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ENvR/PLA N/PUA4 153 Environmental Management and Policy

Environmental Management and Policy

Environmental management and policy involves the selection of courses of action that may be taken to protect human health and the environment. Such actions range from local decisions, such as how to manage waste materials and energy and where to site new facilities, to national and global strategies for managing broad patterns of human activities -- resource extraction, deforestation and urbanization, use of toxic chemicals, emissions of air and water pollutants, and others -- that can harm environmental processes and human health.

Environmental management and policy decisions require a clear understanding of relevant scientific and technical questions; but equally, they require strong grounding in the economic, legal, behavioral, and political considerations that are also involved, and the ability to make complex decisions under conditions of scientific uncertainty and political value conflict.

Environmental management in both businesses and other operating institutions, for example -- hospitals, universities, waste management businesses and sanitation departments, military installations and other government facilities -- involves the design of integrated programs for preventing pollution, and reducing and managing waste materials and energy, taking into account their risks to health and environment, the relative costs and effectiveness of possible solutions, compliance with legal requirements, and public acceptability of the results.

Both the siting of waste management facilities and cleanup of contaminated sites, similarly, require assessment of the environmental and health risks that may be involved. They also require evaluation of the most cost-effective sites and treatment methods, compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and negotiation of operating conditions acceptable to government regulatory agencies and the public.

The development of environmental protection policies and regulations themselves -- normally by government agencies, but with analytical support by consulting firms, and independent review by analysts in environmental and business associations -- requires scientifically supported assessments of expected risks to health and environmental quality. It also requires comparative evaluation of the effectiveness of alternative policy instruments -- for instance regulations, economic incentives, information and disclosure requirements, and others

. -- to reduce the expected risks, and of the associated economic impacts, costs, and benefits of each.

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The goal of education in environmental management and policy is to prepare students for professional careers in which they must recommend, choose, and implement environmental protection policies and management decisions. Each such person must be knowledgeable about major types of environmental management and policy problems, and must be able to perform high-quality professional analysis of both scientific and policy issues necessary to their resolution; to design, evaluate, and implement potential solutions; and to participate constructively in the processes of public discourse that are normally required for environmental management and policy decisions.

Careers in environmental management and policy may take the perspective of many geographic scales -- local or regional, state, national, and international -- and of diverse organizations, all of which play important roles in environmental protection: government agencies and legislatures, private corporations and public enterprises, consulting and research firms, nonprofit institutions and voluntary associations, and political advocacy organizations.

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Examples include positions in environmental risk assessment and risk management with the it U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its counterpart state agencies; positions in pollution prevention and waste reduction programs in business and industry, and in nonprofit institutions such as government agencies, universities, and hospitals; and positions in environmental policy analysis and policy development in consulting firms, educational institutions and research organizations, environmental groups, and trade associations.

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Chapter 1 Introduction: Environment and Governance

Every society develops particular patterns of relationships between its members and their environmental conditions. At a minimum, these patterns include acquisition of the material necessities of life (food, water, heat, shelter), disposal of material and energy wastes, and protection from environmental hazards (fires, floods, predators, diseases). Beyond the minimum, they include attempts to satisfjr additional human wants and aspirations: support of larger and more highly clustered populations, material comfort and affluence, political and economic power, perceptions of beauty or security or control, and monuments to religious values or human vanity, to suggest some of the most obvious.

The patterns that are developed may differ greatly from one society and culture to another. They differ in part due to the environmental conditions themselves, and the opportunities and constraints and hazards that these conditions define: climate and weather patterns, hills and valleys and plains, minerals, vegetation and wildlife, rivers, estuaries and oceans. They differ also, however, due to the characteristics of the human populations using them. Different sized populations make different demands on their awironments; so do populations that have access to different mixtures of other factors necessary to use these resources, such as more powerful technologies for resource extraction and transportation and more elaborate systems for economic exchange. So too do populations that are organized in densely clustered or dispersed settlement patterns, and whose aspirations are more or less dependent on the transformation of materials and energy for their fulfillment. Different populations also simply "see" their environments in different ways -- what is valuable and desired in one culture may be unrecognized or distastefbl or even feared in another.

the society itself and for the environmental conditions that it uses. They may also be more or less equitable amongst the society's members, both present and future; more or less conscious and deliberate; and more or less influenced, either caused or controlled, by the actions of formal governments--as opposed to other institutions, such as families or tribes, corporations or voluntary associations, or simply the sum of individual choices.

human activities and their environment. Government policies do not ultimately control or direct all these processes, as they have their own larger inertia made up of the cumulative patterns of human behavior; but governments do exert influence, sometimes marginally but in other cases quite pervasively, either to reinforce or to deflect these patterns. To the extent that a society's government does exert influence on such patterns, the results may be either beneficial or perverse or both Governments can in fact be a central cause of environmental problems as well as a source of solutions to them, as has recently come to li*? both in the nations of eastern Europe and in widespread contamination at military production sites in the United States.

society itself, and more particularly with the beliefs and values of those who hold political power. They are shaped, that is, by what each society thinks it knows about its environmental conditions, about what its environmental "resources" and "problems" are;

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The results of these patterns may be more or less sustainable over time, 60th for

E ~ e q government uses its public policies to influence the relationships between

The purposes of these policies vary with the conditions and aspirations of the

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by what it wants from its environment, its aspirations and its beliefs about how it can use its environmental conditions to achieve those aspirations; and by its politics, by the ability of particular individuals and groups and organizations to act on those beliefs and

There is a widespread perception today that human uses of environmental conditions--air, water, land, resources, other species--cause problems that should be remedied by government. This perception has given rise to a vast patchwork of statutes, regulations, and other public policy initiatives, both in the United States and worldwide, whose stated purpose is environmental protection. Examples include policies for air and water pollution control, for solid and hazardous waste management and control of toxic chemicals, for preservation of wetlands, natural landscapes, wildlife habitats, and endangered species, and for a myriad more specific issues.

There are, of course, opposing viewpoints. One is that the problems are not in fact real, but are merely the selfish or even irrational worries of the upper and middle classes of the industrial nations, who are--at least for the time being--actually more numerous in absolute numbers, more affluent and more healthy, and have access to more environmental amenities, than any previous generation in history. While this criticism may be true for some issues, however, trends such as the degradation of major natural systems, and widespread impoverishment of human populations' health and well-being, are not merely future fears of doom-sayers, nor the worries of the affluent: they are the reality of life for a growing proportion of the world's population today, and a serious threat within our own children's lifetimes for the declining fraction of the world's population who today enjoy our standards of health and material consumption. A second viewpoint is that even if the problems are real, they do not require government action to solve them: they are merely transitional, and will be solved over time by the invisible hands of economic market processes and technological innovation. A third contrary viewpoint is that even if the problems are real, and government actions are in principle required to resolve them, in fact government actions are more often the causes of such problems than the solutions to them. In this view, even well-intentioned government actions are more likely to be ineffective at best, or even perverse to their intended effects, as well as having undesirable side effects on society's other values; so that either alternative sources of solutions must be found, or we must simply resign ourselves to the consequences of our inability to solve them.

A central theme of this book is that an active and purposehl government role in human interactions with the natural environment is both essential and unavoidable, both in the United States and elsewhere This is true even though the subject matter itself involves substantial internal debates, value conflicts, scientific uncertainties, and in many cases simply indeterminacy; and though the government actions that may be most appropriate do not always match the policies now given that label. Environmental problems are unavoidably governance problems

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Environment and Human Choices

which people live, from the immediacy of the room in which one reads this book to the general conditions of indoor comfort and safety (the workplace or hospital environment,

The human environment in a broad sense includes the entire range of conditions in

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for instance), the institutional context in which an organization operates (the “environment of the corporation”), the communities in which we live and work, the natural ecosystems within which those communities are situated, and the larger global processes that both permit and sustain all life. Properly speaking, the human environment in principle thus includes everything other than our genetic heritage (and perhaps even that, from a long- term rather than static perspective).

In the context of environmental politics and policy debates, however, and of what follows here, the human environment refers more specifically to the natural processes and ecosystems in which we find ourselves: the natural sources and flows of the earth’s energy, the great hydrologic cycle that provides rainfall and supplies of fiesh water, the photosynthetic process by which plants grow, the major material cycles that sustain life (oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and others), the long-term earth processes by which the landscape is reshaped and concentrations of minerals and fossil energy laid down, and the ecological processes at all scales by which living populations grow and are constrained, compete and cooperate, adapt and evolve. These natural processes and ecosystems provide the essential material conditions for everything we do and are and value: basic food and shelter and energy, economic wealth, beauty, recreation, and spiritual inspiration, as well as the essential conditions of life, and sometimes abundance, to all other species.

Yet these processes operate most of the time in the background of our lives, only partially and episodically incorporated into our conscious awareness and decisions. Some ecologists and many economists would argue that we inevitably view the environment only through the prism of our personal self-interest, and use it accordingly; but whether or not they are correct, even with more civic or altruistic motives we are limited by our limited knowledge or understanding of the processes involved, and by our sense of the limited consequences and efficacy of our own actions. We are aware of severe storms and weather changes, of urban smog and of dead fish or trash washing up on beaches, of places we find beautifd and enjoyable for recreation and places we perceive as ugly, run- down or threatening, and of particular environmental places and crises that are reported in the news media. But we rarely give much thought to where our own food and clothing come from, where our waste materials go, and what impacts our own jobs and residential &ekesamii Me-styles have on our environment--let alone the cumulative environmental consequences of the choices of millions of other people like us, and the intermediate decisions of individuals in businesses and other organizations that provide and frame these options for us. AS choosers and users of the environment we are apart from it, using it selectively for our own purposes, but the consequences of our choices are a part of it, reshaping and transforming it in small ways or large, beneficial or destructive or both, fiom what it would have been without our presence.

governance. This is true both empirically and normatively. Empirically, it is true because the actions of governments, no less than those of individuals, have environmental consequences. Governments assign and enforce property rights, deciding who has what rights to use or transform the environment and what duties to protect it; they set and enforce the rules of economic exchange, establishing the terms and boundaries within which people may trade environmental conditions for economic gain; and they use and

Human uses of the environment are matters not only of individual choice but of

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transform the environment themselves, whether for roads and other public works, production by public enterprises, military exercises, or other purposes. Normatively, environmental governance is required because governments are the only institutions that have long-term responsibility for maintaining the conditions necessary for a society to endure: social conditions such as order, economic opportunities, and freedom from external threat, but also material conditions, such as the protection of public health, the sustainability of material and energy resources for future generations, the protection of common property resources against cumulative destruction by individual decisions, and (insofar as natural processes permit) the creation and maintenance of environmental conditions that their citizens want. Governments routinely fall short in their fulfillment of these responsibilities, but their roles in them are central and unavoidable.

In environmental policy issues, therefore, questions about the proper management of the environment--or more precisely, questions about the proper ordering of human interactions with their environmental conditions--are fundamentally intertwined with questions about the proper ends and means of governments themselves.

Environmental problems as public policy issues

about what governments should and should not do, and how such decisions should be made, as well as an historical legacy of answers to those questions that have been developed within each society. These questions about governance are just as much a part of the debates about environmental problems as are the substantive questions of environmental science and environmental values and preferences that are involved. They include, for instance, the following:

Individual versus collect~w purposes. A hndamental question for all public p&bs is what purposes should be pursued through collective decisions and which should be kfi to individual choices. Some functions are intrinsically governmental, and cannot be accomplished in any meaningful way by individuals or economic markets alone: examples include protection against attack, maintenance of public order, definition and enforcement of property rights, enforcement of rules of exchange, administration of justice, and redistribution of resources to maintain socioeconomic equity. Protecting public health has atS0 been long recognized as a function of government; and sustaining the environmental conditions necessary for the society's continuation, as well as its socioeconomic conditions, is also such a purpose, though not always as well recognized in the past. Other hnctions can be provided either collectively or individually, such as transportation, water and energy supply and waste management infrastructure, and other services.

American politics historically has shown a strong ideological presumption in favor of the freedom of individuals to pursue their own preferences, and a correspondingly negative strain towards collective solutions, notwithstanding that some functions are intrinsically governmental and others have also been successhlly accomplished by collective institutions. Not all societies agree with this ideological bias, however; and while we would consider some of these authoritarian or even tyrannical, others simply consider shared cultural values, such as respect for nature or for stable interpersonal relationships or for continuity with time-honored norms and patterns, more important in varying degrees than individual preferences and opportunities

Environmental problems share with all other public policy issues a set of questions

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Tradeofis amorigpirblic piirposes. Even among legitimate public purposes, conflicts and tradeoffs are inevitable: among conflicting goals, among competing uses of 1imited.resources (space, time, revenues, staff, and others) to achieve them, and among alternative beneficiaries and victims. Whatever a statutory policy may say on paper, therefore, its realization is always constrained by priorities set either explicitly or implicitly between it and other competing or conflicting policy purposes.

Proof versus prudence. Government actions should be justifiable rather than merely arbitrary or capricious, and particularly in the United States this principle has impelled a litany of demands for scientific and economic justification of policy proposals. Uncertainty and conflicting judgments remain inescapable, however, especially about the future consequences of proposed policies: prudence must always substitute to some extent for proof. Policy decisions therefore are not only decisions about their nominal subjects themselves, but also about how much proof is necessary--of the magnitude of the problem itself, of its causes, and of the likely effects and effectiveness of proposed solutions-in order to justif) a prudent policy decision. These issues are important, especially when costly remedies are proposed for highly uncertain problems; but in many policy debates they are also used to reif) science beyond what it can realistically provide, and to serve as surrogates for disagreements over the policy choices themselves.

state, federal, international--should decisions about environmental or other policies be made? Local decision-making provides the best venue for developing solutions tailored to specific conditions and communities, for accountability to those most directly affected, and more generally for maintaining the diversity of human cultures and communities: the principle of "subsidiarity" holds that policy decisions should be made at the kwest possible le$ By the same token, however, local government also has more limited revenues and reSources than broader jurisdictions, leAv&g poor-communities (or- nigionQ-unable to_ benefit from a broader base of economic support; and it has the greatest likelihood of t = h g the realization of more general public values (whether of economic trade or environmental protection or human rights), of displacing adverse effects onto other ~

jurisdictions, and of pitting local jurisdictions (07 even national Gvem>ents) against one another in demands for tax breaks, lower wages, and weaker environmental protection p k i e s to attract OT retain businesses. More centralized governance, conversely, provides

and can amass greater revenues with which to realize public purposes, but at the risk of greater bureaucratization, lessened accountability, and standardization at the expense of local diversity in both conditions and preferences.,

Organizatioii of government institutions. What sorts of government agencies, at any level, should be responsible for environmental protection? Should they be specialized agencies (for instance for environmental regulation), or multipurpose (such as a Ministry of Environment which also includes natural resource management)? And how can such agencies be coordinated with other agencies whose actions for other purposes--such as revenue, agriculture, transportation, commerce, even defense and foreign affairs-- powefilly affect environmental conditions for better or worse? There is no simple way of organizing or coordinating all government purposes under one "super-agency," and separate agencies have inherent tendencies to pursue their own missions at the expense of

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Central verszis local governance. At what level of governance-local, regional,

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greater opportunities for setting general standards of acceptable behavior and competition, --

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others. Even within individual agencies such as EPA, complex jobs must be broken down into subunits that take on lives of their own (by regions, by environmental media such as air and water, by particular problems); organizing by problem types (such as air or water pollution, toxic chemicals, and waste management) will lead to different patterns of solutions and conflicts than organizing by problem sources (such as industry, agriculture, etc.) or by administrative hnctions (such as standard-setting, enforcement, research, etc.). Conflicting sub-missions and priorities must constantly be resolved, and nominal authority must be balanced against the frequent lack of sufficient resources (or personnel, or even knowledge) to do the f i l l job that is directed on paper.

Collective choice procedwes. Who decides and how, on what environmental policies and priorities should be? Representative legislatures, or popular referenda, or appointed administrators? Experts or “the people?” Experts may be wise spokesmen for the society’s fiture (like Plato’s “philosopher kings”), or self-interested and arrogant elites; Members of Congress may be statesmen seeking the long-term good of the society, or decent but narrower people simply trying to serve their own constituencies’ needs, or merely self-interested incumbents constantly seeking reelection contributions. Ordinary people may be commonsensical folk seeking the good of society, or they may be just as self-serving, or short-sighted, or irrational in their preferences as anyone else. No one procedure for collective decision-making is perfect; each carries strengths and weaknesses, both in principle and as mechanisms for deciding on environmental policies. Key questions include how well a process succeeds in producing outcomes that are generally good for the long-term sustainability of the society, whatever the personal motives of the participants; and how well it provides for the monitoring and correction that are inevitably necessary when policies fail or produce perverse side effects.

Policy tools. What kinds of government actions are the best instruments for achieving environmental or other public policy goals? Regulations, expenditures or investments of public revenues, economic incentives, information disclosure requirements, providing or contracting for public services, or others? Some policy tools may be far more effective than others, either in general or for particular purposes; all have side effects (and often deliberate consequences) for other goals as well, .both public and private, such as fairness, economic efficiency, and the benefits and costs of the policy to particular pkes and constitueftcies. Policy choices must therefore be based on carehl evaluation of their hll consequences.

collective choice involve a variety of problematic side effects intrinsic to collective decision-making. Some of these reflect the inevitable tension between individual and collective interests within the decision process itself, such as between outcomes that might best serve society as a whole and outcomes that best serve the sum of the interests of the decision participants (for instance reelection, career advancement, and organizational survival and imperialism). “Free-riding” describes each participant’s temptation to try to avoid paying one’s own share of the cost of collective services; “rent-seeking” reflects the equally human tendency to seek excessive compensation for one’s own property or services; and “pork-barreling” describes the tendency of elected representatives to collude in allocating general public revenues for more localized benefit to their own constituencies.

Intririsrc hazards of go\vrriatice processes. Finally, Sovernmental processes for

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Other side effects reflect the transaction costs of reaching agreements Collective decision-making is a costly and time-consuming process, which often requires vote-trading across issues important to individual participants but far removed from the merits of the matter at hand, and compromises necessitated by the process itself (such as “splitting differences”) which may distort or pervert its outcomes. Still other effects reflect the hazards of alternative voting rules: the “tyranny of the majority” at the expense of minority viewpoints is a familiar concern, but as Mancur Olson and others have pointed out, the tyranny of organized minorities is no less problematic: it is far easier to organize small but identifiable groups with personal economic interests to influence policy decisions than to mobilize larger and less identifiable constituencies that share a more general public interest in the outcome (Olson, 196x). The political maxim “do no identifiable harm” reflects this fear of arousing organized opposition not so much from the general public as from identifiable groups of grievants. Ironically, while consensus is preferable ‘even to majority decision-making in principle, in practice it rewards the most extreme form of minoritarianism, by creating an incentive for “holdouts” to demand extra individual benefits as a price of their approval.

Finally, governments no less than businesses and individuals are prone to externalize social and environmental costs of their decisions, displacing them to other times, places and jurisdictions (to other agencies, to other communities or countries, to other levels of government, or to future generations). In environmental no less than other public policy debates, therefore, one must always ask critically what problems are important enough to risk introducing these side effects of governmental action, and how they can be minimized.

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Special characteristics of environmental issues

characteristics that are distinctive or even unique among public policy issues, and which shape both their politics and policy options in different ways. For example:

GeographicaIly defiried Environmental policies involve specific places defined by unique configurations of natural processes and human communities. As environmental issues they thus involve particular environmental conditions and processes, some of which are fixed &“capes, minerals, vegetation) and others of which move (water, fish, wildlife). As policy issues these characteristics inevitably introduce a politics of conflicting public values and uses (for example, extractive versus appreciative uses of public lands) that is different in character from the politics of budget allocation, public service entitlements, and other traditional forms of distributive and redistributive politics. They also involve inherently sectional (that is, geographically defined) political considerations- for instance upstream vs. downstream relationships, resource producer versus consumer regions, inter-jurisdictional conflicts, and local and regional preferences different fi-om those of broader polities--in addition to the cleavages of ideology, party and social class that are common to many other policy issues.

Interdependence of$mnctioris, uses, arid values. Many environmental results are inherently interdependent for scientific and technical reasons, involving complex combinations of desirable and undesirable effects (and indeed, some effects that are simultaneously desirable to some and undesirable to others) These interdependencies are

In addition to these common features, environmental issues also have several

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fbndamental to environmental policy, from multiple-use forest and water resource management to land-use. plans for cross-media optimization of industrial waste management and life-cycle analysis of manufactured products The result is a policy areria unusually influenced by what economists might describe as interdependent utility hnctions among the stakeholders: unlike many other policy arenas where each person can lobby for a divisible share of the outcome, in environmental policy decisions each participant’s use of the environment affects and is affected by those of the other participants: hunters and hikers and loggers, fishermen and farmers and municipal wastewater treatment plants. Both the institutional structures and the processes for making policy decisions of these sorts pose different and more complex demands than many other public policy issues.

Tragedies of the commoris. Many environmental conditions are typically “open access” resources that are by their nature available to everyone and therefore difficult to protect fiom the cumulative effects of overuse. Classic examples include the atmosphere, water bodies (lakes, rivers, estuaries, and seas), underground aquifers and oil deposits, fisheries, and unmanaged public forests and grazing lands; others advanced by some authors include the cumulative effects of human childbirth decisions and of Congressional budget decisions. Garrett Hardin’s classic article “The Tragedy of the Commons,” historically flawed but theoretically important, described as a model of such problems the case of self-interested herders each of whom adds animals to a common pasture until the cumulative effects of their individual decisions destroys it (Hardin, 196x) Some of these can be converted to “common property” resources, in which some form of effective management regime is either created by government or agreed to and enforced among users; such regimes have been well documented among users of fisheries and pastures in subsistence societies, and their principles have been extended to some larger-scale environmental problems as well (Bromley, 199x; Haas et al., 1993). Some can be privatized, to be managed (and presumably protected, though not necessarily) by a single owner. But others are more difficult to protect, either because the users are too many, t$o diverse, or too separated in space or time to create a viable regime,sor because the values to be protected are too divorced from the interests of those causing the damage (for instance, when fisheries are being destroyed not by other fishermen but by land developers or farmers); and all such regimes pose a particular set of challenges--for example, fttftaiRing a kmg-term collective interest in the face of more immediate individual interests--that are distinctive if not unique to environmental policy

Displclcemerit of adverse effects (“exterrmcllities ’ ~ . Environmental issues frequently involve choices that achieve one environmental result by either disregarding or deliberately displacing adverse effects to other locations, times; and stakeholders. In economic transactions these effects are called externalities, since they affect parties other than those directly involved in an economic transaction Similar phenomena in governance might be called jurisdictional externalities, in which single-mission agencies or single units of government displace social and environmental costs onto other agencies, onto neighboring jurisdictions, onto higher or lower levels of governance, or onto fiture generations Examples include providing agricultural subsidies for wetland drainage, locating incinerators on downwind borders, imposing unfinded federal mandates on state and local governments, and using natural resources today at rates faster than their quantity and quality can be sustained for hture users Whenever the jurisdiction of an

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environmental policy decision does not include responsibility for the full range of causes, consequences, and potential solutions for environmental problems, these distinctive problems arise.

over short-term human use preferences, others involve consequences that are both serious and irreversible on any humanly meaningful time scale. Examples include species extinctions, the exhaustion of nonrenewable resources, and particularly the destruction of whole environmental systems that support living ecological communities, such as forests, wetlands, and arable soils. Such systems are essential and irreplaceable Ion,- (1 term assets to society as a whole, not merely to present users, and must therefore be managed by criteria of long-term public interest rather than merely by surveys of current preferences. One must still define the nature of that public interest and the best means of achieving it, but the potential for irreversible social and environmental damage is nonetheless a distinctively important consideration in environmental policy.

involve pubiic consequences broader than the interests of particular participants in environmental policy decisions. Impoverished people will always destroy a resource to survive a little longer, and affluent people such as corporate executives or public officials will often do so to achieve short-term personal or organizational self-interests. A key question therefore is who speaks for these broader and longer-term public interests. One basic American answer was a representative governance structure that sought to balance and counterweight all foreseeable forms of self-interest, so as to achieve an overall public interest by minimizing the power of any particular form of self-interest. A second historically important answer was public-spirited professionals, advocated particularly by Theodore Roosevelt and his Progressive advisors; but in recent years they too have come under attack, portrayed either as captives of particular client groups or as self-interested elites seeking their own interests.

hands of the general public to participate ad hoc and negotiate directly in environmental policy decisions. One of the important forces in environmental policy in recent years has been the broadening of access to include "non-government organizations" (NGOs) ckmmgtespeak For the general public interest. In some ways these groups have been a powerfbl new force beyond the narrower self-interests of particular businesses, lobbies, or even national governments. One must nonetheless deal consciously with the question of which of them do in fact speak for the long-term interests of the society and the species; which of them may believe that they do so but in fact advocate policies that are not in the long-term public interest; and which are merely new special interests using claims of the "public interest'' to cloak their own self-interest. Populist constituencies may just as easily seek short-term self-interest at the expense of the long-term or more general social good themselves: it is easier to organize public constituencies to oppose immediate local threats than to support long-term global restraint. A cautionary example is California's Proposition 13, a ballot initiative which permanently restricted the system of property taxation and with it the future quality and even adequacy of the state's public services

Scietifific and technical premises. More than many other political choices, environmental policy decisions are often strongly framed by scientific and technical

Irreversible damage. While some environmental problems are merely conflicts

General pirblic interest. More generally, many environmental issues arguably

An answer currently popular in the United States is to put more power in the

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predictions, assumptions, and uncertainties. This circumstance raises important issues about how they are and should be decided. First, it raises barriers to meaningfid participation by people who do not understand the scientific and technical claims being made: what appears to be a clear policy principle may be undermined either inadvertently or deliberately by the language of technical provisions. Second, it raises issues concerning uncertainty and the burden of proof should governments require strong scientific "proof' before intervening to correct environmental problems, or should a reasonable judgment based on balancing the evidence and values at stake be enough? Finally, it raises questions about how much deference should be given to scientists themselves in the policy process. Scientific expertise is often essential to understand technical issues that are involved, and public officials yeam for clear expert consensus to justifi their decisions; but different disciplines often address only pieces of the issue, and reach different conclusions from the different bodies of evidence and truth tests they use; and scientists as individuals are often overconfident of their judgments and sometimes as self-interested as other policy advocates. It may be necessary to accept the idea that most "scientific" elements of policy debates are just as much negotiated outcomes among the judgments of conflicting groups of scientists as are the policy decisions themselves among conflicting constituencies in the larger public.

inherently interdependent for scientific and technical reasons, involving complex combinations of desirable and undesirable effects (and indeed, some effects that are simultaneously desirable to some and undesirable to others). These interdependencies are fbndamental to environmental policy, from multiple-use forest and water resource management to cross-media optimization of industrial waste management and life-cycle analysis of manufactured products. The result is a policy arena unusually influenced both by technical claims by scientists and engineers, and by what economists might describe as interdependent utility hnctions among the stakeholders in the policy outcome.

Newness of issire. Finally, environmental issues often pose issues that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable to many participants, especially in organizations that have evebed for other purposes with different subcultures and assumptions. Examples include the recently enlarged role of environmental issues in international negotiations generally, and particularly in recent world trade negotiations such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Among such participants there is a natural but problematic tendency to redefine the issues back into more familiar and parochial terms such as immediate national self-interest, and to resist both the new claims and the new participants--scientists, NGOs, even just additional government agencies--that the environmental issue injects into their decision processes.

For all these reasons, environmental policy is worth studying not only as an exemplar or application of public policy generally, but as an important and distinctive topic in its own right.

Interdependence ojfiinctions, iises, and values. Many environmental results are

Environmental policy 4 _d Environmental policy includes not only environmental protection programs, such

. * as the pollution control regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency and the

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habitat protection programs of the Fish and Wildlife Service, but all government actions to alter natural environmental conditions and processes, for whatever purposes and by

I whatever label. Policies promoting transformation of the environment for minerals extraction, for agriculture or forestry or intensive outdoor recreation, for urban or industrial development, or for transportation infiastructure are by their effects just as much elements of environmental policy as are EPA regulations or habitat protection programs--whether or not they are called by that name. So for that matter are the environmental impacts of military operations, of international trade agreements, and other policies.

policy requires coordination of potentially conflicting policies across multiple sectors, not merely the administration of statutes and regulations within a single agency. Second, many of the most powerful instruments of environmental policy are lodged not in environmental protection agencies per se but in agencies that transform environmental conditions for other purposes. The policies of the Agriculture, Energy, and Transportation Departments, for instance, may have at least as much effect on the environment as does the EPA, and some of the most effective policy strategies for reducing agricultural pollution might involve not adding new EPA regulatory programs but changing or eliminating environmentally damaging programs administered by other departments (many such programs, such as agricultural subsidies, below-cost logging and mining concessions, and under-priced use of water, fuels, and grazing lands, have been

This definitional point has important practical implications. First, environmental

. criticized on economic grounds as well). Environmental protection policy includes those elements of environmental policy

that are intended explicitly to protect public health and ecological processes from adverse effects of human activities. These elements include:

pollution control, including prevention, safe management, and cleanup of waste discharges, accidental spills, and deliberate environmental dispersion of toxic materials such as pesticides. sustainable riatirral resource mariagement, including maintenance of naturally renewable resources (groundwater, forests, fish and wildlife, arable soils), prudent rates of extraction and use of other resources (water, fbels and strategic minerals), and 4wm”s multiple-use management of extractive and non-consumptive uses. preservatioii of riatwal arid cirlttrral heritage, including areas of special beauty, historical and cultural significance, ecological fbnctions, and landscape character.

These elements intersect and overlap both with one another and with other policy

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sectors, and they depend crucially on the government’s institutional policies--how government structures, procedures, and resource allocation priorities are organized to achieve these purposes--for their successfbl implementation.

American Environmental Policy

just the 25 years since Earth Day, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, but the 200-plus years under the current constitutional regime, and nearly 400 since colonization by European cultures--of decisions about how government should shape its citizens’ relationships with their

American environmental policies today are the legacy of its own past history--not

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environment. The label "environmental policy" is relatively new, coined in the 1960s (cf Caldwell, 1963), and with it has come an important change in the categories of thought by which.we address these questions; but the fact of environmental policies is ancient. We have the particular set of environmental problems and opportunities that we have today because of the solutions our forebears chose (and in recent cases, we ourselves) to environmental problems and opportunities as they perceived them. The environmental policy choices we make, similarly, will shape both the opportunities and the hrther problems of the future.

such as the 19th century comucopian perception of virtually infinite natural resources, and the more recent perception of industrial chemicals as insidious and ubiquitous risks of cancer. It also reflects distinctive American attitudes toward governance, such as distrust of centralized power and authority, a preference for adversarial over consensual decision processes, and continuing ambivalence between institutions of representative governance-- republicanism-and more populist institutions of direct democratic influence on public policy. Both the goals and the tools of American environmental policy have changed significantly over the course of American history, as have its primary locus and the political processes by which it is made and implemented.

even today not in any integrated or coherent whole, but in a heterogeneous patchwork of diverse statutes, purposes, instruments, agencies, and levels of government. It resides in no single Department of the Environment comparable to the Ministry of the Environment in other countries, and by and large its reality lies in a multiplicity of agencies continuing simply to implement a growing number of fragmented and largely uncoordinated statutory mandates which impact the environment in conflicting ways. The Environmental . Protection Agency, despite its name, has no single overall statute authorizing it to protect the environment: even for a specific environmental policy issue such as pollution control, pollution of the air, the water and the land are addressed by separate statutes, programs, policy incentives, and decision criteria. The United States in 1970 adopted a National Environmental Policy Act, but it has never translated this into any overall plan or strategy to guide its agencies toward common environmental goals. Both the strengths and the w a k " e s 0fU.S. environmental policy thus derive fiom a policy-making structure that is highly decentralized and fragmented among diverse, mission-oriented programs and agencies.

Despite its lack of overall coherence, however, U.S. environmental policy has important features, both positive and negative, that shape its results. These include basic governance issues, such as concepts of property, federalism, accountability, and the role of an independent judiciary; the regulatory process; and a variety of recent innovations. Some of the most important innovations in U.S. environmental policy-making have in fact been innovations not just in policies themselves but in policy-making processes and procedures, often made possible by the very decentralization and fragmentation noted above.

A first distinctive feature of U.S. environmental policy-making is the expansive deference it accords to private rights to transform the environment for economic gain, and the correspondingly weak powers it accords to public agencies to protect broader societal

This pattem reflects distinctive American attitudes about the environment itself,

To the extent that the United States has a national environmental policy, it consists

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values of natural processes -- in contrast for instance to some Euro.pean nations, where the right to transform land is far more circumscribed by legal restrictions to preserve the overall character of the landscape and community. Contrary to popular mythology, property ownership in the U.S. has always amounted to a "bundle" of rights rather than absolute control, but it has included an unusually expansive notion of the owner's right to extract resources, to transform or destroy natural processes, and to capture unearned benefits of land speculation for private economic gain.

A second prominent feature of U.S. environmental policy-making is the pervasive influence of federalism and intergovernmental relations. The U. S. government has actively promoted environmental development throughout its history, primarily through subsidies such as grants and inexpensive sales of public lands, investments in transportation infrastructures (canals, railroads, more recently highways), assistance to agriculture, and cheap mining concessions; and it has actively managed water resources and public forest and park lands for multiple uses since early in this century. Most other areas of environmental policy, however, were historically state and local matters: land use controls, regulation of air and water pollution, environmental services (water supply, wastewater and solid waste management, parks), fish and wildlife management, and others. As recently as the 1950s, President Eisenhower characterized even air and water pollution control as "uniquely local" responsibilities.

Since the 1960s this pattern has changed profoundly. Pollution control policy has been nationalized: federal uniform minimum standards and approaches have been mandated in place of much of the previous diversity in the 50 states, and a vast new array of federal environmental laws has been enacted to address additional concerns. State and local governments still have primary responsibility for many areas of environmental policy, but they are also the implementing agencies for federally mandated regulatory programs, and in several important policy areas they are themselves the parties regulated by the federal government (for example as operators of wastewater treatment plants, landfills and waste incinerators). The most progressive states, however, continue to serve as key seedbeds for environmental policy innovations that are later adopted by other states and sometimes as national models.

the judicii4 branch, which is relatively independent of Congressional and Executive control, has relatively broad authority to review and enjoin the actions of administrative agencies, and allows relatively open access to individuals asserting legally protected environmental interests not only against I one another but also against the government itself Over the past two decades, as the involvement of the federal government in regulation has grown, the courts have shown an increasing willingness to review administrative decisions more closely. The "hard look" doctrine, for example, developed in the late 1970s, replaced a previously greater deference by the courts to administrative decisions. This willingness in turn has encouraged more frequent resort to the courts by both regulated businesses and environmental advocacy groups who seek results more favorable to themselves than the agency's decision. This trend has also forced the agencies to become more and more preoccupied with justifying their decisions, both through increasingly elaborate policy analyses (cost-benefit analyses, environmental impact assessments, regulatory impact assessments, risk assessments, etc.) and through increasingly detailed

A third distinctive feature of U.S. environmental policy-making is the active role of

Andrews draft -- 7 28.94 - Do not cite or quote 14

documentation of consultation procedures (hearings, written responses to comments received, etc.).

Perhaps the single most distinctive difference between U.S. and many other governments' environmental policy-making processes, in fact, is the broad rights of access and redress which U.S. laws accord not only to business and labor organizations but to citizens in general. This difference was not always so pronounced: the Progressive philosophy of governance, which guided U.S. governance through most of the first half of the twentieth century, accorded strong deference to expert public administrators acting in the name of an overall public interest, and traditional court doctrines limited challengers to individuals demonstrating clear economic injury to themselves resulting from government actions. These principles began to shift after World War 11, with enactment of the Administrative Procedures Act which codified far more explicitly the limits of administrative discretion, the rights of individuals to challenge administrative decisions, and the authority of the courts to review and enjoin them.

Beginning in the 196Os, a dramatic transformation occurred in American environmental policy, from limited statutory mandates coupled with considerable administrative discretion in their implementation to sweeping statutory mandates but increasingly restricted discretion. Laws such as the Freedom of Information Act and National Environmental Policy Act conferred broad public rights of access to most government documents, permitting both individuals and courts to independently evaluate and debate the agencies' justifications for environmental policy decisions. Judicial doctrines that had required economic injury as a prerequisite for challenging government decisions were broadened to protect injury to any arguably protected legal right, such as environmental protection; and the courts have also shown themselves willing to undertake intensive scrutiny of agencies' decisions, and to require detailed documentary justification of them, in response to such challenges. Many new environmental statutes even included provisions specifically permitting citizen suits to compel or challenge the agency's action.

governance, democratizing access to it as a counterweight to economic vested interests, but at the same time politicizing the administrative process and diminishing the authority of government itself to make controversial decisions. One explanation for this shift is a Mafnentaf change in prevailing American ideas about governance, from the Progressive and New Deal belief in a general public interest implemented by politically neutral professionals to pluralist beliefs that there is no general public interest but only competing interests, that agencies can be expected to be "captured1' over time by groups which have most to gain from their decisions, and firthermore that agencies over time develop their own self-interested agendas which may or may not serve any overall public interest (prominently, their own survival and growth). I

,

Taken together, these changes amounted to a profound shift in the process of U.S.

The "clientele capture" thesis asserts that agencies will over time be "captured" by the perspectives, values, and preferences of those interest groups which have most to gain or lose from the outcomes of the agencies' actions and which therefore are most persistently active in influencing them. The "public choice" theory, somewhat misleadingly named, proposes that agencies' actions reflect the self- interested behavior of the individuals within them. Both theories denigrate and

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In short, contemporary U.S. environmental policy-making has been framed by two powerful and conflicting political demands. One is the unprecedented popular political demand for authoritative national action to reduce human impacts on the natural environment, which has produced a constant flow of new regulatory statutes for administrative agencies to implement. The second is a deep unwillingness to trust administrative agencies with discretion, a distrust that has deep cultural roots, is cultivated by the business community out of its own self-interest, but is also shared by much of the public which has observed close relationships between public agencies and powerful economic interests, While businesses and environmentalists are adversaries on the substance of many policies, therefore, they tend to share a distrust of administrative agencies, and therefore to prefer adversarial mechanisms that protect and expand their own rights of challenge at the expense of the discretionary authority of the agencies. The result is a highly politicized, adversarial, and often stalemated process for environmental decision-making .

U.S. environmental policy up to 1970 included over seven decades' experience in management of the environment as a natural resource base--lands and forests, minerals, water, fish and wildlife-but almost none in the regulation of environmental quality. Before 1970 there were literally only a handhl of federal regulatory programs for health, safety, or environmental quality: the Public Health Service, food inspection programs in the Agriculture Department, the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act administered by the Food and Drug Administration, a weak pesticides act, and a few federal incentives for state regulation of air and water quality. Beginning in 1970, however, U.S policy emphasis shifted dramatically from environmental management to environmental regulation, and fiom state and local to national primacy. Between 1970 and 1980, some 130 new federal regulatory laws were enacted, many of them related to the environment, requiring multiple and complex standard-setting proceedings for particular industries and substances; additional ones have been enacted in the 1980s. In a very real sense, therefore, the U.S government is still learning how to regulate--perhaps unlike some other nations that have older regulatory traditions and less ambivalent traditions towards discretionary government authority.

At their best, these environmental regulations had a straightfonvardness that made therae€lktive ksi"ents for rapid improvements in the most obvious forms of industrial environmental protection. Catalytic converters for automobile emissions control, virtually unused 20 years ago, are now almost universally present on passenger cars Lead has been phased out of automotive hels; hazardous industrial wastes by and large are no longer dumped in municipal landfills, and a large majority of industrial facilities are now in compliance with far more stringent air and water emissions restrictions than previously existed. Several dozen especially toxic chemicals and pesticides have been phased out,

reject the traditional normative ideals of public service. that agencies and professionals within them act to implement a general public interest as expressed in law and broad civic values See for instance Olson, The Logic of Collective Actiori (1 965), Lowi, The End ofLihernltsm (1 969), Ackerman and Hassler, Clean CoaL Dirty Air (1 98 1 ), and Wolf, "A Theory of Non-Market Failures," The Public Iiiterest vol. 5 5 (Spring 1979), p 1 14 ff

2e Andrew draft - 7 28 94 -- Do riot cite or quote 16 t either totally or at least from their most hazardous uses; and the overall quality of air and water in the U.S. has measurably improved. Other regulations, however, have been less effective, and some have had problematic side effects. Industrial air and water pollution have been significantly reduced, but not as much as might have occurred with more

' flexible market-oriented incentives. Pollution from many public sources remains serious, regulatory programs for specific substances have addressed only a tiny fraction of the substances for which they are responsible; and environmental hazards associated with individual behavior rather than industrial practices, such as radon exposure, are politically difficult to address by national regulation and enforcement. At their worst, the specificity of some statutory requirements (for particular waste treatment technologies, for instance) has sometimes created an unintended disincentive against cheaper and more effective solutions--investing in redesigning processes and products for pollution prevention rather than in waste treatment technology, for instance.

Recent EPA initiatives have now advocated use of a far broader range of policy tools to achieve environmental policy goals, including for instance marketable emission permits, pollution charges, information disclosure requirements, changes in financial liability principles, and incentive-based penalties. An extraordinary variety of environmental policy innovations has in fact begun to emerge, some at the national level but even more in state and local initiatives. They have not displaced the major national regulatory programs, and due to political inertia may never do so; but they have introduced flexibility into some of them, and they are providing more attractive tools for addressing new problems as well.

As important as the recent developments that have occurred in American environmental policy, however, are those that have not. Pollution control is now well advanced in heavy industry and electric utilities, but far more uneven in smaller businesses and municipalities, and virtually unregulated in agriculture. The process of land development itself continues virtually unaffected, with some increased strictures on construction practices (such as erosion- and sediment-control requirements) but few on its location or cumulative impacts, even in coastal and estuarine settings where some of the most serious conflicts among values and uses of natural prooesses occur. The dominant form of land use change in the United States since the 195Os, concurrent with the eRtFifOffffteffta1 protection policy era of the past several decades, has been the ubiquitous

commercial strip development, at the expense of large areas of the natural landscape as well as of coherent business districts and communities starting from landscapes and natural processes and ecosystems, then structuring and limiting environmental development to fit these constraints--is incorporated into some private development proposals and public land management plans, but beyond these it is almost literally foreign to U. S environmental policy, something that American tourists appreciate and enjoy in Europe but consider a radical or even unthinkable idea in American policies: land use remains overwhelmingly a local policy prerogative, and local planning and zoning policy rarely goes beyond erosion and sediment control regulations and occasional restrictions on floodplains and steep slopes.

focused so far overwhelmingly on domestic issues, especially the environmental impacts of

proliferation of superhighways, low-density real estate development, shopping malls and - -

The idea of landscape planning--

From a larger perspective, the U.S environmental policy agenda also has been

Andrew draft -- 7 28 94 -- Do tiot cite or quote 17 3 7

federal resource exploitation and development projects and since 1970 the federal regulation of pollution and toxic chemicals The agenda of the coming century, however, will be dominated by broader international and global issues for which a domestic regulatory approach by itself is no longer adequate. Even as stronger domestic regimes for environmental protection have emerged in the United States and elsewhere, they are now threatened by the new mobility of both industry and capital across international borders, and the resulting vulnerability of national governments--even the United States, perhaps for the first time since the early years of its development as a nation--to business decisions beyond the effective authority of national governance institutions.

arrangements, which seek harmonization of product standards and forbid the use of trade sanctions against imports made by more environmentally destructive processes than would be permitted in the importing country. A second issue is trans-boundary pollution, both across bilateral borders and regionally among countries sharing a common environmental resource such as enclosed seas. A third is the set of larger global problems requiring multilateral solutions, such as stratospheric ozone depletion, maintenance of ocean fisheries, moderation of global warming, and sustainable development initiatives to accommodate the material needs and aspirations of the world's population without destroying the environmental conditions and natural processes on which they depend. These issues have important domestic implications as well, particularly the changes in prices, markets, regulatory expectations, and production efficiencies that will reshape both opportunities and threats to U. S. economic competitiveness.

A leading example is the environmental impacts of international trade

The U.S. can and must play a strong positive role in such issues, but its policy- ' making institutions are not yet well orchestrated for this purpose, nor is its policy

commitment to it yet consistent or clear. The U.S. has played a positive leadership role, for instance, in negotiation of the Montreal Protocol, in initiatives to protect ocean fisheries, and in environmental assistance to the nations of central and eastern Europe, but its commitment to environmental policy initiatives has been less clear on such issues as trade negotiations, mitigation of global warming, world population growth, and others.

worth consideration by other nations. One is the variety of innovative tools it has f3~odtsd to address them: diverse types of regulations, marketable permits, emission- disclosure and community right-to-know requirements, liability rules and other market- oriented incentives, and others. A second is its extensive development of policy analysis methods, such as environmental impact assessment, risk assessment, and economic evaluation methods, to characterize and compare potential solutions to them A third is its openness to initiatives and pressures from the public, providing both fresh ideas and a valuable counterweight to vested interests. Like most policies, each of these features has both benefits and problems, but overall their advantages deserve consideration for broader adoption.

Despite these limitations, U. S . environmental policy-making offers many features

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What is public policy research, anyway? How do you study public policy? And what difference does it make when you do?

We see public policy research as helping society to think about what it could and should do collectively to solve its problems. There are basically four broad kinds of questions that get asked in policy research:

Wuat justijications exist for public (government) intmention it1 an area? Consider the trucking and airline industries, so recently deregulated after nearly a half century of strict government intervention. Policy research, among other inputs, convinced society (i.e. Congress) that there was insufficient justification for massive intervention in the form of route and entry restrictions and price setting.

If government ought to do something (spend money, write regulations, change fax incentives), what level would best do it? And how much intervention is desirable? Think of these as "where" and "how much" questions. For example, should the city, state, or federal government fund and manage public education? Just how clean should the air be?

How should the interveiltion be structured? Think of this as a "how to do it" question. If an assault on hardcore poverty is deemed in order, should the vehicle be a negative income tax? Reform of existing systems? Adult education? Early childhood programs? Compulsory job training? All of the above? Something else entirely?

+" h e f i t s md who pays when a particular program is put in place? It's clear enough when the Bureau of Reclamation builds massive irrigation projects with our money and recovers about one tenth of the cost from farmers who use the water. But it may not be so clear when the subject is hazardous waste disposal. Then the question of who benefits and who pays h,as to reflect the dangers of both legal and illegal dumping, uncertain future health effects, and the ubiquity of such problems across industries and areas..

What is possibly unique about the study of public policy is that it requires the analytical tools and knowledge of many disciplines. I t is not enough in dealing with'education only to understand human cognitive and social processes and organizations, as psychologists and sociologists do; or in designing environmental policy to be on top of the phenomena of the natural world, as scientists and engineers are. And though economic issues arise in every area of policy, economists can very seldom make useful

policy recommendations on their own. Nor can lawyers, though an understanding of statute and court-made law, and of the processes of administrative law is helpful in any effort to structure a practical policy. Rather, to answer the kind of questions posed above, the combined perspectives of many disaplines are needed.

Think, for example, of the problem of improving air quality in metropolitan regions across the U.S. A process engineer could tell us how to reduce the particulated or sulfur oxide or nitrogen oxide discharges from the industrial and commercial "production" activities in each region. She might even be able to do a credible job of estimating the costs. An atmospheric scientist, in combination with an applied mathematician, could give us some idea of how far source reduction would have to proceed to produce a desired effect on ambient air quality. Epidemiologists and economists might help each other to an understanding of the health effects of existing discharges. A lawyer could describe a feasible administrative process for achieving source reductions.

But, left to his or her own devices, the atmospheric scientist . might well ignore both costs and benefits and go for a technically feasible fix. Without the scientist, the economist could be wildly wrong about the benefits to connect to particular discharge . reduction programs (costs). The lawyer might write a law or regulation aimed at enforceability but implying great costs for benefits achieved.

Even getting the research "right", in the sense of having the right mix of disciplines and that ineffable sense of teamwork that leads to exciting ideas, does nothing to guarantee that the results will be used. Having an idea on the right desk, on the right moming, in the perfect format is probably half the battle. And good ideas drive out bad only in the longest run, definitely not in the heat of a political campaign or a budget fight.

Another bit of realism is the knowledge that even if an idea is adopted by a legislator, governor, or agency head, that person is unlikely to go out of the way to pass on the credit.

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All of this notwithstanding, for the researchers the intellectual excitement is in piercing the problem and suggesting effective policy altematives for society to consider. They are willing to live with the ambiguity that no matter how expert they are in, say, environmental policy, or mental health, or education, and regardless of how subtly they apply the tools of their disciplines to those problems, their work may not be taken into account in the political process. Or if it is, it may be years later when the innovative policy prescription they have offered, tempered by debate and tested by experience, is finally accepted by policymakers as "common sense." Of course, by then it is virtually 'impossible to trace the idea's .provenance.

So researchers toil in the public policy vineyards always hopeful that each study will eventually be of a memorable vintage and that some day it will make a difference.

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ENV?Z/PLAN/PUPA 153 Environmental Management and Policy

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Scientific and Technical Perspectives on Environmental Management and Policy

How should policy analysts gather and use scientzjk information, and how does their usage differ from scientists' use of scientific information? Do you agree with Morgan's claim that good policy analysis is not necessarily bad science? Why or why not?

Can science provide an adequate basis for environmental policy decisions? Would such decisions be better if, as some scientists sometimes advocate, we got them out of the hands of lawyers and economists and politicians and bureaucrats and uninformed laymen, and let scientists make them? Why, or why not? What elements of such decisions do scientific and technical knowledge improve, and what elements do they not?

Russell and Gruber argue that quantitative risk assessment is an essential method for using scientific evidence and techniques to help EPA set priorities and justify its environmental policy and regulatory decisions, and an important improvement over other approaches which they would characterize as more ad hoc, less cost-effective, and/or more politicized.

How should public policy decisions deal with scientific uncertainty, and with conJicting judgments among scientists -- how should it balance proof versus prudence as well as risk versus cost? Think about some important current environmental issues, such as global warming, CFCs and the ozone layer, acid rain, radon and indoor air quality, passive smoking, or others you are familiar with.

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'1 R pod. "Struppling to Do SdCDa for sodcty." sekna 24k672-673. 81990, American Aaoci.ti00 fa th. Advpncement d Sciance, Washington. DC.

Strug- to Do Science for Society The next decade's social issues will increasingly drive scientists into the public policy arena, where a whole new set of considerations must be taken into account. Are we ready? 1

LASrFhu,anCdiCdito- rial in the Derroit News slammed me- reorologiSr Stcphcn Schncidcr for con- rribudng to "the de- bvemcnt of h c r i - M cnvironmcnd rdcncc into cheap poliaczl dleatcr." scans, was to ncp

III crated by the debate over global w d g , +,w .,dshom how hot it can ~tet for sc icnh

-40yr invoivcd in a public poi7 issue. So hr,

rehrcs embroiled in such topics--che entire dimate modding communiry, b r aumple, conrko of just a fov hundred s c i c n b

ing and the w of feral dsruc, nuclear wutcs, chemicals in the c n v i r o m r , and

arc just a fiw of the policy a m s whcre science will be called upon to make a key conaibunon in the 1990s.

And that raises some signi6cant questions. WhU role should individual scicndsa play in policy debares? How can science bc uxd to help policy-makers arrive at the bar solunons? There arc no easy answers.

'Ihe vast majoriry of scicnoists simply go about &e business of research, arguing with their peers rhrough joumals and at mm- ings, and helping d&c a consensus that can serve as a basis for policy debates. Bur some

rckivdy fiw d a s have bund them-

burth;lr'sli lrclyro~.Gcncriccngin~-

bw finqucncy Clmromagn~c fields-rhex

rcuuche~ , either 6 y choice or just by bemg m the wrong place at the wrong rime, make iC into &e public eye.

Jim Hurxn, for insancc. Hvlxn is the menorologist at NASA's Goddard Insacute for Space Srudia who ignited the current concern about global warming in 1988 whcn he told a congressional commirrct he wy 99% certain the world is gming wann- er and that the grrmhourc &ea is probably the reason. Bur as Hvlxn tells ir, he wasn't trying to spark a conmvcrsy at ail. 'I feel I was only +g to repon an accurate de-

472

saipdon of our scientific resea&" he says. To use a religious metaphor, Hanscn is a

%mess"-someonc who believes he has infomaon so impomnt char he cannot keep silent 'A couple of wecks befbrc the 1988 wdmony, I weighed the costs of king wrong vmus the costs of not h g , " he says; the costs of not alking seemed much heavier. 'That wdmony has bcen criadzed a lot since thcn, but when I look back I feel as smngly as ever char my points were correct." He continues to t cU Con- grcss, rhe media, and the public his Jdcndfic conclusions about global wuming. If Hansen is a wimcss, Schncidcr, $10

works at the Nariod G n n r for Amo- spheric Rexuch, is more of a preacher. 'A human being h an obligaaon to make the world a k c r place," he says, so he has i n j d himself into the grccnhou~~ policy debate, uguing char the consequences of global dimarc change could be 50 ruinouS that rreps to prevent it should be nkcn now. "I am an advocate for what I see to be the urgent nFd to 'buy ~ " c c , ' he says. To

some say s c n s a c i o n a l k u c - p i ~ of what could happen to the world if rhe average global mpcrarurt rose several de-.

Shouid other s c i e n h follow Schncidds aample? 'Everyonc has the right to become an advocate," says Granger Morgan, head of the Depumrent of Engineering and Public Policy at Gmegic-'Mcllon Univerziry. 'But you d y want to choose one role or the other-advwtc or analy~t. The LWO rola don'r mix very well." A xiendst who lobbies suongly for one side in a debate risks losing his objccciviry.

Schneidcr himself rccorplizcs the contlict and spc;rki of the 'double ethical bind" chat pulls him in opposite directions. As a xicn- M he must be caurious, giving ail the caveats and not pushing his dau too far. As an advocate, however, he must be bold and dcccivc. In a widely quoted interview in Discover, he explained: T o [reduce the risk of global warming], we need to get some broad- based suppo~, eo aprurc the public's imaginaoon. Thar, of course, means gcning loads of media coverage. So we have ro offer up scary xcnarios, make simplified, b a t - ic statements, and make lirrle menaon of any

d e the a ~ e d~Ceivc ly , he Wts explicit-

doubts char we might have. . . . Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being &aive and being honest. I hope ht means being both."

Thc double bind of &eccivc a&on v m u scicnrific objmiviry is not the only problem crated by the decision to become an advocate. Although one's scienu6c peen .may

xiendst and advocate, the media and the public may not be so sophitdatcd-with the d t that arcfuuy nuanced posirions disappear. "I always tdl the media there are rwo Stephen Schncidcrs," Schneider says, but he admits the &&on is ofken lost.

recognize the d i 6 m c c b" rhe roles of

Stephen Schneider: "A human bctng has an obligation to mokc the world a better place. "

When the cvcning news devotes only 15 seconds to a scienarr-advocate's views, the d t is inevitably a blurring of the line bcnvecn xicncc and advocacy.

Whcrhcr a scicndsr dccida to be an advo- ate, a wimcss, or simply a researcher who stays out of the spotlight, he or she will find that once a topic becomes a public policy issue, it is no longer science as usual. Funding dcasions, for instance, ukc on a

whole new complexion when rtsezrdl conclusions will ai€m policy. By rhcu nature. funding Wacs like raulo that buoy thcir o m programs and dislike results char undermine than. In 1981, Hansen lost hls Dc-

SCIENCE, VOL. &

paruncnt of Energy funding after a front. page noly in the New Yo& Times rrportcd his condluion dw drc world was getdne w u m c ~ md that the mnning wu consis. rent with rhc BreaJIow cffm. The energ) QpumKnr, Huwn says, "saw these dimrtc a*rans u king anrkonmcntrlisrr bid- ing CQMOmic and i n d d progrr~s with- aut d a a l t basii, and fklt that if they ntpportcd the Icse?Kfi it would d y give

"m that arbon dioxide emissions mieplthnvcto k limited was not a message thc DOE w a n d to hear. Evennully, the E"cnnl Protection Agency kgan nrpporcing Hulscn's work

Even if solid, unbiased research docs ~ C I

hdd, drc science bchind an issue k- quendy doer not take center sage. Many

tinJyiy when the scienti6c evidence is not d c b i t h This was the case, for instance, in

mar publiav 00 thtsc 13"s.a In short, . . .

ocha &ron altcr into policy-nuking, par-

0nng.r Morgan: v~cime is io guide policy, wicruinc mvrt mdimn their trsearch.

dcmmmng the acid rain porrion of the current Clan Air A q says economist 'Rob- ert Hhn, who helped drift pan of the bill while on the Council of Economic Advisers.

EC it became a salient political issue, then science no longer played a major role," Hahn says. The act calls for a reduction of 0 million tons in sulfur dioxide &ions,

about what that number will buy us." In- saad, 10 million tons was a convenient number that had ken circulating for a whiic,'and no one was willing to even consider 6 million or 8 million tons, which would have bccn cheaper and might have

11 MAY 1990

.

r ut there was %cry little serious analysis

done just as much to dean up acid rain. "Poliudv it was a line drawn in the sand drat would have bccn vcry di6cult to moss," Hahn says.

And once a policy becomes law, the science often fades even M e r into the background. "Regulations sometimes rake on a life of their own," notcs presidential science adviser Allan Bromley. "Even &er the Xien- titic basis is gone, the regulation lives on." The ament Environmenal Proteclion Agency regulations on asbestos removal may be one of the most egregious cxunples of this. Taxpayers will pay about $5 billion this year to m o v e asbestos from schools and other buildings, and the 6naI bill could run from $50 billion to $150 billion. But a study published earlier this year in Scirnce (19 Januuy, p. 294) reported that more than 90% of the asbestos acrually posts no health risk. The EPA regulations ignore the the disdnceion bcrwcen different rypcs of asbestos, some of which arc dangerous and others relatively benign.

s h e information in the &de in Scimce is at least 10 ycvs old as fir as pcoplc in the field know iq" says Ann Wylic, a geologist at the Universiry of Maryland. But W d regulators were more concerned with the

says, and rcfiucd to accept the findings drat some asbestos was relatively d e .

Do thcse problems mean that scientists should opt out of the arena of policy alte gcthcr? Sur~ly that condusion is too draco-: man. Perhaps the answer is that scicn '

h e r , so that they can at least anticipate 4 the pidalls. People who srudy policy-makinq have a few suggestions along those lines. For ~tucm, h d i n g for research into

issues with policy implications should come from several sources. If the support comes from sources with different missions, no single point of view is likcly to dominate the

be in a better position to provide the f a d base needed to base decisions on. 'But Morgan of Gmcgic-Mcllon argues that providing this base is something scicn- dsts do not do very well. "It's hard to get the sciendfic community to work on policy issues when it has its own research agenda set," he says. The questions that arc most interesting sciendfidy may not be the questions that arc impomt to setting policy. If science is to guide policy and not just provoke it, researchers may have to redirect some of their &om.

The key, Morgan says, is directing the

imcr of the law than with the spiris she

should 1- to u n d m d policy-

research. with such funding, scientists will

research so as to narrow down the uncertainties, the unknown quanutits that make i t impossible to set sound policy. By workmg

searchers can determine which of the uncer- &ties arc S & a n t and concenthe on th&-Fo~%iakers~eb~Mg a res me to g l o G i i m i n g , for instance, h&a-it more valuable to know how different spate- gies will Sect the pace of global warming, as opposed to knowing what the t o d rise in tcmperaturr is k l y to k. In that case,

demanding the dynamics of the proccss instead of the cquhbrium states.

Besides providing the scientific context to undc-d a pmM- i i b a -

zcn at the Massachums Instirute of Tech- 'nologyy For instance, EPA regulaao-ns 'aimed at curbing urban ozone pollution by cutting hydrocarbon cmissions from automobiles may not work, says Gregory McRae of Cuncgie-Mcllon's chemical engineering dcparancnt. Computer simulations show that the key to cucdng ozone in such places

amount of niaogen oxides, M c k says. In the case of global warming, conccm

over rising lev& of orbon dioxide and other greenhouse gua ha Id some to call for a 2096 reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2000, which is W y to be a vcry expensive step for the industrial nations. But there has bccn tide dixussion about the &em of such a policy, Lindzen says. Ac- cording to the models that predict that a doubling of carbon dioxide will cause a 4°C rise in global tanperature by 2100, cutting h n dioxide emissions by 20% would make a differcncc of lcss than half a degree, he says. Is it worth the cost? That's a question that must be debated, but ofim the argument doesn't get so far.

Clearly, there is a whole new sct of considerations for a d e r whose work has consequences for public policy, even- his basic rolc--eereine &ers-is un-

with economists and policy experr~, re-

rrsurch~n could focuS their C~OXTS on ~ n -

*-IJU-gg""d =@&LE!F&&=d L i d -

as Los Angeles is d y reducing the

diinged. To do &at jo<Cgeaive~~a .&l- tist in a policy-sensitive field-musy-dde how he should interact &th &c .&pay gpdclrl~ Ziihuon where his funding is cbming from, consider aiighg hiYkCarch in directions of general interest, and preEarc himself for the possibiliiy &at mu&G&uI work could be ignored when push comes to shove in the political pr0ccss:It's a lot to ask, but some scientists do 6nd they arc compensated by the feeling that they made a difference in the world. ROBERT POOL

NEWS & COMMENT 613 -

Risk Assessment in Environmental

MILTON RUSSELL AND MICHAEL GRUBER Reprinted with permission

for one-time classroom use.

Environmental policy-making has become more dependent on formal, quantitative risk assessment because of increasin attention to the prevention of human health damage Bo m toxic chemicals. Risk assessment helps set priorities for regulation of the very large numbers of chemicals that are of potential concern and helps direct limited social and government resources against the most significant risks. Although the scientific basis for risk assessment is often uncertain and the ublic and its representatives have often been confusecfby its use in regulatory decisions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency currently uses a variety of risk assessment techniques to set priorities, tailor regulations, and make decisions at particular sites. The Environmental Protec- tion Agency also attempts to make the practice of risk assessment more consistent throughout the agency and to improve public understanding of the meaning of risk assessment and risk management.

HE U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA) must analyze the magnitude of the risks of environmental T damage it intends to reduce in order to use its own and

socicty’s resources to maximum effect. Although quantitative risk assessment has become an important part of this analysis, its use as a basis for implementing environmental policy remains controversial. This is so because quantitative risk assessment is the product ofwhat former EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus has called “a shot- - kfwee~ ~ k n t e and the law“ (1, p. 1026). The method attempts to use scientific evidence and techniques in the context of legal and administrative procedure, and in so doing fails to fully satisfy either the people who advocate, draft, and administer environmental law or members of the scientific community (2).

