Saving our environment from Washington : how Congress grabs power, shirks responsibility, and shortchanges the people / David Schoenbrod.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schoenbrod, David.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States. Congress--Powers and duties.

United States.

Environmental policy--United States.

Environmental policy.

Science and state--United States.

Science and state.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (320 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Congress empowered the Environmental Protection Agency on the theory that only a national agency that is insulated from accountability to voters could produce the scientifically grounded pollution rules needed to save a careless public from its own filth. In this provocative book, David Schoenbrod explains how his experience as an environmental advocate brought him to this startling realization: letting EPA dictate to the nation is a mistake. Through a series of gripping and illuminating anecdotes from his own career, the author reveals the EPA to be an agency that, under Democrats and Republicans alike, delays good rules, imposes bad ones, and is so big, muscle-bound, and remote that it does unnecessary damage to our society. EPA stays in power, he says, because it enables elected legislators to evade responsibility by hiding behind appointed bureaucrats. The best environmental rules-those that have done the most good-have come when Congress had to take responsibility or from states and localities rather than the EPA. With the passion of an authentic environmentalist, Schoenbrod makes a sensible plea for "bottom-up" environmental protection now. The responsibility for pollution control belongs not in agencies but in legislatures, and usually not at the federal level but rather closer to home.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

chapter one Introduction Then and Now

chapter two Coming to the Environmental Movement

chapter three Congress Does Its Thing

chapter four Leaving the Lead In My

chapter five Failure and Success in Cleaning the Air

chapter six Growing Power

chapter seven The EPA Today

chapter eight What's Science Got to Do with It?

chapter nine Lois Swirsky Gold, Chemicals, and Cancer

chapter ten Angus Macbeth and the Hudson River

chapter eleven Precaution and Policy

chapter twelve Coming Down to Earth

chapter thirteen A Government of the People

chapter fourteen Home Rule

chapter fifteen Vicki Been and Environmental Justice

chapter sixteen Legislative Responsibility

chapter seventeen The Rights of Citizens

chapter eighteen The Boon of Liberty

chapter nineteen The Appeal of Law

chapter twenty The Joy of Doing

chapter twenty-one Conclusion Spaceship Earth without a Captain

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-281-72924-8

9786611729240

0-300-12891-6

OCLC:

952732543