PADM 550 Environmental Policy Brief Assignment
PLEASE READ EVERY ATTACHMENT !!!
APA FORMAT . 5 SCHOLARLY SOURCES OR MORE , MUST USE SOURCES FROM ATTACHMENTS AND MAY USE OUTSIDE SOURCES
PADM 550
Environmental Policy Brief Assignment Instructions
Overview
The purpose of this assignment is to apply the May, Can, Should model through analysis of a specific environmental policy. An effective tool for finding this legislation is through www.govtrack.us and the cost of the legislation through the Congressional Budget Office at www.cbo.gov.
Instructions
For the analysis paper, this is best done in the following manner:
May
Constitutional authority – what is the Constitutional authority for the federal government to get involved? Avoid the use of the General Welfare clause as it becomes a catch-all for anything that a politician wants to get passed.
Can
Political feasibility – what is the likelihood that the policy will become law? What is the political and social support for the policy?
Financial feasibility – what is the policy expected to do to the national debt or spending? For example, the new COVID stimulus just put us another $2 trillion in debt but was widely supported by both politicians and the public.
Practical feasibility – what are the logistical resources needed for implementation (buildings, personnel, new programs, etc.) and what are the steps for implementation (ex; the Affordable Care Act needed functional websites in order to be implemented, the lack of these created severe problems with implementation).
Should
Relate this back to specific Biblical and Constitutional authorities and discuss whether or not the policy should be supported based on this and the feasibility of implementation.
The goal of this is to critically analyze an environmental policy to objectively determine if the federal government should be legitimately involved in the policy being discussed and if the policy is right for the country.
You are expected to submit a 1 1/2–2-page paper (not including the title page, abstract, and reference page) in current APA format in which the May-Can-Should model is applied in the context of the policy focus. Be certain to emphasize a focused analysis of a particular federal policy (either already implemented or proposed) chosen from the policy concentration area for the assigned module. You must include citations from:
1. all of the required reading and presentations from the assigned module/week
1. all relevant sources from Module 1: Week 1 and Module 2: Week 2 (you MUST use the "Biblical Principles of Government" article), and
1. 3–5 outside sources. NOTE: These sources should be focused on the problem and the piece of legislation, and you may find that you need more than just 3-5 sources to adequately research and discuss these items.
1. Please feel free to use link provided in the assignment resources for the purposes of additional research.
Please ensure that you review and follow the provided Policy Brief Template found in the assignment resources.
Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.
Page 2 of 2
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Chapter 11 Environmental and Energy Policy
PAGE 368 On the Friday after Thanksgiving in November 2018, the White House released the second volume in the federal government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment. A 1990 law, the Global Change Research Act, requires all presidential administrations to compile such an assessment no less than every four years. These reports are to provide important data on the effects of global change on the natural environment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, and human health and welfare, among other topics. The first volume, released in 2017, documented how climate change was affecting the biophysical environment, and it formed the basis for the analysis reported in the late 2018 report.1
This second report, 1,650 pages long, was peer-reviewed by external scientific experts under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences as well as some three hundred scientists in thirteen federal agencies who contributed to it. It can fairly be described as the most comprehensive and authoritative scientific study of this kind to date, and it demonstrates well how such analysis might inform climate change and energy policy choices that we make today and in the future.
