Chapter 2

Environmental Laws, Economics, and Ethics

I. Northern Spotted Owl Controversy

• A. late 1980’s – controversy in Western Oregon, Washington, and Northern California – still continues today

– 1. at stake: thousands of jobs vs. the future of large tracts of old-growth coniferous forests

• a. old growth forests provide biological habitats for many species – including the northern spotted owl and 40 other endangered or threatened species

• B. Provisions of the Endangered Species Act

– 1. require the government to protect the habitat of endangered species

– 2. 1991 – court order suspended logging in 1.2 million hectares of forest where the owl lived

• C. more complex than owl vs. jobs

– 1. timber industry in the Pacific Northwest was not operating sustainably

• D. 1994 – Northwest Forest Plan – provided federal aid to retrain timber workers for other careers – 1. state programs helped reduce unemployment –

restore watersheds and salmon habitats in the forests they once logged

– 2. reserved 75% of federal timberlands to safeguard watersheds and protect the northern spotted owl and several hundred other species

– 3. logging resumed at 1/5 of the level of the 1980s

• E. No one happy

– 1. logging industry – tried to revoke or revise the law – they were not successful

– 2. environmental groups – 1999 – sued the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management – believed that these agencies did not carry out the provisions of the Northwest Forest Plan

II. Environmental History of the US

• A. 17th and 18th Centuries-Frontier Attitude

– Natural Resources (land, timber soil, water) seemed inexhaustible

– Widespread Environmental Destruction

1600 1700 1800 1900

Dominated by Frontier Attitude

Establishment of Jamestown, VA

• B. Protecting Forests – forests of the Northeast were leveled within a few generations – 1. voicing concerns – 19th century

• a. John James Audobon – paintings – public interest in wildlife of North America

• b. Henry David Thoreau – writer – live in harmony with the natural world

• c. George Perkins Marsh – farmer, linguist, and diplomat – wrote Man and Nature – humans cause global change

John James Audobon (1785-1851)

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882)

1750 1800 1850 1900

• d. 1875 - American Forestry Association – wanted to influence public opinion on the destruction of America’s forests

• e. 1891 – General Revision Act – gave the President the authority to establish forest reserves on federally owned land – Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, and Theodore Roosevelt – used to remove 17.4 million acres from logging

• f. President Roosevelt - Reserved additional 6.5 million hectares before signing bill preventing further forest reservation

• g. Gifford Pinchot – appointed by Roosevelt – first head of the US Forest Service – utilitarian conservationist – viewed forests in terms of their usefulness for people – manage forests scientifically – harvest only at a rate at which they can be regrown

1875 American Forestry Assoc. Formed

1850 1875 1900

1891 General Revision Act

1890 Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks

Established

• C. Establishing and Protecting National Parks and monuments – 1. 1872 – first national park established by Congress –

Yellowstone National Park in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming – 2. 1890 – Yosemite National Park Bill – established the Yosemite

and Sequoia National Parks in California – 3. John Muir – biocentric preservationist – founded the Sierra

Club – a conservation organization – 4. 1906 – Atiquities Act – Congress passed this to authorize the

President to set aside sites that had scientific, historical, or prehistoric importance as national monuments

– 5. 1916 – US Army was maintaining 13 national parks and 20 national monuments (today the National Park Service manages 58 national parks and 73 national monuments)

• D. Conservation in the mid-20th century

– 1. Great Depression – federal government financed conservation projects to provide jobs

– 2. Franklin Roosevelt established Civilian Conservation Corps which employed more than 175,000 men to plant trees, make paths and roads in national parks and forests, build dams to prevent flooding, and perform other activities to protect natural resources

– 3. 1930’s – American Dust Bowl – drought and windstorms carried away much of the topsoil in parts of the Great Plains – farmers had to abandon farms – alerted the US to the need for soil conservation

– 4. 1935 – President Roosevelt formed the Soil Conservation Service

– 5. Aldo Leopold – textbook Game Management – supported the passage of a 1937 aqct in which new taxes on sporting weapons and ammunition funded wildlife management and research • a. Wallace Stenger – influenced by Aldo Leopold – wrote

“Wilderness Essay” which helped create the Wilderness Act of 1964

– 6. Rachel Carson – Silent Spring – 1962 – led to restrictions on the use of certain pesticides