The EPA persists in placing itself on this uncomfortable middle ground because its mission often requires it to act in the absence of full knowledge about risks, and because limited resources mean that it cannot act in every situation where risk may exist. Quantitative risk assessment is a valuable tool for reconciling these conflicting demands (3). It helps EPA to (i) set priorities, (ii) adjust national regulations to the degree and distribution of the risk to be controlled, and (iii) make site-specific decisions by considering the nature of the pollutant, the sensitivity of the environmental setting, and the availability of control techniques. (Although EPA uses

M. Rusxll has k n an assistant adminisator at thc U.S. Environmcntal Pmcction A ency. 401 M Smct, SW, Washington, DC 20460. His prcxnt a d d m is Univcrsity ofpTcr;lcssec. Knoxville, TN 37996, and Oak Ridgc National Laboratory, Oak Ridgc, TN 37831. M. Gruhcr is at thc Office of Solid Wastc, U.S. Envimnmcntal Protection Agency, 401 M Strcct, SW, Washington, DC 20460.

286

quantitative and semiquantitative tools to assess the impact of pollution whenever possible, for example, on ecological systems or on resources of economic value, such tools have been most highly developed for application to human health risk. “Risk assessment,” as used in this article, refers to the techniques used to generate estimates of human health risk.)

The Performance of Risk Assessment at EPA Risk assessment at EPA proceeds in four steps: (i) hazard

assessment, (ii) dose-response assessment, (iii) exposure assessment, and (iv) risk characterization. Hazard assessment examines the evidence that associates exposure to an agent with its toxicity and produces a qualitative judgment about the strength of that evidence, whether it is derived from human epidemiology or extrapolated fiom laboratory animal data. Dose-response assessment examines the quantitative relation between the experimentally administered dose level of a toxicant and the incidence or severity or both of a response in test animals, and draws inferences for humans. The presumed human dosages and incidences in human populations may also be used in cases where epidemiological studies are available.

Exposure assessment identifies populations exposed to the toxicant, describes their composition and size, and examines the routes, magnitudes, frequencies, and durations of such exposures. Risk &aracterization presents the policy-maker with a synopsis of all the information that contributes to a conclusion about the nature of the risk and evaluates the magnitudes of the uncertainties involved and the major assumptions that were used. This last element is particularly important in understanding what

risk assessment can and cannot do. The National Research Council (NRC) has pointed out that in any risk assessment “a number of decision points occur where risk to human health can only be inferred.. . . Both scientific judgments and policy choices may be involved in selecting from among possible inferential bridges” (4, p. 3). The NRC also noted that much of the controversy that surrounds the use of risk as a guide to making regulations may arise fiom the confusion between risk assessment, a largely scientific enterprise that may involve science policy decisions, and risk management, which is the process by which a regulatory agency decides what to do about the results of a risk assessment. A risk management decision may involve economic, social, and political considerations and is subject to the constraints of particular statutes, which differ in the way they allow risk to be considered. The NRC recommended that risk assessment and risk management activities be clearly distinguished and separated institutionally in regulatory agencies. This separation has been accepted as a principle by EPA (5). . It is not easy to sustain. There is, afier all, no natural “bright line” between the policy considerations inherent in risk management and those inherent in risk assessment. EPA has attempted to reduce possible confusion by dealing consistently and openly with the

SCIENCE, VOL. 236

assumptions and extrapolations that are required to bridge the gap bctwccn scientific findings and the risk assessments derived from them. This is done through the publication of guidelines for the assessment of different health end points (6-8), for the effects of chemical mixtures (9), and for exposure assessments (10). Thcse g)lidelines represent the formal consensus of scientists throughout €PA and in EPA's Science Advisory Board about what has and has not bccn determined scientifically about different aspects of risk assamt"cn, and about procedures and judgments to be used in moving fiom these findings to an actual risk assessment.

An iUustration of what guidelines do may be taken from the CWiArrinrJfi Curcinqqm Asscmnmt (6). This document classifies evidence a b u t the potential human carcinogenicity of a substance into five groups, which are " s ~ c i e n t evidence," "limited evidence,"

. "inadequate evidence," "no data," and "no evidence," and provides d e s for placing different kinds of findings in each class. For example, these guidelines accept mouse liver tumors as "sufficient" evidence of human carcinogenicity even when such tumors occur in strains with high background incidence and when they constitute the only tumor response to an agent, provided other criteria of "sufficient" evidence are met. Similar guidance is given on the choice of mathematical models for extrapolation to low doses; in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the linearized multistage procedure is preferred. Interspecies extrapolation on the basis of .surfice area is the recommended method.

The guidelines arc thus a means of provisionally "rcsolving" open scientific controversies so that EPA can make the decisions required by administrative efficiency and the mandates of its legislation. They arc conceived to be working documents, subject to change when new knowledge warrants, through the same formal, open process involved in drafting them.

The risk assessment guidelines foster a consistent approach across programs within EPA, establish a standard for quality of work and comparison of studies, and help inform the public about how scientific judgments and assumptions have bccn incorporated into risk assessments. Making decisions about risk in the absence of guidelines may lead to idiosyncratic decisions that cannot easily be explained or defended and that are subject both to accusations of capriciousness and to real or perceived manipulation in the service of political expediency. In addition, by focusing attention on arcas that q u i r e judgments to be made, the guidelines help to show where additional research and analysis might make important contributions to understanding how pollutants cause adverse health effccts.

n e science community at large was solicited formally and informally to participate in development of these guidelines, but that docs not mean that the guidelines as published represent a perfect consensus. Some scientists would make different judgments, and others would reject the premise that the state of science supports such judgments at all. Wilkinson (11, p. 10) epitomizes this caveat as follows:

Ihe fundamental problem facing toxicologists and regulators alike is that the chronic health effects of chemicals cannot be verified by direct expcrimcn- tation. Conxqucntly, . . . risk assessment invariably requires the extrapolation of data obtained under one Jet of laboratory conditions to thosc likely to bc encountered under another totally different sct of conditions. . . . It is disconcerting to realkc that the science of toxicology simply cannot provide unequivocal answers to many of the questions being asked by the public and demanded by the regulatory process.

Risk assessments governed by guidelines only provide for consist- ency and orderly decision-making. They do not give certainty in the scientific sense, nor can they be used to establish precise numbers of persons who will be stricken with some disease. Quantification is useful in risk assessment to approximate the magnitude of an effect, to sct priorities, or to make comparisons. Such comparisons are

d38

l l i

17 APRIL 1987

necessary, for example, when two altemative regulatory options have significantly different consequences in terms of risk, or when options with similar risk reduction possibilities vary widely in terms of administrative feasibility or economic impact.

The Use of Risk Idormation Smiqg priorities. In environmental protection all the beneficial

actions that might be taken cannot be performed simultaneously. EPA should act to reduce as much risk as possible, as fast as possible, giving due weight to its mandatory duties under statute and to the fact that the public it serves is concerned about some kinds of risk more than other kinds (12).

Although priority setting is vital to sensible environmental policy- making, limitations abound in practice. EPA administers all or part of some dozen different and independent statutes, each of which considers risk in a different way (13). Most of these statutes contain stringent deadlines for action and are supported by constituencies that zcalously monitor their timely implementation. It is not surprising, therefore, that EPA has had great difficulty in setting explicit risk-based priorities, especially for the agency as a whole, across program lines. In general, the operational priorities of agencies in a democratic government arise fiom politics, especially the politics of the budgetary process, a not entirely rational enter-

But EPA has in recent years persevered in the development of risk-based approaches to set priorities for actions within its control and in hope of influencing the discussions from which externally imposed priorities emerge. For example, its Integrated Environmen- tal Management Program has developed an approach that enables risk-based priorities to be set among the pollution problems that affect a particular geographic arca. Exposum through all media (for example, air, drinking water, or food) from all significant toxic chemical sources in the arca are modeled and the associated risks are estimated. The risks from various control options arc also estimated. Through additional modeling it is then possible to arrive at the most efficient way of reducing total risk for any desired expenditure (14). A similar approach can be used to set priorities for dealing with major environmental problems that have cross-media consequences (the disposal of sewage sludge, for example). On a broader scale, EPA has recently completed the first comprehensive examination of the environmental problems its programs seek to control. The problems are ranked in terms of how heavily they bear against human health, ecological, economic, and general welfare values (15).

Des@ ofwphtk" By far the most common use of risk assessment at EPA has been in the design of regulations. Risk assessments contribute to the design of regulations in two ways. The first is to select targets for regulation and to decide how stringently to control the various sources that contribute to a particular problem. A given pollutant may be released by diverse sources that are unequally amenable to control. It may produce its adverse effect through transport by different media into locations of differing environmental sensitivity. It may impose widely differing risks, or none at all, depending on these factors. Risk assessments may help tailor regulations to varying risks and direct administrative attention to the most severe ones. This is done so that regulations can be instituted efficiently with respect to government and private resources and with a minimum of social and economic disruption.

The second use of risk assessment in regulatory design is to inform policy-makers of the implications of various levels of control so that they can decide what actions provide "safety"; that is, what degree of residual risk to accept in particular circumstances. We

prise.

ARTICLES 287

57 from the food chain, and established “levels of concem” based OM risk assessment so that the public would have a clear guide to wha food presented acceptable risks and what had to be destroyed.

In this regulatory enterprise, risk assessment was used first tic

adjust the remedy to the severity of different aspects of the problm EPA first focused attention on dietary risks from soil fumigation ana from grain and milling machinery (spot) fumigation, because thesu presented the highest total population risk with lifetime exposure:: expected to yield a risk range offrom lo-‘ to loe6. Soil fumigatiorr ais0 presented the additional concern about ground water contamination. The risks to workers associated with spot and soil fumigation was also extremely high ( If EPA had proposed canceling these uses in the normal way authorized. by the relevant statute, in might have taken 2 years or longer for administrative processes andl appeals to be completed. The risks were deemed high enough to) make such a delay undesirable. In October 1983 EPA used its5 emergency suspension authority to stop soil fumigation with EDBl and 4 months later did the same for grain and milling machinery, fumigation. EPA also served notice (20) of its intent to cancel most: other uses of the pesticide. The risks from these sources, however,, when compared to the benefits from continued short-term use’ pending the development of substitutes, were not considered high, enough to require immediate suspension.

Through a major public information effort (21) EPA was able to’ show that while the risks warranted the removal of the fungicide from hrther use, they did not warrant the indiscriminate destruction of f d contaminated at very low levels. Further, risk asscss- ment was used to focus the attention of EPA on the worst sources of exposure first, that is, on ground water before grainstuffs, on grainstuffs before citrus, and on citrus before mangoes. This enabled EDB to be removed in an orderly way without straining the resources of state or federal agencies and without undue economic impact.

The second major use of risk in designing regulations, the establishment of the appropriate level of control, is demonstrated in the decision EPA made in 1983 on the control of radon from licensed uranium mill tailings (22). Such tailings release radon gas, which can ‘lead to cancer if inhaled. The reduction of radon emissions is relatively simple; the tailings are covered with earth and due provision is made for keeping this barrier from eroding over time. Obviously, thicker barriers give greater protection and cost more to build than thin ones. Important guidance on selecting the appropriate barrier was provided by estimates of residual risk from the alternative options.

EPA estimated that the plausible upper bound for the base case, that is, the uncontrolled situation, was 600 excess cancer deaths over the next 100 years, or 6 per year. EPA eventually selected an option that would typically lead to about 2.4 meters of cover. It estimated that this would avoid 95 percent of the estimated base risk (about 570 “deaths” over the next century) at an estimated cost to industry of about $500 million. EPA rejected another option that involved an earth cover twice as thick that would have cost $750 million and might have avoided 99.5 percent of the risk (about 597 “deaths”). Given the uncertainties involved, these numbers are indistinguishable; they cannot be said to represent differing “counts” of cancer deaths. The point of the analysis is that the extra $250 million probably buys nothing at all, and perhaps even has adverse effects when incremental risks involved in increasing the depth of the earth cover, such as those from additional traffic, construction injury, and flying dust, are considered.

In these two examples, people who hold a different set of values might have chosen different actions based on the same evidence. They might have decided that immediately eliminating EDB from the diet warranted major disruptions of the food supply and large-

SCIENCE, VOL. 236

present an example of each: for partitioning risk, the emergency suspension of major uses of the pesticide ethylene dibromide (EDB); and for establishing control levels, the regulation of radon from uranium mill tailings. .

Between 1977 and 1983 EPA had accumulated substantial evidence that EDB was a potent carcinogen in laboratory animals. EDB had been shown to be carcinogenic in two species (rats and mice), in both sexes, and through three routes of administration (gavage, inhalation, and skin painting) (16-18). EPA had also gathered evidence that dietary exposurc to EDB through h i t s and uncooked grain products was extensive and that when thcse exposures were modeled with the “one-hit model” which was then standard at EPA, quite high risks were estimated for both workers and the general public (16). Criticisms that this model was too simplitic led EPA to reestimate the risk from dietary exposurc in 1983 (17) with a new model that allowed calculation of differential risks for less than lifetime exposure for different age groups. This model was still “conservative,” in accordance with EPA policy, in that it assumed low-dose linearity, and represented a “plausible upper bound”; that is, the number of cases it predicted were unlikely to be higher and probably were lower. Even with this caveat, the results were disturbing. An animal carcinogen was widely distributed in the national food supply, and the potential risks fiom this, should nothing be done, were substantial. [Note that although EPA had not published its final guidelines on carcinogen risk assessment at this time, the EDB risk assessment was performed under a previous, and quite similar, set of assumptions (19).]

In 1983, evidence from ground water-monitoring studies showed that EDB was contaminating this source of drinking water. Since a major use of EDB-based pesticides was as a soil fumigant, this was serious news. In the fall of 1983 EPA issued an emergency suspension of that use. At the same time EPA began a p‘occss to cancel the use of EDB as a grain and fruit fumigant as well, a process that would have eliminated the use of EDB for thcse purposes by 1986 should health risks be found to warrant it. EPA did not immediately suspend these uses despite the carcinogenic potential bccausc EPA management did not believe enough was known at the timc about the risks from residues on food, the risks from substitute fiunigants, or the risks from leaving crops and foodstuffs unprotected. (Consideration of these factors, as well as the economic costs of

.prohibiting a pesticide usage, is mandated by the statute under which EPA must act in such cases.) It decided to await the results of studies then in progress.

Shortly thereafter, EPA leamed that food residues of EDB were higher and more widely distributed among grain and fruit products than previous EPA estimates had suggested. Also at about this time, the risk management situation changed markedly. EDB became a matter of intense public interest and discussion and led to demands for federal action and initiatives by state governments.

States began adopting “safety“ standards fbr EDB in food that, in the absence of information, were typically set around the level of detection. The adoption of differing standards in different areas threatened a substantial disruption of the national food distribution system. The stringency of these standards might have led to the destruction of a significant proportion of the national grain-based food supply with a public health benefit that, while uncertain, was probably small.

The challenge to EPA was to crafi a regulatory policy that would respond to the public demands for action without major economic and social dislocations, before it possessed certainty about whether the substitute fumigants were better or worse than EDB with regard to risk. After satisfying itself on the basis of the information available that substitutes were no worse than EDB, EPA immediately suspended almost all uses of EDB so that it would eventually be purged

288

scale destruction of foods, or conversely, that EDB should continue to be wed at least until evidence on risk from substitutes was better understood. They might have decided that the possible consequences of uncontrolled risks from tailing piles were not worth $500 million to avoid, or that a more protective standard should have been chosen. Such values cannot be argued except through the political pnxcss. What can be argued, and what we do argue here, is that the political process itself relies for its proper operation on communicating to the public the risk basis of the decision. Risk- based regulatory policy-making allows one to do this clearly and in an orderly fashion.

usst”. As might be expected, the Superfimd pro8nm is the source of most of the demand for the use of site- specific risk Issessments. potential sites must be characterized to determine eligibility for Superfund deanups and once on the priority list the extent and scope of the problem must be determined and remedies must be selected. This is so because actual and potential exposure of people and natural resources to pollutants from abandoned waste dumps depends on location; populations around sites, contaminants, and exposure pathways vary, and site characteristics affect the success of altemativc engineering intervention strategies.

Placement on the list is accomplished through use of the Hazard Ranking System, which is being revised under the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act to incorporate a more robust risk basis. The National Contingency Plan, which govems the Criteria for selection of remedies, includes a Public Health Evalua- tion to asscs~ the existing risk in the absence of any remedial action. Finally, assessment of estimated residual risk under different cleanup options is undertaken to meet the statutory requirements for cost-effmiveness, permanence, and “find balancing,” the latter r e f d n g to the balance of benefits from more protective solutions with the urgency of the need to devote resources to other sites (23).

The importance of these risk assessment tasks is matched only by their complexity. Although EPA has been improving the necessary risk’assessments, the agency has thus far been forced to rely mainly on highly conservative exposure scenarios and protective, technology-based practices in its cleanups. Thus site-specific risk assessments to guide the Supehnd program have been accepted in principle but remain to be fully implemented.

90

Sitr-rpcciJic

The Evaluation of the Use of Risk Assessment Priority-setting, regulatory design, and site-specific control deci-

sions could be made without a risk-based approach. If historical evidence is any guide, priorities would be set by individual programs, each one focused on a particular environmental medium or aspect of an environmental problem, for example, air pollution, water pollution, or pesticides. Priorities would be compared and assessed by such measures as “tons removed,” or by administrative achievements, such as “permits issued” and “construction or remedial actions completed.” Resources would be allocated among environmental problems on the basis of historical accident and political influences, and the level of control imposed would be determined by broader political forces that are generally untutored by explicit consideration of what the programs actually did for human health or the environment.

This method of setting priorities was adequate when only a small number of pollutants were of concem, most of which were characteristic of one particular medium, and, of course, substantial environmental progress has been made under it. But such a method provides no way of coping with the negative and even perverse effects that result from the transfer of pollutants between media

17 APRIL 1987

(24). For example, the removal of pollutants from waste water produces sludge that must either be disposed of on land, incinerated, or dumped at sea. None of these procedures are without risk to human health or the environment. When hundreds of toxic chemicals must be regulated, most of which travel freely between media, setting priorities on any other basis than the reduction of risk quickly descends into confusion. Furthermore, such an approach is ill-suited for dealing with new problems. Unless a systematic assessment of opportunities to reduce risk is imposed, the natural tendency is to continue existing reduction programs against existing targets, with ever diminishing r a m s , while virtually ignoring other, possibly larger, risks.

The altemative to a risk basis in designing regulations is to require the installation of a particular technology. Historicall)r the EPA programs that have followed this approach have sought to mandate technologies that remove the greatest possible amount of pollution without causing widespread economic hardship to individual firms. This is the so-called best available technology (BAT) approach. But the BAT approach is “best” only from the standpoint of removal from a single medium. Ordinarily BAT approaches make no serious attempt to deal with transfer of risk to other media. Also, a BAT approach implies universal application across all facilities, perhaps at substantial cost, whether they produce any dangerous pollution or not. Of course, in a relatively uncontrolled situation a BAT approach may be necessary. This was the case in 1972 when the Clean Water Act mandated primary treatment for all sewage that entered surface waters. The risk reduction potential and the net benefits were so substantial that formal risk assessment was unnecessary. But it does not follow from such experiences that environmental policy should be based on the continuous redefinition of what “best“ technology is so as to make uniform controls increasingly more stringent. Given the immense task of protecting the environment on a limited public and social budget and given the large number of important problems that receive little attention, the waste of resources inherent in any strict BAT approach would seem unwise.

For site-specific decisions the altematives to a risk-based approach are either universal application of BAT (with all its problems) or mandating controls sufficient to reduce pollutants to some “safe” level. This latter approach assumes that there is a level of exposure or threshold that is too low to cause any biological effect. Where this assumption cannot be justified, as may be the case with carcinogens, it cannot be used. The recourse in such cases, of which abandoned toxic waste sites are the most familiar example, is to use an absolute approach, such as destroying or removing the offending material to the level of detection or to background. This eliminates the risk in one location but may create a mass of toxic material that must be deposited somewhere else, where it will inevitably pose some risk to some other population.

The discussion thus far suggests that risk assessment, despite its limitations, has substantial utility in making decisions about the environment, especially when the problems with the alternatives are taken into account. Even that measured endorsement is controversial. One common criticism is that EPA’s risk assessments typically overestimate risk, lead to excessive control, and engender unjustified public concern. The basis of this criticism is that the models used and the science policy judgments built into the assessment procedures are inappropriately “conservative”; that is, they have an unwarranted and excessive health-protective bias that leads to controls where none are justified and to excessively stringent controls elsewhere. Such critics also fault EPA for taking action based on incomplete or faulty data or on inappropriate models. It should be noted that the courts have generally sustained the judgments of EPA on risk, provided care has been taken to consider the relevant evidence (2).

ARTICLES 289

The opposite conclusion is also common, that decisions informed by riqk assessments tend to be insufficiently piotectivc; in other words, what risk assessment shows is but the tip of the iceberg. Those critics claim that the scientific basis for risk assessment is not advanced enough for consideration of the synergistic effects of pollutants, all of the potential adverse health dfects, or more than a small fraction of the large numbcr of pollutants that might pose some risk. The risk-based approach is also faulted because it can slow the pace of control. The alternative usually suggested is to press control of all pollutants in all circumstances to the limits of technology and hope that when industry is pressed in this way it will respond with more effective technology.

In that these contradictory criticisms reflect technical problems, we may look forward to at least a partial solution through advances in modeling, in toxicology, and, most important, in the ability to gather, assess, manipulate, and communicate increasingly more complex bodies of information. The use of risk assessment, despite its shortcomings, to make important decisions represents the major incentive to address these issues and to increase the resources devoted to the task. EPA itself is investing heavily in risk assessment research and in the distribution of its databases to increase access to information about risk and exposure assessment methods and data.

But the objections to the expanded and more public use of risk . assessment also has a political, even a moral, dimension. Risk-based

approaches confront people with the fact that they are inevitably, as a consequence of their'niembcrship in an industrial society, exposed to risks. Public officials are understandably uncomfortable with bearing such news, and most people are not comfortable with receiving it. Recent studies suggest, however, that communicating risk has become important to policy-makers at the national level (2.55).

Confronting risk in this way also raises disturbing questions about what kind of society we want to have and about the distribution of risk among different areas and social sectors. Such questions are as vexing ethically and as politically sensitive as the more familiar ones about the distribution of income and opportunities among our people. Much of the heat generated by the risk assessment policies

7 1 described here derives from the association, perhaps barely sensed by most, between such policies and the profound issues that arise from our conflicting desires for 'prosperity, justice, equity, and environmental quality.

~ ~~

. . REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. W. D. Ruckclshaus, Scicnu 221, 1026 (1983). 2. D. L. Davis, CAumbinJ. Ent im. Law 10, l(1985). 3. W. D. Ruckclshaus, h u m Su. T c h l . 1,3 (1985). 4. Ruk Arrcmncnt in tbc F c h d Gorc"cnt: M a t q i y thc Pmcm (National Acadcmy

5. F r a m d j%r tbc &we: Risk Arrcmcnt and Rbk Man&" at EPA (US.

6. US. Environmcntal Protecuon A cy, "Guidclincs for carcinogen risk assess-

7. - "Guide ncs for mutagenicity risk wssmcnt," W., p. 34006. 8. - "Guidclincs for thc hulth WScSSmcnt of suspcct devclopmcntal toxicants,"

9. - "Guidclincs for thc health risk rsscsJmcnt of chemical mixriucS,': ibid., p.

of Scicnccs, Washin on, DC, 1983).

Environmental Pmcction Apcncy, Washingon, DC, 1984).

ments," Fcd. R c y 51,33992 (IG). ibid.,'~. 34028.

34014. 10. I "Cuidclina for cstimating cxposurcs," W., p. 34042. 11. C. F. Wilkinson, Connnmi Taxid. 1, 1 (1986). 12. P. Slovic, S c i m z 236, 280 (1987). 13. ChcmicaISlrlrrancc~DrrhqMtimr (U.S. Environmcntal Protection Agcncy, Washing.

ton, DC, 1981), vol. 2. 14. Rcpat of tbc Pbiladc@hia Cctyrqbic P y C ~ (Officc of Policy Analysis, US.

Enviromcntal Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 1986). 15. Un nubcd Rusinm: A Gunparafin As-t ofEnviwnmrntd P d l m (Officc of

Po&'Analysis, US. Environmental Protcction AgcnT Washington, DC. 1987). 16. Etk/lcnr Dtbrmnidc: PmiriOn Documrnt 213 (Officc o Puucidc Programs, US.

Environmcntal Pmtcction Agency, Washington, DC, 1980). '17. Et/@encDilnatidc (EDB): PmitimDocttmrnt4 (06ice o f Pcsticidc Programs, US.

Environmental Protcction Agency, Washington, DC, 1983). 18. Etlyktw Dilnatidc (EDB) Scicnrflic Suppa a.d D c & n Documcnt Gmm and

Grain Mllli Fum&& Uses (OUicc of Pcsticidc Programs, U.S. &i-cntal Pmnction ?&cy, Washington, DC, 1984).

19. US. Envimnmcntal Protection Agency, "Intcrim pmcdurcs and guidclincs for hcalth risk and economic impact assessment of suspcctcd carcinogens," Frd. Rc& 41,21402 (1976). .

20. .__.. "Innnt to canccl rcgistrations o f pcsticidc products containing ethylcnc dibromidc," W. 48, 46234 (1983).

21. EDB, a G u c Sway in rhc Camnunicuriun o Hcdtb Ruk (officc of Policy Analysis, U.S. Environmcntal Protection

22. US. Environmcntal Protenion*;%. "Environmcntal standards for uranium and thorium mill tailings at licensed commcrcial p'ocessing sitcs; final rulc," Fcd. Regin. 48,45926 (1983).

23. C. Zamuda, Chrm. Wmc Lit' atimRcp. 11,6 (1986). 24. Statc oftbe En&"t: An ,&cs-t at M i d - D c d (Conscrvrtion Foundation,

Washington, DC, 1984). 25. V. CovcUo, D. von Wintcrfcldt, P. Slovic, "Risk communication: An wxSSmcnt of

the litenNrc on communicating information about hcalth, safxy and cnvironmcn- tal risks" (National Scicncc Foundation, Washington, DC, 1986).

dashington, DC, 1985).

t . -1

ENZWPLAN/PUPA 153 Environmental Management and Policy

Economic Perspectives on Environmental Management and Policy

From the perspective of many economists, the primary goal of environmental policy and management (and of government policy more generally) should be economic eBciency: that is, the overall allocation of society's material resources to their "best" uses, as defined by people's willingness to pay for them. From an economic point of view this is part of a broad normative theory of the good society, which achieves the least wastehl allocation of resources and best satisfies people's freely chosen preferences. (NOTE that societal economic efficiency is not the same as engineering efficiency: it is a broader concept of what is best for society as a whole, not just for a particular production process).

To achieve this goal of economically efficient environmental policy, then--or even to achieve effective environmental policies, leaving aside economists' theoretical ideals of efficiency--where should we look for solutions? In particular, should we look primarily to markets and economic behavior, to governments and their political and administrative behavior, or to some other form of organized human behavior (voluntary efforts? education? others?)? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each?

1. What is "economic efficiency," and why do economists and others advocate it as a general goal for society and public policy? Is it an appropriate goal for this

. purpose, and for environmental policy in particular? What other goals does it overlook or compete with?

2. Why are *'free markets" considered desirable? Why shouldn't we privatize many current government environmental services: solid waste management? water supply and wastewater treatment? Parks management (local; national)? Forest and land resource management?

environmental problems best interpreted as "market failures," as deviations from "efficiency?" Are markets today reasonable indicatbrs of "efficiency?"

4. How can market-oriented policy instruments (for instance, economic incentives, or transferrable pollution rights, or privatization of waste management services) be useful in solving environmental problems, whether or not you agree with "economic efficiency" as a goal?

3. What do markets not do well to protect environmental conditions? Are

5 . What are the problems or failures that may occur in government actions themselves? How should one deal with these considerations in proposing government actions A,J /,LA I , ' to solve environmental problems? - v /'

( { I , ?

6. Can you think of forms of organized behavior other than markets and governments through which solutions might be sought? (education? persuasion? voluntary compliance? group pressure? others?) Can other cultures offer insights not now obvious in the U.S.? What strengths and weaknesses come with each of these other approaches?

'1

I

I1 WE ACYNOWLEDCE the power of economic iiicclttl\.es to foster steadily improving efficiency, and we employ it to bring us whitewall tires, cosmetics, and television sets. But for sollie- thing rally important like education, we achew ircentives. We would laugh if someone suggested that the best wag to reduce labor input per unit of production \\*as to sct up a gov- eminent agency to specify labor input in detail for each industry. But that is precisely how we go about tryiiig to reduce environmental damage and industrial accidents.

Quite apart from the maxiniizing characteristics elaborated in formal economic theory, the buyer-seller rela tionsliips of the marketplace have substantial advantages as a foriii of social organization.

In the first place, relationships iii the market arc a forni of unanimous-consent arrangement. When dealing with each other in a buy-sell transaction, individuals mn act voluntarily on the basis of mutual advantage. Organizing large-scale social activity through the alternative open to a free society-denio- cratic majoritarian politics-necessarily implies some niiiiority who disapprove of each particular decisi0n.l Evcrything else

I . One might argue in the contractarian tradition tlrat tlicre ciii~ e w t at the "constitutional" kvel a virtually unaniluous agreenwnt to adopt a specilk u t of rula and constraints for political decisionmaking. In agree ing to. the bng-tmn arrangement each person expctr .tIw cumulative total of all decisions to benefit him. To provide for decision rules in cam in which buyrll anangements cannot work wcll. such 3 unaiiiiaous- consent interpretation of political dccisiolmaking niay liave merit. But that doa not vitiate the point that, everything else being equal, iinrtni. mow consent in each particular decision is superior to iinaniniuus coilsent only at the "constitutional" kvcl. Moreover, as Arrow has s11ow11. it i, imposibk to devise a set of political decision riikr that arc 1mth non- dictatorially imposed and bgically cunslsicclt. Kclmeth J . Arrow, socid Choior and Incb'vidd Vduea ( ad 4.. \Vi ley. I 963 ) .

16

'7 being equal, unanimousconsent arrangements are much more attractive politically than any alternative. Obviously, everything else is not always equal. If the income distribution is grossly unfair, the coiicept of voluntary decisions and unani- iiious consent is a charade; necessity is no less coercive for. being economic instead of political. Quite apart from income distribution, some kinds of decisions cannot be efficiently carried out under individual buy-sell arrangements-whence the . body of economic analysis dwling with market failure. And finally, market transactions cannot take place at all without a prior stipulation by political illems of property rights and defiiiitions, which in turn strongly iiifluences the efficiency and the distribution of gains froiii tradc. But my point is not that the unfettered market is always superior, but rather that its buy-sell arrangements have a great social advantage. In designing techniques for collective intervention, the gains from p re sewing some or all of those arrangements should be given significant weight. Occasioris to do so collie up all the time: If government is to assist higher education, should it aid individual students who can then "buy" education where they choose or should it directly subsidize culleges and universities? Should federal manpower-training subsidies take the form, as they do now, of grants to institutions or of vouchers to individuals, a la the GI Bill of Rights? Sliould the federal government detail safety regulations for each industrial workplace or should it put a stiff price on industrial accidents (for example, via an injury-rate tax) and let individual firins decide how to respond in order to reduce their tax bills? 'Ib urge that the principle of voluiitary decisions should be given weight is not to make it the sole criterion. Rut precisely bemuse the legitimate occasions for social intervention will increase as time goes on, preserving and expanding the role of choice take on added importance. 6

Market-like arrangements not only minimize the need for rarcion as a meaiis of organizing society; they also reduce the need for compassion, patriotisin, brotherly iove, and cultural

T l lE PUBLIC USE OF PRIVATL INTEREST

Q a P P f f

18 TME PUBLIC USE

solidarity as motivating forces behind social improvement. So- cieties seeking to achuve a high standard of jiving have three mapt options in organizing individual citizhs toward that

, &nd: coercion (by democratic majority rule or duthoritarian dic- I.%, 1-h; ’hte), self-interest incentivg, and what we aight loosely call

the “emotional” forces listed above. Every society relies on L ~ ~ ~ ~ < . - d 6 & - & m b i n a t i o n of the three, but in the matter of emphasis

\ ) # - - p7

- V‘Y’ there are vast differences. Maoist China is unique in placing its chips heavily on cultural solidarity and an encompassing egalitarianism. It i s far too early to tell whether this approach will s u d , and what its costs will be. Far less than China, but far more than the West, Japan relies on cultural solidarity as a principle of social organimtion. In any event, cultural solidarity as a central organizing theme is hardly relevant for Western nations, especially the United States with its heterogeneous ethnic population. And, however vital they may be to a civilized society, compassion, brotherly love, and patriotism are in too short supply to serve as substitutes. Harnessing tlie “base“ motive of material self-interest to promote the common good is perhaps the most important social invention mankind has yet achieved. Turning silk into a silk purse is no great trick, but turning a sow’s car into a silk purse does indeed partake of the miraculous. In the abstract we accept that view, but sometimes in discussing the specifics of social intervention we are loath to apply it. If I want industry to cut down ompollution, indignant tirades about social responsibility can’t hold a andle to schemes that reduce the profits of firms who pollute. If I want driven to emnomi& on gasoline usage, advertising appeals to patriotism, warnings about the energy crisis, and “don’t be fuelish” slogans are no match for higher prices at the gas pumps. In most cases the prerequisite for social gains is the identifiation, not of villains and heroes but of the defects in the incentive system that drive ordinary decent citizens into doing things conhary to the common good. There is indeed a rdc for “praching” as a means of creating a political and cul- tun1 cbmrtc UI which CO(UCNUS a n be reached on socul inter-

4” -

‘9 vention. Cleaning up the envitonnleiit will k achieved only as environmental quality taka a higher place in the value system of most citizens. But when it conics to the specifics of getting tlie job done, preaching, indignation, a d identiliation of villains get in the way of results.

A second advantage of the market as an organizing principle for social activity is that it reduces tlie need for hard-to-get information. Because we are payiiig out large sums to improve teacher-pupil ratios, enrich curricula, and build facilities, we want to know the relation between these factors on the one hand and educational results on the other-that is, to determine a production function for education. Consequently, we think it a major problem that educational research has failed to mine up with any evidence that convincingly tells us what will make Johnny read ktter. ‘Ihere are a number of reasons for this failure, but chief among tliein is our inability to define and nieasure either the inputs or results of education satis- factorily. Why don’.t wc also worry about our inability to find a production function for the output of the recreation industry? One reason is that its inputs atid outputs are as hard to iiieasure as those in education. What, for example, constitutes a satisfactory “recreational experience”? But the difficulty in answering is beside the point; in fact, we do not even ask the question, except perhaps in making decisions about public parks. The reason lies in the fact that most recreation is provided by the private market. Beciltlse individuals can choose freely, the prices that niillions of them are willing to pay reflect the values they put up011 various forms of recreation. More- over, as far as the efficient provision of recreation for society as a whole is concerned, even individual sellers of recreational opportunities do not, in any foriiial sense, need to knowaheir own production functions. Those who provide what the public is willing to pay for at costs that permit a reasonable profit survive; the others do not. T o the extent that individual sellers do not know tlic precise shapes of demind and cost curves, the Darwinian selection process may waste some resources in the

OF PRIVATE INTEREST

2 0 T Y E P U B L I C USE

form of investments in failed ventures.1 B3t collipared to altcmrfive forms of social organization the market process is an efficient information promsor through fqcdback aieclia. nisnis that do not depend on explicit knjwledgc of the unknowable.

I n a siaiilar vein, an efficient regulatory sclrerne to coiitrol the discharge of pollutioli into the nation’s waterways requires that regulatory authorities know the production function, the range of technologies for pollution control, arid the demand curves of every major polluter. The alteriiative approach of making pollution expensive to create, by levying a charge on each unit of effluent discharged, sets in motion the infornia- tion-procasing and feedback mechanisni of the market. 111

order to maximize profits, or at a niininium to avoid ultimate failure, individual polluting firins would have to grope toward il least-cost approach to pollution control. I h e knowledge required of the pollutioncontrol authorities, while still formidable, is sharply lessened under the effluent-charge ;ipprmch.

The more complicated and exteiisive the social interwition, and the more it seeks to alter individual behavior, the more difficult it becomes to accumulate the necessary inforniatioii at a central level. It is relatively easy to set up a system of payroll records from which to determine social security benefits. Doing something about the delivery structure of medical care or controlling industrial accidents imposes informational requirements of a much higher order. Obviously, one does not rush out, on the basis of informational emnoniies alone, and recommend that education be turned over to the private market and sold like toothpaste, or that simple effluent charges displace all pollution-control regulations. But, where feasible, building some freedom of choice into social programs does

.

a. Where very large forward comniitmentr are requircd. aild in the case of ahaustibk natural resources, the fact that aterisive futures and inruralice markets annot be established may lead to very large inefficicn- c k . Kenneth I. Arrow, “Limited Knowledge and Ecnnomic Analysis,” Anuriwn Economic M e w , vol. 64 (March 1974). pp. 1-10.

OF P R I V A T E INTEREST a i

offer advantages, either in gencratiiig explicit information for .policyiiiakers about the desirability of alternative outcomes or iii bypassing the w d for certaiii types of information altogether.

A third advintage of tlie itiarkct as a iiians of social organization is its “devil take tlie Iiindiiiost” approach to questions of individual cquity. At first blush this is an outrageous statement, worthy of the coldest heart aiiiotig last century’s Bentha- initrs. And, obviously, 1 liave stated tlie point in a way dc- signed more to catch the eye tlran to be precise.

‘1’0 elaborate, in.aiiy except a coiiipletely stagnant societ

standpoint of static efficiency the iiiorc coiiipletely and rapidly the econoniy shifts production to iiicct changes in consuiiicr tastes. production teclinologia, rcsourct! availability, or loa- tioiial advantages, tlie greater tlie efficiency. From a dynamic standpoint the greater tlie advances iii technology and the faster they are adopted, the greater the efficiency. While these changes on balaiice generatc gains for society in the forlu of liiglier living standards, aliiiost every one of thciii deprives sonic firms and individuals of iiicoiiic, oftes tcinporarily and fur only a few, but sonietiiiicu pcrnianeiitly and for large numbers. I l i e introduction of a new tecliiiology in a firm may displace a Iiaadful of skilled workcrs who, after a period of iineniplovment, find equivalent jobs elsewhere. Or a shoe factory in’ a one-plant community may close, permanently ~ o w ~ r - ing the incoine of middle-aged skilled workers, local merchants, and property owners. Both of these types of incoine losses niav occur in an economy running at full eniployment; both are even greater in a reccssion.y IJiidcr tlie social arraiigeiiients of

JS-GIL an efficieiit us$ of resources iiieaiis constant cliange. / roin the

3 . I’he emphasis in this wctioii nn knxs ilia) scc’iii to contradict tlie argumeiit advanced earlier that transaction\ in a markct system are P form uf unanimous-consent arrangeineat iii wliirh each tranrrction involves grins for huth parties. But the two propsitions are consistent. The origi. nal employment “contract” ktween J tirni aiid a worker. voluntarily riiternl into, did not bind the Cnii to krtp the workcr on the payroll forever. nor did the worker indenture Iiiinxlf forever. Obviously. each woiild

Y

22 ?HE P U B L I C USE

the private market, those wlio n u y suffer losses.are not usually able to stand in the way of change. As a consequence efliciency- creating changes are not seriotisly iiiipcded.' 'I'lierc arc three ways in which society can deal with tliesc iiicoiiie losses: ( I )

prevent the particular changes from taking place, thereby mooting the question; ( 1 ) niake it up to tlic losers either with monetary payments (compensation).. or with oAsettiiig changes that improve their welfare (logrolling); ( 3 ) rather than compensate for each change, use tlie tax-aiid-transfer system to ensure that the cuiiiiilative effect of a11 the cliaagcs is an income distribution that meets society's standards of fairness and equity.

Each one of these ways of dealing with losscs has its own advantages and disadvantages. I shall have to m i l e back to this set of issues several times, since the problciii of losses critically influences collective decisions about efficiency. At this point, however, I want to stress oiie aspect of the loss problem. The standards and values that our society einploys when dealing with losses associated with market efficiency are

have preferred an arrangement under which only he could termiiiate the employment. But under all but the most extraordinary rircunistanws, a mutually advantageow employment contract will have a finite term. Pre. c k l y because it is a changing world, mutually advantageous contracts cannot be drawn to prevent losses (although they can sometimes be drawn to share lorus--whencc insurance).

4. 'Ibis is ckarly an overstatement. Through various iioiicuinyrtiti\c anangmmits firms can and do sometimes slow the adoption of innovations that might cause them losses. Neverthekss. taken as a whok, the market docr continually make efficiencyaeatirg moves dapite the con. rrqucnt i m m c l o s s for some individuals atid h i s .

5. An efficient move is, by definition. oiic iii which gains cxrred losses. Hena. in principk, the paylnent of full coinpiisatioii for losses could ensure that at kart some were better off aiid iioiIe worse off after the move. There is a large literature qualifying and elaborating this prow- sition. See Nicholas Kakior, "Welfare Propositions of I.:runoniics and lntcrpuronal Comparisons of Utility," Economic jourtwl. vol. (1 (Srp tcmber 1939). pp. 549-5a; J. R. Hicks, "The Foundations of tVrlfare Economia," ibid., pp. 696711; T. de Scitovrzky. "A Note on Welfare Propositions in Economics," Review of Eco~ioitiic Sfirdiiur. vol. 9 ( 1941- 194a). pp. 77-88; Frank I . Michelman. "Property. Utility, a d Fairness: Comments on the Ethical Foundations of 'Just Conipiiwtion' Law." Horwrd Law R m r w , vol. 80 (April 1967), pp. I 165-ra58.

.

2 3 ' OF P R I V A T E I N T E R E S T

substantially different froiii those it iiws when faced with the possibility of losses tlirougli goveriiiiiciit actioiis. I n particular, we arc cliary in dealing with losses 11) prcvcntiiig efficiency- creating iiiovcs in thc iirirkctplacc (iiictliwl i ) but very prone to use this technique hi coiiiicctioii with collective actioiis.

Over tlie yars tlie Aiiicricdli politicd systeiii has developed a set of formal and iiiforiiul rules aboiit losses associated with political decisions. First, we teiid to subject political dccisions to tlie rule, "Do no direct liarin." \\'e <mi let liarins occur as tlie second- and third-ordcr cunscquciices of political action or tlirougli sheer inaction, but \ve caiinot Lw: seen to cause liarin to anyone as the direct consequelice of collective actions. The rule is far from absolute, and exceptions abound. But it docs strongly influence policy. Its specific application is handled, in il limited spliere of cises, by inoiictary compensations-for crainple. iii rondeiiiniiig private property for a Iiigliway. Uu- cinployiient compensation is anotlier exaiiiple of payments made to offset tlie direct or indirect liarins governnient may inflict.' Hut usually the prcucntioii of loss is soiight by desigii- iiig collective action to avoid it iii tlic first place.

'!lie politicid systeni enforces tlie "do no direct liarin" rule by very loose arrangeniciits. iii diicli the effective vote of a pirticular group on P particiilar issue is weighted accortliiig to the potential liarin that a dccisioii iiiiglit inflict on it. Fanners Iiave inucli greater weight OH the I louse and Senate Agricul- turc Coiiiinittccs than oil tlic I4:duc;ltion and Labor Coniinit- tees. tlic voice of educators is assiqiictl far greater importance on tlic I<tluc;ltioii awl Lahor Coiiiiiiittws tliaii on the Acro- iiirutic-il aiid Space Scieiims Coiiiiiiittce. Ihcn after tlie easing of tlie clotiire rules in the Senate, the legislative process is structured to incrc;ise tlic difficulty of IIassing legislation in proimtioii to tlie size of tlw liariii it iiiay do to 3 particular group. As a consequeiirc, concciitr;itctl hrge liarnis to a small groitp arc assigned iiiorc uciglit io tlic benefit-mst calculus of

6. See htichclniaii, "l'ropcrty. Utility. mid I-'Jirncii." for a stateiiieiit and critique of the legal status of such coiiipensatiun ruks.

.

'

THE P U B L I C USE 24

politics than are small llarms to large groupsl: kgishtion protn- ising small benefits to very large iiuiubers ii cxceetlingly difficult to enact if it results in large h a m s to wry s i i i ~ l l nunihcrs.

1’0 a point, tliese implicit rules of tlie g a m auke sense. Precisely becaw goveranient lias ccwrcive power, uiiweiglited inajoribnan voting could lead to both gross inefficicncies and gross inequities.’ And another way to state the principle of diminishing marginal utility is to all it the principle of in- crasing marginal harm: large costs to a few are inore to be avoided than small costs to many. On tlie other Iiaiid, because the direct harm is minimized, not by minpeiisation arrangements or b’y general income-redistribution techniques but by placing limitations on the nature of the collective action, the overall efficiency of collective action is sharply reduced. Once put into effect, programs can seldom be eliminated. The regulation of the transportation industry has spawned a set of arrangements whereby the government protects the turf of railroads from invasion by trucking firms and vice versa and ensures that existing trucking firins suffer little competition froin new entrants or from contract carriers.”

Dealing with the prohleni of losses, which aii emphasis on efficiency necessarily raises, is one of the stickiest social issues. There is absolutely nothing iii either ecoiioiiiic or political theory to argue that efficiency coiisideratioiis sliould always take precedence. And sometimes there is no way to avoid un-

7. A incasuie whose overall social benefits were lower than its rosts could command paoagc: 50 bng as i t wcrr constriictcd to p r u d e niorr benefits than costs to a majority curlition. !kr f m c s h l . Biichaliaii. “Simpk Majority Voting, Came l’lieory, and Remurcc Use.” GriuJict~~ lwnd of ~conomb and PdilIcaf science. vol. 2 7 (Augubt r961), pp.

8. In the process incredibly absurd prolii1)itions against Iwtciitially efficient use of r w k s haw kii drvrlopcul. In iiiany ~JSLT truck routes are required to be circuitoils, empty backhauls are imposed, and’ iniiovativr costcutting arrangements between shipper a i d cmicr are forhiddcn. Such absurdities are often deiiounmd as the result of the regutatem capturing the mgulators. In fact. they rxeinplify the conscquencu of the “do no direct harm” ruk carrirul to its full coiirlusion (after ciglitymiiie years of application).

337-48.

OF Y U I V A l B INTEREST 25

coiiscioinbly large losses to soiiie groiiy exwpt by avoiding or at least nidcrating changes otlierwise d i e d for by efficiency, cmsidcmtions. Neverthclcr;s, in dcsigiriirg instrunrents for collective intervention t lut will avoid loss, we PIJCC far too much stress on csdiewing efficient solutioits, a i d far too little on cuiiilxiisation a id geiicral iiicoiiie-redistributioii measure. Over tiine, tlie cuinuhtive conseclueiicts are likely to be a iiiucli siiialler social pie for everyoiic. I low we might improve tlic tradeotf between efficieiicy aiid income preservation in the proms of social interventioii will be oiie of the topics of the C i i d chapter.

‘l’lie fiiial virtue of market-like arraiigeiiicnts that I wish to s t r m is their potential ability to direct iiriiovation into socially desirable clirectioiis. Wliile tlic formal ecunoiiric theory of the iiiarket emphasizes its static efFicieiicy cliaracteristics-its abil- i ty to get the inost out of existiiig resources and technology- what is far more important is its apparent capacity to stimulate and take advaiitige of advancing tecliiiology. Living standards i n iiioderii Western couiitries are, by oiders of magnitude, superior to tliose of tlie early seveiitceiitli ceiitury. llad tlie triuiiipli of tlie iiiarket iiicaiit oii ly a i i w e efficient use of tlie tecliiiologics and resources tlicii avail~ble, the gains in li\ iiig standards would have been miiiusculc b y coinparison. What made the difference was tlic stiiiiulatioii and harnessing of iiew tecliiiologies and resources. (“Nature” put alumiiiuni, petrolcuin, aiid uraiiiuiti i i i tlic wrtli’s mist; but it took new tecliiiology to nuke thein resources. )

It is not siiiiply that niarket iiiceiiti\cs and the price system stiiiiuhtc iiew teclinologia in gener;il, but that they tend to tlircrt irweiition toward coiiscrt iiig tlrosc resources that arc sc.irce. Agricultural tcclinology for graiii prculuction in the United States developed iii the directioii o f using niucli land (wliicli was abundant) and littlc labor (ivliicli was s a r ~ ) . It tlcvelopcctl differently in Ihrope aiitl japan, wliere land is far less pleiitifiil relative to labor. hlorc Kcircr;illy, iiiost wononiic ;inalyses of the natiire of invciitioiis wggest tliat they tended

26 THE P U B L I C USE

to occur in very rough coiiforsiity with ecoiioitiic iiecds and scarcities as signaled by prices and prolitability." 'Ibc corollary to these propositions is that wlicre prices give the wrong signal-that is, do not reflect true ecoiioiiiic scarcity-technology responds (or fails to respond) accordingly. Pollution is a classic case. For hundreds of years environmental quality wdS

treated as a free resource. The riiarket responded with mar- velous efficiency to that signal atid proceeded to develop technology that made maximum use of tlie air atid water'as "free" sinks for waste products, and iieglected the development of technologies that reduced pollutioii per unit of output. Auto- mobile engines were desigiied for speed, acceleration, and low production costs to the accoiilpanimeiit of siiiog-creating etnissioiis. Steel mills, cokiiig plants, and paper inills were built to ecorroiiiize on labor aiid other costs, wliilc asiiig. a i d foul- ing, incredible volumes of air and water. Another resource- labor-offers a sharp contrast: it is expensivc, and business firms iriust pay for it, at ever-increasing real wages; as ;I consequence, over the last century, the atiiouiit of labor per unit of output has been halved every thir ty years.

From a long-range standpoint, the effectivcness of social intervention in a nuniber of important ireas depoids critically on heeding this Icsson. Much of the econotiiic literature on pollution control, for exaitiple, stresses the role of ccoiiotnic incentives to achieve static efficiency in control measures- that is, the use of existing teclinologv in a way that reaches environmental goals at l a s t cost. In the long riiii. however, the future of society is goiiig to liiiige oii the discovery and adoption of ever-iinproving teclinologies to retlucc thc environmental consequences of expanding production. I f , for c x aniple, we assume that per capita living staricl;irds in the United States improve from iiow oii a t only otic-half the rate of the past century, tkc gross iiatioiial product ;I Imndred years

9. Jacob Schmootkr. Invention utid I~:C.OI~OIII~~ Crowfli I I I"W university Pres, 1966); Vernon \\I. h t t m t , "Rtrrarch oii Ilie icoiioin- ics of 'I'echnologicrl Chaiiyc iii Ainericaii Ayririiiture." /oirriiul 01 Form

'Econonicr, vol. 4 1 (November i t @ ) , pp. 735-54.

OF PRIVATE INTEREST 17 froni now will still Itave riscii more than tlrrecfold. Median faiiiily inmine, now about $14,000, will q u a l a b u t $55,000. Oiily if thc amount of pollutioii per uiiit of output is cut by two-thirds can we niaintaiti citrrctit citvironirieatal perfor- inane, let alone improve i t e v e n on the assumption that the rate of economic growth is Iialved. 'Ilrcrc is siniply no way such reductioiis cdii be achicvetl uiiless the dircctioit of technological cliange is shifted to ttiiiiiiriizc pollution. I t is not a qua- tioir of one or two dratiiatic breaktlirouglis any inure tliati it was in the steady Iiistoricil rcductioii of unit libor require- nicnts. 'l'lie probleiii of eitviroriiiiciitcrl quality pcririatcs nrost of tlic production and coiisuiiiptioti drlxcts of the cconotny. I lenn: the discovery aiitl adoption of pollution-reducing teclitiology will have to be equally pervasive. Uiilike the space program or the hlaiiliattatr project, tlicse arc not tasks that cciitral direction can accoiiiplisli WCII. Iiisteid, the institutions and iiicentives of society have to be iiiodified for a steady long- ruii effort. Reducing pollution Iias to becoinc a paying propo- sitioti rather that1 just aiiotlier h t t l c qaiiist the regulators."'

Congcstion in central citics, clreiiiicil tlimts to health, sliarply rising medial costs, and tlrc pressure of economic growth 011 scarce natural resources are other areas in which society already lias intcrvcned and in which tlrc avoidance of long-term problenis depends cslwcially uti tlic response of teclinology to social needs. 'Ilie poiiit is not that the unlet- tered market can deal with tliesc probletns. Indeed, the prob- leiiis arise precisely kcaiise tlic tn;irkct as it is now structured doc3 not work well. But the Iiistorically tlctiioiistratetl powcr o f iiiarkct-like ineiitives to infliiciicv tlic pice and clircctioii of teclitioltigical change warr;iiits cvcry cflort to instill such in- witiws in our progrants o f social iiitcrventiotr.

111

ALTHOUGH market-like arrangements have strategic advaa- tages for organizing a broad range of human activities, that range is not all-encompassing. lhere is virtually unaniinous agrement that basic human and politicd rights should m t be bought and sold, and that rehtioasliips within the family should not be govemed by the calculus of dollars. Siniilarly, sonic aspects of education and, more recently, of health care have been partly insulated from the nurket. We exclude many areas from the market not because it is inefficient, but because of fundamental mnsiclcrdions of liberty and human digiiity. Arthur Okun covered this ground in his Codkin Lectures two yegs ago and I do not lotelid to pursue the point, except when it uiiavoidably intrudes.

Within the sphere of activities not excluded from the mi- ket by considerations of liberty and dignity, there remain many situations in which private enterprise operatiiig in a free niar- Let as we now know it does not produce efficient results. Where the deviations are serious, a pr im facie case arises for collective intervention on grounds of efficiency alone. I’ara- doxically, most of these situations occur where private eater- prise itself does not niake a proper mrket for some important output or input.

Where the market process fails, too iiiucli or too little of some output will be produced. We gct too little enviroaiiient;il quality, or too nuiiy industrial accidents, or too iiiucli traffic congestion. Society caii go about dcJlirig with iii.irLct fJilurc in two quite different ways I t W I I t i t t o isolJtc tllr c.iiiscs of OK failure a id ratore. as t i e d ) JS pussihlc, JII eficlclrt iii.irkct protcfi O r i t ran put i w t t c i \ toiiiplctrl) IIIIO ~O\CI I I I I IC . I I~J~

2H

i ti r .

u 1

THE PUBLIC USE OF PRIVATE INTEREST ’9

Irinds, supplant the market, and directly determine the out- ‘puts it wants. In other words, social intervention a n be pracess-oriented, seeking to correct the faulty process, or outputaiented, seeking to bypass tlie prooms and determine outputs directly by regulation or other device.

Neither approach is universally valid. In some circumstances tlie obstacles to creating a working market process are insuperable. But in many cases, corrective action to create em- cieiit markets is possible. Regardless of the circumstances, Iiowevcr, social intervention has aliiiost always been output- oriented, giving short shrift to the process-oriented alternative. And this has proven a costly bias. It has, with no offsetting gain, forfeited the strategic advantages of market-like arrangements. It has led to ineffective and inefficient solutions to important social problems. It has taxed, well beyond its limit, the ability of government to make miiiplex output decisions. And it has stretched thin tlie delicate fabric of political mnsensus by unnecessarily widening the scope of activities it must cover.

Documenting this thesis is the task of this chapter. It starts with a brief explanation of tlie generic causes of market failure -the circumstances under which unaided private markets are unlikely to beefficient. It then takes up specific cases of market failure, examining tlie output-oriented techniques that social intervention now employs, and cotitristing them with alternatives that seek to modify and correct the root muses of market failure rather than replace tlie niarket process.

T H E CAUSES OF MARKET FAILURE

Any consideration of the causes of niarket failure’must start with tlie fact that there exists no such animal as a “natural” laissez-faire system sprung solely troiii private arrangements. I cannot buy and you a n i i o t sell until both of us know what is iniiie aiid what is yours. Before trade can occur. tlicre must be a n underlying social agreeiiient to define, and enforce, property rights. The agreement nuy be siiiiply to respect some cus-

1

32 THq P U B L I C USE

Wliere side effects are coiifined to tlic parties to a trans- actioii, proper specification of the laws governing private property can sonietiiiis ensure that they are properly rcflectcd iii the private accounting of costs and beiiefits. Under tliese circumstances, establishing sonie continuing iiicclwiiisiii of social interveiitioir is unnecessary. liidividual buy-;lnd-sell arrangements can efficiently reflect social va lu i~ . l l re iiitroduction of workmen's compensation laws, for example, shifted the prima facie liability for work-related injuries to eiiiployers-that is, the injured worker did not have to prove negligence iii court in order to collect daiiiages. The intent of the shift was to make it more probable that eniployers would face the true social costs of their choices about how to orgaiiix production, and thus, for the sake of increasing their own profits, act to reduce such costs.'

In many cases, however, the very nature of tlic situition is such that merely ridefining property riglits will iiot resolve the problem; markets can be organized by purely private efforts only at great cost, if at all. This is soinetinies true even when the side effects are confined to tlie parties iiiakiiig a transaction, as in the case of work-related injuries. It is aliiiost universally true when many other parties are involved.

There are essentially four sets of factors wliose existence leads to market failure and also limits tlie range of corrective action available to society: high traiisaction costs; large uncertainty; high informatioii costs; atid finally, what economists call the "free rider'' probleiii. They are often present in combiiia tion.

Transaction Costs

Markets are iiot costless. 'Ilierc are expciiscs of iiiriney, time, and effort in setting and collecting prim. Soiiietiriiis

4. This is a highly truncated stitcillrlit of a co~n~~licrtrd ISWC The problem of ocrupatiunal safeiy and liealtli IS d r ~ ~ i w x l 111 grertcr dctrrl I X l O W .

Li 1 ti

33 trmsartion costs are virtually iiifiiiitc: there is no conceivable way that a iilarket cait be forttied to dm1 with side effects. Sonwtiiiies transaction costs, wliilc iiot infinite, exceed the beliefits that a market cuuld otlicrwisc confcr, and so it doesn't pay to set OIK up. Very often tlie scape and nature of the transaction costs strongly h i i t tlie raiigc of effective social intcr- ventioii, and fore society to organize markets in less than an idol1 way.

Traffic congestion provides a g o d example of all of these situations. The decisions of iiidividual drivers to commute through crowded downtown streets create costly side effects; cilcli dccisioii to drive iiiiposcs custs iii delay on other drivers. Could the h w be cliangetl to create property riglits iii tlie side cHects? Could I be forced to buy "riglits" to drive frolii other drivers on whoni my dccisioiis would iiiipose delay? Obviously iiot. 'llicre is no coiiccivable way iii which tlic tees of thou- ~i i ids of drivers could calculate tlic iiiyriad bids and offers, transfer net balances of paymetits, and monitor and enforce agreements. Could local govcriiiiicnts establish a quasi-market -set up a scliidule of congestion tolls and charge cach driver accordiiig to the time of day and the degree of congestion ;;long the particular streets lie trawls? While ingenious sclieiiies have been suggested,5 iiivohing radar and computer- izid billing, the costs of setting up such quasi-markets seem to rule them out. What about stiH piirkiiig fees downtown, or tlie sale by governmerit of iiioiitlily downtown auto permits? 'Iliose who value their daily auto t r ip highly would be willing to pay, others would use iiiass traiisit. and congestion could be rcduccd for both groups. 'llic t rwwtion costs of sucli a sclicnic would be iiiuch lower, but tlie prices charged would

OF P R I V A T E I N T E R E S I

THq PUBLIC USE 34. lose wiiie of their relatioiisliip to tlic particuhf circumstaiim causing congestion. hly contribution to coiigestioii varies ac- curding to wlicii I drive aiid aloiig dra t streets, but the parkiiig fce or coniiiiutiiig perinit cliirges iiic a prim tliat is oiily the rouglicst approxiiiiatioii to tliat coiitributioii. Iiciia, the resulting sclieiiie will iiot be ideally efficiciit. hlevertlielcrs, it m y lead to a more efficient result tliaii the two polar oppo- sites-doing iiotliiiig, or forbidding tlie use of certain ~IICJS to private automobiles.

A prograiii receiitly iiiipleiiiciited iii Siiigaporc Iris bceii very successful in reducing traffic. Uirdcr that prograiii, iiiotorists in cars carryiiig fewer tlran four people iiiust buy licenses to enter the mitral business district duriiig the iiiorii- ing rush hour. Supplenieiitiilg this scliriiic is a systciii of high inner-city parkiiig rates, expanded peripheral parkiirg facilities, aiid iniproved inass transportatioii. Initial results iiidiwte that congestion iii the business district has beeii reduced by 40 percent as a result of this ianovatioii.‘

Dealing with environineiital daiirigcs is beset with probleins of transaction costs. For example, a siiiiple rcdcfiiritioii of property laws obviously caiinot create a irnrket in salable rights to emit auto exhausts. Ideally, an eficieiit quasi-niarket iniglit be created if society levied a fee (that is, charged a price) on driving scaled to match the exhaust daiiiagcs generated thereby. But the damages caused by auto exhausts vary with the type of automobile, the nature of the driving, tlie regioii of tlie country, and atmospheric coaditioiis. ‘1’0 calculate and collect such a sophisticated set of fees would be treliiciidously costly and inconvenient. The questioii then arises, is it more efficient to levy a siniplified set of emissioii fees (based oii the average emissions of an autoniobile aiid perliaps accoiiipanied by a new tax on gasoline) which iiiatclies damages oiily ini- perfectly? Or should we give up on tlic iiiarkct coinplctely and

6. Pctcr L. Watson and Kdwrrd 1’. I I d l . i i i d , “ ~ O l l g C \ ~ l O l l I’IICIII~- the Erainplc of Singiqwre,” Firutirr and I)u\c’/optttc.tIf. vol. I 3 (hlarcli 19761, PP. ==l.

OF PRIVATE INTEREST 35 proiiiulgate rcgubtioiis on nctv cars tliat specify emission limits?