The report concluded that the nation must act aggressively to try to minimize what would otherwise be “substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being” that it said could be expected over the coming decades. It examined in detail the likely impacts of climate change within ten regions of the country, focusing on the effects on agriculture from rising temperatures, drought, and storms; damage to the nation’s infrastructure and coastlines, especially from flooding; multiple risks to public health; and the economy. It estimated that the nation could lose as much as 10 percent of its economic output by 2100, in part because of likely damage from severe storms, floods, and wildfires, much like those that in 2017 alone caused an estimated $306 billion in damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).2
Unlike many previous reports with similar findings, including those from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Climate Assessment unexpectedly gained widespread media coverage for weeks. In part, that was because its findings directly contradicted the stance on climate change taken by the Trump White House. Indeed, when reporters asked him about the report soon after its release, President Donald Trump said, “I don’t believe it.” His remarks prompted a noted climate scientist to respond that “facts aren’t something we need to believe to make them true—we treat them as optional at our peril.”3
One of those key facts is that global emissions of carbon dioxide, largely generated by use of fossil fuels, rose significantly in 2018 after several years of decline, driven by strong economic growth in the United States, China, and India. Emissions in the United States leaped by 3.4 percent, despite the nation’s commitment to lower them.4 In one response, the White House in early 2019 sought to establish an ad hoc group of federal scientists under the auspices of the National Security Council whose mission would be to counter the widely accepted scientific findings on climate change recently in the news. That action prompted climate scientists, a group of high-ranking former military and intelligence officers, and others to speak out forcefully against the idea.5
Climate change refers not just to “global warming,” or rising temperatures. It also includes other global and regional weather patterns linked to (PAGE 369) increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The effects of these changes include warmer oceans and increased moisture in the atmosphere; rising sea levels; increased severity of storms and greater risk of flooding; and prolonged drought in some areas that can lead to increased risk of wildfires. Less well recognized, there also are likely to be greater public health threats related to rising temperatures, worsening air quality, increased allergens, wider exposure to tropical diseases, and adverse impacts on the food supply and water resources.6 These profound changes already are producing significant effects throughout the world. Reports by the IPCC and many other scientific panels over the past decade have made clear that the problem is certain to grow much worse unless the United States and other nations sharply reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from burning of fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas (DiMento and Doughman 2014; IPCC 2018; Selin and VanDeveer 2019).
The National Climate Assessment and related studies arrived at an opportune time, as the United States and other nations, and the fifty states, continue to debate how they should respond to the challenges posed by climate change, widely considered to be the most important environmental problem of the twenty-first century. In December 2015, the world’s nations approved the Paris Agreement on climate change, an effort designed to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above what prevailed in the preindustrial era. The Obama administration approved the agreement and took several significant steps to reach U.S. commitments under it to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. These included a Clean Power Plan that was to help phase out older coal-burning power plants and stronger vehicle fuel economy standards that would sharply reduce use of gasoline.
Acknowledging that a Republican-controlled Congress was unlikely to approve such steps, the Obama White House relied on administrative rules to put them into effect, particularly through regulatory actions by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As widely expected, the Trump administration, which took office in January 2017, sought to reverse Obama’s rules on climate change, although those reversals have been challenged in court.7 President Trump also announced prominently that the nation would withdraw from the Paris accord. In doing so, he demonstrated the continuing sharp partisan divide on these issues, especially at the national level (Andrews 2019; Vig 2019).8
Despite this dramatic reversal of federal actions, cities and states across the nation continued to develop their own public policies on climate change, as they had for years. Many of those are much stronger than federal policies and illustrate well the advantages of a federal system of government (Betsill and Rabe 2009; Karapin 2016; Rabe 2019; Selin and VanDeveer 2019).
For the purposes of this chapter, these recent reports and policy decisions underscore the strong relationship between energy and environmental policy. The energy Americans use and its sources—especially fossil fuels, which constitute nearly 80 percent of U.S. energy use—can have profound environmental impacts. Aside from climate change, these include oil spills on land or offshore, increased urban air pollution, production of toxic chemicals and hazardous wastes, and damage to ecosystems. Environmental policy itself, such as air and water quality regulations, can significantly influence the production and use of energy by setting high standards that can affect which sources of energy may be used and what they will cost. This is one reason why critics of environmental policy in recent years, including the Trump administration, have favored lowering those standards to promote increased drilling for oil and natural gas in offshore and other public and (PAGE 370) private lands and construction of oil pipelines such as the highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline that was to bring Canadian tar sands oil to U.S. refineries in Texas.
This chapter describes and evaluates U.S. environmental and energy policies. It discusses their evolution, especially since the 1970s and 1980s, when most of the key policies were approved. Political disagreements over time and today center on the costs and burdens these policies impose on industry and the economy, the promise of alternative policies, and the potential for integrating economic and environmental goals through sustainable development in the United States and around the world. In keeping with our emphasis throughout the text on several core criteria for judging policy alternatives, the chapter gives special consideration to the effectiveness of current policies and to economic, political, and equity issues in evaluating policy ideas and proposals.