– 7. media began to increase their coverage of environmental incidents

• a. 1963 – deaths in NYC from air pollution

• b. 1965 – closed beaches and fish kills from water pollution in Lake Erie

• c. 1966 – detergent foam in a creek in PA

– 8. 1968 – Paul Ehrlich – published The Population Bomb – describe unavoidable environmental damage that would occur with a large population

1906 Antiquities Act 1935 Creation of Soil Conservation Service

1916 National Park Service Created

1900 1925 1950

Aldo Leopold (1886-1948)

Wallace Stegner (1909-1993)

Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

1900 1925 1950 1975

• E. Environmental Movement of the late 20th century

– 1. 1970 – Gaylord Nelson – former senator from Wisconsin – urged Harvard graduate student Denis Hayes to organize the first nationally celebrated Earth Day – 20 million people showed support

– 1990 – Earth Day – 200 million people showed support

II. Environmental Legislation

• A. 1970 – EPA – Environmental Protection Agency was formed – 1. NEPA – National Environmental Policy Act was

signed into law – required the federal government to consider the environmental impact of any proposed action – EIS (environmental impact statement) – each must include • a. the nature of the proposal and why it is needed

• b. the environmental impacts of the proposal (both long term and short term) and any adverse environmental effects if the proposal is implemented

• c. alternatives to lessen the adverse effects of the proposal

– 2. part of the EIS process is to get public comments

– 3. council on environmental quality – monitor the required EISs and report to the President

Environmental Impact Statement

• B. Environmental Policy since 1970 – the regulatory system that exists today was largely put into place during the 1970s

– 1. 1980s – President Reagan attempted to reverse the pro-environmental trend by appointing a pro-business EPA administrator, Ann Gorsuch – backlash occurred and William Ruckleshaus replaced Gorsuch

– 2. 1994 – President Clinton – issued an executive order requiring that environmental justice be considered in all regulatory actions

– 3. Clinton and George W. Bush administrations – characterized by expanded use of cost-benefit analysis in environmental regulation

– 4. George W. Bush – higher priority on extracting environmental resources than reducing human impacts on the environment

• a. no major environmental laws were passed from 2000-2008

• b. major land use regulations were relaxed

• c. states were barred from passing regulations more stringent than those required by the federal government – Obama reversed this

– 5. EPA – given the job of translating environmental laws into specific regulations • a. before regulations become official, several rounds of

public comments occur • b. EPA is required to respond to all comments • c. office of management and budget – reviews the new

regulations • d. some regulations must be justified by cost-benefit analysis

while others like Clean Air Act are barred from considering economic impacts

• e. implementation and enforcement often fall to state government which must send the EPA detailed plans showing how they plan to achieve regulatory goals and standards

– 6. since 1970

• a. 23 national parks – National Wilderness Preservation System now totals more than 43 million hectares

• b. reduce soil erosion by 60%

• C. many species have recovered enough to be removed from the endangered species list

• d. energy efficiency and conservation technology have impoved

– 7. EPAs 2008 report on the environment

• a. emissions of 6 air pollutants have dropped 25% (not carbon dioxide)

• b. since 1990, levels of wet sulfate (acid rain) has dropped by 33%

• c. 2008, 92% of US population gets drinking water from systems with no EPA violations (up from 75%)

• d. 2006, 45% of solid wastes was combusted for energy recovery or recovered for composting or recycling (up from 6%)

• E. 2007, EPA considered human exposures to contamination to be under control at 93% (up from 37%)

III. Economics and the Environment

• A. economics – study of how people use their limited resources to try to satisfy unlimited wants

– Analytical tools include models

• B. economics relies on several precepts – 1. economics is utilitarian – all goods and services

have value to people and that these values can be converted into some common currency

– 2. rational actor model – economists assume two things about all individuals • a. individuals have preferences among different goods

and services which economists refer to as utility

• b. individuals can and do spend their limited resources (time and money) in a way that provides them the most utility

– 3. in an ideal economy, resources will be allocated efficiently

• a. efficiency – a term economists use to describe multiple individuals getting the greatest amount of goods or services from a limited set of resources

• C. externalities – occur when the producer of a good or service does not have to pay the full costs of production

– 1. optimal amount of pollution – economic solution for cases of multiple polluters – at this optimum, the cost to society of having less pollution is offset by the benefits to society of the activity creating the pollution

• a. marginal cost of pollution – the cost of a small additional amount of pollution – must assess pollution damage to health, property, agriculture, and aesthetics