Setting prim on Iiariiiful side cttccts is tlic iiiost desirable iiicaiis of reducing tliaii wlieii a large nuiiikr of technially fusible ways exist to accoiiiplisli rcductions aiid a continuous range of adjustiiient is possible. As iiiore and iiiore wastes coli- tiining BOD (bioclieiiiicd oxygen tleniind) ore duniped into a river, the &tirage to fish and wildlife and to Iiuiwn uses gradually increases.’ Levying a stiff fee on each pound of BOD discharged would induct: each polluter to seek out the least costly ways of reducing his discharges. Polluters themwlres would have an incentive to fiiid better aiid cheaper ways to reduce damages. hloreover, those witli the lowest costs of reduction would cut back by iiiorc t1i;iii tliosc with tlic Iiiglrest costs, and tlie desired staiidilrtl of \viitcr quality ~ o u l d tliercby teiid to LH: rcaclicd at lowcst cost. I i r tlic cxc of very toxic cheiiiicals, such as Kepoiie or dicldriii, Iiowever, very mall ainounts an cause very grwt daiiiagc. ‘l’lie aeiounts entering the cnvironiiient liivc to bc severely liiiiitcd, if riot cut to zero. Unlike tlie case of BOD, tlicre is ir(1 cfficiency gain in having producers facing different costs cut back by different amounts. I h theory one could exteiitl the iiiarkct mrtcliaiiisiii to this case, too: the charge levied on the discharge of each unit of toxic cheiiiicals would be so large that i i o one would discliarge any units. But the gaiiie isn’t worth the candle. When a fairly simple and easily calculable result i s wanted, the delicate adjustments tliat i price systciii is capable of producing are not relevant. Hence. regulatory liiiiitatioiis or flat prohibition may be the least costly and iiiost cffcctive solution.

Uncertainty and Infornwtioti Cuds

It is easicr to treat tlic problciiis of uiiertainty and information costs together siiicu. it i s tlirougli inforillation that we can,

7. l’herc is a lower thresliold below u Iiirli drmrges arc virturlly zeio and an upper threshold beyond w l i ~ r l i 111c contmiiiiig wrtcr bctconio anrrrobrc.

t a L

36 THE P U B L I C U S E

at l a s t some t iines, reduce uncerta i r I t y . hl ri rke t t rarlsact ions cannot be an efficient metlid of orgariizirik liuman activity unless both the buyer and the seller uiiderstbnd the full costs and benefits to them of the transactiolis they undertake, including any side effects that impinge oii their own welfare. If, for example, the legal principle of caveat eiiiptor prevlils, mnsuniers are responsible for judging the reliability and safety of the products they buy. If, at reasonable costs in tiole, inosey, and niental effort, they can acquire and interpret infoor- rnation about the quality of products, then safer and niore reliable brands will commalid a premium over dangerous and less reliable products. The premium will reflect judgments by consumers about the value to them of safety and reliability. Producers in turn will find it profitable to push safety and reliability up to the point at which the costs of doing so begin to exceed the premium; in short, an efficient outcome will be assured. On similar reasoning, workers will evaluate the risks of injury in various jobs; dangerous jobs will coiiiriland a wage premium; and employers will have an incentive to pursue injury-avoiding measures in order to reduce tlie premium. (With the enactment of workmen's compensation laws, liability for work-related accidents was, in part at.least, shifted to employers, who then faced the cost of work-related injuries, not in wage premiums but in premiums for workinen's compensation insurance.)

One concomitant of growing affluence lias been the introduction of coinplex and potentially dangerous mnsunier products-power tools, power lawnniowers, niicrowave ovens, powerful drugs, and so forth. In makiiig a one-time purcliasc of such items the individual consumer is hard put to acquire and interpret information about their safety characteristics. 'Ihe experiences of friends and neighbors are Iielpful but such anecdotal evidence is likely to be imperfect or niisleatliiig. Although commercial testing firms conceivably could fill this gap, there is an inherent limitatioii to tlie efficiency of develop- ipg and disseniinating informatioil oil consunier products in

.

37 this way. 'I'hc overhad costs of buying and testing consumer products io sufficient numbers to givc reliable results are quite large. hhdels proliferate and arc likely to be clianged fre- queiitly. As a consc.quence, tlie subscription price tllat a private testing firni has to charge to ewer the costs of its servim is apt to be so high as to discourage its widespread use? Governnleiit-sponsored research and tcsting, or labeling re- qirenients, may be needed to o~"xmie tlie high costs of information.

'Ilie public provision of consuiiier information sometimes poses a dilemma. lu tlic c ~ s c of liai~rds that are highly coni- pliated, the provision of teclinically coiiiplete but neutral information niay not be very Iielpful. 1;valuating the significance of the hazard on tlie basis of iiew iiiforniation rnay itself require more technical ability and judgment and more tinie than it is reasonable to expect from iiiost consuiiiers. Alterna- tively, governitlent an regulate the safety characteristics of such products, almost always pusliiiig tlie price up. And in soiiie cases a ban bn wrtaiii types of products may be imposed, wliicli is.equivalcnt to cliargiiig mi infinitcly high price. In such situations tlie single risk evahratioir of a governmental body is substituted for'the diverse judgnieiits of iiiillions of consumers, soiiie of whom may Iiavc.prcfcrred a lowr price and more risk to a higher price and less risk.

'Ilic teniptatioii to overregulatc is great, and should be resisted. Quite apart froiii safety features, there are a host of product cliaracteristics-pcrforlli;iiice, reliability, durability- that often depend upon liiglily tcchnial factors. The usual coiisuiner information about such characteristics is casual and iiiiperfect, and in the case of durable goods information cannot be gatliercd by trial and error. hlarket demand and price dif-

8. 'I'echnically. produciiig miisuiiier-product information is a decrcas. iiig-cost industry. The inargiiial costs of tliwiiriiiatiirg the information to additioiial mnsiiniers ~ I C ICSS tliaii avcr;igc costs (iiicludiiig the testing). A private 6rin climgiiig a socially efficicirt price to milsrtnicrs wouM not be able to cuver all its costs. Ileiice, from society's ztandpoint, the private. inarket will produce too little coiiwiiicr inforination.

OF P R I V A T E I N T E R E S ' I

.

38 T H E .PUBLIC USE

ferentials among products therefore do riot reflect cvaluatiolis based on perfect inforniatioii. If the iiiere cxisteiicc of iiiaiket imperfection is allowed to become the occasioli for regulation, society would have to regulate every characteristic of every durable product. But the benefits of potcutially superior information tllat a regulator an briiig to bear have to be balanced against the inability of monolithic regulatory judgirients to match the diverse preferences of individuals and against the inevitable sluggishness with which regulators adapt to changing circumstances. Where ttie potential liariiis froiii a product feature are serious and where the teclinicrtl difficulty of evaluating infonintion is very great, regulation may be the best alternative despite its inefficiencies. But in all CJS~S the comparison should be between an. imperfect niarket and an imperfect regulatory scheme, not some ideal abstraction.

Uncertainty and inforiiiatioii costs impede tlie ability of market transactions to yield desirable results in tlie case of occupational health hazards. Usually injurics at the workplace are easily detectable and liability undcr workmen's conipensa- tioii laws is easily assignable. The social costs of the iiijuries are borne by the employer, aiid the appropriate inmntives for minimizing injury are preseiit." But the niore subtle tlirwts to health from exotic cheniimls, cancer-inducing agents like asbestos, and similar causes, pose aliiiost iiisuperable difficulties that cannot be handled under the normal legal rules for assignment of liability. (And these kinds of dangers steadily increase in a technological society.) In the first place, the private market offers no incentives to undertake the research necessary to pinpoint the health hazards froni particular production processes. Second, the nature of the hazards is inherently probabilistic. Spending twenty-five years exposed to asbestos fibers at

9. Lcgal limits on the size of awards, howcver, sonirtinies result in the msts to the eniployer being lower than the damage suffercd by an iniurrd worker. See Nina W. Cornell, Roger G . Noll. and Barry Weinga\t, "Safety Regulation," in Henry Owen and Charles L. Srhultze, 4s.. Set. ting Notional Prion'tier: The Next Ten Yeun (Brookings Institution.

.

.

r976)* PP. 157-Pi .

OF PRIVATE INTEREST 39 ttie workplace, for cxaiiiplc, eiight raise tlic probability of lung clncer from 0.03 to 0.04, a n iiicrcasc of 33 pcrceiit. IdcaIiy. to provide the appropriate iiiccntives for reducitig this risk, the etiiployer should be liable to p:iy every worker contracting lung wnmr one-quarter the value of tlic tlairuges tliereby incurred. But in the courts one is either liable or not liable. Lcgal fiiitl-

ings of liability are not siiitcd to probabilistic situations. More- over, even tlie probabilities ;ire Iiighly uncertain in iiiost CIS~S, since different studies of tlic causal coiiiicctioiis betwccii chew- ical exposure aiid bad Iic;iltli typic;llly estiinatc dillerciit proh- bilities of incidence, a i d soiirctiiiics disiigrcc about tlic very existence of a conpcction. Civcii tlie usual judicial rules of evi- deiice, sustaining liability iii tlicse kinds of situations is virtually impossible. 'Zlierc is iio practical way, thereforc, for the market to price such subtle and uiiccrtaiii side effects, or even for government to create a qiiasi-iiiarkct by assigning prices. Government research and regulation of Iiealtli-related working conditions are needed. Kesearcli cdii reduce the uncertainty, but iiiucli will remain. In tlic farc of large and ineradicable uncertainty no precise benefit-cast calculus an be applied either by the niarket or by the regulltors. Ultimiately, the stringency of regulations, and the size of tlic cconoiiiic costs tlicy impose, must depend upon a jutlgiiiciital asscssIiieiit of risks. Over time, continued research CJII usually bc cxpcctcd to reduce tlie range of uncertainty. In the iiitcriiii, it would be \vise to build coli- servative safety margins into tlic rcgiilations in those cases in wliicli fatal or disabling conscqiicIiccs are suspectid.

I tigh iiiformatioii costs and large unccrhinty c~ii also impede the efficiency of Iiiarkct traiis;ictions wlicii .iiidividuals or firiiis coiifront heavy long-tcriii invest inelits. An iiidividual private decisioniii;ikcr iiiay be rcluctaiit to iiialcrtake a wortli- while but risky investinelit if tlic potc i i tk i l loms of guessing wrong about the future arc very Iiigli rclativc to his income and firiancial assets. Society ;is ;I wliolc, tlirougli govcriiiiicnt. can pool tlie risks froiii i i i i i i ~ tliffcrciit iiivestiiicats; 1ossi.s from a few bad guesses can he avcragctl i i i t r i t l i tlic gains froin otlicrs.

.

40 T I l E P U B L I C U S E

Witliout arguing the case, I sliall assert that kliis possibility provides no warrant for direct governrilelit iiivqstnient or gov- eriinient guarantees iu tlie noneat run of business activities. 'I'he possible gains front a lower risk preiniuiii are swauipcd by the disadvantages of transferring business iiivcstiiicnt decisions to a bureaucratic framework. But three major exceptions stand out.

Education is an investment in human capital. On the'average it pays a good return. Studies show that tlie rate of return on higher education, for example, compares favorably with that on business investment. But the range of possible outcomes is very wide. The return to any one individual depends on a combination of luck, ability, arid motivation. And the investment required for college or more adva~iced education is very large compared with the inmine and financial assets of the average family-let alone tlie poor. Unlike iuvestinents in business plant and equipment or home construction, no salable assets result from educational investments that can be pledged as collateral for a loan; we do not allow slavery or indentured services. I n any given case, the risk of such a n iiivestnient is therefore very great as SLWI both by a potential lender and by the family of the potential student. Again, the poorer the family, the greater the risk; thus, the less tlie likelihood that educational investlnents, which in the aggregate would pay off, will be made. For reasons of both equalitv of opportunity and efficiency, government has a role i n underwriting some of the risk.'O

In theory, at least, potentially dynainicand innovative sniall businesses seeking to finance risky investments niay suffer froin the same kind of iinperfectiolis in tlie capital iiiarket.Ii Often

IO. Merely guaranteeing educational loi~iis will iiot br siiffirieiit. l ' l i i s eliminates the risk to the knder but not to the borrower (~iiiless the loan is a subterfuge for a grant. in the Sense that no one attenipts to collect i t )

I 1. A risky investment is nof oiie that can be expected to fail. Rather. it u one in which there is great uncertainty about the payo8. A risky iii vestment mlght, as a best estiniatr, be exlwctd to vieM a very yotd retum of io percent, but with a 30 Iwrcriit probab~lltv of yicldiiig upward of 40 percent and a 3 0 prrceiit probability of wffrriiig ii k iss .

4' the capital needcul to carry out soiiie new idea is very large

. compared with current iiicoiiic and assets and they have neither the prior history of good earnings nor the long associa- tioii with particular leiiders that Iiclps bigger and older firms securc capital on rcasoii;il)le tcriia. Coiiccptwlly, at least, this problciii could be cascd by social iiitcrvciitioii to iacruse tlic flow of risk capital to proiiiisiiig but risky small-busincus iiivestnicnt. I n fact, as I sliall poiiit out below, the current small-busiiiess program of tlic fcderal govcrninent bears little relation to tiie nature of the market failure it i s supposed to correct.

Finally, there are occasions when uncertainties about the future are so great, and iiivestaiciit requireillelits so large, that even sizable and well-establislied business firins may be tin- willing to uiidertake ventures that, froin society's standpoint. arc desirable. Large-scale iiivcstincnt iii newer forms of energy -synthetic-fuel plants, for exaiiiple-may be held up, not principally because of tlie ne~'iiess of tlie processes, but because of the uncertain prospcct for oil prices. 'Ilic cost of extracting and delivering hliddlc 1:ast oil to the United States is, in tlie neighborhood of $ 2 a barrel; the current price is about $14. If cutting prices is nccessiry to preserve markets, the cartel operated by the Organ&tion of Petroleum Exporting Coun- tries has ample room to do s o wliile still realizing liandsonie profits. Even if a reasonable return- could be earned on a twenty-five-year investment with a $14 market price for syn- tlietic fuels, tlie huge gap bct\r.ccii costs and prices for most OPEC oil poses tlie kind of uncertainty with which even large private firnis find it difficult to live. I f investment in synthetic fuels is deemed dcsiral>lc, soiiie form of risk assumption by government will prolxibl! I)c iiecessary. Unless tlie particu- tar form is matched to tlic 1i;iture of tlic risk, however, the results are likely to be poor. 'i'lie unusual risk in this case is a price risk; guaranteeiiig ;I iiiiiiiiiiuiii price for the output of specific plants \vould iii;tkc sciisc. '111~ normal incentives for 1iiininiiz;itioii of costs \voultl reiniiin. C.uar;iiitceinq loans for

OF PRIVATE I N T E R E S T

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’ I H E PULlLlC U S E $2

syntlictic-fuel invcstiiieiits tsnultl iiot iii;llc sciise, siiicc the vriiture would be bailed out cvcii if tlic failure stciiiiiicd froiii bad iiiaiiagciiient rattier tliaii 0l’b:C price cuttiiig.

‘I‘he “Free Jlidrr” Problem

\Vliere tlie side effects of private traiisactiniis Iiavc a cotii- iiion iiiipact on iiiaiiy people-for exaiiiplc. in the discliarge of sulfur iiito the atiiiospherc froiii coal-buriiiiig utilitic~-tlie possibility of purely private actioii is scvcrcly liiiiitcd. la theory, if tlic rights to the use of the c1c;iii air u‘cre assigned by law to tlie polluter, tliosc alfcctcd iiiiglit band together and pay the polluter to reduce the eitiissioiis. But any one iiidividual would enjoy the benefits of tlic iiiiproveiiieiit wlictlicr hc paid tiis share of the cost or riot. I le could be a ”free riclcr” OH

tlie efforts of everyone else. llow could mst shares he decided aiid cnformd? \\’itliout the coercive power of goveriiiiieiit, purely voluiitary arraiigciiiciits could not be successful. Con- versely, if tlie rights were assigiicd to tliosc affected by pollu- tio;i so that tlie polluter had to biiy rights to eiiiit sulfur, how would agrceiiieiit be redied on tlic appropri;ite paynient aiid the sharing out of tlic proceeds? l‘urcly voluiitary actioii implies umiiiiiious miiscat.

W e do uiidcrkike soiiie actioiis of this nature by unanininus- coiisciit arrangeiiieiits. ‘l’lie iiiiplicit iiciglilx)i Iiood agrceiiieiit that no one niows tlie lawii on Suiid;iy iiioriiiiig is niic sucli. But as a iiiwiis of dcaliiig with iiiiportant aiid widcsprcid side effects of private transactions, voluiitary arraiigeiiients would quickly break dowii.”

For formal completeiiess, I slioultl notc that it is tlic co i i~ - biaation of high traosactions cost aiid frcc-rider problciiis lllat makes it necessary for govcriiiiient itself to arrange for the

I 2 . In addition, the traiisxtioii C(I\I\ of IirgotiJtiiig ~iuirlv private arraiqpmaits, evrn without tlie freeridcr problriri, would oftcii prove prohibitive.

43 production of certain Liiids of goods and services-what the emiioiiiist wlls “public ~ ( J o ~ s . ” N;itiotial defense and police protection, for exaiiiplc, caiiiiot be bought and sold in the private iiiarkct. ‘l’lieir hciictits are coiiiiiioiily available to cveryoiic. Uiidcr purely vo1uiit;iry irrangciiients there would be no inceiitive for any oiic iiiclividual to pay his slrare of costs, since lie would receive tlir bciicfits aiiyway.

OF P R I V A I E IN1 I.:RI<S’I

la a goveriiiiiciit like o m , iirr;iiiged iii a federal systeni, ;I unique allowtion of rcsimisibilitics amoiig fedcral, state, and local govcriiiiieiits tvould bc iiictficiciit for reasons closely aii;ilogous to tliosc t h t c;iiise iii;irkct f;rilurc in tlic private sector. W c CiiiiiiOt wy, for cx;iiiil>lc, tliiit fiiiaiiciiig education and social services slioulrl be ;issigiicd sdcly to local goverri- iiieiits, Iiigliways a i d coiitrol of water pollution to state gov- ernnienk alone, and flood control tn the federal government. Quite apart from fairness aiitl equity, which might warrant sniiie forin of general revciiiie sharing, efficiency argues for certain types of joint action aiid joiiit financing by several levels of goveriiiiieiit. I \s~ould like to coiicentrate on the role of the federal government in this caiitcst.

Just as tlicy do iii tlic cisc of priv;itc iiurkct transactions, side effects and spillovers i i r i x froiii tlic tis a i d spctidiiig de- cisioiis o f state iiiitl locil govcriiiiiciits; tlic beticfits aiid costs of particular ;ictioiis k o i i i c t i i i i o cxtciitl 1 ~ ‘ y u i i d tlic jurisdiction takiiig tlic actioii. ‘Ilic diiiiipiiig of raw sewage into a river by ;in iipstrcaiii locality m i l l > tlic rivcr for tliosc who live dowii- strc;iiii. ‘Ilic otlicr side of tlic coiii is that taxes to.pay for tlie coiistructinii and oixmtioii t i f \\;istc-trcatiiiciit plaiits would liave to be boriie b y tlic. i i lnt ie; i i i i residents for tlie bcnefit of those dowiistrcaiii. I n tlicor!., ;I r1c;ir dcfiiiition of “property 1;iws” assigiiiiig rights i i i c k i i i \v;itcr t o the dowistreaiii com- iiiuiiitics \voiiltl c i i d h t l i c i i i t o jo i i i together, set a price oii the duiiipiiig nf \v;istes, ;ind tlicrcby provide iiicentives to tlie

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4

Scientific Policy Meets Reality: The Swine Flu Episode

A thousand probabililies do nor make one fact.

@ old Italian proverb

Fate luughs at probabilities.

T E. 0. Bulwer-Lytton &gene Amm F

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that, contrary to expectations, neither risk assessment nor cost-benefit analysis proved useful to decision-makers faced with a potential health crisis in 1976. This outcome should be viewed as contrary to expectations because, (I priori, the swine flu decision seems almost ready-made for the two techniques. First, a plausibly accurate calculation of the risk of the epidemic’s occurrence ought to have been completed. Second, a further risk analysis of the probable outcomes for Americans of just such an epidemic ought to have been completed. Lastly, a CBA should have been done so that the net benefits accruing to a massive, federally funded inoculation program might have been demonstrated to the satisfaction of both policymakers and voters. In reality, although such things were “done,” the form they took bears little resemblance to what might have been expected. Even refrospective~y, it remains impossible to carry out those calculations accurately. How, then, was it scpposed to have been accomplished at the time?

The essential point of the analysis that follows is not to second-guess decision-makers in 1976 from today’s perspective of 20/20 hindsight. Rather, the point is to explore carefully the basis for their decision and ascertain whether the best possible use of existing techniques was made or whether any beneficial change could have been made in the manner in which the decision was carried forward and implemented. The swine

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Reptinted With permission for one-time classroom use.

68 The Myth of Scientific Public Policy

flu decision, when viewed in the light of the evidence tlhat will be presented in this chapter, was not the disaster that many claim&, nor was it a particularly glorious moment for scientifically-based decision theory. It was just another participant in the seemingly endless parade of programs in public policy as daily exercises in “muddling through.” Should the swine flu program have been implemented? What, actually, were the ex ante risks of another pandemic? Can those numbers generate net benefits in a CBA? How were risk assessment and CBA analyses used-if they were? Finally, what role (explicit or implicit) did the objectivity-subjectivity dispute play in the decision, and how might that have been changed? This episode will provide a useful empirical test of the power that is sometimes claimed for risk analyses and cost-benefit techniques.

Public policy surely predates all attempts to examine its premises and rationally evaluate its outcomes. For this reason, risk assessment and cost- benefit analysis are rather recent historical appendages to the actual practices that they were designed to analyze. It has always been possible, of course, to appeal on an ad hoc basis to some set of “benefits” that allegedly flow from an existing policy-and then to implicitly infer that such a policy is, therefore, obviously valuable and necessary. Indeed, attempts to at- tenuate ongoing public undertakings will always be met with a chorus of “special pleading” from policy beneficiaries.’ The truly important question, at least from the perspective adopted in this examination, is: how well does actual policy mirror apriori assessments put forward at the time the policy was being debated before its adoption? If those assessments were accurate models of actual policy outcomes, those practices thereby receive some “scientific” support. If not, the usefulness or objectivity of those same practices (and perhaps of the analysts themselves) might be called into question. One possibility is that the analysts are not properly utilizing the proper technique(s).* Another possibility is that the techniques themselves are defective-if, by “defective,” we mean that they do not accurately model the future that comes into existence after the policies are implemented.

This chapter examines a public program that was debated both on the basis of risk assessment and cost-benefit theory, although official use of the two techniques was not necessarily accomplished in the usual way. The point of the following analysis is not to second-guess the original decision but simply to compare the projections and predictions of the analysts with

. the “facts” as they emerged and as they are now perceived. Further, it is not the author’s position that this policy ought not to have been implemented because it “failed,” although that is currently the generally accepted opinion.’

Our quasi-Popperian working hypothesis is: risk assessment and cost- benefit techniques were valuable predictors of uncertain outcomes. Naturally,

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5 -L;

Sdeatific Pollej Mtcts Reality 69

the word “valuable” does not lend itself to a neat statistical test. How “closely” the modeling mirrors fact is a matter of individual taste and judgment, not an objective test statistic lying within or outside a particular range of predicted outcomes. For that rcason, our attempt to falsify the hypothesis outlined above will be rhetorical, using statistics only in an il- lustrative sense.

Scientific Public Policy: A New Secular Theology

Before the twentieth century, most enacted policy was put in motion because people had become convinced that the policy ought to have been implemented. In brief, public policy debates tended to be “n~rmative.”~ Appeals were directed to the voters’ sense of “right” and “wrong” and, in the case of self-serving legislation, directly to their economic interests. By the twentieth century, though, the scientific revolutions of the Enlighten- ment had spilled over into the endeavors of social science. From the Pro- gressive Era onward, the prevailing view in the academies and among “learned” persons was that rational social policy was not just a dream but, with the correct application of proper methods, could become actual reality. No more would policy have to be debated in the darkness of received doctrine and pttjudice. N d be argued in the light of scientifically- produced “fact.” Sidney Hook samcd up this idea nicely when he attempted to define modern political liberalism. It is, Hook wrote, “faith in intelligence.”‘

It is now beyond argument that Hook’s “faith” is the operational method that guides policy judgments. Decisions between complex social policies can now be made, according to this viey, by appealing to the operational risks within a cost-benefit framework. According to the policy rationalist, if the risks are “acceptable” and “benefits” are greater than “costs,” what‘

that the proposed policy ought not be done, and on what It will not work to say that the proposed policy is “wrong,”

“immoral,” “unjust,” and a “waste of time and effort.” These arguments are “unscientific” and “value-laden” with the citizen’s personal, irrational prejudice. Why are they “irrational”? Because they might have been accepted “without a proper evaluation of the empirical evidence’’ from his parents or some other ex cathedra source or perhaps, worse still, he might not even be able to articulate and defend his position of support or opposition for the policy proposal being debated.

Against all the mere prejudice of average citizens, we have the testimony, beliefs, and inductive methods of the “policy expert.” In theory, these elite individuals have been trained to evaluate policy objectively by the application of scientific technique so as to judge it solely on “positive” grounds.


This method avoids all the useless analytic arguing that characterizes the discussions of laypersons.’

The story that follows is testimony to a recent monument to this newly accepted twentieth-century faith. It is not the only such monument, nor is it the largest by any measure. Yet it is very instructive, precisely because it should have provided one of the strongest demonstrations of the correctness of the tenets of that faith. Other cases are, of course, interesting in their own right, and policy disasters are not difficult to uncover. That is not the issue here. There can be little doubt that we often inrend to ac- complish rational policy, but intentions do not usually jibe with policy outcomes. Economics can be viewed as the discipline that explores the unintended consequences of human action, but even this discipline is an insufficient device with which to see the entire future course of human responses to policy choice. Outcomes are, therefore, often different from predictive theory and human intent.’

Lessons of The Swine Flu Episode

In order to understand the analysis of the swine flu situation, a factual chronology of the events between March 1976 and March 1977 that comprise this strange episode in federalhtate medical intervention is in order. Readers should keep the propositions below in mind as they move through the chronology. They are the judgments of the two policy analysts who had the privilege (by federal grant) to second-guess their unfortunate subjects concerning this policy choice.’ They concluded:

(i) There was overconfidence by medical specialists in theories “spun” from “meager evidence.”

Conclusions were reached “fueled by conjunctions” with preexisting L’personal agendas.”

(iii) There was too much “zeal by health professionals” in an attempt to make their lay superiors “do the right thing.”I0

(ii)

(iv) There often was “premature commitment’*-deciding more than had to be decided.

There were “failures to address uncertainties in such a way as to prepare for reconsiderations.”

(v)

(vi) There often was “insufficient questioning of scientific logic and implementation prospects.”

(vii) Finally, there was “insensitivity to media relations and the long-term credibility of government institutions.”

Scientific Policy Meets Reality 71

Chronology”

In January 1976 at Fort Dix, New Jersey, there was a large “outbreak” of “respiratory disease.” This was not at all unusual, given the time of year and the conditions recruits endure there:* It might have passed un- noticed, except for a bet between two doctors about the nature of the disease. As a result of this bet, specimens were sent to the New Jersey State Department of Health (NJSDH) for examination. By late January, NJSDH had requested some throat washings from Fort Dix for further analysis. Before that request, a recruit left his sickbed to take a forced night march. He later died, and his throat washing was sent on to the NJSDH.

By this time, the NJSDH had a total of nineteen washings. By early February, the NJSDH had identified two distinct flu strains, AIVictoria and A Port Chalmers, in fourteen of the sample washings. They were “un- sure” about another five samples. These samples were sent to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. By the end of the first week in February, the CDC confirmed that five of the samples were indeed . A/Victoria. More arrived by February 12th. and the CDC confirmed that they had isolated four swine flu samples as distinct from other types of flu.

Meanwhile, several overlapping samples were also sent on to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. They confirmed the presence of the swine flu virus. This was a startling discovery for health experts, because the last suspected swine flu outbnak had occurred during the “pandemic” of 1918; it had caused twenty million deaths all over the world, with one-half million occurring in the United States alone!’ Beyond that, theories current at the time suggested a major outbreak of influenza in, or around, 1979 (see more below on the eleven-year recurrence hypothesis). This was predicted to be another outbreak of some flu strain against which the population had little natural resistance, as in the 1918 case. Was 1976 “close enough” to 1979 for this to be that predicted event? Was swine flu, which doctors believed had lain dormant in person-to-person contact for over half a century, about to erupt once more? If so, then any delay might have proved disastrous, and health officials had strong reasons for becoming alarmed by the Fort Dix samples.

On February 14, meetings were held at the CDC in Atlanta to discuss the need to develop “sufficient” vaccine and to keep the public id the dark for as long as possible. lko days later, the World Health Organiza- tion was informed. Mt, Sinai Hospital had already begun to grow a fast maturing recombinant for use in the vaccine. After notifying the state health departments, the CDC realized that it could no longer keep the public uninformed, so it called a press conference. Although the CDC did not mention the 1918 pandemic during the prepared statement at this conference,

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72 Tbe Myth of Scientific Public Policy

the issue was raised during the question-and-answar period; naturally enough, it was the 1918 outbreak that became the focus of media attention in reports of the conference.

Private drug labs had already begun to experience difficulty in growing the virus for the development of the vaccine, especially the giant Parke- Davis. By February 22, the CDC had been informed of other isolated flu cases in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan; it also had knowledge of a previous Minnesota incident in its possession. By March 1, the Army estimated that “as many as five hundred” recruits “may have been” exposed to swine flu at Fort Dix. That news prompted a meeting of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board at Walter Reed Hospital outside Washington, D. C. They recommended development of a trivalent vaccine-one that might theoretically be of use against the three strains-for the B Hong Kong, A/Victoria, and Swine Flu.

By mid-March, the CDC had become convinced that a major pandemic was a distinct possibility during the upcoming 1976-77 flu season. CDC decided to ask Congress for a $134 million program to vaccinate virtually every person within the United States. By the third week in March, many leading scientists had met with President Ford to discuss the available medical options, and Ford had discussed the funding situation with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). On March 24,1976, Ford decided to ask Congress for the money that the CDC had requested.

The end of that month produced an unanticipated problem. The private drug companies did not want to make the vaccine unless they were statutori- ly protected from liability from torts. Their insurers were discussing the possibility of a cancellation of insurance coverage unless this immunity was forthcoming. By the beginning of the second week in April, the House had approved the “Swine Flu Bill,” PL 94-266..-lnsurance industry trade groups were still lobbying hard for tort exemptions for the drug Companies Their position was that inadequate frequency data made calculation of actuarially correct premiums impossible. A subsidiary argument was that insurers would only have a brief time in which to collect the premiums that were eventually levied.

On April 15, President Ford signed the bill. By the following week, HEW was searching for three hundred volunteers for a run of the test vaccine. HEW’S in-house “media monitor” program showed that the swine flu program had the approval of 88% of the nation’s editorial pages. Yet, on May 1, the drug companies were notified that their coverage was about to be cancelled.

Mid-May found the CDC requesting the state health departments to draw up “informed consent documents” for the implementation of the vaccine program. The sample form for vaccinees to sign that was finally agreed

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Scientific Policy Meee Reality 73

upom by all parties did not mention the potential for c e m h extreme &je effccts ( i u d i n g death) for those receiving the vaccination.

Disagreement among doctors about the severity of the problem and the correct federal response to it then surfaced in the media. Dr. Albert Sabin wrote an article for the New York Tinres in which he castigated the rush to vaccinate everyone and urged that vaccine be stockpiled for “high risk” groups in case it was later needed. Nonetheless, HEW prepared legislation to indemnify vaccine makers against all potential claims other than “negligent manufacture.”

By the end of May, the dissenting voices had made an impact on public opinion which, according to HEW’S in-house “media monitor,” had fallen to “66% favorable.” By then, insurance companies were threatening to remove all coverage from the vaccine makers. The Administration agreed with HEW and asked the Congress to indemnify the drug companies. Con- gress was not enthusiastic about releasing drug insurers from liability claims relating to the manufacture and use of the trivalent vaccine.

B y midJune, the CDC had developed “risk/benefit” statements for inclusion on the “informed consent” forms and had passed them along to state health departments. The risk/benefit statement claimed that minor side effects might accompany the vaccine shot, but they failed to alert the public to any serious potential side effects other than a possible case of “mild” flu. This, of course, might have been serious for older people in

July brought the news that Congress planned to reject the insurance indemnification proposal. The Administration and the drug companies then made a deal on the issue, only to find that the insurers would not go along with it. M e d i l e , as it prepared what his perhaps the largest vaccination program in history, the government (through the CDC) began search-- ing the world for evidence that swine flu was indeed the threat that the program’s scope suggested it was about to become. No confirmed cases could be foun8.

By the third week in July, the insurance companies were sending detailed letters to HEW and congressional committee chairmen that listed additional reasons for their refusal to insure the drug companies during the implementation of the vaccination program. Besides those already listed above, they desired that the federal government shoulder all blame should the program “go wrong.” Insurers had taken large (multi-billion dollar) losses worldwide for the last three years. They were convinced that liability insurance was never again going to be the money-maker that it had been before 1973.

In early August the program was given a boost when, ironically, the government misdiagnosed Legionnaire’s Disease as swine flu. The govern-

‘ly the high-risk groups, since flu can lead to fatal complications.

74

ment stated that either Legionnaire’s Disease was swine flu, or that swine flu might cause lxgionnaire’s D i s m Both these fallacious statements were widely disseminated by the media. These misstatements were quickly corrected, however, but Congress was still stalling on the indemnification issue. Finally, after much lobbying and trading among the government, the drug companies, and their insurers, Ford finally signed an amended bill, PL 94 - 380. To gauge public reaction, HEW commissioned Opinion Research Corporation to poll the American public. ORC reported that 93% of those polled had heard of the program and that 53% stated that “they planned to get vaccinated.”“

By September 3rd, the CDC and HEW had approved the vaccine for both distribution and use. Preliminary tests had turned up no serious side effects. By the tenth of the month, the liability situation had been completely resolved. September 22nd saw the giant drug maker Merck ship the first vaccine to the states. The plan was for almost 200 million doses to be administered by the end of December, wen though the government had not yet decided what doses should be given to the young, the old, or those in other “high risk” categories.

The first swine flu vaccines were administered to the general public on October 1,1976 at the Indianapolis State Fair. By the second week of that. month, three senior citizens who had each received vaccinations at the same time at a Pittsburgh nursing home were dead. The following day, October 12, officials in Pittsburgh closed down the Allegheny County vaccination program until an investigation into those deaths could be completed. Nine other states suspended the use of any vaccine from the same batch that was linked to the nursing home deaths.

In a rush to judgment, the CDC denied, before any investigation could have been completed, that there was any link between the deaths and t h e vaccine. Indeed, the immediate autopsy results listed “heart attack” as the cause of death for all three individuals. The Allegheny County cor- oner, however, was skeptical of the “probabilities” of these deaths and took his fears public. By October 13th, fourteen people had died after having taken the vaccine. The CDC announced that this number was “well within the expected range.””

By the following day, the “body count”-as the media had begun to call it-stood at thirty-three. President Ford sensed that public support was slipping, but still trusted the health bureaucrats at HEW and the CDC; he was vaccinated, along with his entire family, on television.16 That same day, Assistant Secretary of Health Theodore Cooper held a televised press conference during which he decried the “body count mentality” of the press. All states now resumed the vaccination program. On his national radio program, Walter Cronkite chastised his media colleagues just for having covered the Pittsburgh deaths!

The Myth of Scientific Public Policy Scientific Policy Meets MUty IS

By October 22nd, the ‘‘body count” stood at 41. No one admitted any connection between the deaths and the vaccine. By the first week of November, Sabin had written (in the New York Times, once again) that the “scam tactics’’ used to get people vaccinated were wrong rrgardless of the “intent” of the health planners, and that the vaccine should have bem stockpiled as he had suggested in his earlier Times editorial.

The same week, with only one percent of the population vaccinated, the government sent urgent appeals to “inner-city radio stations” in an effort to persuade the “minority community” to go and receive,vaccinations. A week later, the first confirmed case of Guilli-Barre s was linked to a Minnesota vaccination. This was a potential s of inoculation for flu that could be fatal or paralytingr Meanwhile, the state of Missouri finally confirmed a swine flu case, the first such confirmation in months.

By the third week in November, a dispute had erupted between a large drug company and vaccine maker, Parke-Davis, and the CDC over responsibility for two million “incorrect doses.” Parke-Davis demanded to be paid for the doses, claiming that the CDC had supplied it with incorrect viruses from which to make that batch of vaccine. The government playe& down the problems with the program while it played up the one Missours flu case. This tactic increased, for a time, the rate of vaccination acrosd the nation.

These increases were short-lived; with the program’s acceleration came more cases of Guillian-Barre syndrome. By early December, there were six known cases; a week later, several more cases had been reported. Eleven states had reported Guillian-Barre cases to the federal health authorities. By the end of the second week in DecemHer, a new consensus was beginning to form among the nation’s “health experts” that the program ought to be shelved until the Guillian-Barre situation could be studied..By then, there were over fifty confirmed cases. Within a week, Undersecretary ,Cooper’s resignation had been accepted by President Ford. Claims under PL 94 - 380 were approaching millions of dollars. The new head of HEW, Joseph Califano, demanded and received the resignation of the director of the CDC. Califano then proceeded to quietly (and permanently) close down the swine flu program.

Critical Analysis: Some Questions, Some Tentative Answers

This episode should have been a proud demonstration of scientific public policy in its most rational and effective form. First, there was the objectively determined health risk. In theory, both the probability and the effects of flu occurrence could be known because of the proven technique


of vaccination and the received history of its side effkcts. Second, there was no need for endless normative debate about whether the public health arm of the government ought to implement such a polidy, should it become convinced that it was necessary. This issue had been settled for decades to the satisfaction of the average citizen. In fact, no one seriously criticized this program on the grounds that the federal government ought not to have been involved with this type of undertaking in the first place.”

Finally, the material for a competent cost-benefit study was readily available, and the entire undertaking had both the blessing of current attitudes towards “risk” and a positive cost-benefit profile.” The reality of the actual outcome should give us pause, however, as we retrospectively examine this particular use of the vast federal policy machine. It might be argued (especially by those who like CBAs) that if better information had been available or if there had been more time to decide and gather extant information, then the policy might not have been carried out. But that, of course, is simply perfect hindsight. In fact, if policy could be formulated with perfect information, all such failures would be avoided. The problem is precisely that policy is never formulated under such conditions.

Several questions should be asked about this policy episode and its at- tendant effects:

I. Why did HEW and its experts immediately decide, based on narrow evidence, that another epidemic was upon America and that universal vaccination was the only option?

Why were the drug companies released from liability if the ‘‘risks” wen so small?

111. Why was disengagement so difficult when the program’s consequences

11.

began to materialize?

IV. Who ought to have been liable for this policy?

V. Did the policy analysts fail their methods, or did the methods fail the analysts?

VI. Could it be the case that the CDC was correct after all, and that the actual outcomes were within “normal expectations?”

VII. Was the policy a “failure” in that the “costs” outweighed the “benefits?”

Conjectures and Retrospective Appraisal

I. Why did the CDC react so strongly to a few throat washings from Fort Dix, and why did they leap to the conclusion that mass immunization

I Scientific Poky Meets Reality 77

was the “solution” for a problem that had not mn materialized? ’R, answer this, one has to understand some of the fundamental axioms and corollary beliefs in influenza “theory” that were fashionable in 1976. Beyond that, one also has to understand the nature of large bureaucracies and the incentives of their individual members as well as the incentives of their top managers.”

The head of the CDC at that time was David Sencer, and he had run his organization for a decade. He “knew every facet” of his empire.*O He was an enthusiastic proponent of “preventive medicine”; mass inomlatory programs are a major aspect of this approach when outbreaks of particular diseases seem imminent. The early reports that Sencer received from New Jersey, coupled with the advice he received from his own “experts” in the influenza field (perhaps colored by their perceptions of what they might have thought that he wanted to hear), certainly gave him an intellectual (“scientific”) basis for a large-scale program. Some have speculated that this entire project was primarily driven by bureaucratic “empire-building” on Sencer’s part.’’ Saving the United States from another killer pandemic by the decisive, prescient actions of the CDC-it must have been a pleasant vision to Sencer. While we cannot enter his mind, the possibility remains that these ideas may have played a role in Sencer’s decision to act vastly and immediately. Perhaps some future study will question every major participant in the decision and attempt that way to determine what truly motivafed Sencer. Such a procedure, however, will always be open to the charge that the principals’ memories have faded or that their desire or ability to tell the truth is in question.

We can evaluate the entire incident introspectively.*z What courses of action might average persons have taken as more information became available? Their initial reaction probably would have been to seek confirming evidence that swine flu was indeed about to break out. Had any other cases been reported anywhere in the world? Some persons, while waiting for confirming information, might have quarantined Fort Dix. If convinced that the next flu season would bring additional cases of swine flu, then they might have appealed to the drug companies to begin making a vaccine that would be available to doctors and health officials should the need arise-perhaps even suggesting that tax receipts be used for costs. A few people, no doubt, would even have opted for a laissez-faire alternative.

Notice that David Sencer did none of these things. The option that he immediately lobbied the Administration for was total inoculation-at a projected federal outlay of $135 million,That lobbying was almost certain to prevail, once the possibility of alarming the public became a virtual certainty.” Sencer, quite naturally, couched his memo to Ford in scientific (that is, positive) terms, but in retrospect his actions seem t o fit the

I- _ _ L r - - c1 --

78 Tbc Myth of Scientific Poblk Policy

form as thc expans government.

Sencer’s request for mass action within a very short time-frame was s u p portable by appeals to a particular theory of influenza Oocumnce and spread which was then in vogue.” One-fifth theory and four-fifths empirical cor- relations, this view of influenza epidemics used historid. evidence to predict a great worldwide breakout of a new (or long-dormant) influenza strain in or about 1978-79. Was it occuring early? If indeed it was a return of 1918’s swine flu strain, then it might be real trouble, since no one below the age of sixty would have had any immunity to the disease.** Was this actually going to happen, as the theory predicted? The CDC applied probability theory at this point; considering the number of scientific experts it could have called upon for answers, it surprisingly made a great mess of the entire endeavor.

Many officials involved with the decision to go forward with the inoculation program gave after-the-fact justifications. Many uttered the same haun- ting line, as if they had all memorized it for future use: “The probabity of another 1918 was positive.” For example, there is the 1978 interview conducted by Neustadt and Fineberg with HEW’S Undersecretary David Mathews, during which he stated

As for the possibility of another 1918.‘. .one had to assume a probability greater fhan

Such a contention is trivially true; it is therefore an insubstantial foundation for policy undertakings. Further, the probability estimates available to the decision-makers were, they later admitted, purely subjective in nature. As Neustadt and Fineberg relate it:

Most (CDC experts) seem to have thought privately of likelihoods within a range from two to twenty percent;. . .these probabilities.. .were based on personal judgement, not scientific fact.”

Silverstein also describes a meeting in which misuse of the probability concepts arose:

Mathews questioned Sencer and Meyer closely on two issues: The probability of a pandemic and the possibility that enough safe vaccine could be manufactured. Neither could put a number on the probability, but both agreed that it was greuter thun zero..”

Scientific Policy Meets Reality - 79

Several implications emerge from these quotations and their context. First, Neustadt and Fineberg are no more sophisticated in their understanding of probability than the original experts. They seem to believe that there ought to have been a difference between the judgments of experts and “scientific fact.” Their evidence suggests, though, that there was no such distinction. Mathews seemed to believe that he was asking Sencer and Meyer about two definitionally different realms when he requested the probability of pandemic while only asking for the possibilify of vaccine production. In fact, he was asking for the same analysis: namely, the subjective judgment of “experts” on both issues. Beyond this, at least two facts are also suggestive. No one had a “number” to give to Mathews or anyone else, because no such number could have been calculated with any pncise meaning. Also, since all real-world events have a probability “greater than zero,” nothing important was actually being said when this statement was applied to the possible occurrence of another pandemic. Nevertheless, by the time the proposal was forwarded from the CDC to the Administra- tion for action, these “probability calculations,” subjectively obfained bur objecfively used, had become blown completely out of proportion. After all, a two percent positive chance of occurrence is fifty-to-one against. Yet on this basis. (and on extremely pessimistic assumptions about the ability of the population to do better this time around than they had sixty years earlier under much more primitive medical conditions), the government acted precipitously and-in the perfect vision of retrospective hindsight- needlessly.

Since the program was not based on a foundation of accurate risk calculations, what gave it its early force? Speculation is inevitable here; Sencer’s role has been criticized in detaik as have the political constraints that operated on the administration. Each person in the chain of command played a role, but the CDC definitely was the catalyst. Neustadt and Fineberg write:

[In recommending the SI35 million mass inoculation program to Ford] Sthcer. in his own mind, may have been playing the hero; if so, he was but the first who did. Mathews, Cooper, and Ford.. .would follow.’o

What is not in doubt is Sencer’s hysterical presentation-based solely on his incentives and the subjective estimates of his staff-to Ford. Ford, perhaps commendably, reacted decisively even though both he and his aides realized that it was he who would take the blame if the program went awry. What needed to be emphasized then (and has still escaped attention) was that the experts were operating solely on grounds of subjective probability as well as that the outcome they subjectively predicted apriori to be very likely was that a pandemic was very unli&efy. Thus, the enlightened guesses


of the consultants and influenza experts were quite accurate. There was to be no 1976 pandemic. Unfortunately, what wm to be turned out even worse for many innocent individuals.

11. Why were drug companies granted immunity from tort liability in light of the prevalent expert opinion that side effects were of trivial concern? The answer lies in part with Congress. Having created media and public pressure by the CDC’s overplaying of the possibility of another 1918 epidemic, Congress found itself in a delicate position. Once a hastily conceived program starts to roll forward, and the press and public become convinced that that program is the sdution to problem x, it is difficult to decelerate spiraling expectations as politically interested groups begin lobbying for its implementation. After all, Congress was debating this issue after drug companies had already begun-at the government’s urgent request-to make the vaccine. To stop after that and deny the public the already-created vaccine would have been a political decision no one in Con- gress or the Administration would likely have made. Congressmen are not medical experts; in order to decide such an issue, they rely on the expert testimony of the same persons who dream up programs like this. Their decision therefore seems very understandable. If they delayed or killed this program, the results would be politically catastrophic-if, as some experts had predicted (as they were told), swine flu was coming. Their constituents would want to know why no vaccine was available; their votes in the next election would hardly be in doubt. There was also the seductive appeal of the companies and their insurers: just make the government liable. This, of course, translated into a plea to make the flu victims liable as a taxpaying group. But, after all, weren’t they going to receive the benefits of the this policy in the first place? Besides, everyone was used to thinking about federal expenditures as the government’s money anyway.

Congress, to its credit, was reluctant to grant indemnification to the drug makers outright-but, to its discredit, its reasoning was incorrect. Congress wanted the companies to be liable because many congressmen simply did not like drug makers or their insurance carriers. They thought the companies were putting something over on them by their appeals for indemnification, and they were not about to give the companies what they thought the companies wanted. The better attitude might have been to inform the companies that either they would be liable and be allowed to make a profit on the vaccine, or they would be protected from torts but be compelled to supply the vaccine at cost. The companies might have argued that an urgent request from the federal government to do a particular thing is hardly a matter of voluntary action. They also could have argued that with a federal request made within a remarkable short time period, they ought to have been held blameless.

4 a Scientific Policy Meets W i t y 81

In retrospect, the insurance companies, regardless of their standing with Congress or anyone else, proved to be correct in their assessment of the risks involved in mass inoculation while the govemmmt aperts consistently understated those risks in order to get the program moving quickly. The more accurate position of the insurance companies was no doubt based on their natural inclinations to proceed conservatively, especially where risks are not calculable. If the companies knew that, why was that viewpoint (made available to Congress and the Administration during the controversy over continued coverage) dismissed by the government as incorrect? No simple answer can be given, but the ubiquitous notion of “political considerations” has great appeal as a possible explanatory vaiiable. In a sense, Congress and the Administration were only pursuing a course of action that many economists should have applauded, since certain welfare theorists had argued that governmental programs were riskless, or at least less risky than alternatives in the private sector.” If the insurance companies refused to insure the program, that was only because they faced private risk, whereas the state could act because it could socialize that risk across the entire universe of taxpayers. When theory and reality clash, as they often have, it usually leaves cemeteries more crowded than before.

111. The government’s inability to disengage from the inoculation program as one difficulty after another plagued it-up to and including the deaths of participating citizens-is all too typical of large, governmentally- run enterprises that seem to take on a life of their own as major interest groups become active. Once a policy is started-such as NASA and the space shuttle, or the Strategic Defense Initiative, or the Energy Depart- ment’s “synfuels” program-the closirtg down of such an undertaking requires:

(1) compelling reasons, and (2) public awareness of those reasons with concomitant political pressure

forcing Congress to stop the program(s).

The presence of compelling reasons is not by itself taken in politics to be sufficient grounds for terminating any ongoing program. The slow pace and insufficient breadth of the closing of existing military bases provides a perfect example of this type of argument. The case of the base closings demonstrates that, no matter how much people want to cut military spending, no matter how obvious the methods are to do it, there is always resistance from entrenched economic interests. Further, since these projects are not run on a profit/loss basis, it is difficult to demonstrate compelling reasons.J* If the government had been successful in preventing the public

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82 The Myth of Scientific Poblk Policy

from finding out about the “body count,” the progrgm-although some insiders might have been convinced that reasons to edd the program were compelling-could have gone on a good deal longer, Had the CDC actually believed its own press release about the ‘‘expected death count,” they would not haw had any reason to stop the program on a purely cost/benefit basis. This is true because of the nature of probability analysis and the tendency of virtually all inductive probabilities to be positive.

IV. Who ought to have been liable for this program’s unfortunate consequences? The federal government instigated it, micro-managed it, and funded it (through taxpayer support, of course); it must be, then, the ultimately responsible entity. In retrospect, this seems a fair outcome, placing the blame where it belongs. Unfortunately, the monetary burden cannot be placed there as well, since the government has no funds of its own. Therefore, a perfectly just solution for situations like these will always remain elusive. It is true that the drug companies seemed to want something for nothing. In this case, they wanted the profits without the risks. Left alone, however, they never would have become involved in such an undertaking in the first place. The liability position of firms involved in manufacture for the federal government is not as clear as it ought to be, due to the government’s vacillation on the issue of manufacturer liability for federal contract work. In such cases, no just solution to issues like these will ever be possible.

V. Did science and its techniques fail the medical experts, or did the experts fail science and its techniques? This issue goes to thk heart of the arguments discussed thus far in this book. Advancing medical technology and medical opinion in 1976, appreciated and well-researched as it was, supplied few strong answers where influenza was at issue. Influenza was (and is today) a “slippery phenomenon. . . (N)ot much was known about pandemic spread.”)’ It is therefore surprising that arguments based upon theories that had very little correlative evidence were so readily accepted by policymakers. lkro theories of disease-that epidemics were separated by eleven-year intervals and the theory that, should influenza strike again, it would spread with “jet speed” and thereby frustrate all attempts to stockpile vaccine-were routinely taken to be true by the CDC, even though a. good deal more research needed to be undertaken before such conclusions would warrant the degrees of belief demonstrated by policymakers at the time. In retrospect, the theory of “jet speed’’ itself seems to be a convenient .rationale for arguing against Sabin’s stockpiling advice.” No theory of probability operates very well if it is required to produce

an estimate for a unique event without either a class of “priors” (see


Chapter One) or empirical data with inferential frequencies. There simply was no legitimate estimate available for the probability of the m u m of swine flu, or the probability of its rate of infectious spread should it rctu&. AI1 such numbers used by analysts wen subjective; they ought to have been expwsed to their superiors in those terms They were not. Subjectivity of estimation is not tantamount to being “untrue”-for that reason alone, the actual situation might still have been defensible (and, as detailed below, might remain defensible) on grounds of expert intuition. It is just that intuition is a poor substitute in this era of science worship for numerical estimates based on accepted scientific procedures.

In the fourteenth century, the Black Plague killed half of Europe. It then receded and has not recurred, despite the fact that humans are not im- mune to it and rats and fleas are still very much with us. What explains this dormancy? Why did it leave in the first place? We have only hunches about the answers. The data available in 1976 did seem suggestive of an increasing frequency of flu epidemics, but was that data reliable? In other words, was that an accurate picture of reality across the entire century, or better data collection, medical reporting, and tabulation? No one knew the answers to these questions in 1976. In fact, experts were not even certain that the 1918 pandemic was caused by the swine flu virus.”

The eleven-year hypothesis was summarized by its author and best known advocate, Kilbourne, as follows:

~

. . .in every instance of a double antigenic shift (in both H and N antigens) a new influenmpandemic hadswept the world. In modern times, such shifts seemed to be coming with increasing frequency, and recent experience seemed to suggest that a cycle of approximatelx eleven years had been established for their introduction.

Major influenza strains to seventy years.“

were thought to recycle approximately every sixty

Notice the characteristically skeptical voice of the scientist here: “seemed to be coming,” “seemed to suggest,” “were thought to recycle.” If the eleven-year theory was true, then why the alarm in 1976-thrk years ahead of schedule? If time periods were shortening between the appearances of new viruses, then an alarm would have been justified, but the eleven-year theory was simply untenable. An additional problem for that theory was the even shakier evidence that purportedly supported the “sixty- to seventy- year” view of the reemergence of any particular flu strain. One or two observations do not a theory make, in spite of the fact that economists sometimes refer to the Long Wave “theory” of the Russian economist Kondratieff. )’


Suppose that the decision-makers had placed a subjective estimate on the “truth” of the eleven-year hypothesis. What might that number have been? It is believed now that the hypothesis was false. Assume p = 0.70 (that is, a 70% probability) for an event A, where A is defined as “the eleven-year hypothesis is true.” That leaves ample room for the possibility of earlier or later occurrence: namely, p = 0.30. Define B as “swine flu is coming again” and C as “the result is to be another 1918.” Assign B a value of 0.20 (experts apparently did on a subjective basis),” and Cone of .lo. Viewed this way, virtually no one believed that anything as severe as 1918 was coming in 1976, even if it was the case that another swine flu outbreak was on the horizon.

The calculations, subjective or otherwise, cannot end at this point. Add to them the mutually exclusive events X and X where X i s defined as the probability, however calculated, that “an effective swine flu vaccine can be developed within a particular time frame”-that time frame being, in the case at hand, “a few weeks.’’ Event X then, is the probability “that such an amount of vaccine, even considering that it can be manufactured in the time frame, could be delivered through preexisting and/or new mechanisms in time to beat the spread of the disease.” Suppose that we had assigned, given our strong modern faith in science, a large p = 0.60 to event X, and a somewhat more pessimistic p = .30 for event Y. Now, assume a last event Z, defined as “the vast majority of Americans will in fact voluntarily go to the mechanisms to receive these vaccinations.” This event can be seen as depending upon the occurrence of events B, X, and X Assume an optimistic p = SO.

Perhaps a decision tree summary would be helpful in interpreting the possible probabilities (outcomes). Beginning in the upper left-hand cor- ner, follow the path that leads through the series of events that culminate in the swine pandemic envisioned by the CDC. Each event is assigned a flu probability, and as one moves through the diagram, the mutually exclusive calculations (multiplications of each tree branch’s number by the one before it) are finally applied (multiplied) by the relevant population. The relevant population is nor the entire population of the country, because vaccine cannot prevent flu in those persons who do not receive the shots; no one expected the entire population to be vaccinated. The 150 million figure is itself generous in its estimation of population compliance.

We now have enough assumptions about influenza (even though we now question the theories widely believed in 1976) and enough of a subjective probability framework so that a preliminary calculation can actually be finished. Suppose that a person was carefully attempting to make the key decision that the CDC’s Sencer made, but from within the theory framework explained and advocated in an earlier part of this book. What

- I


False (0.30) I

Not Swine (0.80) f

No (0.90) I

No Vaccine (0.40)

No Delivery (0.70)

e. < (D

Compliance (0.50) x 150” = “excess

deaths“ Y

(Figure 4-1: Swine Flu Decision Ttee)

86

might that decision have been? Let us begin by assignipg a generous p = 0.70 to event Z whenever the BXY chain produces an dutcome of 0.50 or greater. It is fifty-to-one against, according to this method, that a virulent outbreak of swine flu was about to occur. Given such an outbreak, there was still only an 18% chance that enough vaccine could be produced, delivered, and distributed. The mass inoculation option was therefore even then unsupportable on the very grounds that Sencer used while proceeding to implement it.

Of course, there is still the argument from “excess deaths”-the “if only one life is saved, it was all worth it” contention. Policymakers often deal with this sort of argument; it is usually made by persons who either have no conceptual knowledge concerning opportunity costs or persons who know but simply don’t care for that line of justification. Going back into the model for a moment, assuming identical mortality rates with the 1918 pandemic (as some cost-benefit analysts were later to do-see the nkxt section), then what was the number of expected “excess deaths” under this model? Expected deaths in excess of those predicted across the 1976-77 flu season would have been (.70)x( .20)x(. lO)x(. 30)x( .6O)x( .35)x( 30) times 150 million (see note 39)-approximately 56,700 excess deaths. To put this number in perspective, 1957’s Asian flu outbreak was estimated to have caused 70,000 “excess deaths.””

There is no way, of course, to validate this estimate, nor to second-guess policymakers as to whether the expenditure of $135 million (in 1976 dollars) was a reasonable response to such a predicted event. But what is not at issue is that the analyses done in 1976 did not make the best use of probability theory or risk assessment technique, even insofar as they related as to whether or not people would get the shots. A rational case can be made, given the experts’ own numbers, for having chosen not to get in- oculated even if the epidemic had materiali~ed.~~

Tbe Myth of Sdentific Public Policy

VI. Could it be the case that the CDC was correct after all, and that the subsequent events fell within “normal expectations”? It might be argued that the CDC, entrusted as it is with protecting the health of all Americans (or all persons within American borders) must always err on the side of caution; it must always, therefore, attempt to spare no expense in carrying out its mandate. That position degenerates rather qujckly, however, into making the CDC into some kind of medically totalitarian entity. This is not acceptable within the American framework. The CDC, no less than any other public agency, is ultimately accountable to the people and therefore must justify its programs and expenditures to them.

Neither the CDC nor any other agency‘ can ever be “refuted” on the issue of assigned probabilities, since all reality merely confirms, but never

sirkntific Policy Meets Reality 87

refutes, probability estimates (as we have Seen in Chapter One). MvialIy, any agency could then base its programs on whatever numbers it wished to attach to them, much as public utilities sometimes include questionable items in “costs” when they appear before rate-setting authorities. These disputes arc nmrcnding and probably unrrsolvable. In this sense, the CDC was correct in its decision to proceed, since all probabilities are positive and another 1918 can always be just around the next “time comer.” If all this seems unsatisfactory in some way, it is undoubtedly due to our residually strong belief in the scientific basis for public policy decisions. But expos2 occurrences, while they are the mechanism by which we often judge public policy decisions, are (by the methodology of the policy ap- paratus itself) not sufficient to discredit those policies. ’lb be fair, since risk assessment relies upon probability theory, we cannot condemn policy for either correct or incorrect forecasting of the futura For the future always (if properly understood) confirms classical probability theory.

The last weapon in the rationality arsenal is cost-benefit theory. Through the application of that technique, could we once and for all make an evaluation of the swine flu program that is scientific and objective? In fact, one such evaluation was ~ndertaken;~’ it will be appraised in the following section of this chapter. After the analyses in Chapter Three, we ought not to be surprised that, here, too, absolute answers will continue to elude us.

The retrospective study of this policy seems to make some of the central arguments in this book clearer. First, all policy requires moral (that is, normative) justification if it is to win the continued support of the citizenry. Second, even if the reader disagrees with the foregoing proposition, since it invokes peoples’ values rather than empirical fact, there simply is no operational induction-based alternative.

J

VII. Did the policy fail because the costs outweighed the benefits? Although the best time to perform a cost-benefit study is before policy is implemented, a cost-benefit study supporting the already-ongoing swine flu program was undertaken by Stephen C. Schoenebaum, Barbara J. McNeil, and Joel Kavet; the results of this study were published in The New England Journal of Medicine early in the fall of 1976.4z

The authors began with a questionnaire that was designed to elicit from “influenza experts” the “probability” (purely in terms of subjective hunches) of another pandemic like the one that occurred in 1918. The survey data were followed by telephone contacts that provided “feedback” to the authors of the study from other groups of respondents. These telephone discussions ultimately resulted in a median variation of response of less than 1070, which is to say that the range of variation in the expert opinions solicited had been narrowed to workable limits. (Whether this conforms to the Delphi theoretical technique is not an issue here.43)

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88 Tb Myth of Scitatific Public Policy

The cost-benefit study defined “benefits” as those “costs” that would not have to be borne if the program were carried out under different sets of assumptions as to targeted groups, and so forth. Into their calculations were placed the direct, indirect, and “intangible” costs associated with flu distress. “Direct costs” are the financial tmmfers from influenza patients to the medical establishment, which was defined as “doctors, hospitals, and drug ~ompanies.”~‘ It needs to be pointed out here that Neoclassical cost-benefit analysts would not accept this definitional framework for ag- gregating actual opportunity costs. For reasons discussed below, this method has severe problems. “Indirect costs” would be the “forgone productivity” of the sick, as well as premature deaths from flu exposure. These numbers were estimated as follows:

(1) 1975 estimated daily earnings used as productivity proxy

(2) assumption of 2.8 “workdays lost” on average for those ill with the flu

(3) the present value of lifetime earnings for the prematurely dead would be discounted at nominal interest rates of 4, 6, and 8 percent

It was assumed that the total cost for the vaccine to the general population was 5OC per dose, a total of $100 million. If only those over 24 years of age were to be vaccinated, then the cost would have been $60 million. If only the “high risk group” (defined as those over 64) were to be vaccinated, then the cost would have been $24 million.” (As discussed in footnote 26, however, the assignment of the elderly to the high-risk category contains an interesting anomaly.)

How many years of life would be “saved” by inoculating the populace? That would depend upon the following formula:

Cases averted = P(cases) x P(epidemic) x P(vaccination efficacy) x P(va&ne acceptance by public)

Years of life saved were calculated as follows:

Years saved = P(epidemic) x P(efficacy) x P(acceptance) x years lost

The authors assumed that a 1918-like epidemic would cause an additional fifty million flu cases. There would be 50.000 excess deaths, 38% of which would occur in individuals over 65. The median subjective probability estimate that was obtained from the questionnaire was 0.10. Hav- ing this number, the authors then attempted to calculate the other parts of the formulae. Assumptions were made about the compliance of the public with the swine flu program.