Background
Environmental policy is not easy to define. As is the case with health care policy (chapter 8), its scope is much broader than one might imagine at first glance. Many people believe the environment, and therefore environmental policy, refers only to humans’ relationship to nature—which they see as wilderness and wildlife, parks, open space, recreation, and natural resources such as forests. Or perhaps they understand that much environmental policy deals with human health concerns; the Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, for example, just as easily could be described as public health laws. The widely reported contamination of drinking water in Flint, Michigan, and many other cities around the nation with unsafe levels of lead reminds us of the public health focus of environmental policies.9
Environmental scientists argue that a more useful way to understand the environment is to see it as a set of natural systems that interact in complex ways to supply humans and other species with the necessities of life, such as breathable air, clean water, food, fiber, energy, and the recycling of waste products. To put it another way, humans are intimately dependent on environmental systems to meet their essential needs. People cannot survive without these systems but often fail to recognize their functions or to place a reasonable value on the natural services that almost everyone takes for granted (Daily 1997).
Many scientific reports in recent years also tell us that human beings are now so numerous and use nature to such an extent to meet their needs that they threaten to disrupt these natural systems and lose the services on which life depends, such as a reliable supply of freshwater and productive agricultural land. In the late 1990s, Jane Lubchenco, a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, observed that “humans have emerged as a new force of nature.” She argued that people are “modifying physical, chemical, and biological systems in new ways, at faster rates, and over larger spatial scales than ever recorded on Earth.” The result of these modifications is that humans have “unwittingly embarked upon a grand experiment with our planet” with “profound implications for all of life on Earth” (Lubchenco 1998, 492).
At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit), delegates from 179 nations pledged support for an elaborate plan of action for the twenty-first century called Agenda 21 (United Nations 1993). It addresses environmental concerns by (PAGE371) emphasizing sustainable development, or economic growth that is compatible with natural environmental systems as well as social goals. The objective of sustainable development is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, 43). Given the continued growth of the human population and the economic expansion that must occur to provide for the nearly 9.7 billion people who are expected to inhabit the planet by 2050 (up from 7.7 billion in mid-2019), that will be no easy task.
In September 2002, on the tenth anniversary of the Earth Summit, a new World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, and continued to define that challenge given persistent worldwide poverty, and in June 2012, the United Nations (UN) held a Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development to consider what additional steps should be taken in the twenty-first century. The box “Steps to Analysis: Sustainable Development in the United States and the World” suggests some ways to study and evaluate issues raised at the 2012 conference and after it, and it refers to similar sustainability initiatives taken by cities and other local governments that promote energy conservation and efficiency, use of renewable energy resources, recycling, water conservation, improved growth management, expanded use of mass transit, and similar actions (Mazmanian and Kraft 2009; K. Portney 2013, 2019).
By 2019, some members of Congress began touting what they termed a Green New Deal as a response to the challenge of climate change. It is a comprehensive set of ideas and policy proposals directed as sustainable development that is certain to be refined and debated extensively over the next few years. In addition, some Democratic presidential candidates for the 2020 nomination, particularly Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State, focused heavily on climate issues, and public demonstrations in favor of climate action, including many by students, have become more common.10
(PAGE 372) Steps to Analysis Sustainable Development in the United States and the World
Visit the web page for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/. Click on the tab for the sustainable development goals (SDGS), and then on any of the goals, such as No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Quality Education, Gender Equality, Affordable and Clean Energy, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and Production, or Climate Action.
What do you make of these goals? Do you see them as desirable or not?
Do you consider the goals to be economically or politically feasible?
How would you compare these goals to what most people are willing to consider or embrace as desirable directions for government or society today?
How do you think political conservatives would react to these goals? Would they see them as desirable or not? As giving too much power to government?
For an example of U.S. actions on the topic of sustainable cities, visit the websites for those communities with an especially strong commitment to sustainability goals, such as Seattle, Washington (www.seattle.gov/environment); Portland, Oregon (www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/67121); Santa Monica, California (www.smgov.net/departments/ose); New York City (www1.nyc.gov/site/sustainability/index.page); or Boulder County, Colorado (http://bouldercountysustainability.org). Go to the website for one of these cities or counties and read about what it has done to date and its plans to foster sustainability in the future. Does the community seem to have a clear understanding of and commitment to sustainability? Are its various actions consistent with its stated goals? Can you tell from the description provided on its website how well the city or county is doing in moving toward those goals?
