Saving Our Environment from Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility, and Shortchanges the People

Description

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 Preface chapter one Introduction Then and Now Part I Power 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 Part II Science 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 Part III Our Republic 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 Part IV What We Lose 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