-Croup

5-24

25-44

45-64

65 +

-4 89 1 Scientific Policy Meets Reality

Along with these compliance rates would come side effects; the authors estimated that there would be 307 excess deaths due to the actual administration of the vaccine. Based on these estimated figures, the authors calculated that the total “costs” of not vaccinating would amount to almost $6 billion.“ Interestingly, the authors seem to accept as axiomatic that the 307 deaths that are due to the administering of the vaccine are an acceptable price to pay for the benefits alleged to accrue to the entire program.

Under their scenario, 1,130,000 years of life for the general population could be expected to be saved; 954,000 years of life for those 25 and older; and 857,000 years of life for those in “high risk groups.” The authors admittedly ignored many “intangibles” in their calculations-for example, “pain, suffering, and grief associated with illness or vaccination.” Days lost from school and the disruption of community services were also ignored. So was the indemnification/torts issue that plagued the program, on the grounds that it was not a significant factor.

Without splitting too many hairs, a careful analysis of this study can demonstrate the cloudy and uncertain nature of any cost-benefit study. The large quantity of estimated data is characteristic of such endeavors, because the actual data needed are almost never at hand. Notice that every single piece of data used by the study’s authors is, in some sense, manufactured-and sometimes just invented.

Begin with the “probability assessment” of the likelihood of the epidemic’s oc~urrence.~’ The authors were supplied with tiny ‘samples of opinions from author-designated “experts,” although there was a wide variation in response. In fact, one expert set the probability of a pandemic at 0.02 while another set it at 0.40-that is, 20 times more likely! The authors “massaged” a median response of 0.10 from these varying responses, but only from the smallest sample. Further, these “experts” were not always expert at the same thing. Whith opinions were, therefore, “more expert”? They cannot all assumed to be equal, since their medical specialties varied.

The authors also made some assumptions about what constitute “costs” and “benefits” that are actually arguable, even though they are commonly used in a similar fashion by the authors of other studies. Much of what the authors chose to add together as “costs” were, in reality, simply

‘

90 The Myth of Seicntiflc Public Policy

“income transfers” between individuals and other ihdividuals or institutions. If I do not spend a dollar on x, then I can spend it on y. The “cost” to me of x is, in strict Neoclassical opportunity cost qnalysis, precisely the forgone opportunity y. Yet there is no overall “social cost” if I choose y rather than x, even if x was my first choice. Nor is there any way of knowing precisely what the “cost” of any such action really is, since the actions are never taken. Consider this case: I go to the doctor because I have the flu; while I’m there, the doctor discovers something else that is wrong, catches it early, and is able to cure me. I would have died, had I not gone in-but I went in because I had the flu! How does one quantify the “cost” to me of that visit to the doctor? The authors assume that every dollar spent on doctor/hospital care that would be generated by flu symptoms can be added together as some kind of “social flu care cost.” Up to a point, it is easy to agree, as long as we are clear about what we mean by “cost.)’ But the number so obtained will not be an accurate reflection of the “cost” of a flu epidemic because of situations like the above, as well as the fact that, even though the flu causes grief, being out of school or off from work are things many people enjoy. There are also people who enjoy being sick because of the effect it has on their relationships with others. Against this, there is the output (whether educational or work-related) that is indeed forgone by the absences that might provide psychic net benefit

. to workers or students. Even here, however, it is a two-edged sword, for the lost “productivity” of non-medical workers who get sick is matched by a (presumed) reduction in the productivity of the medical sector that would have treated them. In fact, if everyone stayed healthy, the productivity of that massive sector of the economy would fall to zero! This con- founding effect follows from the fact that one person’s “cost” is another person’s “income.” These effects are sometimes referred to as “pecuniary externalities.”‘*

Is it even clear-cut that “years of life saved” is an unambiguously defined “good” that would flow from the program? It depends, once again, on whose point of view is being token. It is clear that a massive program of this sort, to the extent that it might be successful, would prevent the deaths of individuals whom other individuals might not have saved, who will in the future commit criminal acts, some of them quite brutal and fatal, and many who will die more horribly because they were saved by the program. We cannot ask them which they prefer, of course, and the entire argument might sound excessively “nitpicking” in nature, but these facts cannot be qualitatively added or subtracted nor even remotely estimated. One can only muse philosophically about whether a mass health program that spared a future Hitler or Pol Pot or Stalin could ever show “net benefits.””

The use of wage data or other productivity proxies is also a necessary evil, but it needs to be carefully handled. It is simply illegitimate to argue

, -

u


as follows: x number of cases will occur that would not have occurred, and y is “average productivity,” therefore the social loss is xyt where z is the “average number of days lost from work.” The reason may not be immediately clear, but leave aside the issue of whether or not the produc- tivitylwage information is accurate for a moment, and focus instead on the typical American worker’s habits.

Workers typically allocate a certain number of days per year for “sickness”; companies do the same. If a person really is sick with the flu and misses 2.8 days of work, then that person will simply factor that into their total missed work equation for that year. There really is not “lost productivity” in the sense cost-benefit analysts claim because Parkinson’s Law comes into play: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. If these workers didn’t miss work because of the flu, they would miss roughly the same amount of time over the course of the year anyway, and their output wouldn’t vary greatly (if at all) from what it would have been in the first place. Indeed, a severe enough pandemic that actually began affecting output would simply increase the pressure on the remaining workers to meet production demands, and their productivity would increase concomitantly to pick up the slack.

Support for this counterintuitive proposition can be gleaned from the Historical Statisrics of the United States. If, in fact, influenza caused productivity to decline, we might expect that it, along with the GNP, would fall during flu years. In fact, this didn’t happen in the swine flu years of 1917-19, or the 1956-58 period, or during the 1%7-69 Hong Kong flu period. In fact, both productivity growth per worker and Gross National Product are positive throughout these interludes.s0

’1917 Output Per MndHour (in dollars)

1917 33.3 1918 36.4 1919 38.1

1956 94.6 1957 97.2 I958 100.0

1967 131.3 1968 135.3 1969 136.4

CNP (in billions of dollars) 60.4 76.4 84.0

419.2 441.1 484.3

793.9 864.2 ‘

930.3

Naturally, one could argue that the rates of growth would have been even higher in the absence of flu outbreaks. Counterfactuals, however, cannot be conclusively demonstrated; they can only be conjectures. The con- founding problems associated with isolation of the effects due solely to

92 The Myth of Scientific Public Policy Scientific Policy Meets Realty 93 2- draining resources from alternative uses, thus making personnel, laboratory facilities, and delivery systems less accessible to those suffering from other illnesses. Such an estimate ought at least to have been made and subtracted from their “net benefit” calculation. Once again, hawmr, they would have been simply inventing numbers, for how can anyone know the “answer” to this objection?

All things considered, it is difficult not to agree with the judgment of New York Times editorialist Harry Schwartz:

the influenza and not to macroeconomic pressures are probably insurmoun- table. It is fair to state, however, that average growth rates do exhibit a downward trend between the years 1918-19 and 1957-58. Yet the years 1968-69 do not exhibit this feature. One possible explanation is that, as we move closer in time towards the present, the economy has become more static in terms of the behavior patterns of workers as they have been given more and more fringe benefits, such as a certain number of “sick days” and/or “personal days.” Under this type of arrangement, the number of days missed from work will tend to expand to the number expected and allowed for by management. In any case, explaining past data is always mostly guesswork.

For purposes of computation, then, we have seen that cost-benefit analysis must rely on the “everyone is identical” hypothesis so that “costs” and “benefits” can be appropriately aggregated. In fact, it is impossible to add two “costs” together if one adheres strictly to an opportunity cost framework.” The assumption of homogeneous people is an unstated but absolutely necessary condition of such aggregates. If you and I both go to our family doctors because we have flu, and each of us surrenders a check for $75, the “costs” are not $150. That would mean that each of us gave up alternatives of equal value and that these values can be added. In fact, such addition requires the grouping together of apples and oranges, for we cannot suffer the same “cost” even if money outlays are identical.

There is the further problem of accounting for the “excess deaths” (estimated at 307) that would occur from the medicine being administered. Leave aside for a moment that a doctor’s recommendation that a patient receive a shot that ends up killing him violates the Hippocratic oath’s injunction “First, do no harm.” How dOes the analyst value these 307 people? We are trapped in the old utilitarian box of suggesting that their lives can be sacrificed because their number is less than those who will be “saved” by the program. This argument is unpersuasive as well as invalid. It requires an accurate valuation of human lives, and that issue is far from resolved in torts, even if such “answers” are routinely given by our court system.”

One final point is alluded to by Schoenebaum, McNeil, and Kavet, but they fail to see the implications of it. They state:

We suspect that most areas of the country do not have the flexible resources (personnel, materials, and sufficient supplies of vaccine) needed for immunization of the entire target group within two to four weeks of hearing of an outbreak elsewhere. Such rapidity is essential.”

The concept of opportunity cost infuses this statement, yet in their calculations there is no adjustment for the harm that this program will cause by

I

I

The sorry debacle of the swine flu vaccine program provides a fitting end point to the misunderstandings and misconceptions that haw marked government approaches to health care during the past eight years.. . . Any reasonable effort to assign responsibility for this state of affairs must call attention to at least the following elements.. . . (1) The scarcity in the White House and in Congress of officials with suffi- . cient sophistication in medical matters.

(2) The excessive confidence of the government’s medical bureaucracy and its outside experts in urging the vaccination program on the country while playingdown the uncertainties arising from the fact that medical science still knows comparatively little about the origin and spread of influenza. . . .

(3) Theself-interest of the government health bureaucracy which saw in the swine flu threat the ideal chance to impress the nation.”

Or finally, from Neustadt and Fineberg: i

What a basis on which to build public consciousness and to seek support for preventive medicine! What a basis to risk the high repute of the CDC! What a basis, for that matter, on which to expose 40 million people to an unknown risk of side effects! And all this on the word of experts, overconfident in theories validated through but two or three pandemics, without any proper review of their logic by disinterested scientists.

It is not that the conclusions were inconsistent with the evidence, but that the pmccity of evidence belied the force with which conclusions were advanced.”

That “basis” was a misuse of techniques as applied t0.a paucity of evidence.

Postscript

Policy Evaluation: Art, Science, or Useless?

A free society mquks fm men and women who know what they am doing, who can make sense of their public lives by learning how to take dfec- tive action. Of what, then. does this mtional action by citizens consist?

Aaron Wildavsky Speaking &th to Power: The

Art and C q f t of Aolicy Anaosis

Readers who have ventured this far may have lingering questions as to how policy is to be formulated, if not through the existing evaluative mechanism. If neither risk assessment nor cost-benefit analysis can be decisive, how can policy be implemented and assessed? If there is no scientific basis for our policies, what reasonable standards can be substituted for the judgment of scientific procedures?

These are important and controversial issues, and there can never be one simple, final set of answers. To begin, there is the political model itself; those who espouse this mechanism suggest that we ought to rely upon voters, acting through their representatives, to create and implement proper public policy. Such policy need never be set in stone as long as procedures exist through which our past policies can be overturned. When this occurs, it might be argued that such changes then reflect the will of the majority at the time; they are, therefore, defensible and desirable. This solution accepts the political process itself, not science, as the final arbiter-subject (in the United States) to judicial approval. It is in the courts, of course, that scientific rationales can enter even purely political disputes; courts are now free to decide cases on the basis of alleged scientific reasoning and experiments, regardless of whether purely scientific issues are at stake in such cases.'

The political model'has a great deal of merit. The system of checks and balances, combined with adherence to the unencroachability of certain

,


rights, has proven to be a valid and enduring model within which policy disputes can often be resolved. Its weaknesses are twofold: (1) the model relies on majoritarianism, and (2) the majority position, even so, can be overturned by judicial or political maneuvers (such as gerrymandering). Such outcomes are, of course, “good” or “bad” depending on one’s own personal viewpoints. Evaluated as a policy system, however, it is difficult to deny the efficacy of this model. The search for any legitimate substitute is likely to be long and futile. All policy, finally, is normative; it will therefore be based on political considerations, regardless of any attempt to erect alternative, supposedly scientific models. Ethics, morality, political philosophy . . .these are the proper foundations upon which to erect the edifice of public policies. Earl Warren’s query about the difference between legal precedents and moral correctness (see note 1 above) goes to the heart of the matter; regardless of all the expert testimony, the Brown v. Board of Education decision was then (and remains now) the morally correct one- regardless of the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, even if that decision had stood for over half a century. There is no better way to decide such issues. Reliance on tradition, whether cultural of legal, is unworkable after cultural conditions have significantly changed. It is the virtue of a democratic political system that its mechanisms for change are available to those who wish to organize and use them.

What, however, of the tyranny of the majority? It was that possibility that led the framers of the American Constitution to remove from the political process certain fundamental prerequisites to the entire process itself; namely, those rights that could not be infringed by the federal government. This was as good a practical solution to the potential problem of a gradual loss of liberty as has been yet found on this planet. It also removed a set of conditions from the policy process taken to be axiomatically true and changeable only by that most conservative of majoritarian processes, a constitutional amendment. These declarations are purely normative in content. No cost-benefit study was done to examine whether or not the costs of allowing police to search at will outweighed the benefits of restricting them in that endeavor. No risk assessment study was completed to ascertain whether allowing people to keep firearms was excessively risky to themselves, their kin, or third parties. Such policies today would naturally require endless debate and input from social scientists; yet, it is doubtful that, whatever the outcome of that input, the resulting policies would be any better than those crafted solely from the normative belief structure of then-current political beliefs.

Because of the increasing complexity of our technology-driven society, it is almost al.ways going to be the case that someone has to decide policy issues on some mutually-agreed-upon basis. Those decisions will require,

-r-l Policy Evaluation: Art, Science, or Useless? 97

and ought to have, the input of science and its practitioners. Even when the judiciary (or the set of juries within it) is the court of final appeal, expert testimony can never be the sole criterion for decision.* We typically place inordinate burdens on our judges and juries to decide highly complex issues requiring expertise beyond their existing abilities. Yet that is exactly the mechanism that was designed to deal with such issues. In the long run, the voters are ultimately empowered to alter the complexion of the nation3 judiciary by altering the makeup of its legislatures and executives.’ People will, regardless of the system’s efficiency or ultimate justice, allow certain outcomes and forbid others. In so doing, they can be as wrong as any expert. Yet the “deliberate sense of the people” will remain the final judge of all policy issues.

The alternatives to such a model, although they might be more efficient and correct in the short run on particular policy proposals, are themselves fraught with potential dangers. ‘Itchnocracy, central planning, and bureaucratic decree can produce tangible results, but they can never be successful substitutes for markets.‘ Further, those societies that are least willing to take risks are also those that are typically poor (and are going to remain so) relative to other societies willing to allow a higher degree of entrepreneurial freedom. We can easily manage risk by shutting down industrial activity altogether. The consequences of such policy, however, are, not pleasant to contemplate.

Our final appeal, then, is not to the judgments of risk authorities or those who claim to speak for the public interest, but to the public itself operating through its cherished political traditions. Societies that do not have such mechanisms for allocating risk and evaluating policy ought to erect them. When projected actions are seen as potentially conflicting with established legal canons, then only prudent judgments by Wildavsky’s “rational citizens** can be decisive. Occasionally, those decisions will seem wrongheaded and needlessly anti-technology. But this is not a reflection of Luddism, but of the natural conservatism that arises from the broken promises and false certainties so often promulgated by expert policy analysts. There is usually nothing wrong with taking things more slowly in the face of known or unknown dangers. The overconfidence of experts can lead to horrifying consequences. The idea of unsinkable ships, be they passenger liners or scientific theories, is best abandoned in light of voluminous evidence to the contrary.

Normative policy judgments based on moral and political foundations will never be perfect or error-free. Neither, however, will be judgments by experts based on scientifically “positive” grounds. My grandmother used to say that “there was no damage like that often caused by educated fools.” As I survey the entire terrain of our institutions with their expert-generated

91) The Myth of Scientific Public Policy

assumptions and often incredible outcomes, I begin to undetstand that my wry uneducated relative was correct. Them cad never be any substitute for common sense and moral premises. Each time they are abandoned, humanity pays a terrible price. Science is a tool. i t is not a method by which we can avoid making value judgments; it can never tell us what things are right and what things are wrong. Since public policy is about things hap- pening to people, we must never lose sight of our normative roots, lest we end as a very sinkable ship in, ultimately, the very unnavigable waters of endless induction.

Prior normative criteria, however, are not always to be the final solution to policy questions. Widely accepted views, even when held for long periods of time, often turn out to be incorrect or in need of modification. Reasonable people will reflectively evaluate these criteria on a continuing basis and in light of new evidence that always becomes available over time. What cannot be done today may yet be done tomorrow for the simplea reason that the future need not (and will not) be identical to the past. Change is inevitable. Our institutions allow for it to occur, precisely because of the certainty that it will occur. There is no reason to fear such change, as long as citizens remain rational and deliberate in their role as evaluators of the policies done in their name. People need not hold advanced degrees or be experts in natural or social science in order to assess accurately whether existing policy is good or bad, effective or counterproductive, useless or outdated. Their beliefs about the policies they live with are important, no matter how irrational they might appear to be to experts. Those beliefs will have to be dealt with in any event, so there is little reason for policy elites to ridicule them. Such attitudes are examples of the very unscientific mindset that experts so often deplore in other people, for they explicitly ignore reality by positing a world where perfectly-informed elites enact correct policies for the good of all, whether or not such policies are publicly supported, Such a world never has existed and never will-a fact that average people might respond to, however unscientifically, with a prayerful “Thank God.”

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON “ENVIRONMENTALISM’

For many years scholars were mainly interested in how the environment influ ences people rather than how people affect the environment. At the turn of th century, an environmentalist was a person concerned with how the physic; environment influenced the way societies functioned and ckveloped. It is on1 during the past few decades that the term ettvironmettmlisr has come to h asociated with the converse view, namely, a concern with how human actior affect the natural environment.

There are several bases for concern abut person-environment relationship and they lead to ambiguities in the contemporary use of the term mvironmo f r r l i p f . One view holds that nature’s resources are there to be used. and this 11

should he characterized by efficiency and the absence of waste. A second bak for concern ahout the environment is that the absence of caution in hum; undertakings can lead to irreversible and sometimes disastrous impacts on 11 ahility of nilturd1 systems to function. A third collection of views are those which aesthetic. religious, and ethical concerns motivate a call for restraint I human actions affecting the environnient .’ Although the discussion below presented in three distinct parts, many environmentalists possess a combinatla of these different views.

,

Conservation as t h a s e ot Resources *..,,*/cp Mitny people who consider themselves environmentalists do not question I ideit of using the natural environment to satisfy material needs. Rather. th main concern is to avoid wasting nitturn1 resources, This outlook is epitomi, by the conservation niovement of Theodore Roosevclt’s presidential admit tration. and especially by the views of Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt’s princi advisor on consewation issues.

Pincliot was the first head of the U.S. Forest Semicc ;itid iI leiding advor for the scientilic management of forests. His attitudes toward the natural vironmcnt are rellected in his “three principles.” For Pinchot, the “first princ.

~;C-;W-I* J ~ ; ~ 0

Reprinted with permission for one-time classroom use.

d

1 INTRODUCTION

Ii con\cn at ion i s tlcvclolwicnt . the use o f natur;ll rcsources now existing on l i i 4 coiitincnt lor the Iwnelit o f tlic people who live liere now."' Pinchot's ~n~pIi;isis o i i using resources t iow is; in part, a response to critics who argued 1i;it I<oosevclt i i d I'incliot intendctl t o withhold resources from development. I tic second o f I ' i i idiot 's principles i s tliat "consen'atioli stiinds for the prevention II \v;is~c." T h u s . ;iltliough resources are to he uscd, t h i s use is to he char;tcterized

\vise ni;in;igenient ;ind careful stew;irdsliip. The third o f Pinchot's principles L-Ilcct\ the ideological overtones o f the conservation movement o f the turn o f lit century: "Tlic natural resources must he developed and preserved for tlie wiel i t of the iii;iny. mi not merely for the profit o f ;I few." This i s consistent .\ i th the antinionopoly sentiment that was widespread in America during the I Iieotlore I7oosevelt administration.

Lc;iders o f the conservation nioseinent i n America argued that technicians i;iincd in liclds such ;IS geology. forestry. and hydrology should play the key ole i n the plznning and ni;inagenient o f n;itural resources.5 Highly trained Iwci;ilists were needed to carry out resource management activities in a scientific ind eflicient manner. During the first half of the twentieth century. many re- .oiirce tlcvelopnient agencies in the United States relied on technic;illy trained iim1get-s to acconiniod;lte multiple dcm;inds for land and water efficiently.

hlany contenip)r;iry economists hold views that are consistent witt i Pinchot's oncerns over tho eflicient use o f natural resources. l h e y are trained to identify oniliin;ition\ o f Idwr. capital. and natural resources that can b e used to produce ;irious goods ;ind services "efficiently." The economist's objective o f maxi- riiring the difference between henefits and costs ( " x i i r ed in terms o f dollars)

ternicd the iw~rrottric c$k-icwy id)j(wiw. For many years, economists involved 11 iii;iii;iging n;itriral resources h;we heen iissociated with various specialties such I \ ogricult iml economics, water resources economics, and so forth. In the past L,\V ilec;ides ;I now spcciiilty hiis evolved: environnieiital economics. One o f i ts i\\umptions i s t1i;it the acceptance o f wastes from industries and municipalities \ ;in appropriiite use o f the environment. Many environmental economists be- 'icve t h a t the proper qu:iniities o f waste discliiirgc should he determined by tiialyzing tlie ccononiic bcnelits and costs involved. This view is consistent with m'iiicliot's ideas alwut how the environment should he used.

WaintenanceiOf Harmonyfbetween People and Nature

I tic iiicie;l\ctl-~~ciclitilic undor\t;indilig o f natural proccssos provides ;inother u s i \ lor concern ahout the inllucncc o f h i m i n itctions on the environment. In .nodern tinies, the iniportiince o f m:iintaining the integrity o f natural systems I \ coninionly :i\wci:iicd wii l i ecologists who ;Irguc for the maintenaiw o f har- ' i ioriy I)ctwccii ~ ~ o p l c ;ind natiire.

,. - ~/i

I 111. q i t o I . i t t t i i i \ iii I h pt:ipt.qili ;trc Iroiii pimiom o I I'lnchoi'h h i t i t , , Tlic Ctghifor ( 'o,t~~,ri 'criioti,

.p r i t i~e i l it1 N;i\Ii I I V t K p i i . S X - I i ? )

I tic r c l . i f i t i i i h p IWNLYII ilic c o t i w n ation mt~\eir ie i i t ;md ilic w c i i t i l i c iii:iii;iKemciti of tcwi i rcc\

INFLUENCING ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY 7

Decades before ecology became an established science. M m h ( 1x64) argued fl persu;aively for the need to keep "harmonies of nature" from being turned into 4 discords. His widely cited book, Man atid N(irrire; or, /'hysic~il Geography 0%

Modified by Iftrittutt Ac~ioti, is a synthesis of numerous scientific works and personal observations. Marsh examined the ahility o f natural systems to withstand disturbances and to restore themselves following ni;ijor perturhations suct. as those caused by "geologic convulsions." H e was distressed with the wa) human actions could "interfere wi th the spontaneous arrangements of the organic or inorganic world" and thereby cause instabilities and irreversible change? in nature. Based on his studies o f the adverse environmental effects of humar actions, Marsh warned that continued "human improvidence" could thrcater the earth's ability to support human life.

As the science o f ecology developed in the early twentieth century, Marsh'! concerns began to be articulated using a more rigorous scientilic hiisis. Leopold': (1933, p. 635) ecological studies led him to the following position:

A hantronious relarion 10 laird is more itirricare, a td of more cotiseqiiiwce 10 civilizarion, rhein rlie historians of irs progress seem lo realize. C'ivilizarion is not, as they often assrime, rhe ettslavemenr ofa stable atid cottsrutir eurrh. Ir is a stare of mutual and interdependent cooperation h r r w o i hronutt atritttals, orher aaimuls, planrs, and soils which ntay be clisrlcpr~d U I arty ntoniettr by rhe failtire of any of rhem. Latid despoliarioti has evicrecl narioits, and cait 011 occasion do it again.

The ahility o f humans to inadvertently destroy natur;il systems increase dramatically in the 1940s. The post-World War II period witnessed the emei gence of a variety o f new substances. including radioactive niateri;ils and syl thetic organic chemicals. Many of these new substances are persistent. They d not decay or decompose rapidly into simpler, less harmful materials. Son1 scientists have responded to this dramatic increase in people's ability to distur natural systems with demands for additional controls on human actions.

The contemporary scientists' calls for restraint are often based on the san concerns that motivated Marsh and Leopold: the hunian ability to irreversih destroy natural systems. The sense o f urgency that often accompanies these cia1 for restraint is exemplified hy Rachel Carson's Silerir Sprirrg (1962). The t i l of this widely read book refers to a hypothetical future springtime in which birc ;ind other animals iire silenced inadvertently. They arc destroyed by miin-mat chemicals that are tr;insmitted from one life form to ;inotlicr ;IS part of 11 norni;il production and consumption activities in nature. Pesticides, such tildic1ilorodiplienyltrichloroeth;inel (DDT). are the cheniiciils o f principal i terest in Sikrrr S p r i t i ~ . Carson (1962. pp. 7-8) descrihcd the unintended elkc o f using such Pesticides:

Thew spruys, tlrisrs. atid ctrro.sols ori* t i o i s irpp/ ic*t / u/itio.sl ritiiiwscilly I(

1'" I * * ' * - , . . .1.. .@. f , b v > - \ I l * , I 1 3 1 ll,l#,l#~,. , l l , ~ , , l ~ l ~ v ~ ~ ; , . l . ,.I,,.,,!,,.,,/\ I / l l , f /{(j,.(- l / [ l

8 INTRODUCTION

Silrvtr .Spritig is one of many books written since World War I I to alert the public to the seriousness o f unintentional environmental disruptions.

Religion, Renewal, and Rights

The two perspectives ahove are linked t o well-known disciplines: efficiency in naturiil resource use i s associated with economics. and the need to maintziin "h;irnionies of nature" is tied to ecology. Each of these viewpoints i s pragmatic. The fornier ciills for the elimination o f waste in resource use. and the latter urges the ni;iintennnce o f the earth as habitat that can support human life. In contriist, the ideas introduced helow concerning religion. spiritual renewal, and ethics have ;I more ethereal qunlity. These ideas, however. are no less important thiin the more prnctical concerns of economists iitld ecologists. Indeed, some would iirguc that these spiritual ;ind philosophic matters are o f the utmost significance t o the long-term survival o f the planet.

Several o f the issues examined below were initially raised during efforts to preserve portions o f the Americ;in wilderness. Some observations about this "prcscrvritionist niovenient" are therefore in order. Until the eighteenth cen- tiiry, the utii;inicd \vilileriicss WIS generally considered to be mysterious and ditngcrous. I t \viis ;I pl;icc to he conquered and piit t o "pioductive use." Romantic poets, such ;IS Williirm Wordsworth and Samuel Colcridge. played an import;int enily role i n putting a positive viilue on tlie remote, mysterious, and solitary nature o f wild pl;tccs. The cause o f wilderness prcscrwtion gained nioiiieiituni in America during the late nineteenth century, when only a small fraction o f thc origiiiiil wililerness

M;iny rciirons for preserving wilderness hmc economic and ecologic b;rses. For ex;iniplc, wilderness should be preserved to provide scientists with an opportunity t o study iiiituriil processes. o r bcc;iuse tlie nunierous species present provide ;I pool of diverse gcnctic piitterns thiit inay cvciitually prove useful in ;igr'iculturc or medicine. Alternittively, wilderness sliould he preserved because of ilie oplxit-tunitics i t provides t o Iiutiters, lislicrnien, kind others engaged i r i outtloor recre;ition. Such practic;il prtipo\itions iire iniport;int, hut they are not

nients for wildci-ness preservation. co i i 4e rcd hclow. I<ather, the concern is with spiritual and philosophic

* American Transcendentalism 'rlic religious fervor I 11;it Ii;is sonictinics c1i;ir- ;tclcriiciI tlic Siiuse of wiltlcrnc\s prc'ser'viitiori i s frequently b;ised on ideas o f

INFLUENCING ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

tlic Americ;in tr;in\ceritlcntiiIists o f the nineteenth century, eslwci;illy Emer and Thoreitu. A centrill tenet in their philosophy is that in possessing a SI

;I person has the potential to trimwend l xyond the mi\teri;\\ p r t i o n of universe and thereby pcrceive higher. spiritual truths. For the transcendentali "one's chances o f attaining moral perfection and knowing God were nraninri by entering wiltlerness."'

Emerson is generally acknowledged as the intellectual leader of the Ameri transcendentalists. His view on the communion with God obtainable in wilt ness are summarizcd in a passage from his essay, Nature:

In r l r ~ woods, we return to reason and faith. . . . Standing on, the bar. ground - nry head barhrd by the blithe air and uplijird into ittjinit, spnce - all tnenn egotism vcini.dies. I become a transparent eyeball; I at] nothing; I see all; the CiirrenIs of the Universal Being circulate rhrough me I atn parr or parcel of God.n

The transcendentalists' views on how spiritual values are reflected in nai were used frequently in arguments for wilderness preservation at the turi the century. This i s illustrated by John Muir's valiant but unsuccessful effoi prevent the damming o f Hetch Hetchy Valley in the Sierra Nevada mount o f California. Muir had studied Emerson's work and had similar. strong feel ahout the presence of God in nature. Nash. quoting from several of MI writings. observes: "At one point Muir described nature as 'a into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.' Leaves, rocks. an became 'sparks o f the Divine Soul.' 'V In defending Hetch Hetchy Valley f those who woii ld inundate i t with a reservoir. Muir asserted: "Dam 11- Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches. no holier teniple has ever been consecriited by the heart o f n i m "

Although religious sentiment inlluenced Muir's attempts to preserve tI Hetchy Valley and other wild areas, i t was not his only motivation. A domit theme in his work, and that of.niany other preservationists iIt the turn ol

and eniotion;rl renewid. For hluir and others. the trihuliitions o f the liicch;ini

regeneration that only wilderness could provide. technologic life ushered in by the industriirl revolution required the kin*

Spiritual Renewal and Re-creation Those who view tlie wilderticss as ;in portHiit source o f physical and spiritu;ii **re-creation" often take their inspir;i from Thoreau. For him, forest and wilderness provided "the tonics and b

century, WBS the importance o f providing people with opportunities for spiri

10 INTRODUCTION

which 111 ;ice iii:inLind.'* In joining the pi1itic;il ciiuw for preservation, Thorcciu ;itgueJ t l iat tlic loss of willlerness would le;itl people to hecome weilk and dull iind Inckiiip i n creativity.

The iniport;ttice of wildrrness ;IS a sourc-e o f spirituiil renewal i s a theme t1i:it h;is hcen wunded ninny times since l'l iorciiu wrote in the nineteenth century. For sonic. the \cry i h tliBt wild pliices st i l l exist is a source crf strength. The Amcricmi novelist Walliice Stegner articulated the importance o f the wilderness idea:

Soiiietinic\ the spectaculnr heauty o f a wi ld place i s what niakes i t a "tonic." The iiesthetic features o f wild ;ire;is are often cited in arguments for wilderness preserv;ition. t.speci;illy when these feiltures are unique. This was the case in tlic IO(i0s \\ lien citizens' groups opposed federal ;ittempts to inundate portions o f the G r ; d C;inyon in Arirona ;IS part o f ii large water project. I n this instance, the preservationists prevailed.

Rights for Non-human Beings and Natural Objects Although i t has not heen iii the ni;iinbtre;iiii o f western nioral philosophy or law. tlie question of rights for non1ium;in irnim;ils, and pliltits (and even rocks and soils) has come up from time to time. As fiir I w k iis tlic sisteenth century, there i s evidence of a concern for minimizing the cruelty suffered by aninials." I'he existence of societies for the prevcntioii of cruelty to animals ;ittests to the continuing strength o f this sent inic nt .

There is, Iiowever. a bro:idcr view of the rights o f nonhuman living things that has heen used by preservationists. Consider, for ex:iniple, John Muir's apswer to tlic question, What iiic rattlesnakes good for? His response was that r;ittlcsnalies are "good for themselves. and we need not begrudge them their share 0 1 life." la ;I i l iffeicnt contest, Mu i r indicated that "thk universe would he incoiiiplctc without iii;in; hut i t would ; i l s o he incomplete without the sniallest tr;iiisniicro~cc,liic crc;iture tliiit tlwclls beyolid our coiiceitful eyes and knowledge." Accoiili i iy t o Muir, i n the wildcrncss people learn a need for respecting "the rights of ;dl the rest o f cre;itioii.""

INFLUENCING ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY cq 6-

In recent times. the view that plants and animals hiive a right to exist I heen closely linked to an ethical perspective iidvcuxted by the ecologist AI Leopold. The last portion of his hook. A S a d Corrnty Alrr iar~~c, contains I basis for what Leopold referred to as a "land ethic." For Leopold, the CI)

munity to which ethics applies should not be restricted to people. It needs be enlarged to include other members o f the "biotic conimunity," the 5011

waters, plants. and animals. Leopold felt that decisions about the use of \;I should consider, in addition to economic factors. "questions o f what is ethica and esthetically right." Leopold's land ethic provides a criterion for answeri these questions. For him, a "thing is right when i t tends to preserve the integri stahi i ty and beauty of the biotic community. I t is wrong when it tends 0th wise."" .

Not surprisingly. some have argued that granting rights to nonhuman speci when followed to i ts logical end, leads to an ahsurdity. Passmore (ls'74. p. I : put i t this Wily: " I f men were ever to decide that they ought to treat plar animals, landscapes precisely as i f they were persom. i f they were to think them iis forming with men a moral community in the strict sense. that WOI

make i t impossible to civilize the wor ld -or , one might add, to act at all or e\ to continue living."

Despite the criticism directed at Leopold's call for a land ethic, there has bc niucli discussion o f the proposition that plants, animals, and natural ohje 1i;ive rights that are legally defensible. This position was advanced in Ston (lY74) Slroukl Trecs Iluve Smtdittg? a widely cited essay that played ii rolc tlie U.S. Supreme Court's deliberations on whether the U.S. Forest Serv should permit the development o f a ski resort in Mineral King Valley, a v derness area in California. Stone's position was not used to stop the For Service's action. Ilowever. i t was discussed in a minority opinion of Suprc Court Justice William 0. Douglas. who pointed out that inaniniiite objects SI as ships are sometimes parties in litigation. "So i t should be" for natural bod such as rivers and swaniplands that feel "destructive pressures o f modern tea nology ;ind modern life."" In considering ;in example o f a niitural system unc pressure, Dougl;is referred to a river that, he said. "as plaintiff speaks for I ecologiciil unit o f life that i s part o f it. Those peoplc who have a meaning relation to that hody o f water-whether it he a fishermen. a canoeist. il zoolog or a logger-must be able to speak for the values which ihe river represe iind which ilre threatened with destruction." Neither Justice Douglas' opiw nor the Stone essay were decisive in this inst;lnce. They nonetheless rellect interest i n npplying the kind ethic introduced hy Leolwld.

The question o f whether pliints, animals. ;ind other natural objects have rip must be fwed hy tliose miikiiig decisions inlluencing the environment. I t i s 11

o f ;I larger set of questions concerning the bases for judging whether one act1

.

L

12 INTRODUCTION

;iftcctiiig tlic ciiviroliiiicIIt i 5 prclcrrctl t o ;motIlcr. Criteria colnllioniy used in iiiiikiiig tlicw judgnients ;ire introduced bclow. .

BASES FOR MAKING DECISIONS AFFECTING ENVIRONMENTAL OUALITY

Reasons for caring ahout how human itctions influence the environment include ;I desire t o use resources efficiently. the need to maintain the earth as a hulnan hahitiit, and ;I variety of religious and philosophic beliefs: Several of these COiiccrIIS h;i\e hcen translated into etliical norms and government policies that guide the \Viiy decisions affecting the environment are made. Commonly used iioriiis and policies rest on the idea that human welf ire i s diminished when n;itural resources are \viISted. air and \vitter i s niade unhealthy, and so forth. 'Tllis ;ippro;rch to sctting policies iind r!ornis i s said to he anfhropocenfric in that the concern for the niitural environment i s based ultiniately on the welfare of

I n contemporary Western cultures, decisions affecting the natural environment are generally niade using an anthropocentric standpoint, and this orien- tation is adopted here. Although' it miiy appear that an anthropocentric basis f o r decision milking cannot reflect the v;ilue of maintaining stable ecological syhterns or preserving rare species, this is not the case. To accommodate such considerations. it i s only necessary that sorne people place values on stahle ecosystems and rare species. The underlying reasons for these values may be purely intuitive or religious o r hasctl on i t sense o f oblig;ltion toward nonhuman living things. The re;isons need not Iiavc a "practical" basis at all."

Tliere a i e m;my criteria for choosing iIIiiollg alternative actions ;iffecting the environnient [hiit iire consistent with an iintliropoceiitric perspective. One thilt i s coninionly tised is an ad;lpt;ttioli of utilitarian philosophy known i ls the henelit-cost criterion.

pcople.

Utilitarianism as a Framework lor Making Decisions

L1tilit;iri;iiii~iii's central tciiets are comiionly a5crihed to Jerenly I3enthiim, an e i ~ l i t c e i i t l i - c c ~ i t ~ t r ~ I l r i t i s l i pliilosoplier coliccrneti wit l l the basis for devclt~ping sociitl policy ;iiid legislation. Ilciitliitrii aiid h is l i ) l lwers argued that whcii con- siileriiig itltciIl:tti\re policies. l;twn;1kLbrs sliouIJ ehtin1;iie the'bene1ici;tl si ld 1i;lnn- lul ctitiwqiiciiceh of cilch policy t i ) tlic society ;IS ;I w l i o l ~ . They should selcct tlie ..policy that produces the greatest net balance o f beneficial over harmful corisequenccs t o society.

INFLUENCING ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

For those who idt ) l>t a utilitirrii ln vicw, ill1 x t i o n such its il govcrnnient proic or regulation is judged entirely by its outmnie to w i c t y its a whole. Traditio1 utilitarianism assumes that the hiirn1ful and beneficial consequences of an act it to society ran be predicted and evaluated quantitatively in units that cin added together to yield a net effect. Critics of the utilitarian approach oft attack these assumptions.

"Renefit-cost analysis" is an ad;iptation of traditional utilitarianism that widely advocated. hut controversial. In this approach, the beneficial and harm consequences o f an action (termed social borefits and social C O S I . ~ . respective are described in monetary units. The social benefits are measured i I S the amok of money that people would be willing to pay to obtain the beneficial con quences. The social costs are measured in terms of the opportunities. thal society gives up when its resources are used t~ implement the proposed actic The benefit-cost criterion for choosing among alternative proposals invoh selecting the one that has the greatest numerical difference hetween inoneti benefits and costs. It i s always supposed. when using this type of analysis,,tl a proposed action should not be undertaken unless its total benefit exceeds tot;d cost.

The henefit-cost criterion is of limited usefulness because many effects, hitiiian ;ictions cannot he evaluated in units of money. This is often the c; when environmental consequences ;ire involved. Suppose. for example, thii

proposed action involves eliminating completely the known cancer-caus ("c;rrcinogenic") suhst;inces in a community's drinking-water supply. I t is h; to attiich a meaningful economic value to the benefits o f this proposal. C rc;ison is the difficulty in estiniiiting how many lives would he s;ived hy remov al l o f the c;rrcinogens from the water supply. Also, there are no widely accep. procedures for placing a dollilr value on the estimated lives s;ived. Sonie peo even object to the idcil o f ev;ilui\ting lives in terms o f money. For these rcaso niiiny have itlgued agiriiist using ;I quantitative heticlit-cost it~iiilysis as the PI c i p l hasis for making decisions th;it iiffect environmental quality.

Even though ;I henelit-cost analysis in which al l effects are described in ma etary units is frequently impractical. it is often possible to make qualital conipariwns of tlie socid costs itnd g;iins of a prop0SiiI. Adopting this brc conception of utilitari:rnism, i t is only necessary that the consequences I)

proposed actioil be described as cle;irly and accurately iis possihle. The iiil ' miition on henelits ;ind costs, iilthotigh not presented entirely in monetary un is displayed s o 11i;it people can ni;ikc systematic comparisons ;iiiiong alternai propowls. As elehoriitcd hy S\v;irtziil;rn. Liroff . and Croke ( IW). this qu tative conceptioa of ;I henelit-cost cinalysis is sometimes advi~ated as a b. for estahlishing environmental policies and regulations.

Although a hro;id conception of utilitari;inisni seems like nothing more t! coliinion scnsc. i t i\ oltcii criticized ;is heiiig insemilive to i 5 w x relxted kiirness and equity. I l t i l i ta r ian im focuscs on the iiggrcgilte welf;tIc of a w unit r;ither th;tn tlic wclf;tre of pr t i cu le r individuuls or groups. I t is not c'

ceriieil with who gains i i d wlio l o w s . Only the rial c fkc t is considered. Ueca

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16 INTRODUCTION

,\ iiiord riplit i s one that i s iiidcpciiJeiit of ;my piirticular leg;il system. I t is . 1xisc.d on **nitiriil norms and principles thiit specify that all human beings iire permitted or empowered ti) do somctliing or are entiitled to have something done for theiii" (Valnsyuez, 1981. p. SY). Sonic people feel that iildividuals have ;I iiioral right t o a 1iu;ihle cnvironiiietit itlid th:it t l i is right needs to be preserved at the espeiise of liiiiiting people's 1cg;il frecdoni to engage in activities that destroy the environment. Such restraints 011 freedom are considered necessary to present the human hahitability of the planet.

la some stiites. the moral right to ;I healthful environment has been made inlo ii l q d right. For example, Article I of the Constitution of the State of 1'ennsylv;ini;i w;is aniended to read

Tltc peopli. h i - e a right to clean air, pire wlter, and to the preservation of r l ~ c trrrtirrril, sccviic, historic, rtritl aestlrotic~ vrrlires of the etivirotittitwt. Petin- syliwrri~i's nartirctl rrsvtirces . . . art the co1nnion property of all the people. i t i h d i q tlw gcricrcttiori~ yet fo cottic. As trrrstee of tliese resoirrcvs, h e corttrriortii~c~cilt/r shall preserve itnd nitriritmitt them for rhe benefit of crllpeople.

The notioll th;it "each person has ;I fundamei1t;il anh inalienable right to a Iiraltliful eiivironmcnt" d m c i s t niade i ts way into federal law in the United St;ites during tlic late 19(10's. Such ii right was specified in the Senate version of the bill that eventually becaiiie the National Environmental Policy Act of I 4(1y. I t was, however, deleted by the congressionel conference committee that prep;ired tlw hill that WIS signed into law. Although i t does not guarantee an iiidividual's right to ;I he;iltliful environnient , the Niltional Environmental Policy Act states t l i e t otic of i ts piirposes is t o "iissure for a l l Americans sde, healthful, productive iiiid ;iesthetic;illy itnd culturally pleasing surroundings.",

Vcl;isqucz (1YX2) has re;isoncd that tlie moral right to a healthful environment ";is ;I key factor in determining the form of sever;d of the U.S. environmental programs ebt;il>lished during the 1970s. Some provisions of ihe Fderal W;iter pollution C'ontrol Act of 1972 illustriite his view. The act proclaims, as a national goi~l. thc cliiniri;ition of the "di\sh;irge of pollut;iiits into navigahle waters" by IOR5. To iiicet t l i i s go;il, the US. Enviroiimcntal Protection Agency (EPA) Wits rcqtiircd t o ksue permits t o ;dl muiiicip;ilities and tirms that made significilot \v;lstew;i[cr discharges t o stre;inis alii1 other surldce water In deciding 011 bels of \v;i>te\viitcI dix4i;irgc to perniit hy 19x3. Congress rei1 red !he EPA to insist 011 tile "best iiv;iiliibIe tech ogy econoniically ;icliicvable" for reducing w w loiitis ;it vikrious typc.r of lac cs. According to t l i i s position, the w;iter pollution coiitrol icquirenicnts for ;I particular lirni or niuiiicipdity would be biised on tlir niost stringent level\ of w;istewi~tc~' retluctioii tli;it, in the EI'A's view. could Iw oht;tinc.d cccilion1ic;iIIy wi th ;ivi i i I i i l~Ie tccliiiohigy. 'rile uti1itiiri:iIi concern of tvlietlicr tlic socii11 I>crictit\ excccdcd tlie ctist5 of w c l i striiigciit controls was not t o idtcct i;il,\.s dccisioii iiiAiiiig, l ' l ic qucstioii of wlio would bcnelit and wlio \vould hciir tlic costs W;IS not to iiilluciicc tl ie WA's decisiori process either.

INFLUENCING ENVIRONMENTAL OUALtTY 17 . Vel;~scluez interprets this federal impodtion of stringent controls as being based. implicitly at least, on a recognition of the rights of citizens to pure water.

The issue of rights to a habitable environment has been debated from man) piints of view, not just from the perspective of the present generation of humans. What. for example, are the moral rights of generations yet to come? Also. what are the rights of nonhuman animals? Of plants? Of inanimate natural objects'! Philosophers have given serious attention to these questions. As is evident from the contrasting views of Feinberg (1974) and Passmore (1974). philosophers do not agree among themselves on these important questions. An example of a point of contention is the question of whether future generations have a moral right to an environment that is habitable and not depleted of natural resources. Although it is tempting to say that future generations should have such a right. many philosophers have argued against this view. They assert that since future generations do not exist. except in the imagination, they cannot possibly have rights. Moreover, because of high rates of change in technology and life-style. the present generation i s not in a position to know which interests of futurr generations to protect. Consequently, i t is not possible to say what rights future generations should have.

A concept of justice introduced hy John Rawls, a Haward professor of philosophy. is often considered in discussions of the rights of future generations to a hiihitable environmcnt. To analyze the question of what is owed to future generations. Rawls asks that members of the present generation put themselves in the position of not knowing which generation they belong to. Then they should:

try to piece togrtlrer a jiisr sctvittgs schedrile by balancirlg how mitch at each stctge [of Iiisroryl they nwdd be )villing IO save for their inrniediure descen- ilrnts agctinst what they nioiilrl fcel entitled IO clnifit of rkeir intnreiliure pruclecessors.' Thus, itnagining thztitselres IO be futhers, say. rkey are io awertain how rnicch tlicy worild set aside for their sons by noting nhat they would believe rhetnsrlves entitled to claim of their [own] fathers.

Although Kil\\flS' pisition hiis heen criticized by Passmore (1974) iind others. i t docs provide a W;IY of contcniplntiiig the moral rights of future gener;rtions. I<awls' analysis h;is been interpreted to mean that the next generation should receive the kind of environnicntal qu;tlity and niituriil resources thiit i t could re;i~oliiibly he ;Issuiiied to need to m;ikc the types of choices iiv;iil;il)le to the current gener;ition. A concern for the kind of eiivironn1e1it thiit i s left for futurr geiierations has. since 1970. hecome ;I niatter of n;ltion;ll policy ia the United States. The National Enviroiiniental 1301icy Act of 19(jy indicates th;lt eacll generiition Iiiis rcslwnsibilitics "as trustee ol' lie environnicnt for succceding generirtions." Althougli the wordilig is general, i t indic;rtes a11 t1nmi~t;lkable

'This quolaiioll is from Itawl\ (1971, p. 1x0)

18 INTRODUCTION

coiiccrti for tlic l i t id 0 1 r x i s te i i ce tl i irt gcnci;itioiis to cotlie wi l l be able to I1;ive.

As illustriitrtl b y the ;i l~ove discussion rcl;iting t o future gener;itions. s0ci;ll clccisioiis ;ire pciirr;illy not ni;ide on tlie h i s of ;I siiigle set of principles. Stitiictiiiic\. ;I utilit;iri;tii hcnrlit-c.ost m i l y s i s is the i1oiiiin;int hasis for decision 1ii;ikiiig. At tbtltcr tiiiics. qucslions conceriiiiig iiidivkIu:il rights or fairness may

;I signilic;lat illlluence. The c1i;ipters thiit follow demonstrate that utilitirr- i;ii i isiii, quity. and moral rights Iiave each played a role in shaping environ- inciit;il policies in the past several dcciides.

Leopold‘s I;ind ethic Anieric:in transcendentalisnl L.eg;il rights of nonhutnan species

BASES FOR MAKING DECISIONS AFFECTING ENVl RON M ENTAL QUALITY

Ant hropocenlrism 1kntli;ini’s utilitarianism Iknelil+x;it criterion Eqiiit;ible distribution of costs and hcnefits Morirl rights to a habitahle eiiviitmnicnl liiglits o f luture generations

-0 - 0

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1-1

1-2

1-3

I 4

Speculate on the adviintages of liaving specialists from several disciplines work together on it team to solve environmental problems. What difficulties would you anticipate in using the team approach?

Examine your own reasons for caring about how people affect the environment. TO what extent do your personal motives overlap with the economic, ecologic, spiritual. and philosophic viewpoints presented in the chapter?

Criticize the use of an anthrol~ocentric’framework for making decisions. In light of this critique, do you feel that anthropcicentrism provides a reasonable iipproilch to evaluating the environmental consequences of human actions‘?

Provide iin ex;inipIe demonstrating tIiilt an exclusive reliance on utititar- i;inism could teiid t o ;in cnvironnient;il progriim that either violates people’s rights or distributes costs and benefits unfairly. or hoth.

13

The Land Ethic AID0 LEOPOUD

Aldo Leopold (1887-1947) worked for the U.S. Forest Service before becoming the first professor of Wildlife Management at the University of Wisconsin. He is considered the father of “The Land Ethic.” His main work is Sand County Almanac (1947) from which our selection is taken.

Leopold was distressed at the degradation of the environment and we must b e p to realize our symbiotic relation- s h p to the Earth, so that we value “the Land” or biotic communicy for its own sake. We must come to see ourselves, not as conquerors of the Land but rather as plain members and citizens of the biotic Community.

WHEN GODLIKE Odysseus retumed from the wars in Troy, he hanged all on one rope a dozen slave-grls of his household whom he suspected of misbehavior during his absence.

. T b hangmg involved no question of propriety. The grls were, property. The disposal of property was then, as now, a matter of expediency, not of right and wrong.

Concepts of right and wrong were not laclang from Od- yqeus’ Greece: witness the fidelity of his wife through the long years before at last his black-prowed galleys clove the wine-dark seas for home. The ethical structure of that day covered wives, but had not yet been extended to human chattels. During the three thousand years which have since elapsed, ethical criteria have been extended to many fields of conduct, with corresponding shrinkages in those judged by expediency only.

The Ethical Sequence

This extension of ethics, so far studied only by philosophers, is actually a process in ecoiogcal evolution. Its sequences may be described in ecological as well as in phdosophical terms. An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differenri- anon of socd from anti-social conduct. These are two definitions of one thing. The thing has its o r i p in the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of CD. operation. The ecologst calls these symbioses. Politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which the original free- for-all competition has been replaced, in part, by cooperative m e c b m s with an ethical content.

The complexity of cooperative mechanisms has increased with population density, and with the efficiency of tools. It was simpler, for example, to define the anti-social uses of sticks and stones in the days of the mastodons than of bullets and billboards in the age of motors.

The first ethics dealt with the relation between individuals; the Mosaic Decalogue is an &ample. Later accretions dealt with the relation between the individual and society. The Golden Rule tries to integrate the indwidual to society; democracy to integrate social organization to the individual.

There is as yet no ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus’ slave-pis, is still propeny. The land-relation is sdl snictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.

The extension of ethics to this third element in human environment is, if I read the evidence correctly, an evolutionary possibility and an ecologcal necessity..It is the third step in a sequence. The first two have already been taken. Indwidual t h d - e a since the days of Ezelael and kaah have asserted that the despohrion of land is not only ineupedent but wrong. Sociev, however, has not yet affirmed their belief. I regard the present consewation movement as the embryo of such an affirmation.

An e h c may be regarded as a mode of guidance for meeting ecological siruadons so new or inmate, or involving such deferred reactions, that the path of socd expedency is not discernible to the average indwidual. Animal instincts are modes of guidance for the individual in meeting such situations. Ethics are possibly a kind of community instinct in-the-makmg.


The Community Concept From A Sand Counp Almanac: And Essays on ConservationJrom Round River, by Aldo Leopold. Copyright Q 1949, 1953,1966, renewed 1977,1981 by Oxford University Press. Inc. Repnnred by penssion.

84 ALDOLEOPOLD

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent

parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community, but IS e h c s prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for).

The land e h c simply enlarges the boundanes of the com- munit). to include sods, waten, plants, and anunals, or collectively: the land.

T h sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligaaon to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes. butjust what and whom do we love? Certainlynot the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to tum turbines, float barges, and cany off sewage. Certainly not the plants. of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species. A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these "resources," but it does f i r m their right to conanued existence, and, at least in spots, their con- unued existence in a natural state.

In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the landcommunity to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.

In human history, we have leamed (I hope) that the conqueror role 6 eventually self-defeating. Why? Because it is implicit in such a role that the conqueror knows, ex cathedra, just what makes the community clock tick, and just what and who is valuable, and what and who is worthless, in communicy life. I t always tums out that he knows neither, and this is why his conquests eventually defeat themselves.

In the biotic community, a parallel situarion exists. Abra- ham knew esactly what the land was for: it was to drip milk and honey into Abraham's mouth. At the present moment, the assurance with which we regard this assumption is inverse to the degree of our education.

The ordinary citlzen today assumes that science knows what makes the community clock tick; the scientist is equally sure that he does not. He knows that the biotic mechanism is SO complex that its worlangs may never be fully understood.

That man is, in fact, only a member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history. Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characteristics of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived on it.

Consider, for example, the settlement of the Mississippi valley. In the years following the Revolution, three groups were contending for its control: the native Indian, the French and English traders, and the American settlers. Historians wonder what would have happened if the English at Detroit had thrown

a little more weight into the I n h side of those tipsy scales whch decided the outcome of the c o l o d migration into the cane-lands of Kentucky. It is time now to ponder the fact that the cane-lands, when subjected to the particular mixture of forces represented by the cow, plow, fire, and axe of the pioneer, became bluegrass. What if the plant succession inherent in this dark and bloody ground had, under the impact of these forces, gven us some worthless sedge, shrub, or weed? Would Boone and Kenton have held out? Would there have been any overflow into Oho, Induna, Illinois, and Missouri? Any Loui- siana Purchase? Any nanscontinental union of new states? Any Civil War?

Kentucky was one sentence in the drama of history. We are commonly told what the human actors in this drama tried to do, but we are seldom told that their success, or the lack of it, hung in large degree on the reaction of particular soils to the impact of the parucular forces exerted by their occupancy. In the case of Kentucky, we do not even know where the bluegrass came from-whether it is a naave species, or a stowaway from Europe.

Contrast the cane-lands with what hindsight tells us about the Southwest. where the pioneers were equally brave, re- sourceful, and persevering. The impact of occupancy here brought no bluegrass, or other plant fitted to withstand the bumps and buffeting of hard use. This regon, when grazed by livestock, reverted through a series of more and more wonhless p e s , shrubs, and weeds to a condxion of unstable equiiib rium. Each recession of plant types bred erosion; each incre- ment to erosion bred a further recession of plants. The result today is a progressive and mutual deterioration, not only of plants and soils, but of the animal community subsisting thereon. The early settlers did not expect this: on the cienegas of New Mexico some even cut ditches to hasten it. So subtle has been its progress that few residents of the regon are aware of it. It is quite invisible to the tourist who finds this wrecked landscape colorful and charming (as indeed it is, buc ic bears scant resemblance to what it was in 18%).

This same landscape was 'developed' once before, but with quite different results. The Pueblo Indians settled the Southwest in pre-Columbian times, but they happened not to be equipped with range livestock. Their civilization expired, but not because their land expired.

In India, regions devoid of any sod-forming grass have been settled, apparently without weckng the land, by the simple expedient of carrylng the grass to the cow, rather than vice versa. (Was this the result of some deep wisdom, or was it just good luck? 1 do not know.)

In short, the plant succession steered the course of history; the pioneer simply demonstrated, for good or ill, what succes- sions inhered in the land. Is history taught in this spirit? It will

T H E L A N D m l I C 85

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be, once the concept of land as a community really penetrates our intellectual life.

The Ecological Conscience

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. Despite nearly a century of propaganda, Conservation still proceeds at a snail‘s pace; progress still consists largely of letter- head pieties and convention oratory. On the back forty we sall slip two steps backward for each forward stride.

The usual answer to this dilemma is “more conservation education.” No one will debate this, but is it certain that only the volume of education needs stepping up? Is something lacking in the content as well?

It is difficult to .give a fair summary of its content in brief form, but, as I understand it, the content is substanaally t h s : obey the law, vote right, join some organizations, and practice what conservation is profitable on your own land; the govemment will do the rest.

Is not this foxmula too easy to accompkh anything worth- wtde? It defines no right or wrong, assigns no obligation, calls for no sacrifice, implies no change in the current philosophy of values. In respect of land-use, it urges only enlightened self- interest. Just how far wdl such education take us? An example will perhaps yield a p a d answer.

By 1930 it had become clear to all except the ecologcally blind that southwestem W~consin’s topsoil was slipping seaward. In 1933 the farmers were told that if they would adopt cenain remedul practices for five years. the public would do- nate CCC labor to install them, plus the necessary machinery and matenals. The offer was widely accepted, but the practices were widely forgotten when the five-year contract period was up. The h e r s continued only those practices that yielded an immediate and visible economic gain for themselves.

This led to the idea that maybe farmers would learn more quickly if they themselves wrote the rules. Accordingly the Wisconsin Legslamre in 1937 passed the Soil Conservation Disuict JAW. This said to farmers, in effect: We, the public, will

furnish youfree technical service and loan you speciulued machinery, gyou will writeyour own rulesfor land-we. Each county may write its own rules, and these will have theforce of law. Nearly all the counties promptly organized to accept the proffered help, but after a decade of operation, no county has yet written a single rule. There has been visible progress in such practices as strip- cropping, pasture renovation, and soil liming, but none in fencing woodlots against pang, and none in excluding plow and cow from steep slopes. The farmers, in short, have selected

86 AIDOLEOFOLD .

those remedd practices which were profitable anyhow, andl ignored those which were profitable to the community, but: not clearly profitable to themselves.

When one asks why no rules have been written, one is told, that the community is not yet ready to s~pport them; education must precede rules. But the education actually in progress makes no mention of obligations to land over and above those dictated by self-interest. The net result is that we have more education but less soil, fewer healthy woods, and as many floods as in 1937.

The puzzling aspect of such situations is that the existence of obligations over and above self-interest is taken for granted in such rural community enterprises as the betterment of roads, schools, churches, and baseball teams. Their existence is not taken for granted, nor as yet seriously discussed, in bettering the behavior of the water that falls on the land, or in the preserving of the beauty or diversity of the farm landscape. Land-use ethics are still govemed wholly by economic self- interest, just as social ethics were a century ago.

To sum up: we asked the farmer to do what he conveniently could to save his soil, and he has done just that, and only that. The farmer who clears the woods off a 75 per cent slope, turns his cows into the clearing, and dumps its rainfall, rocks, and soil into the community creek, is still (if otherwise decent) a respected member of society. If he puts lime on his fields and plants his crops on contour, he is still entitled to all the privileges and emoluments of his Soil Conservation Dis- trict. The District is a beautihl piece of social machinexy, but it is coughing along on two cylinders because we have been too timid, and too anxious for quick success, to tell the farmer the true magnitude of hls obligations. Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the euten- sion of the social conscience from people to land.

No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions. The proof that consenadon has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy and religion have not yet heard of it. In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.

. . .

Substitutes for a Land Ethic

When the logc of history hungers for bread and we hand out a stone, we are at pains to explain how much the stone resembles bread. 1 now describe some of the stones which serve in lieu of a land ethic.

One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the’land

community have no economic value. Wildflowers and song- birds are examples. Of the 22,000 higher plants and annals native to Wiconsin, it is doubtful whether more than 5 per cent can be sold, fed, eaten, or otherwise put to economic use. Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if (as I believe) its stabihty depends on its integnty, they are entitled to continuance.

‘When one of these non-economic categories is threatened, and if we happen to love it, we invent subterfuges to gve

. it economic importance. At the beginning of the century song- birds were supposed to be dsappearing. Omitholopts jumped to the rescue with some distinctly shaky evidence to the effect chat insects would eat us up if birds faded to control them. The evidence had to be economic in order to be valid.

It is painful to read these circumlocutions today. We have no land ethic yet, but we have at least drawn nearer the point of admitting that birds should continue as a matter of biotic right, regardless of the presence or absence of economic .advantage to us.

A parallel situation exists in respect of predatory mammals, raptonal birds. and fish-eating birds. Time was when biologms somewhat overworked the evidence that these creatures preserve the health of game by f i g weaklings, or that they control rodents for the farmer. or that they prey only on “worthless” species. Here again, the evidence hadxo be economic in order to be d d . It is only in recent years that we hear the more honest argument that predators are membes of the community. and that no special interest has the right to exterminate them for the sake of a benefit, real or fancied, to itself. Unfortunately this enlightened view is still in the talk stage. In the field the extermination of predators goes mer- rily on: witness the impending erasure of the‘ timber wolf by fiat of Congress, the Conservation Bureaus, and many state leplacures.

Somespecies of trees have been “read out of the party” by economics-minded foresters because they grow too slowly, or have too low a sale value to pay as timber crops: white cedar, tamarack. cypress, beech, and hemlock are ebmples. In Eu- rope, where forestry is ecologically more advanced, the noncommercial tree species are recognized as members of the native forest community, to be preserved & such, within reason. Moreover some (like beech) have been found to have a valuable function in building up soil femliry. The interdependence of the forest and its constituent tree species, ground flora, and fauna is taken for granted.

Lack of economic value is sometimes a character not only of species or p u p s , but of entire biotic communities: marshes, bogs, dunes, and “desens” are examples. Our formula in such cases is to relegate their conservation to govemment as refuges, monuments, or parks. The difficulty is that

these communides are usually interspersed with more valuable private hds ; the govemment cannot possibly own or control such scattered parcels. The net effect is that we have relegated some of them to ultinyte extinction over large areas. If the private owner werr ecologically minded. he would be proud to be the custorlzan of a reasonable propomon of such areas, whch add drversity and beauty to ~ J S fann and to hls community.

In some instances, the assumed lack of profit in these “waste” areas has proved to be wrong, but only after most of them had been done away with. The present scramble to re- flood muskrat marshes is a case in point.