Put in this broader context, environmental policy, both in the United States and globally, can be defined as government actions that affect or attempt to affect environmental quality and the use of natural resources. The policy actions may take place at the local, state, regional, national, or international level. Traditionally, environmental policy was considered to involve the conservation or protection of natural resources such as public lands and waters, wilderness, and wildlife. Since the late 1960s, however, the term has also been used to refer to governments’ environmental protection efforts that are motivated by public health concerns, such as controlling air and water pollution and limiting exposure to toxic chemicals. In the future, environmental policy is likely to be tightly integrated with the comprehensive agenda of sustainable development at all levels of government. Environmental policy will extend to government actions affecting human health and safety, energy use, transportation and urban design, agriculture and food production, population growth, and the protection of vital global ecological, chemical, and geophysical systems (Chasek, Downie, and Brown 2017; Vig and Kraft 2019). Almost certainly, environmental policy is going to have a pervasive and growing impact on human affairs in the twenty-first century.
To address these challenges effectively, however, policy analysts, policymakers, and the public need to think in fresh ways about (PAGE373) environmental and energy policies and redesign them as needed. Many existing policies were developed five decades ago, and criticism of their effectiveness, efficiency, and equity abounds. Not surprisingly, some complaints come from the business community, which has long argued that stringent laws dealing with clean air, clean water, toxic chemicals, and hazardous wastes can have an adverse impact on business operations and constrain the businesses’ ability to compete internationally (Layzer 2012). Others, however, are just as likely to find fault, including state and local governments that must handle much of the routine implementation of federal laws and pay a sizable part of the costs. Critical assessments come as well from independent policy analysts who see a mismatch between what the policies are intended to accomplish and the strategies and tools on which they rely (Durant, Fiorino, and O’Leary 2017; Eisner 2007, 2017; Fiorino 2006, 2018; Kamieniecki and Kraft 2013).
For much of the five decades that modern environmental policy has existed, it has often been bitterly contested, with no clear resolution on most of the major policies; energy policy has been similarly disputed. Piecemeal and incremental policy changes have improved some existing environmental programs, such as regulating pesticides and providing safe drinking water, but what remains is a fragmented, costly, often inefficient, and somewhat ineffective set of environmental and energy policies. During the 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s EPA tried to “reinvent” environmental regulation to make it more efficient and more acceptable to the business community and to congressional Republicans. For example, it experimented with streamlined rulemaking and more collaborative decision making, in which industry and other stakeholders worked cooperatively with government officials. The experiments were only moderately successful. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, likewise proposed a “new era” of flexible and efficient regulation and a greater role for the states, but few experts thought Bush’s efforts were more effective than Clinton’s. Clinton and Bush preferred different kinds of reforms of the major environmental laws to make them more appropriate for the twenty-first century, but political constraints prevented both from realizing their goals. As discussed earlier, much the same was true during the Obama administration when Republicans in Congress sought to constrain the EPA’s rulemaking and to block efforts on climate change they believed to be unjustified, and during the Trump administration when House and Senate Democrats sought to rein in what they viewed as anti-environmental actions by the EPA, the Interior Department, and other agencies (Vig and Kraft 2019).
As this brief review suggests, environmental policy has reached an important crossroads, as have energy policies, particularly as it relates to the use of fossil fuels and climate change. More than ever before, policymakers and analysts need to figure out what works and what does not, and to remake environmental policy for the emerging era of sustainable development both within the United States and internationally. How Congress, the states, and local governments will change environmental and energy policies in the years ahead remains unclear. Much depends on the way leading policy actors define the issues and how the media cover them, the state of the economy, the relative influence of opposing interest groups, and whether political leadership can help to forge a national consensus.
