Of course, these actions must be brought in the name of the law, alleging failure to proceed correctly or to consider range of facts required for decision. They relate only to specific decisions and not substitute for government policy on the matters concerned. While greater openness to public participation will beget cases of harassment and obstruction, on the whole it provides a useful check on administrative authority. In some cases, especially with regard to air pollution, the citizen also gains the right to bring suit against private persons where existing law is not being enforced.

The scope of the environmental concern is indeed broad; at many points it blends into more traditional areas such as conservation, public health, industrial safety, and social welfare. While it has succeeded in establishing a core area of its own, the fresh look at the environment has enriched and revitalized these other areas as well. It will be important to maintain the broadest view as attention moves from the most obvious and specific environmental problems into larger areas such as safety, land planning, and the long-term effects of many low-level but chronic exposures. The proposals of the past year, if enacted and enforced, suggest that we need not anticipate an early doomsday—in fact, we may even be able to breathe and swim a few years hence with more pleasure than now.