There is a clear tendency in American conservation to relegate to govemment all necessaryjobs that private landowners fail to perfonn. Govemmenc ownership, operation, subsidy, or regulation is now widely prevalent in forestry. range management, soil and watershed management, park and wildemess conservation, fisheries management, and migratory bird management, with more to come. Most of this growth in govemmental conservation is proper and logcal, some of it is inevitable. That I imply no disapproval of it is implicit in the fact that I have spent most of my life worktng for it. Nevertheless the question arises: What is the ultimate magnitude of the enterprise? Will the tax base carry its eventual ramifications? At what point will govemmental conservation, like the mastodon, become handcapped by its own dimensions? The answer, if there is any, seem to be in a land ethic, or some other force which assigns more obligaaon to the private landowner.

Industnal landowners and users, especially lumbermen and stockmen, are inclined to wail long and loudly about the extension of govemment ownership and regulation to land. but (with notable exceptions) they show little disposition to develop the only visible altemative: the voluntary practice of conservation on their own lands.

When the private landowner is asked to perfortn some unprofitable act for the good of the community, he today assents only with outstretched palm. If the act costs him cash this is fair and proper, but when it costs only forethought, open-mindedness, or time, the issue is at least debatable. The overwhelming growth of land-uses subsidies in recent years must be ascribed, in large pan, to the govemment’s om’agencies for conservation education: the land bureaus, the agncul- rural colleges, and the extension services. As far as I can detect, no ethical obligation toward land is taught in these institutions.

To sum up: a system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are (as far as we how) essential to its healthy functioning. I t assumes, falsely, I think, that the economic pans of the biotic clock will function without the uneconomic parts. It tends to relegate to

THELANDETHIC 87

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govemment many functions eventually too large, too complex, or too widely dispersed to be performed by govemment.

An ethical obligation on the part of the private owner is the only visible remedy for these situations.

The Land Pyramid

An e h c to supplement and guide the economic relation to land presupposes the existence of some mental image of land as a biotic mechanism. We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.

The image commonly employed in conservation education is “the balance of nature.’’ Forreasons too lengthy to detail here, this figure of speech fails to describe accurately what little we know about the land mechanism. Amuch truer image is the one employed in ecology: the biotic pyramid. I shall first sketch the pyramid as a symbol of land, and later develop some of its implications in terms of land-use.

Plants absorb energy from the sun. This energy flows through a circuit called the biota, which may be represented by a p y ” d consisting of layers. The bottom layer is the soil. A piant layer rests on the soil, an insect layer on the plants, a bird and rodent layer on the insects, and so on up through various animal groups to the apex layer, which consists of the larger carnivores.

The species of a layer are alike not in where they came from, or in what they look like, but rather in what they eat. Each successive layer depends on those below it for food and often for other services, and each in tum fumishes food and services to those above. Proceeding upward; each successive layer de- creases in numerical abundance. Thus, for every carnivore &ereare hun&eds of his prey, thousands of their prey, millions of insects, uncountable plants. The pyramidal form of the system reflecn this numerical progression from apex to base. Man shares an intermediate layer with the bears, raccoons, and squirrels which eat both meat and vegetables.

The lines of dependency for food and other services are called food chains. Thus soil-oak-deer-Indian is a chain that has now been largely converted to soil-com-cow-farmer. Each species, including ourselves, is a link in many chains. The deer eats a hundred plants other than oak, and the cow a hundred plants other than com. Both, then, are links in a hundred chains. The pyramid is a tangle of chains so complex as to seem disorderly, yet the stability of the system proves it to be a highly organized structure. Its functioning depends on the cooperation and competition of its diverse parts.

88 ALDO LEOPOLD

In the b e p i n g , the pyramid’of life was low and squat; the food chains short and simple. Evolution has added layer after layer, link after link. Man is one of thousands of accretions to the height and complexity of the pyramid. Sciencehas given us many doubts, but it has gwen us at least one certainty: the trend of evolution is to elaborate and diversify the biota.

Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of sods, p1ants;and animals. Food chams are the living channels whch conduct energy upward; death and decay retum it to the soil. The circuit is not closed; some energy is dissipated in decay, some is added by absorption from the air, some is stored in sods, peats, and long-lived forests; but it is a sustained circuit, like a slowly augmented revolving fund of life. There is always a net loss by downhill wash, but this is normally small and offset by the decay of rocks. It is deposited in the ocean and, in the course of geo- log~cal time, raised to form new lands and new pyramids.

The velocity and character of the upward flow of energy depend on the complex structure of the plant and animal community, much as the upward flow of sap in a tree depends on its complex cellular organization. Without this complexity, normal circulation would presumably not occur. Structure means the characteristic numbers, as well as the characteriscic lands ind functions, of the component species. This interdependence between the complex structure of.the land and its smooth functioning as an energy unit is one of its basic attributes.

When a change occurs in one part of the circuit, many other parts must adjust themselves to it. Change does not necessarily obstruct or divert the flow of energy; evolution is a long series of self-induced changes, the net result of which has .been to elaborate the flow mechanism and to lengthen the circuit. Evolutionary changes, however, are usually slow and local. Man’s invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidiy, and scope.

One change is in the composition of floras and faunas. The larger predators are lopped off the apex of the pyramid; food chains, for the first time in history, become shorter rather than longer. Domesticated species from other lands are substituted for wdd ones, and wild ones are moved to new habitats. In this world-wide pooling of faunas and floras, some species get out of bounds as pests and diseases, others are extinguished. Such effects are seldom intended or foreseen; they represent unpre- dicted and often untraceable readjustments in the structure. Agncultural science is largely a race between the emergence of new pests and the emergence of new techniques for their control.

Another change touches the flow of energy through plants and animals and its retum to the soil. Fertility is the ability of

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soil to receive, store, and release energy. Agnculture, by over- drafts on the sod, or by too radical a sulxtimtion of domestic for native species in the superstructure, may derange the channels of flow or deplete storage. Sods depleted of their storage, or of the organic matter which anchors it, wash away faster than they form. T h is erosion.

Waters, like soil, are part of the energy circuit. Industry, by polluting waters or obstructing them with dams, may exclude the plants and animals necessary to keep energy in circulation.

Transportation brings about another basic change: the plants or animals grown in one region are now consumed and retumed to the soil in another. Transportation taps the energy stored in rocks, and in the air, and uses it elsewhere; thus we fertilize the garden with nitrogen gleaned by the guano birds from the fishes of seas on the other side of the Equator. Thus the formerly locaked and self-contained circuits are pooled on a world-wide scale.

The process of altering the pyramid for human occupation releases stored energy, and this often gves rise, during the pioneering period, to a deceptive exuberance of plant and anmd life, both wild and tame. These releases of biotic capital tend to becloud or postpone the penalties of violence.

This thumbnail sketch of land as an energy circuit conveys three basic ideas:

1. That land is not merely soil. 2. That the native plants and animals kept the energy circuit

open; others may or may not. 3. That man-made changes are of a different order than evo-

lutionary changes, and have effects more comprehensive than is intended or foreseen.

These ideas, collectively, raise two basic issues: Can the land adjust itself to the ne& order? Can the desired alte'rations be accomplished with less kiolence?

Biotas seem to differ in their capacity to sustain violent conversion. Westem Europe, for e.xample, cames a far different pyramid than Caesar found there. Some large animals are lost; Swampy forests have become meadows or plowland; many new plants and animals are introduced, some of which escape as pests; the remaining natives are greatly changed in distribution and abundance. Yet the soil is still there and, with the help of imported nutrients, still fertile; and waters flow normally; the new structure seems to function and to persist. There is no Uible stoppage or derangement of the circuit.

Westem Europe, then, has a resistant biota. Its inner processes are tough, elastic, resistant to strain. No matter how violent thealterations, the pyramid, so far, has developed some

new modus vivendi which preserves its habitability for man, and for most of the other natives.

Japan seems to present another instance of radical conversion without disorganization.

Most other civhzed regons, and some as yet barely touched by civiluation, display various stages of disorganization, varylng from iniaal symptoms to advanced wastage. In Asia Minor and North Afnca diagnosis is confused by climatic changes, which may have been either the cause or the effett of advanced wastage. In the United States the degree of disorganization varies locally; it is worst in the Southwest, the Ozarks, and parts of the South, and least in New England and the Northwest. Better land-uses may still arrest it in the less advanced regons. In parts of Mexico, South America, South A h a , and Australia a violent and accelerating wastage is in progress, but I cannot assess the prospects.

This ,almost world-wide display of disorganization in the land seems to be similar to disease in an animal, except that it never culminates in complete disorganization or -death. The land recovers, but at some reduced level of complexity, and with a reduced canylng capacity for people, plants, and animals. Many biotas currently regarded as 'lands of opportunity' are in fact already subsisting on exploitative agncuiture, i.e. they have already exceeded their sustained carrylng capacity. Most of South America is overpopulated in this sense.

In arid regons we attempt to offset the process ofwastage by reclamation, but it is only too evident that the prospective longevity of reclamation projects is often short. In our own West, the best of them may not last a century.

The combined evidence of history and ecology seems to support one gene.ral deduction: the less violent the man-made changes, the greater the probability of successful readjustment in the pyramid. Violence, in tum, vanes with human population density; a dense population requires a more violent conversion. In this respect, North America has a better chance for permanence than Europe, if she can contrive to limit her density.

This deduction runs counter to our current philosophy, which assumes that because a small increase in density en- riched human life, that an indefinite increase will enrich it indefinitely. Ecology knows of no density relationship that holds for indefinitely wide limits. All gains from density are subject to a law of diminishing returns.

Whatever may be the equation for men and land, it is improbable that we as yet know all its terms. Recent discoveries in mineral and vitamin numtion reveal unsuspected dependen- cies in the upcircuit: incredibly minute quanticies of certain substances determine the value of soils to plants, of plants to animals. What of the down-circuit? What of the vanishing

THELANDETHIC 89

species, the preservation of which we now regard as an esthetic luxury? They helped build the soil; in what unsuspected ways may they be essenual to its maintenance? Professor Weaver proposes that we use prairie flowers to refloculate the wasting soils of the dust bowl; who knows for what purpose c m e s and condors, otters and @es may some day be used?

Land Health and the A-B Cleavage

A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecologcal conscience, and thLs in tum reflects a conviction of indwidual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capaciy.

Conservationists are notorious for their dissensions. Su- perficially these seem to add up to mere confusion, but a more careful scrutiny reveals a single plane of cleavage common to m y specialized fields. In each field one group (A) regards the land as soil, and its function as commodty-production; another group (B) regards the land as a biota, and its function as somethmg broader. How much broader is admittedly in a state of doubt and confusion.

In my own field, forestry, group A is quite content to grow uees like cabbages, with cellulose as the basic forest commodity. It feels no inhibition against violence; its ideology is agro- nomic. Group B, on the other hand, sees forestry as fundamentally diffemet from agronomy because it employs natural species. and manages a natural environment rather than creating an amficial one. Group B prefers natural reproduction on principle. It. worries on biotic as well as economic grounds about the loss of species lke chesmut, and the threatened loss of the white pines. It womes about a whole series of secondary hex €unctions: wildlife, recreation, watersheds, wildemess areas. To my mind, Group B feels the stimngs of an ecological conscience.

In the wildlife field, a parallel cleavage exists. For Group A the basic commodities are sport and meat; the yardsticks of production are ciphers of take in pheasants and trout. Artificial propagation is acceptable as a permanent as well as a temporary recourse-ifits unit costs permit. Group B, on the other hand, worries about a whole series of biotic side-issues. What is the cost in predators of producing a game crop? Should we have further recourse to exotics? How can management restore the shrinlang species, like prairie grouse, already hopeless as shootable game? How can management restore the threatened rarities, like trumpeter swan and whooping crane? Can man-

90 ALDOLEOPOLD

agement principles be extended to wildflowen? Here again it is clear to me that we have the same A-B cleavage as in forestry.

In the larger field of agnculture I am less competent to speak, but there seem to be somewhat parallel cleavages. Sci- entific agnculture was actively developing before ecology was bom, hence a slower penetration of ecologcg concepts might be expected. Moreover the farmer, by the very nature of his techniques, must modfy the biota more radically than the forester or the wildlife manager. Nevertheless, there are many discontents in agnculture which seem to add up to a newvision of ‘biotic farming.’

Perhaps the most important of these is the new evidence that poundage or tonnage is no measure of the food-value of farm crops; the products of ferule soil may be qualitaavely as well as quantitatively superior. We can bolster poundage from depleted soils by pouring on imported fertility, but we are not necessarily bolstering food-value. The possible ultimate ramifications of this idea are so immense that I must leave their exposiaon to abler pens.

The discontent that labels itself ‘organic farming,’ while bearing some of the earmarks of a cult, is nevertheless biotic in its direction, particularly in its insistence on the importance of soil flora and fauna.

The ecological fundamentab of agnculture are just as poorly known to the public as in other fields of land-use. For example, few educated people realize that the manrelous advances in technique made during recent decades are improvements in the pump, rather than the well. Acre for acre, they have barely sufficed to o&et the s i n h g level of femlity.

In all of these cleavages, we see repeated the same basic paradoxes: man the conqueror vmw man the biotic citizen; science the sharpener of his w o r d vmw science the search- light on his universe; land the slave and servant versw land the collective organism. Robinson’s injunction to Tristram may well be applied, at this juncture, to Homo sapiens as a species in geological time:

Whether you will or not You are a fing, Tristram. for you are one Of the time-tested few that leave the world, When they are gone, not the same place it was. Mark what you leave.

The Outlook

It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high

98 ~ a r d for its value. By value, I of c o m e mean something fqr broader dran mere economic value; I mean value in the philo-

. Perhaps the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and economic ystem is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land. Your true modem is separated from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He has no vital relation to it; to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow. Tum h m loose for a day on the land, and if the spot does not happen to be a golf llnks or a “scenic” area, he is bored stif€. If crops could be raised by hydroponics instead of farming, it would suit him very well. 4ynthetic substitutes forwood, leather, wool, and other natural land products suit him better than the originals. In short, land is something he has “outgrown.”

Almost equally serious as an obstacle to a land ethic is the attitude of the farmer for whom the land is still an adversary, or a taskmaster that keeps him in slavery. Theoretically, the mech- anization of farming ought to cut the farmer‘s chains, but whether it really does is debatable.

One of the requisites for an ecologcal comprehension of land is’an understanding of ecology, and this is by no means co-extensive with “education”; in fact, much higher education seems delibentely to avoid ecologcal concepts. An under- standmg of ecology does not necessarily origmate in COUK~S beanng ecologcal labels; it is quite as likely to be labeled geography, botany, agronomy, history, or economics. This is as it should be, but whatever the label, ecologcal training is

.scarce. The case for a land ethic would appear hopeless but far the

minority which is in obvious revolt against these “modem” trends.

The “key-log’’ which must be moved to release the evo- hionaryprocess foran ethic is simply this: quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integnty, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

It of course goes without saying that economic feasibility limits the tether of what can or cannot be done for land. It always has and it always will. The fallacy the economic deter- minists have tied around our collective neck,.and which we

sgpbrcal *rw.

now need to cast off, is the beljef that economics determines all land-use. This is simply not me. An innumerable host of actions and attitudes, comprising perhaps the bulk of all land relations, is determined by the land-users’ tastes and preddec- nons, rather than by his purse. The bulk of all land relations hinges on investments of time, forethought, skill, and faith rather than on investments of cash. As a land-user thinketh, so is he.

I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an e h c is ever “written.” Only the most superficial student of history supposes that Moses “wrote” the Decalogue; it evolved ir, the minds of a h h g community, and Moses wrote a tentative summary of it for a “seminar.” I say tentative because evolution never stops.

The evolution of a land ethic is an intellectual as well as emotional process. Conservation is paved with good intentions which prove to be futile, or even dangerous, because they are devoid of critical understanding either of the land, or of economic land-use. 1 thmk it is a truism that as the ethical frontier advances from the individual to the community, its intellectual content increases.

The mechanism of operation is the same for any ethic: social approbation for right actions: soclal disapproval for wrong actions.

By and large, our present problem is one of attitudes and implements. We are remodeling the Ahambra with a steam- shovel, and we are proud of our yardage. We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all has many good points, but we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use.

STUDY QUEsTIONS

1. Does Leopold make a case for the intrinsic value of the biotic community, or does he only assume this?

2. Analye Leopold’s view of humans and of biotic commu-. nities. How do we resolve conflicts between their claims and needs? Which are more important, ecosystems or individuals?

Leopolds position. 3. Critically discuss the strengths and weaknesses of

THELANDETHIC 91

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Having Failed to Manage Ourselves, We Will Now Manage the Planet? 1

An Opinion from the Back Forty

There is a growing presumption that humans must now iake control of the planet and its life processes. A recent issue of Sclentt/ic Antetican devoted an entire issue to tlic subject of 'Managing Planet Earth." In it one finds plcas for "adaptive" policies for planetary management which require 'improving the f low of information,' 'technologies for sustainable development," antl "mechanisms. ..to coordinate managerial activities."' Economists of a similar mind-set inlend to 'find the right policy levers" to manage 'all assets, natural resources, and liuman resorrrces.*z Language like this conjures images of economists and policy experts sitting in a computerized, planetary control room, coolly pusliing but- tons and puIIihg levers, guiding the planet to sometliing called *sustainable grOWlli." At a time when humans are rapidly destroying tlic earth, this has an eminently sensible r ing to it. The alternative to management is to sit idly by until the final wliimpcr. Or so we are asked to believe.

1 do not doubt that something needs to be managed. Dirt I would l ike to raise questions a b u t what we manage antl how. For woirltl-IE planet managers, it shorrld IE a matter of no small consequence ihat Cod, Gaia, or Evolution was doing the job nicely until human popiila- tion, technology, and economies got out of controt. This leads me to think that i t is humans that need managing, not the planet. This is more than semantic hairsplitting. Planetary management has a nice ring t o it. It places the 1)iaine on the planet, not on Iiuman stiipitlity, arro-

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158 E c o l o g i p n l L i t e r a c y

gance, antl ecological rnalfcasance, w l i i ch do not have a n ice ring. I t avoids the messy subjects of polit ics, justice, and the d isc ip l ine of moral clioice. Planetary management, moreover, appeals to ow desire to b e in contro l of tl i ings. i t appeals to our fascination with digital readouts, computer printouts, dials, gauges, and high tech of al l sorts. Management is mechanical not organic, and w e l i ke mechanical things: they reinforce our bel ie f that w e are in control.

.Hans to manage t l ie earth are founded on the bel ief that ignorance is a solvable problem. W i t h enough research, satellite data, and computer models w e can take command of spaceship earth. There is a great deal more that w e will learn about the earth, to b e sure. But there are good reasons to bel ieve that its complexi ty is permanently beyond our comprehension. A square meter of topsoi l to a depth of several inches is teeming with life-forms that still have not heen studied, much less t l ieir ecology or t l ieir relat ionsl i ip to t l ie planet. The same can b e said of most of the “machinery of nature.” The salient fact is not our knowledge, but our ignorance. i f w e consider not on ly the complexi ty of nature, from soil bacteria to planetary biogeochemical cycles, but also the human impacts, with their various k inds of synergies, feedback loops, leads, antl lags, t l ie idea of managing the planet takes on a different prospect altogether. Managing the planet, un l i ke piloting a 747, requires a level of knowledge that w e are not l ike ly to acquire.

Furthermore, even i f w e cou ld acquire this knowledge, other l imits would appear. I a m referr ing t o t l ie p rob lem of l iu inan evil, recalci- trance, antl our capacity to rationalize almost anything. There is a limit to w h i c h w e can comprehend t l ie good, and there are other l imits to our will ingness to (lo it. These l i i i i i ts do not seem to trouble the would- be planet managers, w h o see the world as a set of problems solvable b y adjustments in prices or more efficient technologies. There can b e no gocxl argument against efficiency in the use of resources or against prices that include al l environniental costs. I t is a mistake, however, t o believe that w e face on ly problems solvable by painless market adjust- mcn ts a n d bet ter gadgets, n o t clileininas that will requi re w isdom, goodness, a n d a rationality of a higher sort. The word “hubris,” meaning overween ing arrogance, is not heard much any more, bu t i t applies to the bel ie f that w e can sufficiently understand t l ie complexities of the earth t o nianage i t for good purposes. I t is also h i h r i s to believe that t l ie technologies of earth management antl t l ie process of management art‘ neutral.

T ime represents a third harrier. Assuming that w e cou ld amass the necessary knowledge ant l character traits for managing earth, could w e do so in perpetui ty? I f not, what woirltl happen as iiianagenient sys-

\ Q Art O p i t r i o t i Jrvnr t h e R a c k F v r l y 159

tenis subsequently collapse or erode? Would life systems, genetic processes, species dependent upon cont inued genetic improvement or upon human care d ie out? What might happen to the technologies of management as their guardians disappear? The shadows of that prob- l e m now l ie across every nuclear plant that will have to be sealed off from human contact for centuries. Once human management replaces those older processes of evolut ion and the integrity and balances of natural systems, it is a mistake to assume that these could be restored if necessary. Once having crossed the threshold, there may be no going back. But the l ike l i l iood of maintaining management systems for any length of time does not appear to be very high. The same planet some would presume to nianage is l i t tered with ruins that give ample testimony to our fall ibil i ty and inconstancy. Our present scale and technology have on ly raised the stakes without increasing the odds of success.

There is another approach to management expressed by Wendel l Derry, w h o states that “we are no t smart enough or conscious enough or alert enough to work responsibly on a gigantic scale.”, H i s answer has nothing to do with management unless w e mean self-management. H e says that “we must acquire the character and the skil ls to l ive much poorer than w e do. W e must waste less. W e miist do more fbr ourselves.” There are points of agreement between Berry and the planet managers, the need to reduce waste, for example. But where Berry talks openly about l iv ing more poorly, the planet managers talk of sustainable growth as i f l i fe can cont inue as i t has for the past four decades. Rerry’s emphasis on skills of self-reliance and character, wh ich have no market value, strike an odd note in a t ime when w e think that people act on l y froin economic motives, not from a sense of duty, rightness, or even righteousness. Elsewhere Berry has described the environmental crisis as one of character wh ich cannot be improved b y technology or market adjustments, alt l iough they can be made worse by them.’

The difference between t l ie planet managers and Berry has t o do first with different juclgments about the cause of t l ie crisis. The arrtliors in t l ie issue of ScietifiJic Atrrerl’can noted above are silent about the origins of our plight, as if t l ie crisis has no historical causes, no antecedents, and no roots in science, teclinology, economics, or polit ics worth mention. 1 think it no coincidence that the advertisements of IBM, McDonnel l 1)oii- glas, General Mhors , and noeing are scattered throughout. I t is diff icult to avoid t l ie conclusion that planet managers have made their peace willi the powers tliat b e antl have jo ined t l ie movement to extend huinan dominat ion of nature to the fullest extent. I t may be, however, that our i n i p d s e t o inanage that wh ich cannot IK managed, whi le leaving unmanagetl that w l i i c l i co i i ld be, is the source of the problem.

160 I:’c o l o g i c 11 I 1. i l e r u cy

There is good evidence tliat t l ie planetary crisis is a direct reslrlt of the process Wlierel)y the countryside, sinall towns, and neighlmrliootls, l iere and elsewhere were drained of wealth, natural resources, people, and power with these being recrystallized in corporations ant l govern- nients. The processes of urbanization, moclernization, and inclustrializa- tion have dominated the history of the twentieth century, as have those of militarization ant l planetary destruction. It is no coinciclence that the twent ieth century is one of unparallelecl violence Iwtween people, and between people and nature. Nor is i t coincidental that environmental destruct ion has proceeded w i t h t l ie growing depenclcnce of peop le everywhere on products, skills, markets, capital, energy, ant l know l - edge impor ted from somewhere else.

Jkrry’s point that living poor ly requires both character and skil ls strikes at the root of the matter. For planet managers, the o n l y skil ls required are those of scientific expertise, technological ingentiity, and econometrics. Siistaina1)le developInent will h e tleliveretl from on high, in tlie same way that 1)ostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in Bmfhers Kuru- niazou feeds the I\YJSS~S. I’erliajis for the sanle reasons as well . Since people need no skil ls or discipline, they need cultivate no particular traits of character. The kind of skil ls Rerry has in niintl, and before him Thoinas Jefferson, are those of an ecologically competent and active cit izenry wlio know how to do for theinselves antl have the character traits of frugality, tnitlifulness, and gootllieartetlness necessary to b e a goocl n e i g l h o r and good citizen. This implies management, bi i t of t l ie k i n d that g rows out of the disciplines of community and stewartlship.

I t is worth asking how niany of our global problems would have occurred i f this kind of world were still s u l x ” a 1 l y intact. The answer would tel l us, I think, how many of our global problems can h e solved on ly by re l~u i lc l ing the foundations of our ci i l t i i re ant1 patterns of livelihood from the bottom up. There are prol>lems w h i c h can o n l y h e solved at a global level. 111 this category I wti i i I t I inclut le efforts to protect oceans, the ozone layer, cli inate stal,ility, antl I>iological diversity. At a nat ional level, government action w i l l be necessary to estal)lisll “prices tliat tell tile triitIi” aIx)ut t11e environmental coits of things w e consl ime (i.e., full cost pricing). Government act ion w i l l also b e essen- t ial to protect the poor who w i l l b e at greater risk, and to confront that sacred cow of tl istri l) l i t ion in a society in which growing income disparities l i m e nothing to do with economic efficiency, personal wortli, social benefit, or morality.

‘I’hese imp ly potentially traitinntic changes in tlie niintlset of people iisetl t o avoiding real pol i t ical isslres antl living at the cxpense of tlicir ch i l t l rcn I>y not pay ing the costs of soi l erosion, resoiircc depletion,

.

decimated wilt l l i fe, and wrecked ecologies. Honest bookkeeping or a dose of care would reduce the amount of stuff w e buy and discard. This is, J think, why w e must l i ve ‘much poorer than w e do.” However necessary, these changes cannot occur without a n ecologically literate p i i ld ic willing to slipport them, and, 1 think, demand them. W e niay expect any number of feckless polit icians and others t o argue that w e can technologize or g row our way out of ecological malfeasance. The result of trying to do so, however, will on l y delay the day of reckoning ant l make that t ime more bitter than i t otherwise h a d t o be. After al l of tlie energy-efficient motors, lighrbulbs, automobiles are in widespread use, there w i l l \ he a long distance to go before w e arrive at anything l i ke harmony with t l ie natural world or what is being called ”sitstain- al>i l i ty.” That d is tance w i l l b e m a d e up only through inculcat ing changes in publ ic attitudes and means of l ivel ihood wh ich w i l l require witlespreatl ecological literacy and attitudes ak in t o what A ldo Leopoltl once described as a “striving for harmony with land.”

L iv ing poorly, as Rerry puts it, is not t l ie same as l i v ing in poverty. The dist inct ion is tllat between bloatetlness antl prosperity made b y Thoreau, Gantll i i , and Shumacher. To l i ve poor ly but not in poverty will require different skil ls and different knowledge. People antl coni- ini ini t ies with less cash to spend will need to know how to:

1. Distinguish basic needs from wants 2. Reduce depetidencies 3. Take full aclvantage of the free services of nature 4. IJsc locally av;iilable resotirces 5. Ilclndtl local and regional economies, and most iniportantly 6. Itebuild strong, panicipatory communities.

They will need a degree of pract ical ingenui ty that is not socially acceptable in a f f l i i en t an t l e f f luent societies. T h e y will b e good scroungers, scavengers, antl users of the cast-off, secondhand, recycled tlctrit i is from I wasteful society. They will need to become competcint w i t h the natural world in order to reestablish bioregional economies. This requires direct knowledge of tlie ecology of their places including siich things as its trees, inedicinal herbs, soils, wildlife, solar potentials, microcliniates, availabil ity of naturally occurring materials, and wildlife. Aniong the skids that must I,e rediscovered are those that a l low people t o 1;articipate in h e i r siistenance, shelter, and healing. They will need to k n o w how to restore damaged ecosystems. Given the numbers of I~a t te re t l woi i ien, a lwset l children,,and victims of industr ial society, they will also nect l to know how to restore genuine communities.

Can w e manage p lanet earth? r lon ’ t her on it. h i t w e have a . f -

162 ~ c o i o g i c a I Li te re cy

chance to manage ourselves by restoring a disciplined and loving relationship to our places, communities, and 90 the planet. Good sense is required to know what's manageable and what's not and to leave the latter to manage itself. The problem is not {he planet. We are the problem. Throughout history, humans have staadily triumphed over all of those things that managed us: myth, supeastition, religion, taboo, and above all, technological incompetence. Our task now is to replace these constraints with some combination of law, culture, and a rekindled reverence for all life. Management is then more akin to child- proofing a day-care center than it is piloting "spaceship earth."

I

1. ,

'io THE A T L A N T ~ C M O N T H L Y

least 550 years and probably longer. Each farmer, when' his tum comes, takes as much water as he needs from the distributory canal and wastes none. He is discouraged from cheating-watering out of turn-merely by the watchful eyer of his ncighbon above and below him on the canal. If they have a grievance, they can take it to the Tribunal de h s Aguas, which meets on Thursday mom- ings outside the Apostles' door of the Cathedral of Valen- cia. Records dating back co the 1400s suggest that cheating is rare. T h e h u m of Valencia is a profitable region, growing at least (wo crops a year.

Two irrigation systems: one sustainable, equitable, and long-lived, the other a doomed free-for-all. Two case his- tories cited by political scientists who struggle to understand the persistent human failure to solve "common- pool resource problems." Two models for how the planet Eanh might be managed in an age of global warming. T h e atmosphere is just like the aquifer beneath Fowler or the waters of the Tu&: limited and shared. T h e only way we can be sun not to abuse it is by self-restraint And yet nobody knows how best to persuade the human race to exercise self-resuaint

.At the Center of a11 environmcntaIism lies a problem: ..whether to appeal to &e h u r t or to he-head'whether to urge people to make sacrifices in behalf of the planet or to accept that they will noc and instead rig the em-,-

-nomic choica so that they find it rational to be environ- - .mentnlist &is a problem that most ra ivisa in'the envir ronmencal movement barely pause to recognize. Good environmental practice is compatible .with growth. they insis& so it is rational as well as moral. Yet if this were so,. good environmental practice would pay for itself, and there would be no need to pass laws to deter polluten or regulate emissions. A country or a firm that cut corners on pollution control would have no cost advantage over its rivals.

Those who do recognize this problem often conclude that their appeals should not be made to self-interest but rather should be couched in terms of sacrifice, s&css- ness, or, increasingly, moral shame.

We believe they are wrong. Our evidence coma from a surprising convergence of ideas in (wo disciplines that are normally on very different tracks: economics and biology. It is a convergence of which most economists and biologists are still ignorant, but a few have begun to notice. 'I can talk to evolutionary biologists," says Paul Romer, an economist at the University of California 'at Berkeley and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Re- search, in Toronto, "because, like me, they think individuals are important. Sociologists still talk more of the action of classes rather than individuals." G a q Becker, who won the Nobel Prize in economics last year, has been reading biological treatises for years; Paul Samuel- son. who won it more than twenty years ago, his published several papers recently applying economic principles to biological problems. And biologists such as John

.-.. -.. .... - ---..

77

. .

i

Maynard Smith and William Hamilton have been raiding economics for an equally long time. Not that all econo- misu and biologisa agree-chat would be impossible. But there PIC eme&g orrhodoxk in borh disciplines that are suikingly parallel.

Tht last time that biology and economics were engaged was in the Social W n i s m of Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton. n e precedent is not encouraging. The economisrs used the biologists' idea of survival of the fittest to justify everything from inequalities of wealth to racism and eugenics. So most academics arc likely to be rightly waxy of what comes from the new en-

Qbsusion is not with nk. But they need not fur . brcr with coopemtion.

For the Good of the World?

B AND E C O N O M m AGREE THAT Coop-

uken for granted. People and rate only if they as individuals

n l ~ l ~ m do st+ Fer mimomism that r biologists it means the wen once the means to

people arc generally not r &e long-term good of society or the e cnvirollllicnf, tfimfo~''we-will haw.

to find a way to rewud individuals for good behavior and punish them for bad: Exhoning them to self-sacrifice for the sake of "humanity" or 'the tMh" will not be enough.

This is utterly at odds with conventional wisdom. 'Building an environmentally swainable furure depends on restructuring the global economy, major shifts in human reproductive behavior, and dramatic changes in values and lifestyles," wrote Lester Brown, of the World- watch Institute. in his Sure of afr Worjafor 1992, rypifying thc way environmentalists see economics. If people arc shoretigbtcd, an alien value system not human nature, is to blame.

Consider the environmental summit at Rio de Janciro last year. Behind ics d e b i t a and agreements lay nvo entirely uncxamined assumptions: that govemmencs could deliver their peoples, and that the problem was gcaing people to see the global forest beyond their local uecs. In other words, politicians and lobbyists assume that a combination of international trtaties and bener information a n save the world. Many biologists and economists mean: while ~ S C R that even a fully informed public, whose gdv- cmmenu have agreed on all som of ucaties,will still head blindly for the cliff of oblivion.

Three deades ago there was l i d e dissonance &nveen academic thinking and the environmcnralists' faith in the collective good. Biologists frequently explained animal behavior in terms of the "good of the species," and some economists were happy to believe in the Great Society, prepared to pay according to ics means for the sake of the general welfare of the less formnarc. But both disciplines

7R

have undergone radial refomations since then. Evolu- tionary biology has been transformed by the 'selfish gene" notion. popularized by Richard Dawkins, of Ox- ford University, which ekntiplly putm chat animals, in- duding man, act alauistialIy only when it brings some benefit to copies of their own genes. This happens under m cku"= when the altruist and the beneficky arc close relatives, such as bees in a hive, and whai the douisf iS in a position to have the favor reatmcd at a lat- et date. This new view holds chat there simply arc no cases ofcooperation in the animal kingdom except that. It cook mot with an eyeopening book d i e d A&p&moa d N a n d Sukim (1966), by George W i l l i a p m fessor of biological sciencesat the Sou Univcniry of Naw Yo& at Stony Brndt W i l l i ' s message was that evolution pits individuals against each other far more than ic pim species or groups against each other.

By coincidence (Wiiliiuns.says he was unaware of cco- nomic theory at the time), the year before had seen the publication of a book chat was to have a similar impact on economics. Mancur QbOn's Logic ojGi& Aai4a set out to challenge the notion chat individuals would try to further their collecdve h e r e s father than their short- term individual interests. Since then economics has hewed ever more closely to the idea chat societies arc

ccmz. and pofidu chat assume otherwise are doomed. This isbhyi t b sohard tomakcacomuniscid4uork, or even to get the American elcnorate to vote for any of the sadices nccusary to achieve deficit redunion.

And yet the cnvironmend lobby posh a view of the human species in which individual self-inoeren is not the mainspring of human condurr It proposes policies that . assume that when properly informed of the long-term collcctivt consequences of their acciom, people will accept the need for rules that impose res&~ One of the two philosophies must be wrong. Which?

We arc going to argue chat the environmental movement has set itself an unnecessary obstacle by largely ignoring the fact that human beings arc motivated by sclf- interest rather than collective interests. But that docs not mean that the c o l l d v e inkrest is unobuinablc: examples from biology and economics show chat there are all sorts of ways to make the individual interest concordant with the col lcccivc~o long as we ltcognizc the need to. The environmcndisrs arc otherwise in danger of rmk-

ing the same misakes that Mpnriscs made, but our point is not political. For some reason it is thought conservative to believe that human nature is inherently incapable of ignoring ind ivea l incentives for the greater good, and liberal to believe the opposite. But in pramice liberals of- ren believe just as srrongiy as conservotivcs in individual incentives that are not moncury. The threat of prison, or even corporate shame, a n be incentives to polluters. The red divide coma berween those who believe it is necessary to impose such incentives, and those who hope

S U ~ Of their iDdiVidt&, & rCring in ntionnl d i n -

SEPTEMBER 14)3

THE A T L A N T I C M O N T H L Y I ; 2

individd intenuvu, not by axhapdon, fnoml rep

. tiRDudr 01 appeals to our kptCCr natures. If somebody wants to dump a toxic chemical or smuggle an endangered specin, it is

fine that deten him. If a sute wanu to avoid en-

. forcing the federal C l a n Air Act of 1990, it is the thought of eventually being 'bumpedup" to a me= suingcnt nonamin- ment ategory of the act chat haunts sm~c officials. Givm chat this is the ase, environmental policy should be a matter of seeking the most enforcc- able, least bureaucratic, cheapest. most effecrive incentives. Why should these dwrp be tpnctions? Wliy noc some prires, too? Nations, sutts local jurisdictions, and even firms could contribute to financial rewards for t he "greenest" of their fellow bodies.

h6 thought Of p h Of 9

Playing Games With Life

HE N E W CON- vergence of biology and eco-

m m m

2 IOLOGISTS AND ECONOMISTS

AGREE THAT COOPERATION CANNOT BE TAKEN

FOR GRANTED. BOTH THINK THAT

PEOPLE ARE GENERALLY NOT WILLING TO PAY

!-

FOR THE LONG-TERM GOOD OF

SOCIETY OR THE PLANET.

1 nomia has k e n helped by a common methodology-gamc theory. john Maynard Smith. a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, in Britain. was the first effectively to apply the economist's habit of playing a "game" with competing strategies to evolutionary enig- mas, the only difference being that the economic games reward winners with money while evolutionary games reward winners with the chance to survive and breed. One game in particular has proved especially informative in both disciplines: the prisoner's dilemma.

A dramatized version of the game runs as follows: T w o guilty accomplices are held in separate cells and interro-

e r e d by the police. Each is faced with a dilemma. If they both confess (or 'defect"), they will both go to jail for three years. If they both stay silent (or "cooperate"), they will both go to jail for a year on a lesser charge that the police can prove. But if one confesses and the other does not, the defector will walk free on a plea bargain. while the cooperator, who stayed silent, will get a five-year sentence.

Assuming that they have not discussed the dilemma before they were arrested, can each trust his accomplice to stay silent? If not. he should defect and reduce his sentence from five to three years. But even if he can rely on his pamrer to cooperate, he is still better off if he defects. bmuse thar reduces his sentence from three years to none at alii So each will reason that the right thing to do is to defect, which results in three yean for each of them. In the language of game theorists, individually rational strategies result in a collectively irra- tiondl outcome.

Biologists were interested in the prisoner's dilemma as a model for the evolution of coopera-

tion. Under what conditions, they wanted to know, would it pay an animal to evolve a strategy based on coopiration rather than defection? They discovered that the bleak message of the prisoner's dilemma need not obtain if the game is only one in a long series-played by students, researchers, or computers, for points rather than years in jail. Under these circumstances the best strategy is to cooperate on the first trial and then do whatever the other guy did last time. This strategy became known as tit-for- rat. The threat of retaliation makes defection much less likely to pay. Robert Axelrod. a political scientist, and William Hamilton, a biologist, both at the University of

/ 6 7 T H E A T L A N T I C M O N T H L Y

Michigan, discovered by public tournament that there seems to be no mugy that buts tit-for-clt Tit-for-two- opcchrt is, coopentcevcn if the other defecrs once, but not if he defects nviccrcomes close to beating is but of hundreds of strategies that have been tried, none works bratop. Field biologists have been finding at-for-ut at work throughout the'animal kingdom ever since. A fe- male vampire brs for example, .will regucgiate blood for another, unrelated, femde bat that has failed to find a meal during the night-but not if the donee has refused ro be similarly generous in the pas^

Such ~ucs'ibwc: aonaibuced to a growing conviction ruwif Wo&s chat reciprocity is the basis of social life

Lilu p&mtes and dolphins, too. Male dolphins ir debts when collecting dlia to help them

abduct females from other groups. Baboons and chim- panzees remember put favors when coming to one another's aid in fights. And h u m beings? Kim Hill and Hillard Kaplan, of the Univeniry of New Mexico, have ditoovered rhat among the Ache people of Paraguay, suc-

. cessful hunters share spare meat with those who have helped them in the put or might help them in the future.

The impkcion of thesc studies is chat where cooper- auon among individuals docs evolve, surmounting the

t docs so thtough tit-for-ur A auon cnabics~mm to be built upoh a

remrd The conclusion of biology, in other words, is a hopeful one. Cooperation can e"#e Mtudly. The cohcdvc incerrst can be served by $I6 pursuit of sclbh interests.

The Tragedy of the Commons '

C0NOMIS;TS ARE INTEREkED IN THE PRISONER'S dilemma as a paradoxical case in which individually rational behavior leads to collectively h- E tional results-both accomplices spend three

yeon hia i l w b n they could have spent only one. This makes it a model of a 'CQCIzmons" problem, the archerype . of whkk is thc $istory of medieval English common hnd. In 1948 the ecologist Gama Hardin wrote an article in &im~ magazine that explained 'the tragedy of the commons*-why common land tended to suffer from over- @ng, and why every sea fishery suffers from overfish- ing. It is becausc the benefits that each exua cow (or ndwE of fish) brings are reaped by its owner, but the cats of Ehu exua suain it puu on the &s (or on fish JtQekr) 8lt shred among all the usen of what is held in collBa3on. In economic jargon, the coscs arc externalized. Irrdilvidrully rational behavior deteriorates into collective ruin. The ozone hole and the greenhouse effect are classic

usllrpdics Qf tkr commons in the making: each time you bwsn a SelfQn of gas to drive into town, you reap the ben- dst ef i4 Ut h e environmenul cost is shared with all five

Qther memkn of the hum& race. You are a "free-

rider." Being ntional, you drive, and the atmosphere's a- pacity to absorb arbon dioxide is 'overgnzed," and che globe warms. Even if individuals will benefit in the long run from the prevencion of globd warming, in the short run such prevention will cost them dear. As Michael McGinnis and Elinor Osuom of Indiana University at Bloomington, put it in a recent paper, global warming is a 'classic dilcrnma of collective action: a large group of potential bendiciarics facing diffuse and uncertain gains is much harder to organhe for collccdve action than clearly defined groups who are being asked to suffer w i l y un- dcnrPnhble costs."

Hardin recognized two ways to avoid overexploiting commons. One is EO privatize them, so that the owner has both costs and benefits. Now he has every incentive not to overgraze The other is to regulate them by having an outside agency .with the forcc of law behind it+ govern- menL in s h o r c 4 c c the number of cattle.

At the time Hardin published his arcicle, the latter solution was very popular. Governments throughout the. world =cud to the m m existence of a commons problem.by grabbing powers of regulation. Most egregiously, in the Indian subcontinent communally exploited foreso and grasslands were nationalized and put under the charge of ctnpolizcd bureaucracies f u away. This might have worked if govemmcnts wcrc competent and incor- ruptible, and had bottomless rtsourcts to police their charges. But it made problems worse, because the forest was no longer the possession of the local village even collectively. So the grazing, poaching, and logging intensified--che cost had k e n exremalid not just to the r u t . of the vilhge but to the entire country.

T h e whole suucture of pollution regulation in the United States represents a ccncrPlited solution to a commons problem Burcaucnrr decide, in response to pressure from lobbyists, exactly what levels of pollution to ai- low, usually give no m d i t for any reductions below the threshold, and even specify the technologies to be used (the so-called 'best available technology" policy). 'This creates perverse incentives for polluters, because it makes pollution free up to the .threshold, and so there is no encouragement to reduce pollution further. Howard Klee, the director of regulatory affairs at Ammo Corpon- tion, gives a dramatic account of how topsy-turvy this world of "command and control" a n become. 'If your company docs voluncary conPo1 of pollution rather than' waiting for regulation, it is punished by putting icsclf at a comparative disadvantage. The guy who does nothing until forced to by law is rewarded." h o c 0 and the Envi- ronmentll Protection Agency did a thorough study of one refinery in Yorkrown, Virginiz to discover what polluunts came out from it and how dangerous each was. Their conclusion was stlrrling. Some of the chings that Amoco and other refiners were required to do by EPA regulations were Ius effective than altematives; meanwhile, pollution from many sources that government docs not regu-

SEPTELIRRR 199.1 81

THE A T L A N T I C M O N T H L Y

I10

late could have been decreased. The study group concluded that for one fourth of the amount that it currently spends on pollution control, .Ammo could achieve the same effect in protection of health and the environment-just by spending money where it made a difference, rather than where govemment dictated.

A more general way, favored by free-market economists, of putting the same point is that regulatory regimes set the value of cleanliness at zero: if a company wishes to produce any pollutant, at present it a n do so free, as long wit produces less than the legal limir If, instead, it had to buy a quota from the govemment, it would have an incentive to drive emissions as low as possible to keep costs down, and the govemment would have a source of revenue to spend on environmental protection. T h e 1990 Clean Air Act set up a market in tradable pollution pcr- mits for sulfur-dioxide emissions, which is a form of privatization.

The Pitfalls of Privatization

ECAUSE PRIVATIZING A COMMON RESOURCE CAN internalize the casu of damaging ir. economiru increasingly a l l for privatization as the solution B to commons problems. Afur 111, the original com-

mons-common grazing land in England-wen gradually 'enclosed" by thom hedges and divided among private owners. Though the reasons are complex, among them undoubtedly was the accounubility of the private landowner. As Sir Anthony Fiaherbcn put it in TAr Bole of Husbana'h (1534): "And thoughe a man be but a farmer, and shall have his farm XX 1201 yeret. it is lesse mste to hym, and more profytc eo quyckeset [fence with thorns], dyche and hedge, than to have his canell goo before the herdeman [on common land]." The hawthom hedge did for England what barbed wire did for the prairies-it privatized a common.

It would be possibte to define private propcrry rights in clean air. Paul Romer, of Berkeley, poinu out that the atmosphere is not like the light from a lighthouse, freely shared by all users. One person cannot use a given chunk of air for seeing through-or comfortably brerthing-after another penon has filled it with pollution any more than two people in succession can kill the same whale. Whrt stands in the way of privatizing whales or the atmosphere is that enforcement of a market would require as large a bureaucracy as if the whole thing had been ccn- tralized in the fint place.

The privatization route has other drawbacks. T h e enclosure movement iuelf sparked at least three serious re- bellions rpinrr the ercablirhed order by self-employed yeomen dispossessed when commons were divided. It would be much the same today. Were whale-killing rights to be auctioned to the highest bidder, protectors (who would want to buy rights in order to let them go unused) would likply be unable to march che buying power of the

whalers. If US. citizens were to be sold shares in their national parks, those who would rather operate strip mina or charge access might bc prepared to pay a premium for the shares, whereas those who would keep the parks pristine and allow visitors free access might noL

Moreover, there is no guarantee that rationality would a l l for a private owner of an environmental public good to pmerve it or use it susuinably. Twenty yc ln ago Col- inClark, a mathematician at the University of British Co- lumbia, wrote an article in ScimCr pointing out that under certain circumsunces it might make economic sense to exterminare whales. What he meant was that because interest r a q could allow money to grow futer L ! ~ I wnales reproduce, even somebody who had Z certain monopoly over rhe world's whales and could therefore forget abaut free-riders should nor, for reasons of economic self -inter- '

esr, take a susainable yield of the animals. It would be more profiuble to kill them all, bank the proceeds, sell the cquipmenr, and live off the interest

So until recently the ecoromisu had emerged from their study of the prisorier's dilemma more pessimistic

.than the biologists. Cooperation, they concluded, could nor be imposed by a ccncml bureaucracy, nor would it emerge from the allocation of private property rights. The deswuctivu fm-ford l of Fowler, Kansas, nor the co- oprarpoive harmany of Vahch's h w m , was the incviable fate of common-pool resources.

The Middle Way,

N THE PAST FEW YURS HOWEVER. THERE HAS BEEN A

glint of hopc amid the gloom. And it bean an uncan- ny similarity to tit-for-us in that it rewards coopera- I tors with cooperation and punishes defectors with

defection- strategy animals often use. Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues at Indiana Univcrsicy have made a special study of commons problems that were solved, including the Valencia irrigation system, and she finds that . the connective thread is neither privatization nor centralization. She believes that local people can and do get together to solve their difficulties, as long as the community is small, stable, and communicating, and has a strong conccm for the future. Among the examples she cites is a Turkish inshore fishery at Alanya. In the 1970s the local fishermen fell into the usual trap of heavy fishing, con- flics and potential dkpletion. But they then developec?an ingenious and complicated set of rules, allocating by lot each known fishing location to a licensed fisher in a pattem that routes through the season. Enforcement is done by the fishermen themselves, though the government recognizer the system in law.

Valencia is much the same. Individuals know each other and can quickly identify cheaters. Just as in tit-for-tat, because the game is played again and again, any cheater risks ostracism and sanction in the next round. So a small, stable communicy that interacts repeatedly a n find a way

A2 SEPTEMBER 1993

to punue the collective interest-by alccring the individuil crlCuhU011. -e

'There's a presum3- tion out there that users always overcxpioit a common resource." Ostrom sap, *urd themfore pv: ernments always have to step in and set things right But the many 'cases of well-governed and -managed irrigauon sys- rcmsfisherics,andforeto show this m k an inade- quae s d n g point A tu- away povemment could never have found the re- soums to design sysrcms like Alanya." Oscrom is

.critical of the unthinking. appliordon of ovenimplii fied game-rbeory models bcause, she says economist, and biologism i l i frequently begin to be-

depended on a givm eeo- nomic or biological resource for centuries are incapable of communicating, devising rules, and monitoring one mother. She admits that coopera- don is molt likely in s d l group that have Oommon in=- and the autonomy to create and enforce xhwr m n mcs.

Some biologists go further. and argue that even quite big groups can cooperate. Egbert Leigh, of the Smithsonian TroDical

li- rjm people who have

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Research Institute, points out that commons problems go deep into the genetics of animals and plants. T o run a human body, 75,000 different genes must "agree" to coop crate and suppress free-riders (free-riding genes, known as outlaw genes, are increasingly recognized as a major force in evolution). Mostly they do, but why? Leigh found the answer in Adam Smith, who argued, in Leigh's words. that "if individuals had sufficient common interest in their group's good, they would combine to suppress the activities of members axing cona ry to the group's welfare." Leigh calls this idea a"pu1iament of genes," though it is crucial to it that all members of such a parlia-

What Changed Du Pods Mind?

OR ALL THESE twons, coopen- aon ought not to F be a probiem in

Fowler, Kansas-a community in which everybody knows everybody else and shares the immediate consequences of a tragedy of the commons. Professor Kenneth Oye, the director of rhe Center for Inrtmarional Studies at the Massachuseas inst i tute of Technology, h t heard about Fowlcr's sinking water table whm his wife antnded a family reunion there. ,

Oye's i n tms t was further piqued when he subsequently heard rumors that the state had put a freeze on the' drilling of new wells in the Fowler area: such a move might k the beginning of a s+ lution to the water depletion, but it was also a classic bamer to the entry of new competitors in an industry. Oye had been re- daring on the case of Du Pont and chlorofluoroar-

bons, wondering why a corporation would willingly aban- don a profirable business by agreeing to phase out the chemicals that seem to damage the ozone layer. Du Pont's decision sands out as an unusually altruistic gesture amid the selfish smvings of big business. Without it the Mon- mal protocol o~aonedc ruoy ing chemicals, a prototype for inremadona1 agreements on the environment, might not have come about Why had Du Pont made that dcci- sion? Conventional wisdom, and Du Pont's own mer- cions, m d i t improved scientific undemanding and environmental pressure groups. Lobbyists had raised pubIic consciousness about the ozone layer so high chit Du

THE A T L A N T S C MONTHLY

Pont's exccucivts quickly realized that the IOU of public good will could cost them more than the products were worth. This seenu to challenge the logic of tit-fora. It suggesa that appeals-m the wider good a n be effective where 8pped¶ to self -inrerest ' annoe,

Oye. speculates that this explanation was incomplete, and that the'company's executives may have been swayed in favor of a ban on CFCs by the realization that the CFC technology was mature and vulnerable. Du Pont was in dangc oflosing market share to its rivals. A ban beginning ten yeais hence would at least make it worth np potential rival's while to join in: Du Pont could keep its market share for longer and meanwhile srand a chance of gaining a dominant market share of the chemials to replace CFCs. Again self-interest was part of the motive for environmental change. If consciousness-raising really changes corporate minds, why did the utility industry fight the Clean Air Act of 1990 every step of the way? The 'case of Du Pont is noc, after all, an exception to the rule that self-interest is paramount

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The Intangible Carrots

ESIDES. ENVIRONMENTALISTS CANNOT REALLY believe that mere consciousness-raising is enough or chcy would not lobby so hard in favor of en-

* . B forceable laws. About the only cases in which they can claim to have achieved much through moral suasion are the campaigns against furs and ivory. There can be little doubt that the world's leopards breathe easier because of the success of campaigns in recent deades against the wearing of furs. There was no need to bribe rich socialites to wear fake furs-they were easily shamed into it. But then shame a n often be as effective an incentive as money.

Certainly the environmental movement believes in the power of shame, but it also believes in appealing to pcople's better natures. Yet the evidence is thin that normative pressures work for necessities. Furs are luxuries: and recycling works better with financial incentives or legal sanctions attached. Even a small refund can dramatically increase the amount of material that is recycled in household waste. In one Michigan study recycling rates were less than 10 percent for nonrefundabie glass, metal, and plastic. and more than 90 pcmnt for refundable objects. Charities have long known that people are more likely to make donations if they are rewarded with even just a tag or a lapel pin. Tit for tat The issue of normative pressure versus material incen-

tive comes into sharp focus in the ivory debate. Western environmentalists and East African governments argue that the only hope for saving the elephant is to extinguish the demand for ivory by stifling supply and raising environmental consciousness. Many economists and southern African governments argue otherwise: that local people need incentives if they are to tolerate and protect ele-

Rl

phancs, incentives that must come from a regulated market for ivory enabling sustained production. Which is right depends on two things: whether it i s possible to extinguish the demand for ivory in time to save the ele- phanu. and whether the profits from legal ivory trading can buy sufficient enforcement to prevent poaching ar home.

even if it proved possible to make ivory so shameful a purchase that demand died, this would be no precedent for dealing with global warming. By giving up ivory, pee ple are losing nothing. By giving up carbon dioxide, pcople are losing pan of their standard of living.

Yet again and again in rccept years environmentalists have persisccd in introducing an element of mysticism and morality into the greenhouse debate, from Bill Mc- Kibben's nosralgia about a nature untouched by man in Th End ofNamn to James Lovelock's invention of che Gaia hypothesis. Others have often claimed that a mysti- a1 and moral approach works in Asia, so why not here? The reverence for nature rhat characterizes the Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu religions stands in marked contzast to the more exploiutive attitudes of Islam and Christianity. Crossing the border from India to Pakistan, one is made immediattly aware of the differ" the peacocks and monkeys chat swarm, tame and confidenq over every In- dian temple and shrine are suddenly sure and scared in the Muslim country.

In surveying people's aninrdes around the Kosi Tappu wildlife reserve in southcastem Nepal, Joel Heinen. of the Universicy of Michigan. discovered that Brahmin Hindus and Buddhists respect the aims of conservation programs much more than Muslims and lowcaste Hin- dus. Nonetheless, religious reverence did not stand in the way of the overexploitation of nature. Heinen told us, Sixty-five percent of the households in my survey expressed negative anitudes about the reserve, because the reserve took away many rights of local citizens." Nepal's and India's forests. grasslands, and rivers have suffered tragedies of the commons as severe as any country's. The eastern religious harmony with nature is largely lip service.

The Golden Age That Never Was

narrow view of selfish rationalism expresse'd by economists and biologists is a characteristically I Western concept have tended to stress not Buddhist

peoples but prc-industrial peoples living close to nature. Indeed. so common is the view that all environmental problems stem from man's recent and hubristic attempt to establish dominion over nature, rather than living in harmony with it, that this has attained the status of a clichC, uttered by politicians as diverse as Pope John Paul I1 and Alben Gore. It is a compulsory part of the preface in most environmental books.

f N RECENT YEARS THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT THE

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If the ClichC is true, then the biologisu and ccono- miso are largely wrong. Individuals a n change their at- umdm and counuraa selfish ambitions. If the clichC is f b , &en it is the iriangible incentive of shame, not the appeal to collccrive interen, that changes people's

Evidence bearing on d6s ma- comes from archacob oeisp and mthropologisp. They are gndually ruching the conclusion chat pre - indusd people were just as often capable of environmend mismanagement as modem people, and rhat the legend of an age of environmend .harmony-before we 'lost touch with naturc"-is a myth. Examples are now legion. T h e giant birds of Madagascar and New Zealand were almost certainly wiped out by man. In ZOO0 yevs the Polynesians con- vtrted Easter Island, in the a s u m Paciik, from a lush

. foiest chat provided wood for W i n g anoes into a treeless, inf&de grassland where famine, warfare, and m i - hlism were rife. Some archaeologisu believe that the Mayan empire reduced the Yucazh penirisula to meager scrub, and so hdiy wounded itself. The Anasazi Indians apparentty deforested a vase ara. History abounds with evidence that limitations of

technology or demand, rather than a culture of self- iesmins arc whnt has kept mbd people from overgrazing chek commons. The hdivu of Canada had the technology to exurminat~ che b a v e r long before white men arrived; at rhpt point they changed their behavior not because they lost some ancient reverence for their prey but because for the fim time they had an insadable market for beaver pelu. T h e Hudson's Bay Company would made a brass kerric or twenty steel fishhooks for every pelt

' minds.

Cause for Hope

economist and rhe biologist about man's self%, shoruighrtd nature seems justified. W The optimism of the cnvironmcnul move-

ment about changing that nature does noL Unless we can find a way to up individual incentives in favor of saving che aunospherc, we will fail. Even in a prc - indusd sute or wirh the backing of a compassionact, v c g e d a n religion, humanity proves inapable of overriding individual greed for the good of large, diverse groups.,So must we assume chat we are powerless to avert rhc a g e d y of the aerial commons, the greenhouse effect!

Formna~rcly not Tit-for-tat can come to chc rescue. If the principles it represents arc embodied in the treaties and legislation chat are being written to avert global

E CONCLUDE THAT THE CYNICISM OF THE

warming. chcn there need be no problem in producing an effecrivc, enforcablc, and occtptlble series of laws.

Care will have to be clkcn that free-rider m u n m a don't become a problem As Roberr Keohane, of Hvvlrd University's Cenrci for Internntiollll Main, has m d , the commons problem is mirrored at che inurnational lcveL Counmes may agree to rrcltics and then uy to free- ride their way ppsc them. Justu in che case of l a d commons, there seem to k m solutions to privatize the issue and leave it to competition between sovereign s a t e (that is, w), or to cenaolize it and enforce obedience (rhot is, world govemmenc). But Kcohane's work on in- ~rnational environmcnrol regimes to control such things as acid cain, oil pollution, and ovehhing a m c to much the same conclusion as &prom's a middle way exku. Trade sanctions, blackmail, bribes. and even shame an be used b & e n sovereign governments to crate incentives for cooperation as long as violations can be easily de- tected. The implicit chrcar of made sanctions for CFC manufkctwe is "a d w i c pic# of at-for-us" Paul Romer ObSCWCS.

Local govemmmts within che nation can play at-for- catas well The US. govenrmencis pmaiccd pxrhis arc it o k n thrrpt~u to deprive scam of highway c o m m o n . funds, for example, to encourage them to pass laws. S ~ ~ t e s CPZL play &e same game with counties, or cities, or fimy and so on down to the level of the individual, taking care at each smge to rig rhe inanrives so that obedience is chaper than dwbedience. Any d o n chat raises the cost of k i n g a fret-rida, or raises @e ccwprd of being a cooperatot, will work. Let the United States drag i u feet over the Rio conventions if it wano, but let it feel the sting of some sanction for doing so. Let people drive gas-guzzlers if they wish, but M them u n d it huns. Let companies lobby against anti-pollucion laws, but pass . laws that make obeying them worthwhile. Makc it rational for individuais to pcf 'green."

If this sounds unrerrlitic, remember what many envi- ronmcncal lobbyists are calling for. "A fundunenu1 re- strumring of many elements of society," Lcstcr Brown proposes "a wholly new economic order." "Modem society will find no soluaon to the ecologirsl problem unless it taka a serious look at i o lifuryle," the Pope has said. These are hardly realistic airns.

about human nature. Instead of being shocked that pm- plt &e such a narrow view of their interests, use the facr Instead of crying to change human nature, go with the grain of i t For in refusing to put group good a h a d of individual advanuge, people are being both rauonal and consistent with their evoluaonary PML 0

.

We are merely asking govemmcno to be more cynical t

86 SEPTEMBER 1993

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E Balrar ci .I, rhc Beabta dthc commonr" N.tur 340 91-93. 81989, Muani1l.n Res. Lta. Hunphrre, UK. Reprinted with pnnirrioll.

COMMENTARY -

2L.a 2s 6 P J f

The benefits of the commons f. Berkes, D. Feeny, B J. McCay and J. M. Acheson

Conventional wisdom holds that resources held in common will invariably be overexploited - the 'tragedy of the commons". A number of examples show that this is not necessarily so.

IT has become a truism that resources held in common are vulnerable to over- exploitation. Twenty-one years ago,

it the "tragedy of the commons" - by the w of a metaphorical village common in which each herdsman "is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit"'. Hardin argued that such problems have no technical solution^, and emphasized the need for government controls to limit "freedom in the commons [which] brings min to all"'. Hardin and otlrcrt' have subsequently pointed to priMbtion of common resources as amher solution consistent with the a d p i s of many rcsource economists'.

It is usual to assume that resource degradation is inevitable unless common property is converted into private prop erty or government regulations are instituted. The prevalence of this view is reflected by an anide in The Economist c; 10 December 1988 about fisheries, c.pically viewed as a common-property resource: '...it is possible to manage fisheries successfully", the author assem, 'provided three facts are kept in mind". Two of these are relevant here: "left to their own devices, fishermen will overexploit stocks" and "to avoid disaster, managers must have effective hegemony over them".

Nevertheless, research camed out in the 21 years since Hardin's article often leads to conclusions that challenge this c m d d wisdom. Such results are of interest to resource managers, applied natural and social dentists, policy-makers and development planners. Many case studies, including our own, show that succcss can be achieved in ways other than privatization or government control'". Communities dependent on common- property resources have adopted various institutional anangements to manage those resources, with varying degrees of success in achieving sustainable use. We use ecological sustainability' as a rough index of management success without necessarily implying resource use that is eCologically or economically optimal.

As a first step in the analysis, it is necessary to define the kind of resources under consideration. Common-property (or common-pool') resources share two key characteristics. First, these are ~cmurces for which exclusion (or control of accey) of potential users is problematic.