Until policy breakthroughs occur, however, today’s environmental and energy policies are likely to continue in much their present form. Yet some of the most innovative and promising policy actions, rooted in the kind of comprehensive and coordinated thinking that is associated with sustainability, are taking place at the regional, state, and local levels, and they provide a glimpse of what might eventually be endorsed at higher levels of government (Klyza and Sousa 2013; Mazmanian and Kraft 2009; K. Portney 2013, 2019; Rabe 2019).
(PAGE374) The Evolution of Environmental and Energy Policy
Modern environmental policy was developed during the 1960s and shortly thereafter became firmly established on the political agenda in the United States and other developed nations. During the so-called environmental decade of the 1970s, Congress enacted most of the major environmental statutes in effect today. Actions in states and localities paralleled these developments, as did policy evolution at the international level (Axelrod and VanDeveer 2020; Chasek, Downie, and Brown 2017; McCormick 1989). Energy policy experienced a somewhat different history, but here too it has been considered in a comprehensive manner only since the 1970s (Rosenbaum 2015).
Early Environmental and Energy Policies
Although formal environmental policy in the United States is a relatively recent development, concern about the environment and the value of natural resources can be traced back to the early seventeenth century, when New England colonists first adopted local ordinances to protect forestland (Andrews 2006a). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, conservation policies advanced to deal with the excesses of economic development in the West, and new federal and state agencies emerged to assume responsibility for their implementation, including the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 and the National Park Service in 1916. In 1892, Congress set aside two million acres in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming to create Yellowstone National Park, the first of a series of national parks. Many of the prominent conservation organizations also formed during this period. Naturalist John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892 as the first broad-based environmental organization, and others followed in the ensuing decades.
Following a number of natural disasters, most memorably the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt expanded conservation policies to deal with flood control and soil conservation as part of the New Deal. Congress also created the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933 to stimulate economic growth by providing electric power development in that region. The TVA demonstrated a critical policy belief: that government land-use planning could further the public interest.
Prior to the 1970s, energy policy was not a major or sustained concern of government. For the most part, it consisted of federal and state regulation of coal, natural gas, and oil, particularly of the prices charged and competition in the private sector. The goal was to stabilize markets and ensure both profits and continuing energy supplies. The most notable exception was substantial federal support for the commercialization of nuclear power. Beginning in the late 1940s, Congress shielded the nascent nuclear power industry from public scrutiny, spent lavishly on research and development, and promoted the rapid advancement of civilian nuclear power plants through the Atomic Energy Commission and its successor agencies, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy (DOE).
(PAGE375) The Modern Environmental Movement and Policy Developments
By the 1960s, the modern environmental movement was taking shape in response to changing social values. The major stimulus was the huge spurt in economic development that followed World War II (1941–1945). During the 1950s and 1960s, the nation benefited further from the rise in consumerism. An affluent, comfortable, and well-educated public began to place a greater emphasis on quality of life, and environmental quality was a part of it. Social scientists characterize this period as a shift from an industrial to a postindustrial society. In this context, it is easy to understand a new level of public concern for natural resources and environmental protection. Scientific discoveries also helped. New studies, often well publicized in the popular press, alerted people to the effects of pesticides and other synthetic chemicals. Rachel Carson’s influential book Silent Spring, which documented the devastating effects that such chemicals had on songbird populations, was published in 1962, and for many, it was an eye-opener.
The initial public policy response to these new values and concerns focused on natural resources. Congress approved the Wilderness Act of 1964 to preserve some national forestlands in their natural condition. The Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, also adopted in 1964, facilitated local, state, and federal acquisition and development of land for parks and open spaces.11 In 1968, Congress created the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System to preserve certain rivers with “outstandingly remarkable” scenic, recreational, ecological, historical, and cultural values.
Public concern over climate change. Los Angeles youth join a nationwide strike from school as they protest climate change and strike for the Green New Deal and “other necessary actions to solve the climate crisis” at City Hall in downtown LA. Protests of this kind have increased as public concern over climate change has deepened.
(PAGE376) Action by the federal government on pollution control issues lagged in comparison to resource conservation, largely because Congress deferred to state and local governments on these matters. Congress approved the first modest federal water and air pollution statutes in 1948 and 1955, respectively. However, only in the late 1960s and 1970s did it expand and strengthen them significantly. International environmental issues also began to attract attention in the 1960s. In his 1965 State
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