• b. ecosystem services – benefits to humans provided by natural systems

• c. marginal cost of abatement – the cost associated with reducing (abating) a small additional amount of pollution

Economic Optimum Amount of Pollution

Private vs Social Cost of Pollution

• D. Strategies for pollution control

– 1. command and control solutions – the EPA or other government agency requires that a particular piece of equipment be installed to limit emissions to water, air, or soil

– 2. incentive based regulations

• a. environmental taxes – emission charge on polluters – designed to identify and replicate the societal costs of pollution

• b. tradeable permits – rely on identifying the optimal level of pollution – government sets a cap on pollution, and then issues a fixed number of tradeable permits (marketable waste-discharge permits)

• c. cost-effectiveness analysis – if we establish this regulation, how much will it cost to achieve some outcome

Effect of Tax on Optimum Pollution

• E. Critiques of Environmental Economics

– 1. it is difficult to assess the true costs of environmental damage by pollution and pollution abatement

– 2. we do not all agree that economics is an appropriate decision tool – utilitarian economics are not universally accepted

• a. economics may not take the risks of unanticipated environmental catastrophes into account and may not consider dynamic changes over time

• F. Natural Resources, the environment, and national income accounts

– 1. national income accounts – represent the total income of a nation for a given year

• a. gross domestic product (GDP)

• b. net domestic product (NDP)

– 2. to problems affect the way national income accounts currently handle the economic use of natural resources and the environment

• a. costs and benefits of pollution control

• b. depletion of natural capital (Earth’s resources and processes that sustain living organisms)

• G. Natural Resource Depletion

– A. NDP is a measure of the net production of the economy after a deduction for used-up capital

• 1. if a firm produces some product (output) but in the process wears out a portion of its plant and equipment, the firm’s output is counted as part of GDP, but the depreciation of capital is subtracted in the calculation of NDP

• 2. in contrast to 1 – when an oil company drains oil from an underground field, the value of the oil produced is counted as part of the nation’s GDP, but no offsetting deduction to NDP is made to account for the nonrenewable resources used up

• H. The cost and benefits of pollution control at the national level

– 1. economic development experts have expressed concern that some poor countries, in attempting to raise their GDPs as quickly as possible, overexploit their natural capital and impair the environment

– 2. if “hidden” resource and environmental costs were explicitly incorporated into official measures of economic growth, policies that harm the environment might be modified

– 3. EPI – Environmental Performance Index – assesses a country’s commitment to environmental and resource management

IV. Environmental Justice

• A. Environmental Justice and Ethical issues

– 1. challenge of environmental justice – to find and adopt equitable solutions that respect all groups of people, including those not yet born

• B. Mandating environmental justice at the federal level

– 1. 1994 – President Clinton signed an executive order requiring all federal agencies to develop strategies and polices to ensure that their programs do not discriminate against poor and minority communities when decisions are made about where future hazardous facilities are located.

• a. first put in place in 1997 when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rejected a uranium processing plant near two minority neighborhoods

• C. Environmental Justice at the International Level

– 1. 1989 – The UN Environment Programme developed a treaty, the Basel Convention, to restrict the international transport of hazardous waste – this was amended in 1995 to ban the export of any hazardous waste from industrialized to developing countries

V. Environmental Ethics, Values, and Worldviews

• A. Ethics – the branch of philosophy that is derived through the logical application of human values – these values are the principles that an individual or society considers important or worthwhile

• B. environmental ethics – examines moral values to determine how humans should relate to the natural environment – considers rights of people living today and the rights of future generations

• C. Human-centered and life-centered worldviews

– 1. worldview – a commonly shared perspective based on a collection of our basic values that helps us make sense of the world, understand our place and purpose in it, and determine right and wrong behaviors

– 2. environmental worldviews

• a. Western worldview – expansionist worldview – anthropocentric – human-centered – utilitarian – mirrors the frontier attitude – advocate the inherent right of individuals, accumulation of wealth, and unlimited consumption of goods and services to provide material comforts

• b. deep ecology worldview – 8 key points – (1) all life has intrinsic value

– (2) the richness and diversity of life-forms contribute to the flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth

– (3) humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs

– (4) present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive

– (5) the flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease in human population

– (6) significant improvement of life conditions requires changes in economic, technological and ideological structures

– (7) must appreciate the quality of life rather than adhering to a high standard of living

– (8) have an obligation to implement the necessary changes