I fie physical nature of the resource is such

Hardin popularizedthisdilemma-dhg

.. UTURE . VOL 340 . 13 JULY 1989

that controlling the access of potential users is costly and, in some cases, virtually impossible. Migratory or fugitive mourccs such as fish and yildlife pose obvious difficulties. Similarly,> ground water, range and forest lands, 'and global commons' such as the high seas, the atmosphere and the geosynchronous orbit, pose problems of exclusion.

The second key characteristic of

right to exclude others from using the resource and to regulate its use. (3) Under communal property, the resource is held by an identifiable community of users who can exclude others and regulate use. Some shellfish beds, range lands, forests, irrigation and ground water have been managed as communal property. (4) State property or state governance means that rights to the resource are vested

Cree Amerindian fishermen of James Bay, seining river eddies for whitefish. The use of the resource is regulated under rules agreed upon by all -groups of fishermen wait their tum for the best sites during the short fishing season. (F. Berkes.) common-property resources is subtractability; each user is capable of subtracting from the welfare of others. This characteristic creates a potential divergence between individual and collective economic rationality in joint use'. As one user continues to pump water from an aquifer, others experience increased pumping costs; as the number of fishing boats increases, the catch per unit of effort for each declines. On the basis of these two characteristics, we define common- property resources as a class of resources for which exclusion is difficult and joint use involves subtractability.

As a second step in the analysis, a taxonomy of property-rights regimes is needede''. Common-property resources are held in one of four basic property- rights regimes. (1) Open access is the absence of well-defined property rights. Access is free and open to all, as with ocean fisheries of the past century. This is the regime implied in Hardin's model. (2) Private propeny refers to the situation in which an individual or corporation has the

exclusively in government, which controls access and level of exploitation. Examples include crown lands and resources such as fish and wildlife held in public trust. These four categories are ideal, analytical types. In practice, resources are often held in overlapping combinations of these four regimes, and there is variation within each.

We now briefly summarize selected case studies. These studies show the workings of communal-property systems not recognized in Hardin's model, as well as the limitations to the use of state governance in some situations.

Our first case concerns wildlife hunting temtories in James Bay, Quebec, in northeastern Canada". Hunters in this subarctic area have traditionally used resources communally, as do many Amerindian groups. and have a rich heritage of customary laws to regulate hunting. Beaver is an important species both for food and, since the start of the fur trade in James Bay in 1670, for

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The beaver is vulnerable to depletion because colonies are easily spotted. A community-based hunting tedtory sys- teftr;v&b mior hunters and their families aeaiftp #I mwards of specific territories, at present ensures sustainable use. The beaver resource in James Bay, however, has not always been used sustainably. In the 1920s. a large influx of non-native trappers followed the new railroad into the area to take advantage of high fur prices. Amerindian communities lost control over their territories and all trappers, including natives, contributed to a “tragedy of the commons”. Conservation lawswek eventually enacted after 1930, when beaver populations were at an all-time low, and outsiders were banned from trapping in James Bay. Amerindian com- munityand family territories were legally recognized and customary laws became enforceable, resulting in productive harvests after about 1950”. The experience of the 1920s and 1930s is not unique. Periods of cut-throat rivalry among fur companies had led to non-sustainable use of resources twice before: in the mid-1700s and in 1825-29. Gradually, however, local control was restored and stocks recovered’*.

Our second and third cases deal with lobster and fish management on the east coast of the United

. States”.” and show that communal territories exist even in societies that subscribe to the ideal of freedom in the commons. In the US tradition. marine resources

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have been used sustainably in the absence of such locally enforced exclusion and regulation. But we have compared the productivity of exclusively used territories with areas in which claims of adjacent communities overlap. We found that fishermen in, the exclusive territories catch significantly more and larger lobsters with less overall effort”.

The third case, a trawl fishery in the New York Bight region, provides an alternative community-based solution to the commons dilemma“. The fishermen who belong to a cooperative specialize in the harvest of whiting. They have ready

was essentially ‘unregulated.. The rapid commercial exploitation of teak in Thailand in the late nineteenth century led to the nationalization of all forests. State ownership fails to provide consistent enforcement, but it also serves’ to deny users the authority to manage local forests. Illegal logging, followed by further land clearing for cultivation, is widespread. Although much of this land is suitable for cultivation, there are few safeguards for conserving environmentally sensitive areas; this results in overall damage to land.

The lack of enforcement of state-forest

Beaver hunters in north- eastem Canada (this one was sketched in 1891) used resources communally until the coming of the railroad in the 1920s brought an influx of ‘outsiders’.

I

belong to all citizens but are controlled by state governments as a public trust. Pri- vatization of some marine resources such as shellfish beds is feasible but not always sociaTIy desirable or politically‘ acceptable”. Government management is similarly difficult: limiting the number of licences is considered an infringement of citizens’ rights. Even so some groups of users are able to restrict access and manage common-property resources.

The lobster resource is vulnerable to overharvesting, but lobster stocks in Maine have remained sustainable. Although some managers have for decades been

. predicting a resource collapse, the Maine lobster catch has been remarkably stable since 1947’’. The state government establishes lobstering regulations but does not limit the number of licences. In practice, however, there is exclusion through a system of traditional fishing rights; to go lobster fishing at all, one has to be accepted by the community. Once accepted, a lobsterman is only allowed to fish. in the- territory held by that community. Inter- lopers are usually discouraged by surrep- titious violence.

One cannot say if the resource could 92

access to the best whiting grounds in the region, and often dominate the regional whiting market in the winter months.

The cooperative maintains relatively high prices for members through supply management; if limits entry into the local fishery and establishes catch quotas among members. Limited entry is achieved through a closed membership policy and the control of docking space, effectively excluding non-members from access to whiting grounds and markets. Quotas are based on the estimates of what the cooperative can sell to the regional market, and are achieved in ways that reward individual initiative but also discourage ‘free-riding’. By contrast with govemment- imposed regulations, which are considered by fishermen to be inflexible and which in any case are ineffective because they do not address the fundamental problem of access, self-regulation through the cooperative is considered to be both flexible and effective in maintaining sustainable use’‘.

Forests in Thailand comprise our fourth caseI6. Traditionally the exploitation of high-value timber was regulated by local governments; the use of low-value timber

property rights leading to accelerated degradation is not unique to Thailand. The nationalization of forests in Nepal (1957) and Niger (1935) produced a similar outcome”. In Nepal, the situation is being ameliorated by the re-creation of communal management at the local level”. Without-effective control by government, nationalization has often converted traditional communal property into de jure state property but de facto open-access.

Having reviewed a few cases, we return to the tragedy of the commons model to explore its problems in relation to the findings. Hardin asks the reader to assume a pasture “open to all”’. Each herdsman acts in an indivi-’ dually rational fashion by adding animals to the common pasture. For him, the private benefits of adding one more animal exceed the Drivate cost. Because each

herdsman does the same, the overall result is overgrazing and disastrous losses for all.

Hardin’s model provides insight about the divergence between individual and collective rationality. But it fails to take into account the self-regulating capabilities of users. It assumes that the herdsmen are unable to limit access or institute rules to regulate use. Therefore, overexploitation is inevitable - unless pnvatuation or government controls ate imposed. These conclusions have been used as part of the justification for nationaluation”, privatization of land resources”, and the widespread practice of topdown development planning that ignores local institutions‘”. The social and ecological costs of these practices have often been tragic in their own right.

Recognition that users have the potential and, under some conditions, the motives and means to act collectively opens up other policy alternatives and provides questions about why some communal management systems fail and others succeed. The success or failure of common-property resource management has to do with the exclusion and regulation

13 JULY 1989 NATURE . VOL 340

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exploitation. Second, the model assumes that the

individual interest is unconstrained by existing institutional arrangements. In

Woodwtters near Bhraung. Nepal -nationalization of Nepal's forests led to over-exploitation, out tho situation is now being improved by the re-creation of local communal management.

hann. London; 1989). 8. World Commission on Ermronmcntand DavelOpmant Our

co"onFunns(oXf0rd UnmrsltyRess. 1987). 9. O s m . E. in *. NRC hf. C ~ ~ I V O I I pmwrrv

Resoume Management 599-615 (National Academy. Dc

of joint use. Forest destruction in Thai- land, for example, occurs because vill- agers do not own the forest and cannot exclude others. Local people therefore have little incentive to conserve and every incentive to cut down trees before someone else does".

By contrast, in other examples - hunters in James Bay, lobstermen in Maine, trawlermen in the New York Bight irea, communal forest users in Nepal, and nigation water users in South India" - groups are able to exclude other potential users and regulate their own joint use. They are therefore able to reap the ben- BO of their own restraint. Our examples

are not isolated, but are consistent with a 9 body of literature on grazing lands , forestsz, wateP and coastal marine resources2', covering a wide range of regions and cultures throughout the world.

What accounts for the many exceptions to tlie predictions of the conventional theory? How can Hardin's model be improved to obtain a more comprehensive theory of common-property resource management? First, the Hardin model

many communities, common-property resource users are compelled by social pressure to conform to carefully pre-

collective action is feasiblez, and sustainable outcomes are not u n ~ s u a l ~ ' ~ ~ .

More fundamentally, the model over- looks the role of institutions that provide for exclusion and regulation of use. Cultural and historical factors underlying such institutional arrangements are a key to the success of communal management of coastal marine resources in Japan and several Pacific-island nations", in addition to the cases we describe above.

Finally, the set of solutions offered by the model is too limited. Privatization or the imposition of government control are not the only viable policy options. In fact, the conventional reliance on these approaches is overly sanguine. By definition, common-property resources are ones for which exclusion is difficult and so privatization is often not feasible. Al- though dividing a commons and assigning individual property rights can increase efficiency under some circumstances, it might not in others. Similarly, state control

. - -. _ _ - -, io. GI+. w. in pmc. NRC cant common pmwnv

~ ~ ~ o ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ , 593-598 (National -emye

11. ~rmb. D. w E C O ~ K merests and inst,turim

1. Hardln. G. Science lS2.1243-1248 (1968). 2. Hardin. 6. & Badan. J. (ads) Managing me Commonc

(Freeman. Sln Francisco, 1977). 3. ~ ~ r d o n . J. s. J. poiir. ~ m . az. 124442 (19%).

overexploitatkn, the model falls into the 7, ~ ~ s ~ , d ~ ~ ~ ~ s ~ ~ & e s o u r c e s : Emlopy and Co"uniry-8as.M Susrainable Dewlomenr (Bel- trap of equating the commons with over- l

NATURE * VOL 340 . 13 JULY 1989

has worked in some cases, but the example of Thailand forests illustrates its potential for failure.

In general, we propose that successful approaches to the commons dilemma are found in complementary and compatible relationships between the resource, the technology for its exploitation, the property-rights regime and the larger set of institutional arrangements. We also propose that combinations of property- rights regimes may in many cases work better than,any single regime. The success of local-level management, for example, often depends on its legitimization by central government; James Bay" and recent experience in Nepall'are examples. Such nested relationships are also found in fisheries in Japan and Oceaniau. In some cases, cooperative management arrangements (comanagement) are needed, involving the sharing of power between governments and local communities%. ,

In sum, sustainable common-property resource management is not intrinsically associated with any particular property- rights regime. Successes and failures are found in private, state and communal- property systems. Recent research highlights the potential viability and continued relevance of communal-property regimes, nested systems and comanagement. Studies after that of Hardin have shown the dangers of trying to explain resource use in complex socio-ecological systems with simple deterministic models. 0

F. Berkes is in the Institute of U&an and Environmental Studies. Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario, Canada U S 341; D. Feeny is in the Department of Economics. McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. Canada L8S 4M4; B. J. McCay is in the Department of Human Ecology, Cook College, Rutgers University, PO Box 231, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. USA; 1. M. Acheson is in the Department of Anthropology, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469-0158. USA.

Is. M a y . 8. 1. in The Question of the Commons: T)lc cuirunz end ECOIO~Y of co"uns/ Resources 195216 (Uninrsityof Arizona Press. 1987).

16. Feeny. D. in WorfUDefomstationin Lhe TwenriemCenrury (Duke Uninnity Press. 1988).

17. Thomron. J. 1.. Feeny. D. H. & O a k e m . R. 1. in Proc. NRC Conf. Common prownV Resource Management 391-424 (Natlwl Academy. Washington. Dc. 1986).

18. h o l d . 1. E. M. & Campkll. 1. G. in Proc. NRC Conf. Common Propmy Resoume Management 425454 (National Academy. Washington DC. 1986).

19. Petm. P. in Ths Quesrion of VH) Commons: 7he Culture and Eco~ogy of Communal Resources 171-194 (Unmr- sity of Arizona Press. 1987).

20. Wade, R. Village Rspublia: Economic Conditions for Collecriw &rim (Cambridge University Prass. 1987).

21. Netting. R. M. Balancing on an Alp: Emlogrcsl Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Community (Cam- bridge University Press. 1981).

22. Fomann. L. &Bruce. J. w. (ads) r e s 7 h p r i e - taryOimanrionroffomst~~onmv(Weslview, Boulder. 1988).

23. M a w . A. & Andanon. R. L. , . .and me Oasetl Shall Rejoice (Mil. Cambridge. 1978).

24. Ruddle. K & Akimlchi. 1. (eds) Maririme Institutions in me western Pacific (National Museum of EVmology. Osaka. 1984).

25. (ktrom. E. in Rethinking lnsrirurionsl Analysis and Dsvslopmenr 101-139 (Institute for Contemporary Studies. San Francisco. 1988).

26. Pinkefton, E. (ad) Co-operatiw Managemenr of Locsl fisheries (University of British Columbia Press. 1989).

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Chapter 2 The Larger Historical Context

The physical environment has been an underlying force in American politics and economics throughout the nation's history, and indeed before it was a nation. Important roots of American environmental policy were laid long before even the Revolution, in a context dominated by the colonial policies of European nations and the survival needs of European colonists. -Additional roots were laid during and after the Revolution, as the new nation established its basic framework of government and property rights, its initial

I precedents and policies, and its decisions to retain or reject elements of its European and colonial heritage. Still more were set down in the century of settlement and population growth, economic development, and technological innovation that led from the Federalists of 1790 to the Progressives of 1890.

American environmental policies today still reflect much of this basic structure, and many current issues in fact reflect new battles over long-fought principles. To understand American environmental policies today, therefore, one must trace their roots back to the influences that formed them, in the contexts and concems that have shaped American history more generally, from the colonial period onward.

Global Trends Over the past 400 years, human relations with the environment have been

dominated on a global scale by the rise of a set of powerful and interconnected forces of human activity. One of these was the so-called "Great Transition," the emergence of the European nation states with agricultural surpluses sufficient to support large-scale cities, national armies, and long-distance trade. A second was the development of Renaissance science and technology, and subsequently the Industrial Revolution, which provided those same nations with vastly expanded capabilities to extract and transform the materials and energy of the planet into human creature comforts, luxuries, and armaments. A third was the expansion of these nations into competing global empires, colonizing and dominating distant societies throughout the world and extracting their resources, creating new markets for their own manufactured goods, and in general reshaping the economies, BQFQgfsi itRBifls&utim of these societies on terms favorable to themselves.

unprecedented material affluence, industrialization, and urbanization of the European empires based on global-scale extraction and economic use of natural resources. The past two centuries of this period are often referred to as the Industrial Era, but I suspect they will be known in retrospect as the Carbon Age, since while the Industrial Revolution began with water and wood power, its scale and impacts have been overwhelmingly driven by the capacity to extract carbon deposits stored away over millennia in the forms of coal and oil, convert them into products for human use--and in particular, h i m them to produce energy for industrial production, transport, and consumer comfort--and then diwharge their combustion products on a vast scale into the earth's atmosphere.

Since the end of World War 11, the European empires have disintegrated and disappeared as global-scale governments, but have been replaced by a combination of political balkanization and economic centralization. the replacement of a small number of

A central consequence of these forces was a period of four to five centuries of

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global empires by close to 200 nation states, and the concurrent emergence of large-scale global economic structures, dominated not by national governments but by multinational corporations--banks, resource extraction concerns, manufacturers, and transport and service enterprises--each pursuing their own organizational self-interest with little accountability even to the governments of their countries of origin, let alone to the politically independent but economically and institutionally fragile countries of the less industrialized world.

Since the end of World War I1 these long-term trends in patterns of governance and economic use of the environment have been augmented by several additional trends One was a dramatic increase in per capita consumption of materials and energy by the populations of industrialized countries, fieled by relatively cheap access to raw materials and energy, advances in mass production technology, and historically unprecedented levels of general affluence; a second was worldwide dissemination of general awareness of this material affluence and consumption as a life-style to which to aspire. A third was the worldwide dissemination of scientific knowledge of medicine and sanitation, which dramatically reduced traditional causes and rates of mortality without any commensurate reduction in birth rates, leading to rapid worldwide growth of human populations and increased pressure on environmental resources to support them. A fourth was large-scale urbanization and rural-to-urban migration, first in the industrialized nations (particularly the United States during and after the war) but more recently and dramatically in the poorer countries of the so-called Third World. Finally, a fifth was a large and widening gap between the affluence of elites and the poverty of the majority of the world’s people, both within and among nations.

We now find ourselves, as a world community of peoples and nations, facing two quite profound sets of challenges, which are frequently posed as in conflict with one each other but which in fact can only be addressed, and must be addressed, as two fbndamentally intertwined elements of a single problem. One is how to provide, not only minimally but equitably, for the material needs and legitimate aspirations of the human population, which is rapidly growing, and the vast majority of whom even now live in conditions far below what we in the affluent western nations would regard as decent or acceptable. The second is how to sustain, and ideally to improve, the condition of the

ecological systems of the world’s environment, which must be kept capable of indefinitely sustaining both the human species and all other forms of life. Both these challenges are direct byproducts of the forces I have just highlighted. Neither can be solved alone; and neither yilJ be solved--indeed, both are being exacerbated--by mere continuation of these past processes.

domestic policy, therefore, it developed within and in part because of a larger global context, and the importance of that context is now forcehlly reasserting itself. A central question for the fiture, in fact, is whether the structures of American environmental policy that have been developed primarily for domestic purposes will prove adequate for the far more serious environmental crises that are now emerging at a global scale This chapter provides at least a glimpse, therefore, of the larger global context in which the roots of American environmental policy were set down.

’

While American environmental policy has generally been thought of as a matter of

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European Context'

longer time span before 1776 than the American nation has yet experienced since. Generations ofpeople immigrated and settled, lived and died, and used the American environment during that time; and in fact, more emphasis may have been given to policies for managing the physical environment during the colonial period than during the first century following the Revolution (Engelbert, 1950). It is worth our attention, both for its content and for the precedents and patterns it established.

The cultural context of American colonization was Europe. The colonial settlers came from Europe, with European ideas and traditions and upbringing, and they came for reasons that had to do with European events. As colonial settlers, moreover, they were governed by policies made in the capitals of the European colonial powers. Policies made in the colonies themselves therefore reflected either deliberate adoption, adaptation, or rejection of the European environmental policies that prevailed at the time.

The colonial period is often slighted in American policy studies, yet it includes a

The Great Transformation

what Karl Polanyi has called the "great transformation"--from a feudal structure based on moral and personal obligations and land tenure, to a market economy based upon transferable wealth and commerce. (Polanyi, 19). The High Middle Ages (ca. 1100- 1300) had been a period of dazzling accomplishment: invention of the compass, the mechanical clock, spinning wheel, windmill and waterwheel, for instance, and the opening of trade lines to China by Marco Polo. The 14th century, however, had brought a "little .ice age", crop failures and famine, corruption in church and government, and the Black Death--plagues--which killed 23 million people, literally one-third of the world's population from India to Iceland (Tuchman, 1978). Feudal society in the 15th century was closely tied to the land and its resources, with relatively little commerce or technological innovation. Population was gradually increasing, and with it food production, though in relatively fixed ratios; but nourishment was poor and seasonal, since refrigeration was nonexistent and meat and vegetables could be preserved only by salting and drying. Open fires, tallow candles and oilcloth windows provided light and heat; bad ham-, bad wedher, and epidemics of malaria and plague were regular causes of human misery. Infant mortality rates were high, and even the best-fed people generally died by about age 50.

loyalties and social status and obligations. The land was held in major estates or "manors", whose large size and open fields made possible the use of modern agricultural technology of the time: heavy moldboard plows, each drawn by eight oxen and tilling the manor's common fields in long, narrow strips (White, 1962). Common people were legally bound to the land as serfs, by obligations of grain and labor owed to the lord of the

European society in the 15th century was in the process of profound changes--

Land was the basis not only of subsistence and income, but also of people's

Any contextual overview such as what follows can only t o u c h on highlights from the work of others. This overview relies primarily on Weber (1971) and Stavrianos (1971); for more detailed treatment, see those sources or other texts on European history.

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manor on which they lived, most of which had to be paid in kind since money was scarce and common people had little access to it. They received land and food and protection fiom their lord, but in turn were bound to him for life; and the lord also had legal jurisdiction over them which he exercised through a manorial court. From the point of view of the serf the power of the lord was absolute, though from a broader perspective the lord also had obligations to his superiors. The lord of the manor was a free man, but owed produce and service (especially military service) to a baron or bishop and on up, eventually, to the King. The feudal manor was a relatively self-sufficient political and economic unit, a local agrarian state ruled by its lord--a "land lord". Though most lands of the manor were worked in common, individual families were sometimes given small plots of their own as part of their remuneration.

Under the feudal system, all authority and legitimacy emanated from the top. The King ruled by divine right, not by constitutional consent of the governed, as the agent of God who came to that right by his birth. He delegated lesser authority and property to his vassals, barons and lords and knights and other free men who in return swore him their loyalty and military as well as economic support. All land and resources were ultimately owned by the King--hence the term "real estate" or "royal" property--and granted by him to his vassals as "fiefs" or "fee" for their services.

Property rights thus were always conditioned on grants fiom above, on the satisfaction of feudal obligations to one's superiors, and on strict adherence to customary law. The law of entail required that land could only be passed on intact to one's direct descendants, not divided into smaller parcels or sold. If there were no descendants, it reverted to the grantor. Primogeniture required that it be passed only to the oldest son. Annual payments, "quitrents," must be made to the grantor in obligation for the grant. In short, all land ownership was derived from above and conditional.

The feudal society was organized for subsistence and stability, and its economy was governed by moral rather than market principles. Everyone had a proper role and hnction in society, assigned by their birth and defined by their land tenure. Each product had a traditional price and each form of labor a traditional wage, which were generally recognized as proper and defined as just, rather than fluctuating with supply and demand. Peak periods such as harvest time were handled not by extra wages, but by obligations of adiditionat service to get the job done. In the towns, professional guilds of artisans and craftsmen established fixed prices and output levels on the basis of what was considered to be a morally just price. From an ecological perspective, feudalism maintained a relatively stable set of relationships between human populations and their ecosystems for an extended period of time, neither over-stressing it by technological change nor exhausting it by overuse: contrary to Garrett Hardin's argument of a "tragedy of the commons", common-land farming and grazing fbnctioned relatively stably for centuries without tragedy until fbndamental economic changes disrupted the social system that regulated it (Hardin, 1968, Burch, 1971). The costs of these conditions, however, included the perpetuation of a permanent aristocracy based on land rents, the maintenance of a rigid system of social classes and personal service obligations that provided little opportunity for advancement based on merit, and the discouragement or even prohibition of innovation

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Feudalism and the manorial economy began to decline by the end of the 12th century, but the transition to a market economy lasted for several centuries. The key to the change was agricultural surpluses, which could be exchanged and marketed rather than consumed locally for subsistence. By the 13th century regional markets developed for foodstuffs, and international markets began to develop for commodities such as wool; and fiom market places and trade centers grew towns and cities, in which people supported themselves not by f m i n g but by commerce. By the middle of the 15th century Europe had developed extensive trade links with China land the Indies. A new class of people developed in European society, a merchant class or bourgeoisie, whose income came not directly fiom the land but fiom the flows of commercial exchange and sale. The prices of these commodities were greatly increased, however, by the high cost of transportation and by the profits of Moslem middlemen and Mediterranean merchants en route.

The rise of commerce was accompanied by a major shift in emphasis from barter and direct exchange to monetary payments for products and services. Money was necessary in international trade--China and India had littie interest in Europe's products-- and it provided a convenient medium for exchange, since it was both portable and convertible into different amounts and commodities. Monetization was accelerated, moreover, by the influx of large amounts of gold and silver fiom the Americas in the 16th century, which put far more coin into circulation and thus spread the transition from subsistence to a market economy.

Combination of commerce, monetization, and falling agricultural prices resulting from surpluses. The influx of new money created severe inflation, which struck hardest at the feudal landowners: their social status was challenged by the rising wealth of the merchants, which increased as did the prices of the goods and services of urban life, while their own incomes came fiom fixed land rents paid in grain and labor. Moreover: since the stability of feudal obligations provided no incentives for increased productivity, wage labar was increasingly substituted for traditional peasant obligations, and cash crops for subsistence crops. The land itself gradually was enclosed and leased to professional peasant farmers on the basis of monetary rents; and this process, called "commutation," served both to free the rural population from land bondage--either voluntarily, by paying 44awsWktkeifW, or involuntarily, by renting the land to others--and to replace the

sheep grazing, as the price of wool rose; later ones were more often to grow food crops for the expanding cities. As the owners transferred production decisions to renters, peasant farmers producing for the market became the driving force of the agrarian economy; and with the incentive of legal leases and modest rewards, these farmers began to develop modem methods of intensive farming, such as crop rotation, seed selection, scientific cattle breeding, and agricultural machinery.

In short, by around 1500 the emergence of a market economy had created strong pressures for the commercialization of agricultural land; for the transformation of it from common subsistence use to enclosure and more intensive cash cropping, and for the transformation of common people from land-bound peasants into tenant farmers and wage laborers. In the process it converted agrarian social relationships from lord and serf into landlord and tenant. The effects on land and people were intimately connected: it turned

The socioeconomic system of the manor was hndamentally transformed by the

manorial system with a market production process. Many of the early enclosures were for --

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the land into a commodity, a factor of market production, and in the same process it transformed the agrarian population into a mobile labor force--freed from both the security and the obligations of serfdom--which could seek employment either in the country or in the towns and cities, depending on where jobs and wages permitted.

single lifetime. It was, however, a fhdamental transformation of the relationships both among people, and between people and their physical environment.

Monarchy and Mercantilism

important political changes. Under the feudal system, political power was dispersed through a loose structure of loyalties among the lords and knights and barons, each of whom commanded his own private army in the service of the King. Government revenues were constrained by the stable feudal system of land obligations The rise of commerce and the increased circulation of money, however, shifted the basis not only of wealth, but also of government revenues and political power; and with this shift came a centralization of royal power. Trade could be taxed more flexibly than land, and more profitably; and cash taxes could be used to pay standing armies and government bureaucracies. Increasingly, therefore, kings came to rely for their support more on merchants than landowners. Kings received revenues from the merchants in return for official monopolies and other trade privileges, merchants benefited from the profitable business of provisioning armies, and armies provided a means of enforcing tax collection. The power of parliaments also increased, as sources of legitimacy for taxes: taxes were now levied universally, rather than freely accepted by feudal vassals, and they therefore required some ratification by those affected.

increasing interest in the promotion of favorable trade relationships. This interest took three forms: incentives for exploration and colonization; grants of special privileges to enterprising merchants, who were willing to take financial risks that might profit them personally as well as their monarchs; and protective taxes that benefited their own merchants differentially against those of other empires, such as trade and navigation acts

of economics. eliminating middlemen and reducing transportation costs In the mid- 1400s the Turkish empire spread westward, culminating in the fall of Constantinople in 1453; this blocked the overland routes to China and the Indies on which Europe relied During the same period, the rise of Renaissance science began to make possible the exploration of alternative routes by sea Sea transport had always had a mechanical advantage over land for bulk cargoes, since it requires 35 times less force to carry an equal weight, and sailing ships had been used around Europe and the Mediterranean for centuries. But only in the 15th century did new scientific discoveries begin to make possible long-distance ocean exploration and transportation. Better maps reduced many unknowns, and the mariner's compass permitted more accurate steering, the development of printing facilitated the spread of scientific knowledge; and the progress of astronomy led to improvements in the basic theory and methods of navigation Columbus sailed in 1492, Leonard0 da Vinci had only been bom in 1452, Copemicus in 1473, and Gaiileo and

This transition did not happen overnight, in a single stroke of policy, nor even in a

0

The economic changes of the Great Transformation were accompanied by

To increase their revenues from trade and tariffs, the monarchs of Europe took an

The motivating force for exploration was at least in part a pair of familiar problems

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Kepler not until 1564 and 1571. Then as now, advances in science and technology played a critical role in changing man-environment relationships, and in converting environmental conditions into natural resources.

alternatives due to discoveries in science and technology, that Portugal and Spain and others began supporting explorers to seek sea routes to Asia, first around the southern tip of Afica and later westward across the Atlantic. Diaz of Portugal reached India around the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, Vasco Da Gama in 1497-98, and Cabral in 1500; for Spain, Columbus in 1492 and 1497, Vespucci in 1497, and Magellan and Del Can0 in 1519 reached the Americas; Cabot of England reached Labrador in 1497, and Sir Frances Drake, Northern California in 1579; and Verrazano in 1524 and Cartier in 1534-3 5 reached North America from France. By the late 1700s George Vancouver had even reached the North Pacific and New England's ships had explored Nootka Sound en route to Canton. Exploration led to the discovery of new trade routes, but also to the discovery of new places with new stocks of resources: gold and silver, then sugar and other commodities. The places which the explorers discovered they claimed as possessions of their monarchs, and exploited to improve their nations' terms of trade relative to the other European empires.

The mercantile system was a set of trade relationships oriented toward the nationalist goals of the European empires that were growing in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many of the European states were at war with one another on and off during this period--Spain, England, and Germany in particular. Each therefore had to feed and pay a large standing army; and to do this each also had to develop a favorable balance of foreign trade, so that more money was flowing into the empire than out of it. In the absence of paper money, the only means of "deficit financing" was to discover and capture more gold and silver. Each empire also had unique goals and constraints based on its geography and resources. Spain, for instance, was a full century ahead of Britain in exploring and colonizing the Americas, and captured large stocks of gold and silver there; but it used these stocks to support a rigid feudal aristocracy. Unlike Spain, Britain had no overseas sources of gold and silver in the 16th century, so it used its sea power to attack the Spanish ships, capturing them if possible to bring their gold to Britain, but otherwise at €east sinking them to deny their resources to Spain. The British also were an island empire, which needed to import many resources by sea--such as timber for shipbuilding, iron, and other naval stores--many of which came from the countries of the Baltic. But the Dutch were a naval power as well, and occupied a strategic monopoly position at the mouth of the Baltic; Britain therefore needed alternative sources of these products.

There were many aspects to the mercantile system, but its basic principle was economic nationalism in trade relations The most important motivating force in this system, however, was not nationalism for its own sake but the convergence of interests between the nationalistic goals of the monarchs and the profit motivation of the merchants and entrepreneurs who made it work The explorers of that day were economic entrepreneurs, who were willing to take large risks in order to make large gains: Pizzarro and Cortez of Spain, for instance, and later Sir Walter Raleigh and Lord Baltimore of Britain. Some of the early explorers were financed by monarchs; later ones raised their own capital through joint ventures called "joint stock companies," antecedents of the

It was largely because of the blockage of trade routes, and the possibility of new

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capitalist corporation though lacking such features as limited liability. These corporations were chartered by the King and granted special privileges, or even quasi-feudal land grants, to whatever resources they might discover. Examples included the British East India Company, chartered in 1600; the Dutch West India Company in 1621; and the Virginia Company, chartered to settle the Virginia colony in America, in 1606.

Colonization as Environmental Policy

Europe reached out around the world in the 16th century not only to explore, but to establish colonial empires--first the Portuguese and Spanish, then the French and Dutch and finally the British--each seeking to find and capture new stocks of natural resources that were politically accessible and cheaper than those already available to them.

Was this an "environmental" policy? It has usually been characterized as simply an aspect of European political and economic conditions, and of the exigencies of the warfare then in progress among the empires. These conditions did define the demands of those nations for resources, and the state of technology also defined limits to what each could supply fiom its own territory. But to stop with that explanation ignores the other half of the context, the uneven distribution of resource supplies in the physical environment. Each empire was looking for new resources not only because it wanted them, but because it did not have enough locally to meet its wants, and because it had developed the technology--navigation and military organization--that permitted it to capture and transport them from elsewhere. The ecological result was that each expanded its environment, to include worldwide sources of supply. Each adapted, in short, through its technological abilities, to overcome what had previously been constraints of distance and jurisdictional boundaries and thus to improve living conditions for itself and its population.

Colonization was, then, among other things, an environmental policy. In the broadest sense, it was a policy of expanding the accessible environment of each empire, including physical resources as well as economic and political control, to a larger and larger portion of the world. More precisely it was an environmental policy to benefit the ruling political and economic classes of each empire, by providing them with the physical resources they desired on more favorable terms then previously, by relieving the urban concentrations of poor people displaced from the land by agricultural commercialization, and by giving the empires the financial resources they needed to maintain large standing armies.

however, that caused vast changes in the world's ecosystems. Living species previously limited to particular regions were transplanted worldwide: examples include European stockyard animals (horses, cows, sheep, pigs), grain crops (wheat, rye, oats, barley), and h i t s ; and American vegetables (corn, potatoes, tomatoes, cassava, avocadoes, peanuts, and squashes), tobacco, cotton, sugar, and drugs (such as coca and curare for anesthetics, and others). Native populations were decimated by epidemic disease organisms to which they had not previously been exposed (such as smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and tuberculosis), and in turn contributed syphilis to Europe's miseries. The human races, for

F w reasons rooted in European political and economic conditions, the nations of

European exploration and colonization also had unanticipated consequences,

better or worse, were spread worldwide both by colonization and by the slave trade. governance institutions and policies of the colonizing nations were imposed on quite I The

Aidrews drafr - 7 28 94 -- Do tiof cite or quote

different cultures and environmental settings. And not least, both localized ecosystems and the localized governance regimes that sometimes existed to manage them were now subjected to powerfir1 new external pressures that threatened to dominate them for the benefit of distant markets and beneficiaries.

9 P 7

~ Freedom of the Seas

the seaborne "carrying trade,'' several of the maritime powers sought to declare their . sovereignty over the world's seas as well as its newfound shores. This practice began within Europe, in agreements which allocated jurisdiction over the smaller European seas- -for instance, the Baltic and Adriatic--among the various sea powers Britain, too, claimed sovereignty over the North Sea in order to control Dutch fishermen off the coasts of Scotland. As explorers spread further, they claimed sovereignty over the additional waters they found: the Portuguese, for instance, claimed exclusive territorial rights over the Indian Ocean since they were the first European nation to discover it. The result was increasing conflict among the sea powers, more often than not in the form of piracy of etch nation against the other's ships.

This pattern of claims was broken by a Dutch legal scholar, Hugo Grotius, who in defending Dutch navigation rights against Portuguese claims set down basic new principles of the law of the sea that would endure for over 300 years. Grotius published a treatise in 1608--Mare Liberum ("Free Sea")--which asserted that the seas were properly a common resource (what we would call today an "open access resource"), free for use by all. Each nation was entitled to enforce its authority within a defensible perimeter of its coasts, but not over the high seas beyond: "imperium terrae finiri ubi finitur armomm potestas," the dominion of land ends where the power of arms ends. The reasons were simple: the costs of enforcing rights on the high seas were greater than the potential benefits, and the seas' resources were so vast that they could meet everyone's needs without conflict (Christy, 1975: 701). The sea power nations gradually accepted these principles, and the boundary of each nation's seaward jurisdiction was said to be the limit of a cannon shot, or about three miles. The United States in 1793 explicitly declared a 3 mile territorial sea, and other nations generally did likewise; not until the mid-twentieth cmtury did the United States and several other nations, faced with new technologies for offshore fishing and mining, raise new challenges to Grotius' principles

As European ships explored new seas and shores, and their empires competed in

.

England's Civil War and "Glorious Revolution"

America were taking root and developing their social, political, and economic fabric-- England itself was wracked by civil war. The Stuart Kings, James I and Charles I, from 1625 on, attempted to rule England without resort to Parliament, supporting the Treasury by selling commercial monopolies rather than by new taxes that would have required Parliamentary approval. They also tried to force Anglican religious practice on all of Britain, thus angering such groups as the Puritans and many Scots. When the Scots rebelled in 1640, Charles was forced to convene Parliament in order to ask for hnds to suppress them. Once convened, however, Parliament instead demanded royal ratification of its constitutional powers, as well as changes in the King's advisors and religious

From 1640 to 1688- half of the 17th century, during which the English colonies in

policies; and when Charles refused, civil was broke out between the Puritans and the royalists. The Puritans won, led by Oliver Cromwell, and established England as a republic ("Commonwealth") from 1649 to 1660, ruled until 1658 by Cromwell as "Lord Protector". The monarchy was then restored under the Stuarts Charles I1 and James I1 until 1688; but in response to James' efforts to reconstruct personal rule and encourage Catholicism, Britain's parliamentary leaders peacefully deposed him in 1688, in what has become known as England's "Glorious Revolution": they invited James' daughter Mary and her husband, the Dutchman William of Orange, to rule England on condition that they swear to uphold a Bill of Rights confirming Britain's governance as a representative constitutional government. This Bill guaranteed not only religious toleration but also recognition of the legal powers of Parliament and of the rights of individuals Most important, it established the principle that the sovereign was also subject to the rule of law, no longer an absolute ruler.

England's civil war was a major influence on the development of policies and political attitudes in America. Most immediately, it preoccupied Britain with its own internal affairs for nearly 50 years, leaving the colonies both the hardships of developing on their own, and the freedom to do so Of necessity and opportunity, therefore, they developed their own institutions of self-governance, and a system of export trade relationships with other ports and empires that was far more diversified than might otherwise have been permitted.

over the aristocracy, and led to policies that suppressed feudal privileges and challenged hereditary authority with the principles of egalitarian liberty. The legislation establishing the commonwealth in 1649, for instance, stated explicitly that not the King, but "The People, are, under God, the Original of all just Power" (Stavrianos, 1971 :247). Conflict continued between those who defined "people" by universal manhood suffrage, and those who limited them to property owners; but in either case, the traditional principles of feudalism and the divine right of kings were rejected. In their place, the Commonwealth canfirmed the "natural and inalienable rights" of each individual, and the principle of popular sovereignty. These egalitarian ideas probably could- not have arisen until the market economy had freed common people from land bondage, and until they had asserted their rights to equality by defeating the aristocracy in battle; but once demonstrated, they became an important basis for the American system of government and property rights as well, and for the rights demanded by many in developing nations today

Finally, Britain's peaceful revolution in 1688 established the principles of constitutional government; of the legislature rather than the King as supreme authority in matters of law, taxes, and the maintenance of armies; and of the natural rights of individuals that limited the authority of any government or king. Kings had lost battles against Parliaments before, but this was the first case in which such a Parliament represented primarily middle-class goals and constituencies rather than a feudal aristocracy (Stavrianos, 1971).

The civil war also resulted in victory for the common man of Cromwell's army

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The Scientific Revolution

Europe during the 16th to 18th centuries, a shifi which is basic to all modern western A dramatic transformation in people's understanding of their world occurred in

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environmental policies. The change had many elements. Among the most important, however, were the Reformation, which challenged both the sacred and the secular authority of the Roman Catholic religion with the more democratic and humanistic Protestantism; the Scientific Revolution, which replaced traditionally theological scientific philosophies with empirical observation, natural laws, and experimental methods; the rapid spread of technological innovation, culminating in the Industrial Revolution; and the Enlightenment, or "Age of Reason", which popularized such ideas as belief in progress, critical reasoning, natural rights, utilitarianism, laissez-faire economics and environmental relativism. These elements both stimulated and built on one another.

of nature, from the traditional view of nature as a divine mystery in which God acted by miracles, to a practical view of it as a complex but understandable mechanism--a clockwork on a cosmic scale--that was explainable and predictable by human observation and reasoning. As Galileo put it, around the beginning of the 17th century:

I think that in discussion of physical problems we ought to begin not from

A common theme among many of these elements was a fundamentally altered view

. the authority of Scriptural passages, but from sense experiences and necessary demonstrations.. .Nor is God less excellently revealed in Nature's actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible. (Quoted in Bronowski, 1973:209. With this view of nature came inevitably a new and ambiguous view of man in

nature. Man was on the one hand a special being, prideful in this newfound ability to understand nature's laws through his own reasoning powers, and to manipulate its conditions to his advantage. On the other hand, man was also a species of nature, himself understandable--to an extent not yet even imagined--in terms of natural laws.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, therefore, educated Europeans developed an interest in discovering and applying natural laws, both to their physical environment and to themselves. Not only the results of this interest, but the interest itself, marked aradically new understanding of their world. One starting point for this transformation was the rise of commerce and ocean navigation discussed above. Long distance navigation was made possible by advances in science and technology, such as Renaissance map-making and navigational instruments, but in turn it stimulated a demand for hrther advances. Safe navigation, for instance, required advances both in applied science and technology--such w shpbuw teehiques, time-keeping devices, telescopes, and instruments for more accurately measuring latitude and longitude--and in basic scientific understanding, such as in mathematics and astronomy.

The basic discoveries of this period are well known: Nicholas Copernicus in 1543 described the planets as rotating around the sun rather than the earth; Galileo Galilei in 16 10 used telescopic observation to support Copernicus' theory; Johannes Kepler mathematically described the orbits and movements of the planets; Isaac Newton by 1687 postulated and mathematically proved the law of universal gravitation, Newton and Leibniz concurrently invented the mathematical method of the calculus

The transformation itself, however, was far more profound than the particular discoveries with which it is associated. The significance of these discoveries was the demonstration that nature worked not by divine miracles but by natural laws, which humans could discover by observation and test by experiment Newton's discovery, for example, was not just of gravity as an isolated event. It was the discovery of a universal

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law of nature, which applied equally to an apple falling to the ground and to a planet in the heavens; and it was a demonstration of the power of empirical scientific method combining reason and mathematics with observation and experimental proof

control of motion and the development of mechanical power in the following century. The calculus, in turn, was not just a new technique: it was a whole new conceptual method that made possible the study of continuous motion, and thereby of uncountable numbers of scientific questions that we now take for granted and still study by its method.

them, set off a wave of interest in the study of nature that has never abated since. Stated simply, people began studying their environment, and taking a serious and scientific interest in how it worked. Those who could afford to, collected and catalogued specimens of minerals, fossils, and forms of plant and animal life; expeditions to foreign lands brought back specimens that further piqued people's interest. In the 1770s , while Britain and America were fighting a revolutionary war, Captain James Cook was leading three scientific tours to the South Pacific, to observe the transit of Venus, explore and chart the islands of that region, and conduct descriptive studies of natural history and ethnography. George Louis Le Clerc, the Comte de Buffon, published the 32 volume Natural History from 1749- 1789; his Theory of Earth (1 749) and Ages of Natzrre (1 778) not only established a basic theory of geological history, but articulated an idea of evolution, theorizing that all the planets had originally been thrown off from the sun and were slowly .cooling.

Within a century after Newton's Principia was published, John Ray and Linnaeus had laid the foundations of systematic botany and zoology; Benjamin Franklin had developed a comprehensive theory of electricity; and the steam engine had been invented by Denis Papin, improved by Thomas Newcomen, and perfected by James Watt: In chemistry, the study of combustion gasses had revolutionized the old concepts of earth, air, fire, and water: Joseph Black in 1775 isolated carbon dioxide, Henry Cavendish in 1781 separated water into hydrogen and oxygen, and Joseph Priestly and Jan Ingenhousz isolated oxygen and demonstrated the role of photosynthesis in the carbon cycle. Finally, in 1789 Antoine Lavoisier published his Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, which estabkhd both the "principle of balance"--the thermodynamic law that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed--and the systematic basis of chemical science.

By about the time the U.S. became a nation, in short, it had available to it most of the basic foundations of modern science, newly but solidly established and ready to be applied further. Time and motion were well understood (except, of course, for the concept of relativity) and capable of being analyzed, mechanical power was available through the control of motion, and through kinetic energy released by heat as steam; understanding of electricity made possible both electromagnetics and electrochemistry, understanding of chemical oxidation permitted advances in metallurgy and industry, and the beginnings of selective breeding were taking place in agriculture Most important, the analytical concepts and methods of empirical science provided an intellectual framework which could be applied to the untapped natural resource potentials of the New World.

With the calculus, by which it was proven, it also made possible the study and

The discovery of universal laws in nature, and of analytical methods for proving 1

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The Industrial Revolution The rise of European commerce, and the new practical scientific view of the world,

led also to a transformation in material production processes- the "Industrial Revolution"- -which emerged parallel and interrelated with the transformation of science. Within Europe, increased population and increased coin in circulation expanded each nation's markets for its products (Hobsbawm, 1968). Overseas trade and colonization created new markets for European manufactured products, both among the colonists themselves and among the native people with whom they traded: English woolen blankets, and iron tools and pots, for instance, could be traded to American Indians in payment for the h r s Europeans wanted for their hats and coats. Commerce also created profits: large sums of capital, accumulated by joint stock ventures for their investors, which could be used to finance even more profitable hture ventures, and which was--by around 1760 in England- plentiful and therefore relatively cheap. The enclosure of land in England, which accelerated rapidly between 1750 and 1780, concentrated ownership in fewer hands for agriculture and especially wool production; it also created a mobile pool of cheap labor available for industriahe, paid in money rather than in kind, who were generally paid for piece-work productivity rather than hourly wages, thus guaranteeing both efficient production and high profits due to low wage costs.

means to exploit the' favorable opportunities provided, especially in England, by commerce and social conditions. In the textile industry, entrepreneurs used their capital to buy raw

thus breaking the traditional output restrictions of the guild system. With the invention of larger-scale and power-driven machinery, such as Richard Arkwright's water frame spinning machine ( 1769) and Edmund Cartwright's power loom ( 1785), these workers were drawn together into factories for larger scale and more rapid production. In the mining of coal--an essential he1 in Britain, where wood was scarce--the chief production constraint was flooding; this problem was solved by Thomas Newcomen's steam engine (1702), made far more efficient by Boulton and James Watt (1 763), which powered water pumps. In iron and steel production, Abraham Darby's conversion of coal to coke (1 709) provided a cheap substitute for scarce charcoal, and Henry Cort's iron "puddling" process ( 4 7 8 4 j p m M more malleable decarbonized iron. To transport bulk commodities, British entrepreneurs and engineers (such as John MacAdam, 1750) pioneered in canal and hard-surface road construction, which dramatically reduced both the time and expense of transport, and thus the effective distance between previously-distant raw materials, production processes, and markets.

steam engine, which permitted large-scale substitution of fossil fuel energy for animal and human labor. The steam engine converted the heat energy of fire and fuel into mechanical energy, which could both augment and substitute for animal and human work. It could do work that the latter could not, such as run effective mine pumps. It could also increase the speed and efficiency-the output per worker per day--of jobs they could do, such as spinning and weaving. Finally, it could be used both for stationary power in industrial processes, and for traction to power steamboats and railroads. Probably no single invention has more significantly shaped natural resource use, material production

Mew innovations, within industrial organizations and technology, provided the

. material in bulk and "put it out'' to non-guild artisans doing piece-work in their houses,

Perhaps the most fatehl single innovation of the Industrial Revolution was the

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processes, and even the pattern of human settlement in the industrialized world today, and this is especially true in the United States. With all its other advantages, it was dependable: it did not eat, become sick, strike, or vote.

history, and particularly for the newly independent United States? First, it greatly increased human capacity to transform raw materials into manufactured products. This increased demands for natural resource extraction from the physical world, even as it made the comforts of these products available more cheaply to more people. It increased the level of human stress on the systems of the natural world as it also measurably increased the welfare and comfort of many people.

Second, it achieved this goal at great human cost, at least during the lengthy transition period before labor organizations and protective legislation--child labor laws, for instance, and working hours limits--appeared in the early twentieth century. A large and growing population was dislocated from the familiar and relatively stable life of agrarian production into the poverty, crime, and disease of overcrowded cities, and often into either unemployment or low paid jobs, working long hours under hazardous conditions. Power machinery increased the productivity per worker, but it maximized its potential profit only if the workers kept up with it. Men and women, even boys and girls down to the age of four or six, worked fiom dawn to dusk in textile factories, machine shops, mines, and construction projects. The "progress" of western industrialization--the capital accumulation used to construct large scale industry and transportation--was built not just on profits in markets, but on the sacrifices and hardships of generations of working people. At the height of the Industrial Revolution in England, for instance, in the first half of the 19th century, Weber (1971 :42 1) reports that the real wages of textile workers and miners were actually decreasing by about 50%. This same dilemma- should people today be sacrificed in the hope of benefits for others tomorrow?--confronts the developing nations (as well as the formerly Communist countries) of today's world as well (Berger, 1976).

Third, the industrial revolution caused a major change in the scale of human organization, which has not yet ended. From small factories to cities and urbanized areas, to industrial complexes to multinational corporations, industrial capitalism has created a system 6f social and economic organization which today fhdamentally structures the relationships between people and their environments, and people and natural resources, in every industrial nation. As T. S . . Ashton put it (1948, 1964:98),

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What consequences did this transformation of production processes have for world

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The industrial revolution is to be thought of as a movement, not as a period of time.. . . Everywhere it is associated with a growth in population, with application of science to industry, and with a more intensive and extensive use of capital. Everywhere there is a conversion of rural into urban communities and a rise of new social classes. Industrial capitalism also became a driving force in 19th century European

colonialism, seeking new raw materials and markets; in 20th century economic imperialism on the part of industrialized nations;'and in the emergence of today's integrated global economy. At the time of the American Revolution, the eventual extent of this impact undoubtedly could not have been foreseen: the American economy in fact remained largely agrarian, in fact, for most of the following century, and did not industrialize on a

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major scale until after the Civil War. The emergence of this transformation in England and Europe, however, clearly influenced the patterns of environmental policy and development in America. Among the most significant effects, it provided markets for American raw materials (especially cotton); it provided sources of capital for investment in America's . development; it invented labor-saving technologies highly applicable to a country in which labor was scarce and natural resources plentiful; it stimulated the invention and adoption of industrial techniques in particular American industries; and it forced Americans to choose between a predominantly agrarian and a predominantly commercial and industrial pattern for its own development.

The Enlightenment The new world-view of Newtonian physics led not only to advances in the natural

sciences, but also to a new naturalism and a new rationalism in the study of human society and institutions. "It would be very singular," as Voltaire expressed it, "that all nature, all the planets, should obey eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal, five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice (quoted in Stavrianos, 1971). It is not simply coincidental, therefore, that the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution--occurring during the same century as the work of Galileo and Newton--were justified by ideas of the "natural" rights of individuals.

The century following Newton and the English revolution in the 1680s is frequently referred to as the "Age of Enlightenment", so called because of the widespread confidence of its thinkers and writers that mankind was at last emerging from dark ignorance and superstition into the light of reason. The English revolution provided a symbol of this progress in the world of politics; the discoveries of Newton and other 17th century scientists provided similar symbols in the world of ideas. Scientists such as those mentioned above were among the adherents and sources of Enlightenment idea; but others were also important in extending these ideas to human nature and society.

John Locke wrote his Treatise 011 Civil Governmelit in 1690, the year after William of Orange signed the English Bill of Rights. In it he justified the principle of government by social contract between sovereign and people, on the basis of the 'hatural rights" of individuals to agree on such a contract. Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (165 1) had &ac%e~k&ntefl as by nature evil, and human life in the "state of nature" as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short;" and Hobbes therefore argued that absolute monarchy was necessary to save men from themselves. Locke, in contrast, argued that the natural man was decent, reasoning, and perfectible; capable of progress and self-restraint; and capable of living by informed consent and tolerance within a social contract with his fellows. Conversely, he was entitled to withdraw his support from the social contract if the sovereign violated it, a principle explicitly adopted in the American Declaration of Independence 86 years later. Locke's central ideas--the basic goodness and perfectibility of man, natural laws and rights underlying human society, reason, and government by social contract--amounted to an enlightened view of human nature. They also provided many of the specific arguments used to justify the American Revolution, American government and property rights, and American policies toward the use of natural resources.

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Building explicitly on Newton and Locke, the "philosophes" of the Enlightenment- /36 -men such as Voltaire and Vico and Montesquieu in Europe, and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Pahe and Thomas Jefferson in America--concluded that the way to human progress was simply to enlighten people, by education and critical reason, about their true nature and perfectibility and about the natural laws by which human society and history functioned. Montesquieu, for instance, in his Spirit of the Laws ( 1748) linked human law and institutions and politics to physical and economic conditions in their environments he deduced political institutions from foundations in nature and historic circumstance Thomas Paine's Common Sense argued for American independence on the ground that it was "unnatural" for a continent to be governed by an island And in economics the physiocrats--led by the Frenchman Francois Quesnay, but including Thomas Jefferson and others as well--argued that wealth flows not from commerce and coin, as the mercantilists held, but from land It was land that provided the agricultural surpluses on which trade and manufacturing and wages were built, manufacturing could only change the form of the land's resources, and commerce their location As in other areas of Enlightenment thought, here were "natural laws" at work again, these leading Jefferson to emphasize the importance of small farmers in an economic democracy

Many of the principles on which the Enlightenment's writers generally agreed are still among the most powerful foundations of American government and politics One is the idea that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights This idea connoted not only equal rights before the law--rejecting the hereditary status differentials of the feudal aristocracy--but also equal potential for perfectibility in reason and virtue People were not predestined to particular roles, but formed by their experiences and environments Accordingly, social progress was possible, by providing people with appropriate experiences and environments an argument for both universal education and universal suffrage, as John Stuart Mill suggested, and for other social programs as well Crime should not be avenged, but deterred (by remedying the conditions that led to it) and cured (by rehabilitating the offender) The ideas of egalitarianism, perfectibility and progress were powe&l motivating forces at the time--most obviously in the American and French Revolutions--and they remain powefil in U S politics today

Another powehl Enlightenment idea was utilitarianism If the world were to be arrcferstood in t m s of human reason and experience rather than divine intervention, how were good and bad to be determined, and progress and regress? The church, traditional authority on such matters, could be no help the core of Enlightenment thought was a commitment to critical analysis and radical, secular humanism, both of which were contrary to church dogma and to dogmatism in general The answer, stated most succinctly by Jeremy Bentham in 1776, was that the good society was one which maximized the happiness of its members "the greatest good for the greatest number 'I

Like Locke, Bentham's approach implied a majoritarian form of government, and it also assumed that individuals would behave in accordance with enlightened self-interest, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain As Weber (1971 653) puts it,

The philosophe'., ideal [was] liberty, property, and security Liberty to pursue one's own happiness without injuring others Property being the advantages that each man could gain by his own labor and talent, Security to enjoy these in peace,

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under laws which prevented others from depriving one of them by using force or privilege. The most persuasive statement of this theme at the time was Adam Smith's 7he '

Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. Smith argued that there is a natural order in the economic affairs of societies. Each individual is the best judge of his own interest, and will therefore seek to improve his condition as he best sees it. Therefore, the best society is one in which each individual is left as fiee as possible to pursue his own self-interest, trusting to the "invisible hand" of this principle to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Laissez-fnire, iaissez passer: "let men act freely, let goods flow freely," and let the preferences of the majority define the good society, through the natural economy of a free marketplace. Smith's ideas challenged the traditional mercantilist doctrine that commerce should be regulated in the interests of the state, and that specie or land was the proper measure of wealth. Labor is the proper measure of wealth and values, he argued: the value added to things by the inhsion of human work. This was an important step forward in economic theory. Smith's broader significance was in applying the ideas of the Enlightenment to the domain of economics, and in the process articulating the ideas of a free-market economy and the labor theory of value.

global view of human affairs. They thought as world citizens in a period of Europe's worldwide exploration, trade and colonization. They disagreed among themselves, however, in their attitude toward political authority. Voltaire, for instance, argued for a reasoning elite, not for universal enlightenment, and some of his closest correspondents and patrons were "enlightened despots" such as Catherine the Great of Russia who ruled Europe's most rigid monarchies. It was others such as Tom Paine and Rousseau, who linked reason to the rights and interests of the common man and used it to justifir revolution against political oppression. In their view, even enlightened monarcliy gave power to people qualified only by birth or palace politics, while republicanism-elective representative government--gave it to persons trusted by their fellow citizens as enlightened and capable.

It is important to recognize the continuing power and significance of Enlightenment ideas in modern political issues, including (but by no means limited to) ksws d natural resource and environmental policy Specific circumstances have changed, but many of the fundamental issues remain the same, and few have been presented more articulately than by the passionate reasoners of the Enlightenment.

Thephilosophes were in basic agreement in many ideas, and in a cosmopolitan,

Summary

most powerful new ideas and forces in human history. These included the rise of empirical science; the substitution of water and fossil fuels for animal energy and of machines for labor; the capitalist system of economics; the philosophy of progress, and utilitarianism; the emergence of representative democracies; and the balancing of government powers among separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It is no accident, therefore, that those ideas are so deeply embedded in the framework of American society: the United States was the first society in history to pledge itself to "the pursuit of happiness" as a practical goal of government policy, and the very motto on its Great Seal--Nevus

Early American environmental policies were shaped in a period of some of the

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Drdo Seclorum, a "new order of things"--expressed its recognition of its unique historical context.

deeply embedded, and sometimes less readily accepted, by societies emerging in different conditions today. America did not invent most of these ideas, but its birth as a nation coincided with them; and its combination of favorable political and economic conditions with vast untapped stocks of natural resources gave it an opportunity virtually unique in history to apply these ideas to its own development. To that experience we turn now, therefore, though we shall later return to the question of whether these ideas remain adequate to the global environmental challenges we face today.

By the same token, it should not surprise us that some of these ideas are less

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Further Readings--Chapter 2

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add World Lit Only By Fire? others?

T. S.. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution 1760- 1830, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1948, 1964.

Thomas A. Bailey, The American Payeant: A History of the Republic, Boston: D. C. Health & Co., 1956.

Emily Morrison Beck, ed. Sailor Historian: The Best of Samuel Eliot Morrison. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Peter L. Berger, Pvramids of Sacrifice, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1976.

Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.

William R. Burch, Davdreams and Nightmares: A Sociological Essay on The American Environment, New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

.Francis T. Christy, Jr., "Property Rights in the World Ocean." Natural Resources Journal, VO~. XV, NO. 4 (OCt. 1975), pp. 695-712.

Marshall B. Davidson, The World in 1776. NY: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1975.

Rene Dubos, Mirage of Health, New York: , 1959.

Allan W. Eckert, Wilderness Empire, Boston; Little, Brown, 1969.

Dank4R. Fusfefd, The Age of the Economist: Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1966.

Garrett Hardin "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science, Vol. 162 (1968), pp. 1243-48.

E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1968.

John C. Miller, The First Frontier: Life in Colonial America. New York, Dell, 1966.

Samuel Eliot Morrison, The EuroDean Discover?, of America: The Northern Vovases, NY: Oxford University Press, I 97 1.

Samuel Eliot Morrison, The European Discover?, of America: The Southern Voyages, 1492-1616. NY: Oxford U. Press, 1974.

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John M. Peterson and Ralph Gray, Economic Development of the United States. Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1969.

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation.

Carl 0. Sauer, Sixteenth Centurv North America. Berkeley. U of California Press, 1971. i' L. S. Stavrianos, The World Since 1500. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971.

Arnold Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution. Boston: Beacon, 1956, (orig. 1884).

Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Centufy, NY: Knopf, 1978. I

t Eugen J. Weber, A Modern Historv of Europe. London: Robert Hale & Co., 1973.

Lynn White, Jr. Medieval Technolow and Social Change, New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1962.

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Andrew drcrsf -- 7 28 94 -- Do ti01 cite or quote 1'1 I Chapter 3 Colonial Environniental Policies

The colonial period is frequently glossed over in discussions of American environmental policy, but in fact it had great significance for much of what has followed. Many of the specific laws and regulations show what long-standing precedents exist for modem policies such as the regulation of wildlife and common rights to navigable waters. They show too some principles which later governments, for better or worse, deliberately rejected, such as feudal and land tenure and government control of forest resources. When Americans did evict the British, they rejected also those policies that they considered vestiges of British paternalism, and opened the way to largely unrestricted and unmanaged exploitation of the American environment by individuals.

More important than most of these specific actions, however, are the hndamental pattems that were established by policies of this period: patterns of settlement, of resource exploration and use, of property rights in the physical environment, and of governance and policy-making authority. A perceptive Hessian surgeon, Dr. Schoepf, summed up the difficulties of establishing farsighted environmental policies in America in 1783:

In America there is no sovereign right over forests and game, no forest service. Whoever holds new land in whatever way, controls it as his exclusive possession, with everything on it, above it, under it. It will not early come about, therefore, that as a strict statutory matter, farmers and landowners will be taught how to manage their forests so as to leave for their grandchildren a bit of wood over which to hang a teakettle. Experience and necessity must take the place of magisterial provision. The attitudes of the United States' founders, and the principles that they

incorporated into the Constitution and early statutory policies, were not invented overnight but were deliberate adoptions or rejections of 1 '/z centuries' worth of colonial concepts and precedents. These choices were significant in themselves, and they set the tone for many of the environmental policies of the following century

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already well populated by hundreds of native tribes and nations who had explored and settled throughout it for as long as five or ten to thirty thousand years (McNickle, 1949). As Sauer points out (1971), therefore, the European explorations should not be described as "discoveries", but merely as the first European experiences of North America. Wherever the explorers went, they traveled by Indian trails, led by Indian guides, among settlements of Indians and eating food grown by Indians. The Indian societies used relatively simple technologies, but were generally peacefil and stable societies.

them at an immediate disadvantage, 'respects that have important parallels to differences between the industrial and the "lesser-developed'' nations today. First, they did not have the technological resources that the Europeans had at the time, most obviously ships and horses and guns. Second, they had no system of trade comparable to the Europeans' for

North America was a "new world", of course, only to the Europeans: it was

The Indians differed from the Europeans, however, in certain respects that left

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economic advantage. Third, they had a disastrous lack of resistance to European diseases, with the result that vast numbers died of epidemic diseases such as smallpox and measles to which they had never before been exposed: the total indigenous populations of the Americas may have been reduced by as much as 90 to 95% in a century due to disease (Stavrianos, 1971)' Finally, their concepts of property rights were generally based on village or tribal sovereignty over territory, and individual ownership only of specific and often seasonal use rights to the resource products of the land--rights to hunt or gather in a particular area during a specified portion of the year, for instance--a system which was in fhdamental and ultimately losing conflict with European settlers' concept of land ownership as including individual rights to enclose, transform and sell land for economic gaip (Cronon, 198354-81). Common property scholars in recent years have noted similar conflicts worldwide, in which stable localized common-property regimes among users of fisheries and pastures have been disrupted and the resource destroyed by the intervention of central government policies opening them to other users producing for more distant markhs (Bromley, 19xx:yy???).

French not quite as long. Each empire settled in different places for different reasons, however, and thus had different impacts.

America, seeking first a new route to Asia, then gold and silver and later sugar. They found these by subjugating the native inhabitants, such as the Aztecs and Incas, first looting their treasures and then putting the Indians to work in mines extracting silver and on plantations growing sugar, tobacco, cotton, and coffee. Spanish Conquistadores built the first European colonial empire, first by force of military conquest and later by cultural domination. They transplanted Spanish culture, laws, language, and religion to Central and South America, establishing the basis for 18 of today's Spanish-speaking najions, and built cathedrals and printing presses and two universities older than Harvard. By 1574, 33 years before the first English colony in Virginia, there were already about 200 Spanish cities in the Americas. McNickle, an American Indian historian, holds that despite their destructiveness and exploitation the Spanish in the long run were far more positively influential on the Indians than were the English.

The Spanish settled in the Americas a full century before the British, and the

The Spanish came mainly to Central America and down the west coast of South

The Spanish sent several expeditions into North America looking for new sources of treasure. Hernando Cortes explored the lower California coast in 153 5, and Juan _ - Cabrillo ranged farther north than San Francisco in 1542, 37 years before England's Sir Frances Drake reached the bay now named for him there. Coronado explored Arizona and New Mexico, the Grand Canyon and Colorado River and as far east as Kansas, and DeSoto traversed fiom Florida as far north as the Carolinas and Arkansas, but they turned back after failing to find the gold they sought It was also the Spanish who introduced the horse to the Indians of the American Plains, which we so commonly assume was a "natural" part of Plains Indian culture; and the wild "razorback" pig to the lower Mississippi fiver valley Spanish influence was dominant until the 1600s when it was gradually eclipsed by British and Dutch competition in shipping and manufactured goods: while Spain's colonial riches went mainly to perpetuate an aristocracy and inflate its economy, the other nations of Europe had been forced by less favorable circumstances to develop more eficient market economies.

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The Dutch and French were interested in trade, rather than the conquest of riches The Dutch founded New Amsterdam (later New York) as a trading base, and other trading settlements in the Caribbean and South America, but did not expand far into permanent colonies. The French built trading settlements throughout what is now eastern Canada and the upper Midwest, and down the Mississippi River to Louisiana--named in honor of King Louis XIV of France--in 1682, seeking mainly the fur trade.

The English came to settle and produce, however, and thus grew to dominate the development of North American culture and government as well as environmental policy. British cod fishermen had had contact with the North American coast long before settlers arrived, and had even taught some crude English to the native Americans they met: and Sir Francis Drake had explored the northern California and Oregon coasts in 1579, seeking a Northwest Passage and establishing British claims to the northwest. Once settlement began, however, the settlers came to stay rather than merely to trade. Some English settlers came to escape religious persecution, but many more came simply to improve their living conditions: in England, labor was plentifbl and wages therefore low, and land was scarce--especially as a result' of the enclosure movement--while in America land was plentiful, labor scarce, and wages higher. By ,1688 there were over 300,000 English settlers in America compared to 20,000 French, and by 1776 over 2 million--a third of the total population of the English-speaking world. Britain also needed the commodities that could be produced in America, and provided growing markets for them--fish, timber and ship's stores from the Northeast, grain from the middle colonies, rice and cotton and tobacco and indigo from the South--and unlike Spain, it had no subjugated native population to exploit for labor. Primarily because of this difference in purpose and the wave of immigration that followed from it, American environmental policy has grown primarily fiom its British roots rather than from those of the other major European powers that colonized North America.

business community, who pooled capital in "joint stock companies" chartered by the King to produce commodities and profits for Britain. From the British perspective, the colonies existed strictly to serve the motherland, to improve its position as an empire in its competition with the other European empires. They were populated by English citizens, -BttHkeplwtxwx"ielered new lands and resources to be exploited for the benefit of Britain's rulers and businessmen.

have clearly defined policies for- trade and the development of natural resources, and these grew out of its mercantile economic goals. To build Britain's economic position, its colonies should produce cheap raw materials needed in Britain, especially those that must otherwise be bought fiom other expires; they should trade strategic materials only with Britain; they should ship their goods in British ships, and pay taxes on both imports fkom and exports to other nations; and they should not export, or in some cases even produce, products which competed with those of Britain herself In a much-quoted statement of a British merchant around 1700, the purpose of the colonies was

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A powerful motivating force in the British settlement of America was the British

- - Britain had no overall environmental policy for the American colonies, but it did

... to supply us with commodities which may either be wrought up here or exported again, or to prevent fetching things of the same nature from other places for our own consumption, to employ our poor and to encourage our navigation.

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This statement captures the essence of the mercantilist point of view, which was to maximize trade advantages to the mother country. The American colonies became an integral element of the so-called "triangle trade" system between England, Africa, and the Americas: shi.ps carried American rum and British and European manufactured goods to Africa, then with the growth of sugar and gold industries in South America, both of which needed cheap labor, they added the leg of carrying slaves across to South America and Central America; and finally they carried sugar and gold back, either directly to Europe or via the Atlantic colonies, picking up additional agricultural products and raw materials there along the way. In the opposite direction they carried American fish and other commodities to the West Indies, sugar and molasses to Europe and manufactured goods and immigrants back to America.

advantages for sailing ships: economic because the exchange patterns balanced well, and physical because due to the prevailing winds from the west across the Atlantic ocean, it was almost as iuick to sail down the African coast with the northeast trade winds, then angle across the Atlantic and up the American coast with the Gulf Stream and return to Europe with the west winds behind.

This pattern was pioneered by the Dutch, and had both economic and physical

Colonists and their Environment

later expeditions of the 19th century, settlers did not begin to know the richness and diversity of the continent: a land mass 3000 miles wide, used by the native population almost exclusively for subsistence on renewable resources. The eastern half of the continent was governed by a temperate climate all the way to about the 100th meridian of longitude--through what is now Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas--with moderate temperatures and year-round rainfall. West from there to California was arid land: with little rainfall and shorter grasses holding the more fragile soils of the Great Plains and Great Basin. Fertile soils, sweeping grasslands, untouched concentrations of minerals, forests of giant pine, fir, redwood, and sequoia, broad rivers flowing throughout the interior of the country--all these lay within the continent, environmental conditions formed by centuries of ecological dynamics, which would be discovered and labeled "resources" bylater m o n s of settlers.

For the early colonists, however, their environment was the eastern coast and as far inland as was accessible to them. They found natural harbors and fisheries first, codfish off the coast and shad and shellfish further inshore, and forests and abundant wildlife: deer and elk, moose and bear, waterfowl and passenger pigeons. They found water courses to guide and sustain them inland, small and fast-flowing streams that they could explore as far as the "fall line" where waterfalls blocked ascent by boat, but also broader and slower rivers--the Hudson, Connecticut, Delaware, and Susquehanna--that could be followed further. Before long they also found the barrier of the Appalachian and Allegheny mountains, which slowed their movement to the west for a time (although the French were less affected by these barriers, since they had discovered a route around them via wateways up the St. Lawrence River, Great Lakes, and Mississippi and Ohio Rivers).

food, fiber for clothing and shelter, fuel for heat and light, minerals for tools, and land

What was the environment that the colonists found? Until Lewis md Clark and

The first need of the European settlers was physical subsistence, which required

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6- rights with which to produce these necessities. They found subsistence initially in hunting wildlife, fish, and wild h i t s , and in growing crops taught to them by the Indians: corn, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, beans, and squash. The Indians cleared land by fire, both for agriculture and for easier hunting and by cutting or "girdling" trees to kill them; and they

' fertilized their crops with fish and seaweed. As crop yields declined, they would move inland, leaving the cleared land to regenerate: a practice which also increased wildlife habitat, whether or not they knew it. It was the Indians, therefore, who first tolerated European settlements, and taught the colonists their initial skills in American agriculture and forestry; without them many of the settlements probably would not have survived.

The second need of the settlers, however, was economic survival in the manner to which their European background had accustomed them, and in this important respect they differed from the Indians. Economic survival for the settlers required the production of export commodities that could be exchanged with Britain and other empires for manufactured goods to meet their wants.

A most important influence on later American history was the fact that different regions presented the colonists with different ecological opportunities and constraints for economic survival. These differences in environmental circumstances led to profoundly different patterns of man-environment relations.

the soils and climate were well adapted to large-scale production of staple export crops. first tobacco, an Indian and Caribbean crop which rapidly became popular in England; later rice, which was introduced probably from Madagascar in 1675; and finally indigo, a substance used in the dying of cloth, which was domesticated in 1740 and whose harvesting periods complimented those of rice. Tobacco grew well in the coastal plains and rolling Piedmont uplands, although without fertilization it rapidly exhausted the soil; and rice flourished in the wet lowlands along the South Carolina coast. The other main resource of the South was forest products, for the live oak forests near its coasts provided important sources of shipbuilding timber for the British Navy, and its plentifbl stands of pines yielded other naval stores such as tar, pitch, resins, and turpentine.

From the perspective of the British merchants who were financing colonization, these conditions were ideal: indigo previously had come only from Asia at higher cost, __ tobacm andrice were also profitable cash crops, and forest products were important strategic materials which must otherwise be imported from Dutch traders in the Baltic Their only scarce resource was labor. The problem was mitigated first by the use of white indentured laborers--people willing to bind themselves to service for a given period of time in return for their expenses of travel and subsistence--and then by importation of black slaves fiom Africa, initially by the Dutch and then by English and American ships.

From the perspective of today, however, the easy adoption of plantation agriculture was also a fateful commitment. Tobacco, for instance, required little labor to grow, but it rapidly exhausted soil nutrients and thus required continuous movement to find new lands for it. The importation of slaves brought both a labor resource and a human population, which would not only work but also reproduce itself and eventually expect the same rights and privileges as other human populations in the country The social pattern of plantation agriculture created more rigid class distinctions between aristocracy and common people, landlords and laborers and slaves, which made the South

In the South, where English settlement began with the Virginia Company in 1609,

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more feudal than the egalitarian tendencies of the other colonies. Then too, even the aristocracy of the South was dependent on prices of their exports which were set in London, often to their disadvantage; and many of them became wealthy only by speculation in western lands rather than by their commerce. Finally, the dominance of plantation agriculture caused a narrow specialization of the economy of the South, which left it far more reliant on the British (and later on other regions of America) for many of its needs than were other colonies, who were early forced by less favorable trade circumstances to divers@. The mercantile advantages of Southern staple crops were later to become its burdens, as it found adaptation to later conditions more wrenching. The South was not uniform in this pattern--North Carolina, for instance, had a substantial population of upland freehold farmers who got their start as "squatters" fkom Virginia, and Georgia began as a haven for defectors--but it was the plantation owners who dominated the political and economic structure of the region.

In the Northeast, by contrast, environmental conditions were much less favorable for agriculture. The summers were hot, but the winters cold; the soil was rocky and inhospitable to large scale agriculture; and the hinterland was more dangerous than promising. From a mercantile point of view New England's only natural advantages were fish, fbrs, and forests. Fish were perishable and competed with the British fisherman, but furs were profitable, especially after King Charles I ordered in 1638 that all English hats be made of beaver. Most fbrs were obtained by trade with the Indians in exchange for English manufactured goods: woolen blankets, iron implements and guns as well as

jewelry. New England's forests were a source of many naval stores, but particularly of mast timbers, a scarce and important resource. In an age of sailing ships, England needed naval stores--its sea power was its commercial lifeline, its defense against the Spanish empire, and its offense for capturing Spanish bullion--and without American sources it must obtain these supplies from the Baltic region, by trade with the Dutch who were also competitors. In New England, therefore, Britain sought to encourage the production of forest products and to nourish stable hr-trading relations with the Indian tribes.

South, though its consequences were different. For one thing, forestry and fishing and fir trapping were inherently more individualized occupations than plantation agriculture, and 4 not be orgmkd on the same scale or slave system or social hierarchy. Nor were they as profitable cash crops for the English traders as were those of the South. Since no one crop was dominant, economic production was more diversified and thus more adaptable over time to changes in conditions. The unprofitability of large estates fostered a more egalitarian pattern of small landholdings, and contributed to the development of self-government. Finally, the production of forest products for shipbuilding led naturally to the development of manufacturing and industry and shipping trade in the Northeast, particularly since abundant waterfalls provided a natural source of power as manufacturing technology advanced; and in this characteristic those colonies split fastest and most deeply fiom the mercantile interest of England.

England may inadvertently have forced New England hrther into manufacturing by enacting the first of the "Corn Laws" in 1660, heavy import taxes on grains passed by the British aristocracy of the Restoration period to protect its own farmers at the expense of the farmers of the northern and middle colonies of America. England wanted cheap

The adaptation of the New England settlers was no less fateful than that of the

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raw materials, not competition in shipping and manufacturing Once New Englanders began to produce most of the materials for shipbuilding, however, and Britain was preoccupied by its civil war and Reformation, the colonists began to build and operate ships themselves as well--not only to capture the profits and to avoid the prices of the British vessels, but even to survive. Nantucket thus became a whaling port, and other New England fishing towns grew into the home cities of American shipping and shipbuilding--the "Blessing of the Bay," the first American-built ship, was launched in 163 1 at Medford, Massachusetts--and a substantial portion of the New England colonies' income began to flow from trade, with England and its other colonies and with other empires and their Caribbean possessions as well.

Not all the differences between New England and the South arose from environmental conditions, for there were important cultural differences as well. The South was early dominated by British aristocrats, entrepreneurs who had come to make money from the land and to maintain or recreate the social class structure that served themselves, while New England was dominated by the religious aristocracy of Puritans and Calvinists. These populations brought different attitudes with them, which should not be ignored. But these attitudes had to operate on the opportunities and constraints of the physical environments they found, and these conditions therefore should not be underestimated either. The result was a pattem of differences between these regions--or "sections", as they later came to be'called--not only in physical conditions but in culture, in social and political structure and governance, in land tenure, and in economic base These .differences profoundly influenced the course of American history, and in some respects are still evident today.

The "middle colonies'', which grew up between New England and the South, developed yet a third pattem of adaptation. Their soils were more fertile than those of New England, leading them to be called the "Bread Colonies", and their rivers broader: the Hudson, Delaware, and Susquehanna all provided easy access inland, but conversely had few waterfalls for manufacturing. Abundant forests benefited the development of shipbuilding, but the main export of these colonies was food grains. Culturally, they were more diverse and egalitarian than either New England or the South: Pennsylvania in particular was founded by Quakers, populated by squatters of many origins, and governed by the mosttnlerant a d egalitarian principles of any of the colonies, and from early on it welcomed immigration from Europe as well as England. Farms were larger than New England's but smaller than the Southern plantations; slavery was disapproved; immigration was unrestricted and even well advertised in Europe; civil liberties were supported; and land was bought at unusually fair prices fiom the Indians, and sold to the settlers in larger "lots"--allotments--than elsewhere. Other than grain and forest products, these colonies' main income came from commerce. New York and Philadelphia were established at key locations for the transshipment of commodities between Europe and the interior of the continent, which put their merchants, like those of New England, into a situation of potential competition against the merchants of England. As long as the American merchants could find trade advantages with other ports, to obtain money to remedy its chronic imbalances in trade with England, the system worked adequately; but when these relationships were disrupted in the 1760s by changes in British policy, they contributed strongly to the forces that led to revolution. .

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All the colonies, in short, survived economically by foreign trade in raw materials, such as staple crops, forest products, h r s and fish and whale oil, and food grains; they subsisted largely on their own food crops, on animal skins and wool and flax for clothes, on timber for fuel and shelter, and on imports of salt, sugar, manufactured goods, and other commodities not available locally; and they gradually built their own shipping, shipbuilding, ironworking, and other manufacturing industries that competed with those of England.

Colonial Environmental Policies

policies of the European colonizing powers, and the policies that were developed by the emerging governance institutions within the colonies themselves. Both of these were distinct from the practices and management regimes that existed among the indigenous populations already present in North America. British policies were the sources of many of the initial policy precedents adopted by colonial governments, as well as the starting point for many of the adaptations--and in some cases, deliberate rejections--which the coIonists developed to suit their own preferences and environmental conditions. They were also sources of some of the grievances that led to the Revolutionary War, and of some of the environmental damage of the period, such as the exhaustion of southern soils and the destruction of fbr-bearing animals (such as beaver, otter, and martin) east of the Appalachians.

England had no overall policy for American land development. Its colonies were established piecemeal, in grants to various colonization companies and proprietors: to the Virginia Company, for instance, to seek gold and converts and a route to the East Indies, to the Hudson's Bay Company for fur trading in northern Canada, to Lord Baltimore as a haven for Catholics and a profit-making venture, and to William Penn as a payment for royal debts owed to his father. Each colony's charter granted it jurisdiction over specified lands under various conditions, the title remaining with the King. As the American colonies grew, their immigrants brought with them both the legacy of feudal land institutions, and their own varied attitudes towards the changes in those institutions that were then occurring in Europe. All saw land as a primary form of wealth, and saw in the w"@ytnnittess tand ofNorth America the opportunity for each individual to enjoy the property privileges reserved for the elite in Europe. Many saw land as a source of commercial wealth as well, particularly the entrepreneurs who first organized the colonies an the authority of feudal charters and royal grants.

The merchants of Europe, of course, viewed the colonies as production platforms and markets, much as multinational corporations view the less developed nations of today: populations that could provide them with cheap raw materials, buy their manufactured goods, stimulate their shipping industry, and (unlike today) employ their population surplus in a region where land was plentifbl but labor scarce. And the vast majority of people who went to the colonies to live were, of course, those surplus people themselves: some criminals, some debtors, some religious dissidents, but many farmers who had had to leave the land in Europe, and artisans and laborers seeking better wages and land ownership, who were willing to take the risks necessary to build materially better and more independent lives for themselves They were people, in short, who almost inevitably

American environmental policy in the colonial period was of two types: the

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viewed America's land not as a fiagile ecosystem or a scarce resource but as a virtually @ee, abundant commodity and opportunity for the production of economic benefits.

The European nations claimed title to American lands and their resources on the grounds of discovery and settlement. The original English settlements were thus established on lands claimed by the King of England and granted by him to charter companies and colonial proprietors; they in turn consummated these claims by physical possession of them, in the persons of both settlers and soldiers. Those colonies that were surrounded by others, such as Delaware, Maryland, and Rhode Island, took on their approximate shapes at this time; the others, especially those whose borders were open to the west (such as Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas) claimed large western territories extending across the Appalachians "fiom sea to sea."

The early English trading and colonizing charters were similar to those previously granted by the Crown to domestic English companies for drainage and irrigation projects. These companies assumed the risk of the ventures in exchange for liberal terms of land tenure, much as tax breaks encourage chosen forms of corporate investment today. Initially the companies and proprietors sought to maintain strong central control over colonial lands, and even to retain or recreate the European feudal system of land restrictions, such as establishing entails and demanding quitrents.

his benefit by the chartered proprietors and royal governors. These practices rapidly broke down, however, principally because of the sheer abundance of the land and the inability to police it effectively against "squatting" for agrarian use. Feudalism had prospered where land was scarce: but where land was abundant, and labor scarce and therefore expensive, people could not be kept within such a restrictive land-based system of social classes and controls.

Within a few years, therefore, the companies and proprietors began to use land more liberally for economic purposes, by distributing it to individuals as an incentive for immigration and agricultural productivity. Colonial proprietors first began distributing individual lands to settlers--three-acre gardens in Virginia, for instance--then began to offer "headrights" to land, a guarantee of 50 acres to anyone who paid his own or someone else's passage to America. Essentially, they used the abundance of land as an irmntiVeto overcome the scarcity of labor. Usually the only duty of the individual was to pay a nominal annual quitrent, a legacy of the feudal system of obligations which took the form of an acreage tax. Quitrents often proved uncollectable, and were gradually phased out in exchange for higher initial sale prices. The headright system was an important antecedent of 19th century American homesteading, similar in that it provided stated quantities of land per person without regard to race, creed, or color. It differed in that headrights were rewarded to the donor rather than directly to the settler, could thus be accumulated rather than distributed only one to a family, and were encumbered by quitrents rather than given with clear title. Because of the unlimited acreage that could thus be accumulated by payment of immigrants' passage, headrights became one of the principal methods by which the large plantations and estates of the southern colonies were assembled.

slowly. Pennsylvania was the first colony to sell lands. chartered to William Perm in

In principle all the colonies' lands were "the king's domain", to be administered for

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Land also was distributed by sale, though this practice was new and developed

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6 0 1681, he offered the lands for sale from the start in shares of 5000 acres for €100, subject to a quitrent of one shilling per hundred acres per year. These were large holdings, bought mainly by wealthy Englishmen and later by land companies for speculation, to profit fiom their rising value at resale. Other colonies sold land in smaller quantities mainly to settlers Virginia, for instance, offered cheap land as an enticement for settlement in its backlands despite an official veto of the practice by the King.

Finally, land was distributed by grants for special purposes, which provided important precedents for later land grant policies of the American republic. Land was granted to settlers as an inducement for frontier protection, as early as 1630 in Virginia It was granted as a bounty for military service, especially after the French and Indian War (and later the Revolution), a practice common in English history as far back as William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings. It was granted as an endowment for education, including the establishment of both Harvard University and the College of William and Mary, which foreshadowed the reservation of lands for education in the Northwest Ordinance of 1788 as well as the land grant college system of the 19th century. And it was granted as an inducement for the development of particular industries, an antecedent of the later federal grants of public domain lands to the railroad companies.

holding freehold possession of their farms: the only major exceptions were the slaves and tenants on the plantations of the coastal South, and the leasehold system left over from the Dutch patroons of upstate New York. By 1750 most colonial Americans other than slaves did own land or other productive property.

As early as the 17th century, therefore, the widespread availability of freehold land ownership was one of the most important differences between America and Europe, and the legacy of this difference is still evident in the legal and socioeconomic status of land in America. In both societies, land was a primary basis not only of economic wealth but also of social and political status: Scott (1977) reports that the young John Adams, for instance, later to be President, could neither vote nor hold ofice nor even marry until he inherited his father's land at the age of 26. But land in Europe was scarce, while in America it was plentihl. Land in Europe was virtually all owned, at least by the King; many large areas were owned directly in the name of the crown, especially those including fbrests or mineral deposits, and most others were encumbered by centuries of feudal restrictions and obligations linking them to a social and political elite. In America it need only be claimed and used to be appropriated, and the nominal ownership of the King had little practical effect.

The abundance of land in America thus brought both the economic and the social and political benefits of freehold ownership within the reach of vast numbers of people, in contrast to all the nations of Europe, and offered better wages for labor as well. Not surprisingly, it thus offered a powerful incentive for immigration The resulting diversity of land ownership in turn provided a principal foundation for the egalitarian institutions of American society. "If the multitude is possessed of real estate", wrote John Adams, "the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude in all acts of government" (quoted in Scott, 1977)

Land abundance changed other institutions as well The property qualification limited the European electorate to an elite few, but in America, given widespread property

By 1700 most of British America was populated by small independent farmers

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ownership, it permitted nearly universal adult male suffrage except for slaves and indentured servants. American land ownership never developed the full trappings of the European landed aristocracy, although the plantation system of the South permitted occasional approximations of it. Instead, it developed an extraordinary commitment to the autonomy of the individual landowner, with virtually none of the reciprocal obligations of his European counterpart.

From the perspective of the colonists, the right of freehold land ownership was justified on three grounds. First, it was theirs by grant from companies (in the South), proprietors (in the Middle Colonies), or town corporations (in New England) chartered by the King, consistent with traditional European law. This basis sufficed against British authorities, except in cases where the King revoked or altered the charter, but did not rationalize the appropriation of land from native Indian inhabitants. The Indians, after all, possessed the land by right of prior occupation and use, an argument usually respected among the European nations themselves: the arguments of "natural rights" actually originated in the 17th century as a basis for English civil rights versus the crown, but they also spread to America to become an important philosophical basis for American ideas of privati: property rights. Interestingly, the same sorts of arguments were later used to just@ settlers' squatting against the legal ownership of American land speculators: land ownership was justified by actual residence and production, not by legal title alone. Morrison (1 971, 1974) also notes a relatively consistent pattern of Indian hospitality to Europeans' trade but hostility to their settlement, which suggests a clear concept of jurisdiction and property at least at the community level; and their understanding of the concept of property is evidenced by the existence of death penalties for theft of maize. If the Indians were also children of God, were not the colonists simply robbing them of their land?

The second argument for colonists' land rights, therefore, was that it was theirs by "natural right" justified by the "labor theory of value." In this view, argued by Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts among others, the Bible directed man to "increase, .multiply, replenish, and subdue the earth"; and therefore all undeveloped and unworked land remained the possession of no one, which could be claimed by anyone who invested it with his work. Since Indian lands were thus in an "unclaimed state of nature"--that is, siflee-thy were used for subsistence hunting rather than for market agriculture--and since the colonists viewed themselves as having the natural right of Englishmen to own private property, they considered themselves justified in appropriating as much land as they were able to cultivate. For a time this pattern accommodated both populations, but as European immigration increased and their settlements expanded, conflict was inevitable.

To these arguments was added a third, that the colonists owned lands by virtue of payment for them. In many cases settlers paid Indian tribes for land rights--however much or little the payments may have been--and they therefore argued that these payments conferred title to their lands. This was a new argument in the concept of land ownership, the notion that land could be exchanged without encumbrance on the basis of paper titles and bills of sale rather than transferred in accord with feudal encumbrances, and that it could be sold in the market for whatever a buyer was willing to pay. The Indians may not have cared whether they were losing their lands to 'hatural rights" or to "legal rights", for in either case the result was the same: frauds and misrepresentations occurred, and often

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the Indians thought they were being paid simply for rights of shared use rather than for exclusive title, and this difference was conveniently ignored by the colonists But as a basis for the American system of property rights to natural resources, the argument of land

. rights based on purchase was an important precedent, which opened the door to the federal land disposal system of the 19th century, to speculation, and to many other issues that later became central to American environmental policy.

Freehold ownership never meant absolute right to do whatever one wished with one’s land, however. It was, rather, a bundle of rights in which the individual normally controlled the preponderant number and controlled them for an indefinite period of time. The rights to tax, to condemn, and to police land have always been reserved by society to its government. In colonial America land ownership was subject to government controls, many of which have modern counterparts. Colonial governments condemned private land by eminent domain when it was needed for public buildings, forts, ferries, waterwheels, towns, or other public purposes. Wildlife were on essential food supply, especially deer, and even though they might cross private lands, by 1776 they were protected by closed seasons and deer wardens in all colonies but one. Gold and silver discoveries were subject to 20 percent royalties to the Crown. Timber was a strategic resource, for ship timber and naval stores as well as fbel and construction, and forest resources were therefore regulated by both British and colonial authorities: Britain reserved the best trees for mast timbers for the Royal Navy, Massachusetts prohibited the destruction of young tar and pitch pines, and Pennsylvania required the reservation of one acre of forest for every five acres cleared. Water was owned only after it was appropriated by the user, though each owner was entitled to continuation of the natural flow of water over and along his land. Massachusetts levied a property tax as early as 1646; Pennsylvania levied a progressive land tax during the French and Indian wars (1 758-63), aimed particularly at the absentee landlords of the Penn family. After the American Revolution property taxes became additionally important as a source of revenue for state and local governments, since the constitution transferred to the federal government the authority to tax imports and exports which had been their other principal means of support.

The freehold did not, then, imply absolute autonomy of the individual to decide the use of his land. Individuals were never free to use their property in such a way as to interfere with the rights of others, they must pay taxes on it; and they must abide by various legal restrictions on the use of the resources found on their land, such as forests, wildlife, minerals, and water What the freehold did mean, however, was a presumption favoring the individual’s autonomous preferences within the constraints of the laws, including the rights to possess land, to use it (except for nuisances), to receive its produce, to sell it, and to exclude others from it, without government permission. In short, he was fiee to develop or sell or mine or clear his land, unless prohibited by law, for whatever price the market would pay him The actual extent to which laws constrain the use of land has varied greatly over time, but the essential issues to the colonists were the principle of freehold itself, the presumption in favor of the individual which it implied, and the republican form of government that followed from that presumption

the settlers recognized this Restrictions on wildlife were accepted because they were essential to survival, and on timber because it was a strategic material Whatever the

Land resources played a critical role in colonial America’s agrarian economy, and

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/53 abundance of timber in America as a whole, timber that was accessible by the transportation technologies of the day--almost exclusively waterborne--was nevertheless scarce and essential. Many first-generation settlers also brought with them European attitudes toward resource husbandry, bred in the land-scarce conditions of their native countries. Land was often overworked and then abandoned, but its market value was nevertheless usually commensurate with its value as a natural resource. These values did not begin to diverge significantly until the major urban, industrial, and transportation developments of the nineteenth century.

Agriculture

wanted for its own use, and especially those that would provide cheaper substitutes for materials that must otherwise be bought elsewhere. These included forest products, which will be discussed hrther below, but also tobacco, rice, indigo, and food grains; silk, flax, and hemp; and wine grapes. Some of these required no fkrther incentives than those of the market--tobacco, for instance, could be sold in London for six times the price of wheat--but for others the government established production incentives in the form of bounties, planting requirements, market guarantees, and adjustment of tax rates.

rigging ships and other purposes, and during the reign of Queen Anne a bounty of €6 per ton was offered for its production; in 172 1 the import duties on it were eliminated as well. .Indigo was an essential ingredient of fabric dyes, which had been available only from the French, and Britain in the 18th century was just developing the high-volume, mechanized manufacture of textiles that helped spark the Industrial Revolution; so in 1748 a bounty of six pence per pound was offered for indigo production. Bounties were also offered at one time or another for the production of flax (also for the British textile industry), grapes (for wine), and mulberry trees (to encourage silkworm culture). Import duties were lowered or eliminated not only on hemp but on tobacco, molasses, indigo, and silk. Market guarantees were. provided 'in the form of "enumeration lists", which prohibited the export of "enumerated" commodities to nations other than Britain but by the same token guaranteed them a market in Britain (though at prices dictated by the English merchants). Ginger, sugar, tobacco, cotton-wool, indigo, hstic and other dyeing works were

several non-agricultural products such as copper, iron, and various forest products. Many of these could not be produced in England, thus guaranteeing a market for colonial produce; tobacco could be but was forbidden in order to encourage colonial production of it (and to protect Britain's own soils).

Some of the colonial governments also created their own production incentives. Virginia in 1669, for instance, offered 50 pounds of tobacco for every pound of wound silk made in the colony. Several colonies established planting requirements and harvest restrictions to influence the output of certain crops: both Virginia and Connecticut, for instance, passed laws requiring farmers to grow certain amounts of flax and hemp, because of their importance to textile manufacture and shipbuilding, and Virginia from 1658 to 1770 had a law requiring everyone to plant 10 mulberry trees (for silkworm culture) per hundred acres of land cultivated. Virginia and Maryland also restricted farmers' output of

Britain pressured the colonies to produce crops and other raw materials that it

Hemp, for instance, was an important material for the production of rope, for

enumerated in 1660, and molasses, rice, and sugar were later added to the list, as were --

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tobacco, which was exhausting the soil and being overproduced as well. they assigned production quotas limiting the number of plants each farmer could grow and the number of leaves he could harvest, and they required also that each produce a minimum quantity of food crops in order to lessen the region's dependence on imports, and to keep the farmers from exhausting the soil by planting it all in tobacco. In a sense these were America's first soil conservation laws, though they were neither effective nor intended wholly for that purpose.

With the exception of tobacco, however, the colonies generally took no action for the conservation of soil fertility. It is possible that they simply had too little knowledge of soil science to recognize it as a problem, or that the initial richness of the soil seemed inexhaustible. The economics of agriculture worked against conservation measures: labor was scarce and expensive everywhere, and the old eastern farms that needed conservation measures were competing at a constant disadvantage against cheap new lands in the west. By 1750 the earlier settled portions of Virginia and Maryland contained large areas of abandoned lands, which reverted first to pastures and eventually to thickets and second growth forests, and many communities that were economically bankrupt. In the South, the prevalence of tenancy was an additional handicap: many plantations were operated by overseers who were paid a percentage of the annual crop, and who thus were motivated to squeeze from the land as much production as possible. Finally, farmers were a debtor class, generally poor and trying to make their way upward, running high risks from the weather and the market without reserves of capital or credit to put into conservation measures. Britain had always prohibited both the use of "bills of credit" based on land, and the issuance of any colonial paper money for private transactions, fearing inflation caused by land speculation; but the result of these policies was a severe shortage both of agricultural credit and of currency in the colonies generally. For all these reasons, agricultural Conservation policy in America did not become prominent until wefi into the 20th century.

although indigo production did rise substantially and tobacco quality was probably improved by the destruction of inferior plants at harvest time to achieve quotas. The continuing expansion of agriculture on new lands to the west could not help but limit the eflectiveness of any controls on older lands in the east.

These policies are noteworthy, however, because they are so similar to many of the devices used in more recent times for production controls. Bounties and quotas fbnctioned not unlike agricultural price supports and other modem tax breaks, in that they provided economic incentives beyond the market prices to influence production in directions desired by government. Planting requirements were somewhat similar to today's "land banking" and crop rotation requirements intended to reduce soil exhaustion. These sorts of policies existed in the colonial period, but many of them were not duplicated in America again for 200 years

Many of the colonial agricultural incentives were not particularly successhl,

Forests .Forest products were an essential strategic material in the colonial period: in fact,

until at least the 1860s when iron ships were developed, and in some respects even as late as World War I1 when metals replaced spruce in aircraft manufacture. Timber was

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essential for ship construction, especially “great timbers” made of oak for strength and water resistance, including some with particular curvatures to make the sternposts, catheads and !‘knees“ for the hulls. Large, straight firs and pines and spruces were necessary for masts and spars. A main mast on a large sailing ship required a straight tree 40 yards long and 40 inches in diameter, located close enough to water to be transported to the shipyard: perhaps one tree in 10,000. Before the colonization of America most of these mast timbers were Riga firs from the Baltic region, traded by the Dutch.

England was chronically short of timber from the 16th century on. Its own supplies were heavily exploited for the construction of naval and merchant ships, as trade increased and England became a sea power in the 1500s. Queen Elizabeth and the Stuarts licensed heavy cutting of England’s dwindling forests for revenue purposes as well, needing additional sources of money to finance their governments; and during the English civil war, Cromwell and his successors established deliberate policies of deforestation on royal lands and old estates, partly for revenue and partly to eliminate vestiges of the feudal aristocracy. The production of naval timber also competed, of course, with settlement and agriculture, since grain crops brought quicker returns; with other timber needs, such as for construction of housing, casks, canals and locks, and other durable goods; and later with industry’s needs for charcoal. Many people recognized and warned that England’s forests were dwindling, but the government still failed to develop a consistent domestic policy for the protection and production of forest resources. The result was a critical shortage, especially in mast timbers after Britain went to war with the Dutch in 1652.

products. Northern New England and eastern Canada were rich in native white pines, ideal for mast timbers; the central hardwood forests and southeastern liveoaks could relieve the preserve on English oaks; and the southeastern long leaf pines, cedars,’and cypress could provide additional timber plus other essential products for shipbuilding: tar and pitch, resins, and turpentine. The first cargo shipped back to Britain from the American colonies was a load of masts in 1609; clapboards were sent in 1623, and in the same year America’s first sawmill was established in York, Maine.

Britain’s desire for forest products initially complemented the needs of the colonies, and thus resulted in little need for explicit policy-making. The colonists had to clear land for settlement myway, and New England in particular had little else to sell, except furs and fish, in exchange for their imports from Britain. Beginning with William and Mary in 1688, however, Britain began to apply more intense regulation, in part to remedy its Baltic trade balance and lessen its dependence on then-hostile Sweden, and in part to try to force the colonists to shift away from producing other products that competed with England, especially wool, ships, and fish. Britain had neglected its colonies during its own civil war, and of necessity therefore the colonies had begun to develop in their own directions, building ships to develop their own carrying trade, raising wool for their clothes and export and exploiting the rich fishing and whaling grounds of New England, directions which were competitive rather than fitting into the complementarities of mercantile colonialism.

As early as 1685, therefore, Britain appointed a Surveyor General of the Pines and Timbers of Maine, and this position was expanded in 1705 to include all of Her Majesty’s Woods and Forests in America. In 1691 the new charter of the Massachusetts Colony

Englishmen recognized early the importance of the American colonies for forest

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reserved all trees greater than 24 inches in diameter one foot above. the ground, which grew on lands not already granted to private individuals (that is, on the "King's domain"), subject to a penalty of €100 for every tree illegally cut. This regulation became known as the "Broad Arrow" policy, because the trees were marked with an arrow-like configuration of three hatchet cuts as a mark of British Navy ownership.

continued by the state of Massachusetts itself after the Revolution (though at the time Massachusetts defied it, and refbsed to pass a colonial law repeating it). A 171 1 Act of the British Parliament extended the policy to all lands from Maine (then part of Massachusetts) to New Jersey. Meanwhile, a 1705 law prohibited cutting of tar and pitch pines less than 12 inches in diameter, in order to allow them to mature; and a 1704 law established bounties of €4 per ton for tar and pitch, 23 per ton for resin and turpentine, and €1 per ton for spar timbers. A 1721 law prohibited all cuttings of white pines without a royal license; and a 1729 act not only reaffirmed these policies, but added many forest products to the "enumeration list" of commodities that could be exported only to England, which cut off the colonies' extensive timber trade with Southern Europe and the West Indies; and it gave the Navy 20 days' right to pre-empt these products when they arrived in England.

broader mercantile political and economic goals for America, combining economic incentives such as bounties with coercive sanctions such as harvest and trade restrictions to secure materials Britain wanted on favorable term's. Many of these policies were easily accepted or even welcomed by the colonies, since they assured them of markets often on preferential terms relative to other exporting nations. The Broad Arrow timber reservations, however, were an important exception. Legally, the British forest policies were quite proper. Their effect, however, differed greatly from its agricultural policies. American forest products were protected only by a 20 percent duty, not by a market monopoly. Even the bounties did not compensate for the higher prices American exporters could otherwise get from the lumber markets of southern Europe which were now closed to them. Moreover, more than half the bounties went to the southern colonies for ships' shores, while the prohibition on white pine cutting fell mainly on the New England colonies. Finally, the latter prohibition posed a direct challenge not only to colonial forest trade, but to hndamental ideas of property rights in land resources.

not Parliament had a right to pass a law restricting their use of timber on private lands. This issue has important similarities to later ones, such as the extent of the American government's authority to restrict the use of wetlands, floodplains, historic sites, and other characteristics of private lands. English kings had always claimed this prerogative for naval timber before its Civil War, but after the Restoration the Parliament--many of whom owned oak groves--had rehsed to continue it in England. Yet now they were imposing on American colonies the same situation they had reksed to accept at home. The American colonists from the outset had cut timber freely on lands to which they had title, since no such restrictions had been introduced in their patents; yet Parliament was now asserting the right to control the resources of those lands and thereby to limit the economic livelihood of people who received income from them. Other markets were far

The 1691 timber regulation was a precedent for later forest laws, and was even

Like its agricultural policies, Britain's colonial forest policies grew out of its

For the colonists, the basic issue of the Broad Arrow controversy was whether or

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more lucrative than England, and lumber more profitable than masts, and the principle of the restrictions, even if legal under British law, threatened the basic norms of American colonial society regarding private property rights.

The Broad Arrow policy not only failed, therefore, but became one of the irritants leading to Revolution. Colonial legislatures ignored it; colonial courts refbsed to convict (and in fact, more often convicted British contractors for damages to private lands when they sought to harvest reserved trees); and colonists themselves flaunted it, both by smuggling and by cutting lumber into widths just under the 24 inches that would have provided evidence of illegal harvest.

One additional precedent of British colonial forest policy was an Act of 1743, which instead of reserving all white pine set aside specific reservation areas to which the King retained clear title. These areas were far less controversial except to the extent that the earlier laws had already generated lasting hostility, and in fact they provided a precedent for the system of localized forest reservations that has since developed in U.S. policy. A similar policy was first adopted by Massachusetts in 1783.

The Plymouth Bay Colony as early as 1626 restricted the cutting of trees greater than 24 inches in diameter on ungranted lands, mainly to preserve these valuable trees--large enough for masts, and near enough to water for transport--for shipbuilding rather than being cut up into lumber. By about 1658 several New England colonies had laws controlling forest fires--fires were often used to clear land for agriculture--and by the Revolution all but four colonies had forest-fire-control legislation. The first forest preservation law was enacted in Pennsylvania, where in 168 1 William Penn ordered that for every five acres cleared one acre must be left in forest. By 1741 all the colonies from Maryland north also had laws prohibiting unauthorized cutting of timber on public lands ("timber trespass"). The Massachusetts General Court in 1739 threatened fines 'of 10 shillings for every bush, shrub or tree less than 6 inches in diameter that was cut from beaches or marshes, perhaps America's first "coastal zone management" policy, because of concern over beach erosion and drifting sand.

Forest products were never a dominant export of the colonies as a whole--they amounted at most to only about 5 percent of total exports--but for several of the colonies, lheyxereakid sources of income, and for Britain they were an important source of strategic naval construction materials. When the colonies cut their exports in 1775, after the Boston Tea Party, one of the key effects was to cut off Britain's supply of American mast timbers and divert them to France, a loss which Albion (1926) labels a disaster for the British Navy during the Revolution. Both British and American colonial forest policies early showed a willingness to regulate the cutting and burning of forest resources, especially on public lands, and a recognition that the values of mature trees can be realized only if they are protected against earlier destruction. But the reactions to the British Broad Arrow policy also show the early emergence of strong grass-roots norms concerning property rights to land-based resources, which would be a powehl driving force in environmental policy throughout American history

The colonial governments established forest policies beyond those of England.

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Unlike land and .forests, water resources were early designated as common rather than private property. Navigable watercourses--rivers, lakes, and bays--were essential '

public transportation routes, especially for heavy or bulky cargoes such as timber, since overland transport of them was expensive or even impossible. Mainly because of this functicm they came to be regarded legally as open to common use by the general public rather than as the property of riparian landowners.

navigable, a definition probably based on the technology of sailing ships, the history of manorial land rights, and even the small size of the country. All non-navigable streams could be controlled by the adjoining landowners, who had the right to use the surface waters flowing across their property (although they did not actually ''own'' the water until they appropriated it for use). In America, however, different conditions prevailed: its large rivers were in fact navigable far inland, the land was unencumbered with prior rights, and the country was rich in timber that was only accessible by floating it downstream to mills and shipyards. Yet under British law any landowner could block the passage of these logs, or appropriate those that stranded on his land, or even erect a mill-dam that would block all navigation.

include all water that was in fact used for navigation. A Connecticut law in 1752 defined rivers as common highways for the transport of logs and log rafts; a New Jersey law in 1755 prohibited any obstruction of "rivers, creeks or streams" that were in fact used for navigation and transportation, except by act of the General Assembly; and Pennsylvania laws in 1771 and 1785 officially declared portions of five specific rivers "public highways", mentioning specifically their importance for the development of inland timber resources. As this concept spread, navigability came to include any stream that would float'a log or a boat.

protect public health and fisheries. Massachusetts in 1647 passed regulations prohibiting pollution of Boston Harbor as a public health measure, and South Carolina in 1726 passed a law prohibiting pollution harmfbl to fish. The most important water policies, however, were hose estabfishing precedents of ownership and basing these on a broadened and realistic concept of navigability, for these precedents became the basis of both the constitutional and the statutory principles for American water resource policy. An important issue throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, for instance, has been the extent of federal jurisdiction over the uses of inland lakes and streams--not only for transport but for the regulation of water pollution, hydroelectric power production, and other purposes- -and a specific point on which that debate has turned is the definition of "navigable" waters.

In England, only tidal portions of rivers and estuaries were legally considered

The American colonies therefore broadened the definition of "navigability" to

In addition to property definitions, colonial water policy also included actions to

Minerals

(gold and silver) and those dealing with utilitarian materials such as iron and copper. Policies for precious metals were more important for their legal precedents than for their effects: each colonial charter except that of Georgia reserved to the Crown a percentage

Britain's mineral policies were of two kinds, those dealing with precious metals

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of any gold or silver that might be discovered, usually 20 percent. Since no significant deposits of these metals were discovered in the colonial period, the policy had little effect, but it did set a precedent for reserving mineral rights to the government when public lands were transferred into private ownership Private ownership did not necessarily include

' rights to all the land's resources, therefore, as the coal companies of Appalachia later demonstrated at the expense of the poor farmers who held only surface rights, and as twentieth century issues over strip-mining in the Great Plains also illustrate. Mineral reservations similar to these British policies came into U,S. law as early as the Confederation period of 178 1-89.

Iron and copper, in contrast, were not reserved but were subjected to strict trade regulation. Iron like timber was a strategic material, essential in the manufacture not only of cannon but of all sorts of tools, weapons, and other implements; yet Britain was short of both the essential materials needed for ironmaking, ore for substance and wood for fuel, and dependent for the former on Swedish imports. America had both in abundance. The iron industry began in Virginia as early as 1620 and in Massachusetts in the 164Os, and by 1700 the colonies were competing successfblly against England in the production of iron.

The result was that the colonies both reduced their imports of British iron products by making their own, and competed with British exports elsewhere in the world. American manufacturing of iron thus threatened Britain's own industrialization process, a process that began to accelerate with Abraham Darby's successful substitution of coke, made from coal, for scarce charcoal in 1709. Coke lessened England's dependence on wood for fuel, and thus spurred both its demand for colonial iron ore and its resistance to colonial competition in iron manufacture. In 1750 therefore a law was passed which eliminated import duties on American pig iron sent to Britain, but which also prohibited the construction of plating forges, steel furnaces or rolling mills in any of the colonies, and condemned all existing ones as public nuisances. In 1764 iron was also enumerated and thus barred fiom colonial export to nations other than Britain, thus assuring the British of a supply monopoly at low prices. The goal, of course, was to restore a mercantile exchange pattern between American raw materials production, British manufacturing, and American markets for finished iron goods--including, of course, the American Indians, for iron implements and woolen blankets were the two principal commodities which Britain traded to tkg Indians for their hrs.

policy as an ineffective restriction and a colonial grievance The burden of the forest regulations fell most heavily on the lower income Americans who made their living from forest products, but the restriction on iron manufactures angered the wealthier class of people who were developing the rising manufacturing and industrial base of the colonial economy. Both policies fell mainly on New Englanders The law was widely flouted, therefore, and by the time of the Revolution America was actually producing more iron than Britain.

Other minerals were discovered during the colonial period, but most were not developed until after the Revolution, usually because either extraction technology or transportation was lacking or cheaper substitutes were available. Lead was mined in Missouri from the 1720s on, and shipped to the seaboard by way of the lower Mississippi River. Great Lakes copper was also discovered in the 17th century, but was not used until

_ - The prohibition of iron manufacturers, however, ranked close to the Broad Arrow

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1845. Pittsburgh coal was not used until around 1800, though it was discovered by the 1750s: with wood still abundant, fossil fbels were neither necessary nor cost-effective. Even the salt deposits around Syracuse, New York were not worked for 50 years after they were discovered around 1725: only when imports were interrupted by the Revolution did they become a critical resource supply.

Fisheries

European fishermen--French, English, and others--worked the Newfoundland Banks long before permanent settlements were planted. British fishermen would set out from Bristol to Portugal where they would take on a cargo of salt, then fish the waters of Iceland--and after 1580, when the King of Denmark required license fees in those waters, mainly the waters of "new found land"--for cod which they would exchange in Portugal for wine, oil and more salt before returning home again to Bristol.

The New England offshore fisheries apparently were not discovered by the English until the early 1600s, however, coinciding with the colonization of Virginia in 1607. Fishing colonies were planted in Maine in 1607 and 161 1, and in 1614 Captain John Smith of Virginia discovered both the richness of New England's fisheries, and three other advantages of them: shore fisheries were possible as well as offshore; they had a double season, unlike Newfoundland; and the cod arrived there earlier up the Gulf Stream, allowing fishermen to get their catch to the London markets significantly ahead of those

.further north (Judah, 1933). These discoveries coincided with the rising dominance of entrepreneurial

commercial interests in London such as the colonization companies, in contrast to the early and continuing dominance of the Newfoundland banks by the working fisher-folk of west England. It was the London-based capitalists who first controlled the New England fisheries, therefore, and in 1620 Sir Ferdinand0 Gorges' Touncil for New England" was granted a monopoly charter to license and charge for fishing both offshore and onshore in New England. The charges amounted to 304 pence per ton, or about E20 per ship. This charter was opposed by fishermen and by the Virginia Company, and probably retarded the growth of the New England fishing industry, though the Council argued that the

to the land-based colonies if unregulated.

boats ("shallops") and using equipment supplied by British companies, and gradually manufacturing more and more of their own gear as well Massachusetts around 1640 exempted fishing property from taxation for seven years, to encourage the development of the fishing industry--much as today's towns offer tax breaks to industries to encourage them to locate there--and exempted fishermen from military service during the fishing season. England also helped--the Navigation Act of 165 1 banned all imports of fish, oil, or whale products unless they were both caught and carried by English ships. Since the colonies' ships were also counted as English, this gave them a guaranteed market for their catch, although the same law banned resale to merchants of other nations and thus permitted the London merchants to dictate prices to the fishermen, only from 1656-59 was

Fish were perhaps the earliest North American resource known to Europe, and

fisttermen's practices of timber cutting for stages and forest burning were a threat

By 1628 the American fishing industry began to develop, first building their own

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this policy eased, when an oversupply was rotting away in British ports without domestic buyers.

Other than these few regulations Britain had no general policies for the New England fisheries, and intervened only to resolve immediate conflicts. During its civil war beginning in 1642 it ignored the New England fisheries almost entirely, and with its economy in turmoil its commerce for most American products were also interrupted. The colonies accordingly pursued their own self-sufficiency and alternative markets, and captured control of the New England fisheries, which they never again relinquished. After 1640 British fishing in New England waters was negligible--the Newfoundlanders had no desire to compete in those waters anyway, since they would have been at a disadvantage against the colonies who controlled the land where they would have needed to dry and process their fish--and American control was well established. By 1660, 1300 New England boats were on the banks, marketing to Europe and the Americas, Malaga and the Canary Islands, Portugal and the Caribbean. The best fish were traded down the coast for flour and tobacco; medium grade were sold to the Catholics of Southern Europe for salt and wine, and the spojled or "refhe" fish were traded in Barbados and the other "sugar islands" of the West Indies to feed their slaves After the British Revolution of 1660, the British took no fbrther policy interest in these fisheries, since no British economic interests were pressing for such action.

known and no reasons then existed to fear the depletion of ocean fish populations. They , do illustrate the importance of environmental conditions in resource economics, however--

the double season and early arrival of the fish which made New England competitive against Newfoundland-and they also shed light on differences in the settlement patterns of New England and eastern Canada. Colonization was attempted in Newfoundland as well as New England, but was driven off from the former by the already-established British fishermen who feared (correctly) that settlements would preempt control over the coves and resources they needed for their fishing operations. In New England, however, fishing proceeded parallel with settlement and was controlled from the land right from the start. From the British perspective, therefore, Newfoundland developed as an adjunct to the sea, with colonization accordingly retarded; while in New England the fisheries developed as an idjunct te the lad's economy as settlement proceeded rapidly

New England's other major fishing industry was whaling, which supplied spermaceti for candle-making and oil, whalebone and ivory, and ambergris for pefimes and cosmetics. By 1774, 360 ships collected 45,000 barrels of sperm oil and 75,000 pounds of whalebone. Since this activity took place on the high seas it generated little policy, but it was a major colonial resource industry

Within the colonies, policies related to fishing served mainly to protect the resource against other damage and to prevent any private monopolization of the resource Massachusetts in 1647 established free public fishing and waterfowl hunting on all bays, rivers, and "great ponds", taking advantage, perhaps, of the weakening of the Council for New England's control during the British civil war An important corollary of this law was the right of open passage across non-agricultural private lands to reach these ponds, providing an early basis for hunters' trespass In 1 709- 10 Massachusetts passed fUrther legislation to prohibit unauthorized blockage of fish passages in streams, a measure

These fisheries policies tell us nothing about fish conservation, since little was

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probably aimed at widespread construction of mill-dams. South Carolina in 1726 also passed a law to prohibit pollution harmful to fish, and especially to ban the use of poisoning as 'a harvesting method.

was significant that the colonies' early actions were to declare them a free resource to anyone who captured them. This policy contrasted both with the British policy of granting monopoly control over licensing of fishermen, and even with American policy regarding other resources such as forests: trees and other land resources were considered private property of the owner of the land, but water and its resources were considered the common property of the society until captured by individual users. On such differences in legal status turn many later issues of environmental policy especially such issues as water pollution control, inter-basin diversion, and shoreline access.

In summary, fisheries were not a major subject of colonial policy-making, but it

Wildlife

before and during the period of American colonization. Legal tradition as old at least as Rome held that wild animals,ferae rratzrrae, were the property of no one--like air and oceans--but could become someone's property by killing or capture. European kings gradually eroded these principles, however, by restricting hunting by the lower classes, ostensibly to limit the availability of weapons, but perhaps also to. limit the number of hunters. England, for instance, limited the number of hunters by "qualification laws" on the basis of social class and property ownership: only those who owned land worth 40 shillings per year--later raised to €100--were allowed to hunt. Laws in the 16th to 18th centuries prohibited hunting animals during their vulnerable periods--for instance bird eggs and molting birds (1533, 1604), fish fry (1558), undersized lobsters (1699), and spawning salmon (1 71 0)--and regulated the equipment that could be used, such as by resthcting qualifications for ownership of firearms ( 1389, 1 53 1, 1 548), limiting heron hunting to hawking and longbows (1 503), setting minimum fishnet sizes (1 S S ) , restricting jacklighting (1 581), and requiring coverage of eelpots to protect mature salmon (1705). Market restrictions also were used to improve enforcement, such as by prohibiting the unlicensed sale even of ashes from wildlife forage and cover plants, and prohibiting the sale or even possession of game by "unqualified" persons (1 540, 1604, 1 7 IO). (Lund, 1975).

kings established and expanded a system of "royal forests," lands which even though still occupied by farmers and other users were subject to special royal jurisdiction over wildlife and their habitat requirements This "Jurisdiction" included both private farms and Crown lands, but was administered by the King through its own laws and lands separate from those of common law, and enforced by stewards, foresters, and other officials. These lands were managed primarily for the reserved sport of kings and their favorites, for the game species of "the forest, chase and warren" (Lund, 1975). Laws in these areas prohibited unauthorized purchase of hunting dogs, protected forage and shelter plants, limited livestock and prohibited sheep and goats except by license, required farmers to maintain adequate forage vegetation, and allowed foresters to cut winter browse for deer as necessary from private lands In return for these restrictions and for wildlife damage to

Within Britain itself, an extensive body of wildlife laws and policies developed both

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The British Kings went further: after the Norman conquest of 1066, successive

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their crops, farmers in these areas were also compensated by being allowed the privilege of common use of the forest.

The Forest Jurisdiction, and its gradual expansion, established a royal policy that the King was the ultimate authority over wildlife, whether they be on private or public lands. Wildlife were treated as a sole royal right, no longer subject to common right of capture. The kings shared or delegated this right by franchises, similar to the monopolies they granted to merchants and colonization companies: these franchise grants went by such names as park and chase, free warren, free fishery, several fishery, and common of piscary, each designating the specific resource and the degree of exclusivity of the privileges thus granted.

fishery franchises that navigation was being impeded by the large number of private weirs erected on streams and estuaries; and the significance of this problem was such that the Magna Carta itself, in 12 15, directed removal of these weirs. Later court decisions based on this language barred the king from granting private fisheries in tidal waters (U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, 1977: 1 1); these decisions in turn established precedents for American water and fisheries laws. With the exception of tidal fisheries, however, wildlife remained under the clear authority of the king and the Parliament; as Bean puts it (US. CEQ, 1977: 12),

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By the beginning of the 13th century, however, the kings had granted so many

Stripped of its many formalities, the essential core of English wildlife law on the eve of the American Revolution was the complete authority of the King and the Parliament to determine what rights others rhight have with respect to the taking of wildlife. These early British laws also show that many principles of wildlife management

have been long recognized. Eagles and other raptors were protected in England as early as 1494, and other predators as well; and the Forest Jurisdiction provides an eady example of the concept of deliberately managed wildlife preserves, even to the point of managing private inholdings consistent with wildlife habitat needs as well. These policies also demonstrate, however, the long-standing flavor of elitism and aristocratic privilege embedded in the goals of wildlife policy. Hunting was reserved to the upper classes by law, eventually to the extent that "unqualified" persons could not even possess--and tke&e, c&d not =€--game. These laws were often flouted, either directly by poaching--it is in the context of these laws that the well-known story of Robin Hood is set--or indirectly by landowners, who designated many of their farmers and tenants "gamekeepers" who thus were allowed to hunt. But by their effect they deliberately gave wildlife an "artificial preeminence" as a delicacy reserved for the tables of the rich rather than a source of nourishment for the general population.

British wildlife policies for America were basically nonexistent, with the exceptions of the fisheries policies already mentioned and its interest in fur-bearing animals which will be discussed separately below. What other policies there were originated in the colonies themselves, and differed for obvious reasons from many of Britain's. America had no entrenched upper classes to protect special privileges in wildlife consumption, for one thing; to the contrary, most wildlife was commonly used for sustenance, and colonists later continued to assert their lhatural rights" to take what wildlife they needed for consumption and sale The growth of the fur trade undoubtedly underscored this norm as

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well, along with trade in skins of larger animals such as deer for domestic clothing as well as export (each deerskin brought $1 .OO, hence “one buck”). Finally, American immigrants in the 18th century included at least some individuals who could be counted explicitly in opposition to British wildlife policy, for laws of 17 19 and 1737 had made 7 years’ exile in America the penalty for breaking an enclosure to take deer.

The initial concern of the colonies’ own wildlife policies, therefore, was the protection of wildlife not for their own sakes or for aristocratic sport or cuisine, but as a general source of food, especially as the skin trade began to threaten the supply of deer for that purpose. Game laws were enacted in almost every colony, most of them aimed not so much at absolute protection as at limiting exports and saving the wildlife for local use. South Carolina alone, for instance, shipped over 12 1,000 deerskins to England in 1706-07 and 255,000 in 1730. Massachusetts established a closed season for fishing in 1652 and for deer hunting in 1694, New York did likewise for wild fowl in 1708, and by 1776 similar laws had spread to all colonies except Georgia. Other laws authorized the appointment of deer wardens (Massachusetts in 1739, New Hampshire in 1741), restricted the sale of deer skins, and prohibited night and Sunday hunting. These laws probably were not very effective, and became less and less enforced as the importance of game in people’s diets declined, but they illustrate the early concerns over the effects of market hunting that later prompted far more stringent and effective controls on commercial trade in wildlife.

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Furs, Frontiers, and Taxes Britain’s principal wildlife interest in America was furs, and while it left the

management even of these species to the individual colonies, it did establish policies both to control trade and to resolve fiontier conflicts over access to furs. These policies were quite separate fiom its domestic wildlife policies both in control and intent, but they had considerable significance for the course of American development.

For Europeans h r has always been a luxury good, used for fashionable winter clothing and especially, in the expanding British economy of the 17th and 18th century, for hats. Beaver under-fur had a particular value for the manufacture of felt hats, a major British fashion industry, since it had fine barbs which made it stick to the felt, and demand increased accordingly once this was discovered. In 1638 Charles I issued a royal proclamation noting the popularity of beaver hats among the upper classes, and they remained the standard headwear for the well-dressed until they were replaced by silk in the early days of the Victorian era, around 1840. The principal source of beaver was the northern tier of North America. Furs became a major element of British colonial trade with America beginning after the Restoration, with the imposition of stiff import duties on foreign-made hats, the capture of the Hudson River Valley route from the Dutch in 1664, and the immigration of many French Huguenot hatters to England after the decree of 1685 denied them religious freedom in France.

Using the major rivers inland to the Midwest from New York and other seaports, the British were able to tap vast regions; furs were light and valuable and could easily be floated downstream to trading posts and shipped to England. In exchange, the British traded manufactured goods to the Indian trappers, particularly woolen blankets and iron and steel implements--knives, guns, traps, cooking pots, and other tools--and the

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Hudson’s Bay Company provided not only an economic hnction but also a quasi-official British political presence in the interior of Canada, which was otherwise dominated--at least from a European perspective--by the French. Furs were the Indians’ only exportabfe commodity, at a time when the introduction of iron weapons and tools was kndamentally reshaping the Indian economy of bone and wood, bark and skins; and the British, conversely, needed Indian acquiescence for the survival and expansion of its colonies.

therefore, except for two issues. First, the British colonies began to develop their own fbr export and hatting industries in competition with Britain, and the colonial traders disrupted Indian good-will by trading in rum, swindling the Indians out of land, and paving the way for settlers to follow. Parliament responded by enumerating beaver h r s in 1721, thus guaranteeing to British hatters all British America’s exports at lower prices while raising supply costs for France, their chief economic rivals. In 1732 fbrther legislation prohibited all exports of hats from the colonies, and forbade even the manufacture of hats except by people who had apprenticed at least 7 years in England. Other acts adjusted import and export taxes to hrther encourage production of firs for British hatters. Aside from the trade restrictions mentioned above, however, England left fur-trapping and trading policies up to the individual colonies, and intervened only to disallow monopolies and other restrictions, until the end of the French and Indian Wars in 1763.

both the Indian tribes and the French settlers and traders of the trans-Appalachian region. Westward settlement was limited by the difficulty of transporting heavy supplies inland, such as salt and sugar and iron goods, but it was encouraged by the gradual extinction of fur-bearing animals in the east and the search for new supplies of them. Petulla (1977) reports that by 1750 some two million beaver had been killed in eastern North America by whites and their Indian trading partners; and first the Indians themselves, such aS the Iroquois, and then whites began ranging further and further inland to trade and trap, causing increasing conflict with the French and Indians already there. Notwithstanding the French presence, many of the English colonies also claimed lands westward as far as the Mississippi River, and colonial land speculators encouraged the westward spread of trapping and settlement as a means of securing the frontier and consolidating their claims.

Britain meanwhile was involved in four major wars with France between 1680 and 1763, 36 years out of 74, and all these conflicts affected the American colonies--the last one dramatically so. From an American perspective the first three resulted only in consolidation of British claims to maritime Canada and Hudson’s Bay, and in exacerbating the conflicts with the French and Indians (and Spaniards in the South) all along the inland frontier. The fourth, however, began in America, in conflict between English and French trappers and settlers in the Ohio Rwer Valley Running southwest from just east of the Great Lakes, the river was inevitably a strategic corridor both for westward movement of the English and for communication between French colonies in the North and South--and it was the key to both the fertile lands and the fur trade of the upper Midwest Beginning in 1754, therefore, a seven-year world war grew out of this conflict between the French and English--called the Seven Years’ War in Europe, and the French and Indian War in America--with the result, in 1763, of ending all French rule in North America

This system provided a relatively well-balanced system of mercantile exchange,

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Second, the colonies’ inland expansion brought them increasingly into conflict with

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The British and their colonies won the French and Indian War, but the consequences included changes in policies that led directly to revolution. From the colonies' perspective, victory drove out the French obstacles to westward expansion, and colonial participation in that struggle gave them the right to the lands that were won.

. Land speculators such as the Ohio Company of Virginia, the Loyal Company and the Greenbriar Company began gearing up for westward settlement, based on pre-war colonial land claims, including some that had guaranteed 200,000 acres of land bounties to Virginia militiamen for their war service. From many midwestern Indians' perspective, the Anglo- Americans had just driven out their protectors and trading partners, the French, and left them vulnerable to encroachment by the British colonies, despite the 1758 treaty which reserved to them all trans-Allegheny lands as hunting grounds. From the British perspective, however, victory left a sorely depleted treasury, a vast expansion of territory to police and administer, and a dangerously ambiguous frontier between white settlers-- who in British eyes had not carried their fair share of the burden of the war, either in money or manpower--and Indians. Britain moved promptly and firmly, therefore, first to try to stabilize the frontier, and second to raise more revenues from the colonies to support the British troops which were policing that fiontier.

The Proclamation of 1763 was Britain's effort to stabilize the frontier for at least long enough to deal equitably with Indian claims. It was issued shortly after the Treaty of Paris which ended the war, and it prohibited any hrther colonial settlement west of a line running roughly down the Alleghenies. In principle it was an appropriate policy, not only to protect Britain's trading relationships with the Indians but also to provide for equitable treatment of Britain's new French and Indian subjects. In fact, however, the proclamation line did not accurately reflect actual settlements that already and legally existed to the west. -To colonial settlers as well as land speculators--who held trans- Appalachian claims, even paying quitrents to Britain as late as 1766--the policy was a cold slap in the face after the pride of victory. These land interests included not only actual settlers but many of the most prominent citizens, traders and legislators in the colonies, such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. In their eyes the British troops were not protecting but blocking them, and British demands for more revenues fiom them to support this purpose merely added insult to their perceived injury. Since the French had now been dekated, the cdmists needed no longer fear being enveloped by them from the north and west; why then did they need to pay British troops to "protect" them in those quarters? Their feelings were only strengthened when the British General Gage tried to raise Colonial troops to assist in suppressing Indian revolts later in the year.

Throughout the 1760s the British sought new methods of raising revenues, therefore, to finance their garrison on the western frontier; and with each attempt additional interest groups in the colonies became alienated. The colonies too had war debts to pay; and they had little means of paying them other than land bounties which were blocked by the Proclamation line, and money which was already scarce due to wartime disruptions of trade with European and Caribbean ports and was now to be squeezed even drier by new British trade restrictions and revenue measures. Britain first gave the colonies a year's notice to raise their own taxes, and when they did not, Parliament passed a series of revenue measures itself, including the Stamp Act of 1764 (taxing paperwork), and the Townshend Acts of 1767 raising taxes on imports to the colonies. It also

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expanded the list of enumerated goods in 1764, to help rebuild its own economy; and it began vigorously enforcing all its colonial export controls, reinforcing its America customs houses with aggressive--and sometimes harsh and corrupt--inspectors to try to capture the maximum possible revenues and to clamp down on the profitable American smuggling trade.

in part as an anti-smuggling measure and in part as a favor to its own “multinational corporation,” the British East India Company. By lowering duties, and thus cutting the . price on the British East India Company’s tea, England could with one action both prop up that faltering company and at the same time undersell the colonial smugglers. It also, of course, set a precedent that could have ruined the colonies’ own export and import trade, and put them virtually under the economic control of the Company and its British capitalist backers. The Tea Party was not just about tea; it was a protest against increasingly centralized economic control by a government-backed multinational corporation (Hacker, 1940).

Finally in 1774, having failed either to raise significant revenues or to maintain the 1763 boundary, or even to reach any lasting agreement with the colonies over frontier boundaries and defense revenues, Britain passed the Quebec Act: it shifted administration of the entire upper midwestem region to a military governor in Quebec, the only colony that got along peacefbily with the Indians, and in the process it guaranteed freedom of religion and other civil rights to its new French Catholic subjects. Like the Proclamation

. of 1763 it was founded in good intentions, but it also ignored the claims of Virginia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to those lands. Its effect was once again to enrage the colonial assemblies; and when combined with the economic burden of the revenue measures, the political conflict between assembly and Parliamentary powers to levy taxes, and the threat of British naval blockade following the Boston Tea Party, the stage was set for revolution.

The famous Tea Act of 1773, which prompted the Boston Tea Party, was intended

Summary .

several points that remain important to American environmental policy today. First, en-1 peEcy is not a new invention of the past 25 years, nor even of the previous 200: environmental policies of many kinds existed in America from the earliest period of European colonization, both for land and natural resource use and for protection of public health and other purposes. Land and water use, water pollution, forest and mineral resources, fish and wildlife--all were the subjects of explicit government policies during the colonial period, either by the British colonial authorities or by the colonial governments or both. These policies in turn were fbndamentally interwoven with questions of property rights: who had what rights to use or transform the environment and its resources, what responsibilities went with those rights, and what restrictions might (and did) governments impose on the exercise of them.

Second, the initial British versions of many of these policies were fbndamentally reshaped when they conflicted with important American environmental and economic conditions. Ownership of land in America, for instance, came to represent a far broader “bundle of rights” than did either the feudal system of English land rights out of which it

Even this brief overview of colonial environmental policies is sufficient to make

28 Andrews draft -- 7.28 91 -- Do ijot cite or p o t e /b8 evolved or the native American use rights understandings that it supplanted--in particular, the rights to exploit and transform its surface resources, and to subdivide and sell the land itself for profit: Traditional British restrictions on subdivision and sale of land, such as .feudal quitrents and primogeniture, simply could not be sustained in an environment where land seemed almost boundlessly available but population small, and where indeed the availability of land was a central incentive for attracting immigrants to increase the labor force. British water rights principles, similarly, which limited publicly shared use rights to navigable estuaries, could not be sustained in an environment where major rivers were in fact navigable far inland, and where indeed they served as essential highways of commerce through large regions. Nor could traditional British principles restricting hunting to the elite and fishing to monopoly concessions be sustained in the face of widespread access to and use of these resources for subsistence and trade. American environmental policies were powerfully shaped both by the characteristics of the American environment itself, and by the distinctive opportunities and constraints these presented in combination with socioeconomic and political conditions.

Third, policies. for ownership and use of the environment differed from the outset among various environmental resources and conditions: ownership of land did not (and does not) necessarily confer absolute ownership over the minerals underneath it, over the water that ran across it, or over wildlife that might be present on it. Minerals were subject at least to government royalties, water was a shared public resource (and a regulated one from the point of view of pollution), and fish and wildlife were subject to governmental

. regulatory restrictions from very early in American colonial history. Contrary to American popular mythology, land ownership has always represented only a “bundle” of rights: the size of the bundle has shifted in various ways over time, but has never been absolute.

the European colonial governments hndamentally disrupted and destroyed pre-existing Native American resource use regimes, and with them many of the abundant resources that had previously been sustained there --beaver, deer, bear, turkey, wolf, cedar and large oaks and white pines, and others--and set in motion the large-scale conversion of the environment from a source of renewable resources for local-sustenance to a source of commodities for global markets. Both the explicit environmental policies of the colonial gc”mn& and the underlying policies of the European empires that lay behind them-- colonization, open immigration and mercantile trade--amounted to a combination of ecological and economic imperialism that destroyed sustainable patterns of use rights that had been maintained by the Native American communities, substituted the abstract monetary value system of global economic markets, and as a result exploited environmental resources far more wastefully for as long as they were more abundant and therefore cheaper than in Europe. As Cronon put it,

Finally, and most importantly, the property principles and environmental policies of

Operating in an economy where labor was scarce and difficult to hire, where accumulated capital was smaller than it had been in Europe, colonists turned to the factor of production which could compensate for the ones they lacked. they turned to the land and all it contained. . The result was an economy which used natural resources in a way which often appeared to European visitors as terribly wasteful.. .By integrating New England ecosystems into an ultimately global capitalist economy, colonists and Indians together began a dynamic and unstable

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process of ecological change which had in no way ended by 1800 ... Ecological abundance and economic prodigality went hand in hand: the people of plenty were

. a people of waste (Cronon, 1983 : 1 59- 1 70). One might add that similar pattems of economic and ecological imperialism are central to conflicts today between ecological sustainability and exploitation of resources for global markets in less-developed countries, and to corollary debates about the environmental impacts of global economic pattems and U. S. (and other nations’) trade policies.

FURTHER READINGS

Albion, Robert G. 1926. Forests and Seapower: The Timber Problem of the Roval Naw, 1952- 1 862. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,.

Biiley, Thomas A. 1956. The American Pageant: A History of the ReDublic, Boston: D.C. Health & Co.

Beer, George L. 1893. The Commercial Policv of England Toward the American Colonies, NY: Columbia College (Studies in History. Economics & Public Law, v. 3).

Cronon, William. 1983. Changes in the Land: Indians. Colonists. and the E c o l o u f New England. New York: Hill and Wang.

Dana, Samuel T. 1956. Forest and Range Policy. New York: McGraw Hill

Degler, Carl N. 1959, 1970. Out of Our Past: The Forces that Shaped Modem America NY: HarperlkRow.

Dickerson, Oliver M. 195 1. The Navipation Acts and the American Revolution. Philadelphia: U. of Penn. Press.

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Englebert, Ernest A. 1950. American Policv for Natural Resources: An Historical Survey to 1842. Cambridge: Harvard University (Ph.D. dissertation).

_ - Hacker, Louis M. 1940. Economic and Social Origins of the American Revolution. The TriumDh of American Capitalism, New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 145-1 70.

Hams, Marshall. 1953. Origin of the Land Tenure System in the United States. Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press.

Judah, Charles B. Jr. 1933. The North American Fisheries and British Policy to 1713, Urbana: U. of Illinois Press.

. Lawson, Murray G. 1943. Fur: A Study in En&sh Mercantilism 1700-1775. Toronto: U. of Toronto Press.

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Lund, Thomas A. 1975. British Wildlife Law Before the American Revolution: Lessons fiom the Past. Michigan Law Review, 74:49-74.

Merrens, H. Roy. 1965. Historical Geography and Early American History. William and Ouarterlv, 22519-548 (3rd Series).

Petulla, Joseph M. 1977. American Environmental History. San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser.

Scoville, Warren J. 1953. Did Colonial Farmers 'Waste' Our Land? S. Econ. J. 20: 178- 181.

Scott, William B. 1977. In Pursuit of Happiness: American Conceptions of Propertv from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana U. Press.

Semple, Ellen Churchill. 1903. American History and its Geographic Conditions; Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Sosin, Jack M. 196 1. Whitehall and the Wilderness: The Middle West in British Colonial policv. 1760-1 775. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska Press.

U.S. Council on Environmental Quality. 1977. The Evaluation of National Wildlife Law. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

U.S. Public Land Law Review Commission. 1968. History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office.

The Massachusetts tribes. for instance. were reduced by smallpox from 30.000 to a few hundred, and the 1

Narragansetts from 9.000 to similar numbers (Dubs. 1959).

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Chapter 4 Revolution and the Constitution

Between 1776 and 1790 the American colonies fought and won a revolutionary war, joined themselves into a loose confederation of independent states, then strengthened that confederation into a federal government based on a constitution and a bill of rights. These events were shaped in part by the opportunities and constraints of the American environment. In turn, they shaped the policies that guided much of the use of the American environment for the following century. The basic framework, and even many of its specific manifestations, are still visible today.

Early environmental policies were not established in a separate agency or specialized set of interest groups labeled “conservation” or “environmentalists”. Rather, they were elements--important elements--in a broader process of solving political, social, and economic problems of the new nation. How could soldiers be paid, and a war be won? What balance should the new government strike between creditors and debtors, between personal rights and property rights, between spacious and populous states? How could a new government support itself, establish its credit rating with other nations and investors, and rebuild its economy after cutting itself loose from its mother country? Should that economy emphasize capital-intensive commerce and manufacturing, or agrarian democracy? These were among the central questions of the time. The answers that were chosen reflected choices both about the sort of society people sought, and about

. the role of natural resources and environmental conditions in that society.

Natural Resource Policies in the Revolution From 1776 until the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the 13 colonies, now declared

independent but united states, were at war with Great Britain. They were the first colonies to break away from European rule--Spain’s Latin American colonies did likewise during the course of the following century, while many others remained under European administration until as recently as World War 11--and they did so by force of arms, under conditions of great hardship and scarcity. As is usual in time of war, environmental policies were shaped primarily by military necessity.

itself independent, but united with the others in common defense through a Continental Congress. Articles of Confederation were drawn up in 1777 and ratified by 178 1, but these articles provided for only a limited common government: a federal government, representing the governments of the independent states, not a national government ruling the people directly. It had no president; Congressmen were appointed by each state government, not elected by citizens, and the Congress had no authority either to conscript soldiers nor to impose taxes, nor could it regulate commerce either among the states, or between them and other nations. Congress could establish military manpower quotas for each state, and call on each state to meet them; it could appoint military officers and negotiate with foreign nations, and it could print money, as could the states Its only power over the states and their citizens, however, was the power to persuade

This weakness was intentional. Supporters of the Revolution did not want to recreate strong national governance similar to British rule, and the state legislatures which

Wko d e policy? In signing the Declaration of Independence, each state declared

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sanctioned the Declaration had no desire to give away their powers. The result was that most environmental and other policy-making continued to be the responsibility of the individual states, with the exception of treaties and of several ordinances relating to the management of public lands.

Shortages, Bounties, and Surveys

overseas trade: shortages both of goods normally imported, and of the specie--hard currency--normally earned by American exports. As British colonies, America's economy emphasized the production of fur, fish, and forest exports, and 95 per cent of its population was engaged in rural occupations. Manufacturing was limited by the greater abundance of land than of population, the high price of labor, lack of capital, and the cheapness of British manufactured goods due to Britain's concurrent industrial revolution. As mercantile colonies, the American 13 had depended on their home country for manufactured goods, and on trade of their surpluses to other nations and colonies, as well as on profits from the carrying trade itself, for hard currency to pay for their imports. With the outbreak of revolution, British suppliers and markets were closed off, including the economically-important British West Indian colonies as well as England itself British naval blockades battled American smugglers and privateers, with limited success, to cut off America's other trading partners. New England's fishermen and fish exporters were seriously affected by loss of access both to their markets (in Southern Europe and the West Indies) and to the resource itself (Green, 1943:259).

Americans did not suffer from lack of food during the war, except in the Army (Bradford, 1966). Conversely, American agriculture generally was relatively untouched by the war, except in two respects: farmers near the battle fronts found new markets for their crops in the various armies, and all farmers faced the same inflated prices as everyone else for imported goods. (Jensen, 1969). Many commodities other than food, however, were at least vastly inflated in price and in some cases physically scarce. Salt, for instance, was a critical commodity for preserving meat, and had to be obtained by imports from France and the West Indies. Woolen cloth for clothing was scarce--normally imported from England's textile mills--and required substitution of homespun. Paper was necessary, not only fur newspapers and correspondence, but for ammunition cartridges and all the invoices and records and paperwork to administer an army; at the time, however, it had to be made not from wood pulp but from rags by skilled laborers, and both of these were in short supply. Recycling of rags was urged, then enforced by searches of attics which converted even old sermons into cartridge casings (Leonard, 1950). Gunpowder stocks in 1776 were only 80,000 pounds, much of it stored since 1763; only imports from France prevented serious shortages (Stephenson, 1925).

For most necessary wartime commodities, government policy intervened in two ways: first by exhorting frugality and recycling, as in the case of rags for paper and homespun for clothing, and second by providing premiums and bounties for increased production. Cash bounties were offered for increased production of textiles, and particularly of iron and steel products. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the manufacture of iron and steel was one of the American industries which Britain most sought to suppress, but which was most essential to production of military supplies. As a

An immediate problem of the war was shortages, caused by the interruption of

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result, many American manufacturers and merchants made handsome profits during the war years; encouraged by bounties, and while cut off from British markets, freed also from British colonial manufacturing and trade restrictions. In addition, the war acted as a protective tariff in itself, freeing them fiom the competition of British products as well (Jensen, 1962).

fiom their antecedents flowed three major elements of subsequent U. S. environmental policies. The first was the principle that conservation of resources--in the sense of fiugality and recycling--is patriotic. The second was the acceptance of continued government involvement in the economy, through such instruments as premiums and bounties for preferred types of products. This fact stands in contrast to the popular belief that the Revolution set up a "free enterprise system" in which government played little or no role. The third was the initial recognition that home markets--!oca! production of necessities, and reciprocal domestic trade among the states--were safer from wartime disruption than import and export trade relationships. While conservation did not prove to be an enduring policy except in time of war or other threat, America's 19th Century environmental policies show strong and tangible government involvement in the encouragement of domestic manufacturing and trade relationships.

Another policy precedent grew out of wartime shortages of lead. Lead was essential for ammunition, but scarce: some was obtained from mines in what is now Missouri, and shipped down the Mississippi, but by the end of the war statues, pewter utensils, and virtually every other available supply had been recycled into the production of bullets. In 1775 and 1776, therefore, the Continental Congress requested the states to conduct surveys to search out new lead deposits. These surveys were probably the United States' first systematic attempt to gather information about a specific resource, and may have provided the basis for policies in the early federal land laws (1 785, 1796) reserving one-third of all lead and salt deposits--as well as the traditional gold, silver, and copper royalties--to the government (Englebert, 1950). Such surveys were not extended to other resources until the state natural resources surveys of the 1820s and 1830s.

terrain, both on land and along the coast. George Washington employed a geographer and a&swvep.or to assist him in preparing for troop movements These positions were retained after the war, guided the land survey that was provided for by the land ordinance of 1785, and provided early impetus within government for geographic exploration (Englebert, 1950:64) A corps of military engineers was also formed, to do the necessary military work of constructing roads, quarters, and fortifications, and clearing navigation obstructions from harbors needed by the naval forces; much of the initial expertise for these tasks was provided either by America's French allies or by trial and error on the job, there being no school of engineering in America until West Point was founded in 1795 From these wartime roots, among others, grew the later major involvement of the Army, during the 19th century, in Western exploration and topographical surveying; the coast and geodetic survey; and the involvement of the Army Corps of Engineers in domestic water resource development, initially for the improvement of navigation

As types of policies, bounties and exhortation were not new, but from them and

A second sort of survey grew out of military needs for better knowledge of their

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Land Bounties and War Finance Shortages of commodities caused some problems, but the shortage of hard

currency was far more pervasive. Normal export earnings were drastically reduced, replaced only in part by the food purchases of foreign armies and by the decline in imports. The new government had no authority to levy taxes; how was it to pay and provision an army, for a war that turned out to last seven years? Its answer was to pay in the only coin it had to offer, the promise of winning: it printed paper money, it borrowed money both at home and abroad with a promise of interest, and it promised land--which it did not then possess--to its soldiers.

Monetary policy does not concern us here except in one respect: government borrowing to finance the war left it with heavy debts to pay at the war’s end. The money was owed, with interest, in part to foreign lenders, but mainly to domestic merchants. often the same ones who also profited by currency devaluation, and then converted their devalued wartime securities into interest-bearing notes at close to face value after the war The national war debt was an important source of class conflict, therefore, between the majority of American taxpayers, mostly poor farmers and artisans, and the wealthy merchant minority who were both government’s creditors and their own. The debt was also one of the first major policy issues facing the new government after the war, its response to which would shape its credit rating with foreign holders of the hard currency it needed for solvency and investment. The issue of paying off the national debt therefore became a central consideration in policy-making for public lands, the government’s only tangible asset after the war.

land claims extending westward to the Mississippi, Virginia most prominently. These states used land bounties--warrants authorizing the bearer to take possession of a claim of specified size--to induce enlistment in their militias, not just for a short specified term as was usual, but for the duration of the war. This device had been used frequently in colonial times, while the governments were acting as companies chartered by the Crown, not only as rewards for military service but also as fblfillment of headrights and inducement for frontier immigration and settlement. The other half of the states lacked this resource, however, and in some cases, such as Maryland, had to offer cash bounties to achieve the same ends, thereby increasing the grumbling among the soldiers at different pay rates by different states The Continental Congress likewise had no lands to offer, since it existed simply as a meeting of delegates of the various states--rather like the modem United Nations Despite its lack of any land to offer, however, George Washington persuaded the Continental Congress, beginning in 1776, to offer land bounties as bonuses to soldiers either for enlisting for the duration, if they were Americans, or for deserting if they were British or Hessian (Englebert, 1950) Washington knew the strength of people’s drive to own land, both to settle and to speculate on like the large land companies-to “let the little guy speculate too ” Congress simply assumed that victory would make lands available to fblfill the promises made By the end of the war, 16,683 land bounty warrants were given amounting to over 2 6 million acres (Berkhofer, 1972), an area somewhat larger than the present state of Colorado Each individual was entitled to between 50 and 800 acres, depending on his rank, with virtually no restrictions on its use

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At the outset of the war, the federal government had no land. Half the states had

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The Revolutionary land bounties committed a large amount of land by themselves, but they had a many-fold greater effect as a precedent for hture war bounties. Similar bounties were offered for service in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War of the 184Os,’ resulting in a giveaway of 65 million acres of public lands by 1860. Historians of the public lands have referred to these lands bounties as the “single most notorious source of speculation and unwise development” in the westward settlement of the nation m. Pubiic Lands and the Confederation

How did the federal government acquire the land to make good its promises? And how did we as a nation come to acquire the vast acreage of publicly held lands which even today make up filly one third of the nation’s land area? It is a poignant irony of history, as lawyers today debate the authority of government to impose pollution control and ecological restrictions on the use of land resources, that virtually all America’s lands west of the Alleghenies were once in government ownership. Most of the areas that remain-- especially national parks and forests, wildlife refbges, and the undifferentiated “public domain” administered by the Bureau of Land Management--are the residual of the far larger areas once acquired, owned, and sold or given away by the federal government. The lands were acquired first from the original 13 states; later from France, Spain, Britain, Mexico, and the Indian occupants; and more recently, in smaller areas, by repurchase or condemnation and compensation.

sea” in their specified parallels of latitude.’ These claims had then been cut off at the Mississippi River in 1763 by England’s recognition of Spanish claims west of that boundary; and for various historical reasons, several of the colonies held overlapping claims about which they had argued heatedly for some time before the Revolution. By 1776, those states that claimed lands west of the Alleghenies had already begun both granting lands for military service, and selling lands to raise revenues. Some of these lands were surveyed and sold in fixed acreages, some not; some were sold privately, some (in the north) at public auction; many of them were acquired by speculating land companies, whose principals included many state legislators and Congressmen.

The other six states, however, lacked extensive backland claims, and felt r k e d v e s Both hisadvantaged and threatened by the resulting imbalance. In an immediate sense, they were equally involved in the prosecution of the war, and had equal needs for resources with which to reward their soldiers, yet they lacked lands with which to do so. Small but populous states like Maryland had high troop quotas but little land to offer as bounties. Many of them also owed war debts to the Union for their shares of defense costs, which they had little means to pay In a more long- term view, enclosed states such as Maryland, New Jersey, and Rhode Island foresaw a permanent and increasing imbalance of power between themselves and their expansive neighbors, in which they would eventually lose their equality in governance as population came to fill the vast lands of the larger states.

The original charters to seven of the colonies had granted them lands from “sea to

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In 1776 the Continental Congress began drafting the Articles of Confederation, the “social contract” among the states by which the United States would be governed. The first draft explicitly provided that “no state shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States.” The enclosed states objected vigorously, however, and led by

. Maryland, demanded that all backland claims west of the Alleghenies be ceded to the new federal govemment as common property of all Americans. Since all the states were contributing to the war effort, they should all share in the unallocated lands to be acquired by victory; and these states agreed to cede their western land claims. On a less idealistic plane, influential land speculators in the Maryland legislature also expected that they would have more influence and obtain better terms fiom the federal government than from Virginia (Jensen, 1962; Klose, 1964).

the Confederation to receive lands, to manage or dispose of them, or even to make laws or institute governance for them. In 1780, however, during the darkest period of the war, the states finally agreed to cede their claims; and Congress pressed a resolution calling on the states for “liberal surrender” of their claims, and urgently requested Maryland to ratify the Articles. The resolution went further, too, and discussed a policy by which the ceded lands would be managed. First, they would be “disposed of for the common benefit of the United States.” Second, they would be settled and formed into distinct republican states, which would become members of the Federal Union, and have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom and independence as the other States. Third, they were to be “granted and settled at such times and under such regulations as shall hereafter be agreed to by the United States in Congress assembled (U.S. Public Land Law Review Commission, 1970:Sl). Congress sweetened the terms by agreeing that ceded lands would be accepted in payment for war debts.

1780; New York ceded in 1780, and most other states did likewise within the following few years, with the exception of Georgia which did not do so until 1803. In all, 237 million acres were thus ceded, or 12 percent of the total area of the United States today Most importantly, these lands were ceded completely, without reserving rights to any particular resources (such as water or minerals) to the states--although some states, such as W h Carolina, loaded onto the ceded lands a heavy legacy of fraudulent and last- minute land claims to be resolved and honored by the federal government (PLLRC, 1970; Bartlett, 1974).

The creation of a national land domain had profound importance, not only to environmental policy but to United States history as a whole. ’It provided the precedent of federal land ownership, and of management of these lands for the common benefit, precedents that would later provide a basis for the reservation of national forests and parks, hydroelectric dam sites, wildlife refuges, fuel mineral reserves, and many other public purposes; and for the growth of professions trained to manage such lands. Even more important, however, it provided the initial basis for a rmtroml as opposed to a merely federal government: a government that was not just the sum of its 13 states, but had assets of its won, which could be used to attract capital investment, to pay off war debts, and to encourage immigration and settlement that would develop new resource supplies and markets In theory, it could have sold or mortgaged this territory to a foreign

The Articles themselves said nothing about western lands: they did not authorize

Maryland accepted the result, and ceded its own claims and ratified the Articles in

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nation to pay its .war debts, or it could, as it did, use it to put into practice Enlightenment ideals of republican governance, education, and freedom, and create out of it. new co-equal states that would eventually challenge and dilute the power of the original thirteen.

Treaties: Boundaries, Jurisdiction, and Fishing Rights The Treaty of Paris in 1783 ended the American Revolution. By this treaty,

England accepted the independence of the United States, and recognized its jurisdiction within boundaries roughly corresponding to the 3 1 st parallel on the south (above Spanish- held Florida), the Mississippi River, and the 45th parallel and Great Lakes on the north. At American insistence, it also established American fishermen’s right to fish off the coasts of Labrador and Nova Scotia, where they had fished before the war, and gave them liberty to dry and cure their fish on the unsettled shores of those provinces. (“Thanks be to God,” wrote John Adams, “that our Tom Cod are Safer”). England retained its claims in Canada, which extended west to the Pacific above Spain’s claims and included what are now the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Implied in this treaty was the transfer of all the King’s rights to the governments of the individual states, subject to the limitations of the Articles of Confederation (and later the U. S. Constitution). Undistributed Crown lands, for instance, became State lands, and to them were added the expropriated estates of Royalist sympathizers. Royal jurisdiction over wildlife became the state’s jurisdiction. In general, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1842, the states became successors to the Crown’s public trust responsibility over fish and wildlife, navigable waters and submerged lands.2 The States immediately established their own constitutions, most of which called for strong bicameral legislatures, weak chief executives and frequent elections. Virtually all immediately abolished feudal restrictions on land acquisition and transfer as well: entail, primogeniture, and quitrents. These restrictions were the essential mechanisms by which a landed aristocracy was created and maintained, and they were abolished for that reason. As John Adams put it:

The only possible way then of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue, is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society; to make a division of land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates (quoted in Scott, 1977:41) The r d was to make land freely transferable, by sale or by grant, and divisible

into separate pieces of whatever size and shape the owner saw fit. In short, land could now be freely bought and sold as a commodity by anyone with the money to do so.

ran along their boundaries. New Jersey and Pennsylvania, for instance, declared the Delaware River a “common highway”, and established a commission of 6 members to administer their concurrent jurisdiction over it; each state would continue to control its own shore fishery. Virginia and Maryland, similarly, declared the Potomac a free and common highway, and their harbors open to reciprocal free use; they would allow other small craft to use all harbors freely, split the duties on larger ships, share the cost of navigational aids, and set up a joint company to develop the river for navigation (Jensen, 1962:342).

The states also acted promptly to clarifjl their jurisdictions over watercourses that

Martin v. Waddell, 41 U.S. (16 P e t . ) 234 ( 1 8 4 2 ) .

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The Treaty of Paris settled America’s jurisdictional claims with England, but additional treaties were necessary to negotiate its relationships with native Indian tribes, especially those who occupied the vast trans-Allegheny region that had now been won from England and ceded by the states. To most Americans these Indians were enemies, trading partners first of the French and then of the British, and still supplied and encouraged by British trading posts on the Great Lakes. They blocked Americans’ westward land speculation and settlement in the Ohio Valley, and were powefil enough to be a military threat. The Indians in turn were understandably apprehensive at the victory of the colonies over the British who had protected their interests. The U.S. concluded several treaties in the 178Os, by which various Indian nations ceded their claims in western New York and Ohio--the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784, and the Treaty of Fort MacIntosh in 1785, for instance--but other tribes rehsed to accept these, and as military bounty-warrant holders and other settlers, squatters, and speculators poured westward after the war, defLing Indian occupancy, the treaties proved unenforceable against whites as well. The result was a decade of hostility and warfare in what is now Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. The conflict was ended only by military force, when General “Mad Anthony” Wayne defeated the Indians in 1794 in the Battle of Fallen Timbers. By the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, the twelve Indian tribes of the “old northwest” yielded

. their land rights to the federal government.

The Constitution

a federal Congress of Independent States rather than a national government pre-eminent over them. This suited the preferences of many Americans, who preferred regional . accountability and self-governance to a new distant, centralized authority. It did not, however, suit the preferences of powefil groups whose interests extended across state lines: manufacturers competing against foreign imports, commercial and shipping firms trading with other states against foreign competition, creditors of government receiving depreciated returns from the taxless Congress, and businesses facing debtor revolts. These groups were linked more er less by shared economic interests in business and wealth, and demanded a greatly strengthened nntronal government to serve those interests: to protect their property rights, to enforce the stability of contracts, to provide credit for entrepreneurs, and in general, to protect the rights of a minority--the wealthy minority--against domination of the democratic process by the debtor majority In 1787, therefore, against the background of economic depression and Shays‘ Rebellion, they succeeded in calling a constitutional convention to amend the Articles of Confederation, and used it to substitute a drastically altered, far more business-oriented and nationalist constitution (Degler, 1970:87-88)

The Constitution is the essential foundation for all U.S. laws, regulations and other policies, providing both the sources and the limits of their authorities That does not mean that it provides unambiguous solutions for every issue. Its meaning has been repeatedly stretched and reinterpreted over time, to fit new situations and to just@ actions that a majority of the Congress wished to take. Its immediate effect was to increase greatly the powers of the national government over the States, and reinterpretation since that time has consistently increased this dominance. Flexible’or not, however, it is “the supreme law of

The Articles of Confederation had deliberately created a weak central government,

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the land, and the interpretation of its provisions structures all subsequent debate over what environmental policies are appropriate to the U.S. government. If the results sometimes appear strained--as for instance justifjling federal protection of endangered species, or of air quality, by reference to interstate commerce--it is often simply out of legislators’ belief that an interdependent national economy and society may require more national-level solutions than did the decentralized society of 1787, and that it is safer to stretch the constitution than to risk the potential political mischief of a convention to revise it.

The central arguments of the constitutional debate were not over environmental issues, but over issues of representation in governance and state versus national power. What additional powers should a national government have? Should it have authority to tax and spend and to raise armies, which the Confederation did not? Should it be authorized to regulate commerce among the states, and with Indian and foreign nations? How should representation of state government be balanced against representation of populations, whose numbers vaned widely from state to state? And how should abuses of centralized power be prevented or remedied?

policy in America. The separation of government powers among three branches, for instance, provides different avenues for making and influencing policy than in other nations: compare the use of environmental lawsuits in America against England, for instance, where the equivalent of the Supreme Court is the House of Lords. The bicameral legislature structures the debate over environmental issues differently than did the unicameral Confederation Congress which represented only state governments: consider the differences in viewpoint between populous urban states and spacious agrarian ones, and the differences in outcome that flow from one vote per person versus one vote per state.

Several of the specific constitutional powers of government, however, have particular significance for environmental policy and management; and so do several of the restrictions on government authority among the Constitution‘s amendments. The U.S. government possesses only powers that are stated or implied in the Constitution, and some . of its powers are explicitly limited by the Constitution as well. Every environmental policxtherefore, must be explicitly derived from some provision of that document, and

the most important sources of constitutional authority for environmental policies are the so-called commerce, property, and federal supremacy clauses, and the general-welfare and necessary-and-proper clauses which amplifj the others. Other occasional sources include the war, treaty, admiralty, interstate compacts, and tax clauses. The most important limitation on environmental policy-making is the fifth amendment; other limitations include the fourteenth and fourth amendments

These issues affect environmental policy, as they affect every other issue of public

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may also be evaluated against the constitution’s limits on government authority. Among _ -

The Commerce Clause

Section 8 of that Article lists the specific powers that the Congress was to have. One of the most important of these, both generally and to natural resources, is the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian

Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative powers in the Congress, and

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Tribes”. Many advocates of this power in 1787 apparently had in mind such issues as competition from imported goods, against which they wished government protection. Others apparently sought to prevent or end interstate trade wars, and control by seaport states of commerce up the rivers--the “highways of commerce” to and from inland states. Still others sought national control over relations with Indian tribes, some to protect the Indians against actions of settler-documented state legislatures and others to protect their land interests against Indian claims. In the context of 1787, the authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce was one of the most controversial and explicit powers by which the United States was transformed from a federal to a national government; and recent history reconfirms this effect.

Many major elements of U.S. environmental policy are derived from the commerce clause. Water resources, for instance, have sometimes been valued for essential but conflicting uses, such as commercial navigation and the operation of mills. The commerce clause, it was argued, allowed the federal government a “navigation servitude” over all navigable waters, to prevent the erection of barriers “affecting” interstate commerce, such as mill-dams. This logic was also extended to include the promotion of interstate commerce, by federal investments in improving the navigability of waterways: first by providing aids to navigation in coastal harbors, such as buoys and lighthouses, then by clearing snags and other impediments out of inland rivers, and ultimately by investing in the multimillion dollar, multiple-purpose water resource development projects built today by such agencies as the Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and Soil Conservation Service.

The commerce clause is also a basis for much of today’s federal wildlife regulation. A federal role in wildlife protection was first established by a 1900 law, the Lacey Act, which prohibited interstate commerce in illegally caught wildlife and thus effectively ended the market hunting industry. The same principle allows federal prohibition of imports and exports of endangered species, and of plants or animals dangerous to American agriculture.

authorize federal regulation of air and water pollution: in part because effluents flow into navigable waterways, but also because they cross state lines themselves (in ambient water amkk aments); because they are emitted by industries participating in interstate

polluters; and because they affect other industries that either operate in interstate commerce or are across state lines (such as farms, beaches, and resorts). Products that are sold or operate across state lines are also covered: airplanes and trucks and automobiles, pesticides, and noisy machines, for instance (Soper, 1974).

Finally, the commerce clause provides the federal government’s claim to authority over interstate flows of many natural resources: oil import quotas, oil and natural gas prices, hydroelectric power transmission, gasoline allocation, agricultural export deals, and marine fishery harvesting, to name a few of the most obvious. In the inclusive interpretation that has evolved, and in a nation pervaded by interstate mobility, the scope of the commerce clause appears to permit federal involvement in very nearly any significant issue of environmental policy.

In environmental protection, the commerce clause has been stretched hrther to

commerce, which might thereby benefit from unfair commercial advantage over non- --

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The Property Clause

needfbl Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other property belonging to the United States”. This provision remedied the government’s previous lack of legal authority to accept, manage, and dispose of the ceded public domain lands. It also provides the basis for most subsequent laws and regulations governing the public lands: national park and forest reservations, timber sales, mineral leases, offshore drilling permits, grazing fees, and wildlife rehges, to name a few. It permits the government to protect its own property: for instance, by killing deer that overgraze it, requiring adjacent stock owners to fence in their cattle, and conceivably even by setting other restrictions on adjoining land and resource users in order to protect the environmental and other values of the public lands (Soper, 1974).

the federal government holds ‘‘reserved rights” to vast amounts of annual water flows in the arid West, some associated with Indian reservations and thus derived from the treatymaking and commerce clauses, but others associated with other public lands. It has never utilized these flows fblly, but it has the right to do so; and if it chose to--for instance, to encourage oil shale extraction--present users such as farmers and ranchers, and even western cities, would have to subsist on far less. Second, when the federal government builds a dam and thus creates a resource of impounded water--as by the Tennessee Valley Authority, or the Bureau of Reclamation--it owns that resource, and may manage it as it sees fit, such as by selling or leasing the right to convert it into electricity, and by deciding when and for what purposes flows will be released (for instance for power generation, flood control, irrigation, fish and wildlife habitat maintenance, or recreation).

Article IV, Section 3 gives the Congress the power “to dispose of and make all

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The Property Clause also is significant in two ways to water resource policy. First,

Federal Supremacy Article VI declares that the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Laws pursuant to it, and

treaties are “the supreme Law of the Land, .. anything in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” In short, federal law prevails over state law if they conflict, so long as. the federal law does not violate the constitution. This is the principle of federal supremacy, intended by its authors to insure the authority of the national gcwxmcs ottef the states; without it each state could simply ignore the national laws and constitution if it chose to. Closely linked to federal supremacy is the doctrine of federal preemption: the principle that state lawmaking is “preempted” by federal law either if the subject matter is constitutionally reserved to the federal government, or if federal laws have been passed that thus supersede state laws. Some powers of government are exclusively assigned to the national government, such as the powers to administer the federal lands, to negotiate treaties and to regulate interstate commerce; these generally present relatively straightforward issues. In other cases, however, federal and state authority overlap. Federal authority to regulate pollution under the commerce clause, for instance, overlaps the state police power to regulate health and order; and the stretching of the commerce clause to include pollution control, or other new federal responsibilities, also confronts directly the tenth amendment, which reserves to the States all powers not specifically assigned to the federal government. In these cases of overlap, federal law preempts state laws where they conflict, but frequently only case-by-case litigation

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answers the question of how much room federal statures leave for additional state legislation.

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profound effects on many substantive issues. On the one hand, for example, through the Migratory Bird Treaty Act ( 19 18) it allowed federal conservation of waterfowl that might otherwise have been lost to conflicting and lax regulation in some states of their flyways. In air and water quality management, most individual states could not afford the competitive disadvantage of tightening their controls unilaterally; federal laws were therefore passed to provide uniform minimum standards based on health criteria, and thus to prevent states from luring industries away from others to “pollution havens”. On the other hand, federal preemption has also been used to benefit manufacturers seeking uniform standards for mass production and distribution, by f&akenrrlg state health and environmental standards7 Michigan, for instance, has fought constantly with the federal government to maintain tighter standards against hot dog adulteration; and several soft drink manufacturers have attempted--unsuccessfully so far--to overturn state regulation of nonreturnable bottles by arguing for federal.preemption. In the area of nuclear radiation,

Commission, but the courts forbade it to do so on the grounds that federal regulation preempted that subject matter--in effect, forcing nuclear technology on that state against its wishes.

In all these cases, the doctrine of preemption requires balancing of federal against state authority, an issue which has pervaded American law and policy since the Confederation. Then as now, the balance has tilted more and more towards centralized national policy-making, and the authority of the national government has been expanded increasingly into areas previously thought to have been reserved to the states. Whether this is thought good or bad often depends on the observer’s attitude towards the substantive purpose thereby achieved: manufacturers frequently applaud federal preemption that serves their purposes, and environmentalists likewise, but each objects when it serves the other at their expense The issue of centralized versus decentralized power, however, in itself an important matter, often is lost in the debate.

Federal preemption is a two-edged sword in environmental policy, and has had

@ the state of Minnesota sought to impose tighter standards than the Atomic Energy

General Welfare; “Necessary and Proper” In addition to many relatively specific powers, such as to tax and spend and

regulate commerce, Article I Section 8 provides Congress broad authority, first, “to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States”, and second, “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing powers.” The first of these stimulated intense debate during the decades following ratification: if the Constitution was intended to grant specific powers to the national government, and reserve all others to the states (Tenth Amendment, 1791), didn’t the “general welfare” risk justifying virtually any expansion of national government authority? Many early Presidents vetoed such expansions, out of concern that it would give Congress unlimited license if used in this way Yet if the Constitution’s authors did not intend some additional grant of authority by this phrase, why was it included? Over time the latter reasoning has prevailed, and the general welfare clause can now be used to justifjr many federal policies not already derived from more specific provisions. The only

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constraint is that the power must be exercised for the common benefit, not merely for a local purpose.

The second phrase, the “necessary and proper” clause, acts as an amplifier of all . the more specific powers. Its central purpose is to allow government to adopt reasonable

means for accomplishing its constitutional tasks. Inevitably, however, it also provides a means for extending the scope of the more explicit powers, against the supporters of a more narrowly limited federal government.

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The War Power Article I Section 8 authorizes the Congress to provide for the common defense, to

declare war, to raise and support armies and a navy, and to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces. Article I1 Section 2 provides that the President is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. These powers affect natural resources only occasionally, but quite significantly. Most exploration of the American west in the 19th century was carried out by Army expeditions, led by such people as Lewis and Clark, Clarence King, and Major John Wesley Powell. Army engineers laid the foundations for American road and river transportation, justified in part by national defense arguments: even the modern interstate highway system was initially justified as a “national defense highway system,” as government scholarships to college students were authorized under the National Defense Education Act. Army topographers surveyed the fiontier before land sales; Army troops enforced white property claims against the Indian tribes. Wartime defense arguments were used to justifjr government rationing of natural resources and other policy changes regarding their use; Army officers administered the Yellowstone Valley reservation for 50 years before the National Park Service was created in 1916, and they likewise directed the Civilian Conservation Corps camps in natural resource restoration work in the 1930s. Even the Tennessee Valley Authority grew out of a surplus World War I army power plant and explosives factory on the Tennessee River, which were kept in government jurisdiction partly as a defense asset to assure abundant energy and munitions in any future war. More recently, the government itself created and propagated a new resource, atomic energy, primarily for national defense and secondarily for civilian power production. Army troops also assist in coping with natural disasters such as floods. Both the powers to provide for the common defense and to make war,

have played important roles in the evolution of U.S. environmental policy. therefore, and the Army itself--as the government’s first supply of organized manpower-- _ -

Treaty-making Article I1 Section 2 authorizes the President to make Treaties, subject to the

approval of 213 of the Senate; these treaties become the “supreme law of the land (Article VI), and therefore supersede any state laws with which they conflict. Treaties play an essential role in the creation of international environmental policies, which have no higher legal foundation, and occasionally have major significance for domestic resources as well. International treaties and conventions provide for the management of whales and marine fisheries, for instance, for the protection of endangered species, and for the management of the water resources of rivers that follow or cross international borders: the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers and the Great Lakes are obvious examples. Broad multilateral

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treaties have also been negotiated to phase out the production of chemicals that damage the earth’s stratospheric ozone layer, and for other environmental purposes Treaties passed for other purposes also may have important benefits or risks for the environment: the recently adopted amendments to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), for instance, allow nations to regulate the environmental hazards of products imported, but not to use trade sanctions against imports produced by environmentally damaging processes, leaving no trade policy tools to prevent industrial flight to “pollution havens” profiting fiom weak environmental protection controls. Finally, in at least one case the Congress has resorted to the treaty power when it was unable to enforce an environmental policy under the commerce power. The courts declared unconstitutional a federal law regulating migratory waterfowl, and Congress therefore achieved the same end through a treaty with England and Canada in 1916; this was then enforced by an enabling law in 1918, which was held constitutional as a “necessary and proper’’ means of implementing the treaty

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Interstate Compacts Article I section 10 requires Congressional consent to any interstate compact or

agreement. This requirement was intended to guard against sub-national alliances at the expense of the authority of the Union, and was consistent with the intent of the commerce clause as well. In environmental policy, it also has the effect of insuring a federal policy role in multi-state resource management. Interstate compacts have been used for many .years in the arid west, for instance, to apportion scarce water supplies among upstream and downstream states (such as in the Colorado River Basin), and between states sharing a common border resource (such as Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake between California and Nevada). The U.S. government has acted not only as an additional party to these pacts, but also as spokesman for other interested parties: for example, other nations holding treaty rights in the water flows (Canada and Mexico), Indian tribes holding reserved water rights, and in-stream water uses not protected by the laws of the states. More recently, the federal government has fostered multistate river basin commissions in other parts of the nation, both for multipurpose water resource development and for water quality management, and it has been a party to interstate compacts developed by the states &“age h t m a t e rivers such as the Potomac, Susquehanna, and Delaware.

In the 1980s, interstate compacts were also developed (and in some cases, actively encouraged by federal legislation) to provide regional multi-state management of hazardous and some radioactive wastes This usage has important differences in implications from previous natural resource management compacts, in that it offers groups of states the authority to exclude wastes from non-member states--in effect, to deliberately interfere with interstate commerce--as a reward for their willingness to build facilities that are often unpopular with their own citizens to manage the wastes of member states. Important questions about this practice have not yet been resolved. For instance, if a single state has no right to interfere with commerce in wastes, why should a group of states be allowed to do SO? What has really happened is that a particular constitutional mechanism is being as an incentive to overcome intra-state political conflict, in ways that have no real justification in constitutional principles and are even arguably antithetical to them.

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Tax Power

and excises;” this power was extended by the 16th amendment (1913) to include taxes on incomes. This is one of the most fundamental general powers of the U.S. government, but it has specific implications for environmental policy as well. Most kndamentally, it permits the federal government to use economic incentives, rather than merely criminal penalties and prohibitions, to achieve environmental policy goals. Forested lands can be given special consideration in capital gains and estate taxes, to encourage the long-term investments necessary for conservation; pollution control equipment may be depreciated rapidly to ease the cost of installing it; tax credits can be provided for installation of solar or other energy-conserving equipment. Conversely, the government can selectively increase taxes--and thereby, increase economic disincentives--on activities that Congress considers contrary to its policies, such as windfall oil profits, gasoline consumption, whisky production, and the emission of pollutants. Congress could, if it chose, charge a tax per unit of pollution emitted in order to discourage it, and some economists have urged this strategy in preference to the current predominantly regulatory approach.

Article I Section 8 allows the Congress “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts

The Fifth Amendment The Constitution greatly broadened the powers of the.nationa1 government relative

to both state governments and individuals. It was ratified, therefore, only after assurances

protecting states and individuals from abuse of centralized authority. This Bill, the first ten amendments of the Constitution, was ratified in 1791. The rights therein recognized were generally similar to those recognized in previous Bills of Rights, in the state constitutions and even in the British bill of 1688; one of them, the fifth amendment, has had particular significance to environmental policy.

trials, and provides for grand juries in all capital and infamous crimes. In addition, it includes three momentous provisions: first, that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himselc second, that no person shall be deprived of hfk&eay, cx pfepeft-pr without due process of law; and third, that no private property shall be taken for public use without just compensation

The first provision is significant in such cases as the cleanup of oil spills We accept almost automatically-the assumption that no one should be forced to testify again himself in a criminal case. But pollution is a crime, often an accidental one, yet one which must also be contained and cleaned up quickly in order to minimize its damage. This speed frequently requires reporting by persons first on the scene--most likely the persons responsible for the spill. Other pollution control activities may require potential polluters to keep records for pollution control officials, and both the Clean Air Act and Federal Water Pollution Control Act permit the Environmental Protection Agency to require such records and reporting. The courts generally have ruled that routine record-keeping raises no constitutional problem, any more than does keeping income tax records; in the self- reporting of specific criminal events such as spills, however, opinions are divided, and

. that limits on those powers would also be spelled out immediately, in a Bill of Rights

The fifth amendment includes protection against “double jeopardy” in criminal

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EPA has had to incorporate specific restrictions on the use of self-reported information in order to avoid the problem (Soper, 1974:45-50)

equally to all government regulatory proceedings. Is government condemning land by eminent domain for a national park, or a highway? Banning a pesticide? Deciding whether or not to license a nuclear power plant? Whatever the particular issue, the individual‘s right to do something--or even to enjoy existing environmental amenities-is considered property under the fifth amendment, and individuals cannot be deprived of it without due process of law. In practice, arguments of process have often been asserted at great length--for instance by environmentalist opponents of nuclear power plants, and by pesticide manufacturers against EPA regulations--in order to extend the definition of “due” process and thus thwart government action. No one wants arbitrary decisions made without fair notice, hearings, and consideration of the individuals’ rights. In practice, however, the appropriate balance between fairness and attenuation of government procedures is often difficult to determine.

The most important provision for environmental policy purposes is the prohibition of “taking for public use without just compensation”. If government occupies the land to build a fort or a road, it clearly has taken it and must compensate the owner. If it needs partial use of the land, such as for a power-line right-of-way, it usually must compensate also to the extent that its use prevents other uses the owner might make of it. But suppose it merely regulates the use of the land, as in zoning, or prohibits development in floodplains or “critical environmental areas”? Some would argue that this is still a taking of the owner’s development rights, diminishing the income he can get fiom it, and

rtherefore requiring compensation--compensation that government often could not afford. Others argue that such regulations are not takings, so long as the owner retains some reasonable economic opportunities; they are, rather, simply valid exercises of government’s police power--its power to provide for the general welfare, and to prevent and abate nuisances, such as situations in which one person’s use of this property is injuring the rights of others. In short, does an industry have a right to keep on polluting, or does the community have a right--previously neglected--to a pollution-free river? And does a landowner have a right to fill a wetland and build a shopping center on it, or only the right to continue f i l l use and enjoyment of it as a wetland3 This is the issue posed in

. The due process requirement is most obviously significant in trials, but it applies

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the taking-versus-regulation debate. - - The taking issue is crucial to environmental policy, because it defines the boundary

between government regulatory authority to protect resources and individual rights to exploit them for economic gain or other personal preferences Does the government hold air, water, and other resources in trust for all Americans? Or do manufacturers, for instance, have a right to pollute, or waterfront owners a right to build in the flood plain-- even though the effects of their actions may injure others--that government can control only by purchase? The courts have given many answers in the past, but at present generally incline towards a “balancing” of public benefit against private loss to decide whether and what compensation is required. This issue is central not only to land use policy but also to pollution control regulation, bans on hazardous substances, and every other case in which property rights to the use of environmental resources are at issue.

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The Fourteenth Amendment The fourteenth amendment was ratified in 1868, soon after the Civil War, and was

one of three intended to establish and protect the rights of black Americans. Among other provisions, it extended the requirement of due process to state government actions as well as national ones; and it forbids states to deny to any person the “equal protection’’ of the laws. The logic of this provision is that no system of justice can be considered fair that does not give equal protection of its laws to all its citizens, and racial discrimination was and is a particularly visible affront to this principle.

presents both opportunities and problems when applied to people in zirieqzral environmental circumstances. On the one hand, one could argue that it demands equal provision of basic environmental services to all a state’s citizens, poor as well as better off, though the courts so far have rejected this argument (Soper, 1974:122-25). On the other hand, it causes problems in the regulation of pollution by firms in different places. Consider two pulp and paper mills, for instance, identical except that one is located on a small stream and the other dn a seacoast with strong tidal currents to flush its wastes. How much should each plant be required to reduce its organic (oxygen-demanding) wastes? One common answer is that both should have to install the same technology, so that the burden of the environmental protection laws falls equally on them--even though the cost of such action by the coastal plant may be far out of proportion to the additional social benefits gained. A less frequent answer is that unequal environmental circumstances may cause legitimate inequalities among firms, and that equal protection arguments, therefore, should not be used to hamper shifts of economic processes to environments to which they are better suited.

In the field of environmental protection, however, the equal protection clause

Fourth Amendment

houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures;” it requires for each such search a warrant based on “probable cause’’ and describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. The purpose of this requirement was to protect innocent persons against harassment and abuse of police powers. How does it appty, howevm, to such problems as environmental monitoring or occupational health and safety, in which effective regulation and enforcement may require spot checks or other surprise inspections to insure against cheating? In one case, for example, an industry sued

‘EPA under the 4th amendment to block it from using aerial surveillance to detect pollution from its plant. Both air and water quality laws authorize such access by pollution control inspectors, but their constitutionality has not been hlly tested. In each such case the courts must balance the privacy protections of the fourth amendment against the equally legitimate responsibility to protect public health, safety, and welfare as expressed in the anti-pollution laws (Soper, 1974:40-45).

The fourth amendment protects each person’s right “to be secure in their persons,

Summary

and the beginning of the U.S. government as we know it. The underlying issues, however, continued to be vigorously disputed. Who should benefit from the.nation’s abundant

The ratification of the Constitution marked the end of the Confederation period,

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natural resources, the wealthy capitalist minority or the poor farmer majority? Should the nation pursue a primarily manufacturing or agrarian economy, and how deeply should the national government involve itself in the encouragement of one or the other? Some of these debates continue even today. Should government increase price supports for farmers, or increase beef import quotas to lower prices for consumers? Should it give tax advantages to businesses for capital investments, or increase taxes on their windfall profits? Should it encourage agribusinesses or family farms, corporate forestry or small operators, large power plant systems or individual energy conservation and solar heaters, large-scale oligopolies or small-scale self-sufficiency? In the 1790s, these debates were personified by two men: Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, Federalist; and Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State and future president, agrarian populist and anti- federalist.

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Andreus drnft - 7 28 9-1 -- Do iiot cite or quote 19 071' Further Readings

Bartlett, Richard A. 1974. The New Countrv: A Social History of the American Frontier 1776-1890. NY: Oxford U. Press..

Berkhofer, Robert. 1972. Jefferson, the Ordinance of 1784, and the Origins of the '

American Territorial System. William and Mary Quarterly 2923 1 (3rd Series).

Aspects of Revolutionary Finance. American Historical Review 35:46 (1 929).

Bradford, S. Sydney. 1966. Hunger Menaces the Revolution. Maryland Historical Magazine 6 1 : 1 .

Degler, Carl N. 1959, 1970. Out of Our Past: The Forces That Shaped Modern America. NY: Harper and Row.

Englebert, Ernest A. 1950. American Policv for Natural Resources: A Historical Survey to 1862. Cambridge: Harvard University (Ph.D. dissertation).

Greene, Evarts B. 1943. The Revolutionary Generation. 1763-1 790. NY: MacMillan.

Handlin, Oscar and Mary. 1945. Origins of the American Business Corporation. J.f Economic History 5: 1-23.

Harris, Marshall. 1953. Orirzins of the Land Tenure Svstem in the United States. Ames: Iowa State U. Press.

Jensen, Merrill. 1969. The American Revolution and American Agriculture. Agricultural .Histor_~ 43: 107-127.

Jensen, Merrill. 1974. The American Revolution Within America. NY: NYU Press.

-- Jensen, Memll. 1939. The Creation of the Public Domain, 178 1-1 784. Miss. Vallev Hist. Review 26:323-241.

Jensen, Merrill. 1962. The New Nation: A Historv ofthe United States During The Confederation. 178 1 - 1 789. NY: Knopf

Klose, Nelson. 1964. A Concise Studv Guide to the American Frontier. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press.

Leonard, E. A. 1950. Paper as a Critical Commodity. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biographv, 74:488.

Lipset, Seymour M. 1963. The First New Nation. NY: Basic Books

Andrews drap -- 7*28 94 - Do riot cite or quote 20

1% Peterson, John M. and Ralph Gray. 1969. Economic Development of the United States. Homewood, IL: Irwin.

Scott, William B. 1977. In Pursuit of Happiness. Bloomington: Indiana U. Press.

Soper, Philip. 1974. The Constitutional Framework of Environmental Law. In E. Dolgin and T. Guilbert, Federal Environmental Law. (Minneapolis: West Publishing Co.), pp. 20- 125.

Stephenson 0. W. 1925. The Supply of Gunpowder in 1776. h e r . Hist. Review 30271.

U. S. Public Land Law Review Commission. 1968. History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Ofice.

Ver Steeg, Clarence L. 1957. The American Revolution Considered As An Economic Movement. Huntington Library Ouarterlv 20:361-372.

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Title:

Authors: Source: Date:

THE 104TH CONGRESS: PROPERTY RIGHTS; HOUSE CLEARS MORE LIMITS ON ENVIRONMENTAL RULES

JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.,Special to The New York Times The New York Times, Late Edition - Final

Friday Mar 3, 1995 Sec: A National Desk p: 19

Abstract: By wide margins, the House cast preliminary votes on Mar 2, 1995 for a bill that would prohibit federal agencies fi-om protecting wetlands or endangered species unless landowners are compensated for any resulting decline in their property's value. The bill, which is strongly opposed by the Clinton administration, would make it easier for landowners to file claims against the government when they are prevented from developing ecologically sensitive property.

Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company. Data supplied by NEXIS (R) Service.

Article Text:

votes. today for another significant restriction on environmental regulation, a bill that would prohibit Federal agencies from protecting wetlands or endangered species unless landowners are compensated for any resulting decline in their property's value.

The legislation would expand the application of the Constitution's prohibition against seizing property without compensation, a principle that the courts have been increasingly pressed to apply to situations where the use of the property has been limited by regulations.

The bill would make it much easier for landowners to file claims against the Government when they are prevented from developing ee&gk&ysefts& property, whether by filling in swampy land for farming or by felling valuable timber.

agencies sharply restrict some of their best-known programs to protect natural resources.

to 'a growing movement of property owners at a grass-roots level who believe their rights are being infringed upon.' For years, people in what they call the 'wise use' movement have worked to free property owners from the strictures of environmental laws, which they say violate the the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Final action on the bill is expected on Friday, when the House is scheduled to complete two weeks of debate on the anti-regulatory provisions of the Republican majority's Contract with America. Approval is

WASHINGTON, March 2 -- By wide margins, the House cast preliminary

That could impose incalculable costs on the Government unless Federal

Representative Tom DeLay, the majority whip, called the bill an answer


I43

all but certain. Similar property-rights legislation has been introduced in the Senate,

with the backing of such influential members as the majority leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, and his rival for the Republican Presidential nomination, Senator Phil G r a " of Texas.

It is strongly opposed by the Clinton Administration, and the President might veto it, especially if it passes Congress as part of a package of bills weakening environmental, safety and health laws. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt today called it 'nothing but a thinly disguised attack on America's great natural resources.'

Under the bill, any time a Federal regulation caused even a section of a landowner's property to decline in value by as little as 10 percent, the owner could demand compensation while keeping the land. If the value of the affected property went down as much as 50 percent, the Government might have to buy it outright.

Since property values are largely determined by how much income the owner can generate from the land, environmental regulations limiting development can profoundly affect a property's worth. This bill would confront Federal land management agencies with a choice: either forgo enforcing regulations or pay the price.

In a preliminary vote today revising the version of the bill approved by the House Judiciary Committee last week, the House showed overwhelming support for the idea of compensating landowners for regulations that cut into the profits fiom their land.

On a vote of 301 to 128, the House accepted a new version of the bill that focused on two programs that conservatives view with special disdain: the wetlands provisions of the clean water and farm laws, and the Endangered Species Act.

The measure, as amended, would also protect the rights of ranchers, farmers and others in the arid west to use publicly owned water, always a subject of intense wrangling in western states.

The bill's opponents, mostly liberal Democrats, warned of severe fiscal consequences of the bill. They said a less costly approach would be to amend the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and other environmental measures as they come up for renewal.

proposal to require agencies to disclose the likely reduction in property values stemming fiom regulatory actions, giving property owners ammunition to take to court but not guaranteeing them compensation. The vote was 241 to 186 against the measure.

Nobody can reliably estimate the costs to the Federal Government if it would have to pay every farmer or real estate developer who is prohibited fiom draining a wetland, or every logger who is forbidden to cut trees along the banks of salmon streams. Without question, opponents said, the cost would run into billions of dollars if the Government tries to enforce

On a second vote, the House brushed aside a more moderate substitute

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existing environmental laws filly.

Louisiana who helped to write the bill, scoffed at the show of fiscal concern.

property owners is going to depend mightily on the actions of the agencies fiom this day forward,' he said.

budgets of the agencies that impose the regulations. That would pose a powerful incentive for the Interior Department, for example, not to enforce the Endangered Species Act aggressively.

But Representative W. J. (Billy) Tauzin, a conservative Democrat from

'The amount the Government is going to have to pay to compensate

Under the bill, the money to pay landowners would come fiom the annual

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D. oadoq 'Did-: 'Ihs&vi"mt vs. pmpslty Rights." New Yo& TLner, 3/15/95, p 25. 81995, New Y a k Ti, I=, New York, NY. Reprinted with pembiiao. 193'

Title:

Authors: Source: Date:

DIAL,OGUE: THE ENVIRONMENT VS. PROPERTY RIGHTS; WANT A TOXIC

Dan Gordon, president of Fulwider Corporation, a residential housing developer. The New York Times, Late Edition - Final

DUMP NEXT DOOR?

Wednesday Mar 15, 1995 Sec: A Editorial Desk p: 25 Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company. Data supplied by NEXIS (R) Service.

Abstract: Dan Gordon criticizes the so-called property rights bills proposed in the Senate and state legislatures throughout the country, which he says would hurt most homeowners. Gordon says that details of the bills vary, but all require that taxpayers pay a landowner when a zoning rule, environmental law or other government regulation limits the value of the land.

Article Text:

landowners' rights and in preserving property values.

passed by the.House this month and comparable ones proposed in the Senate and in state legislatures throughout the country.

rule. Taxpayers must pay a landowner when a zoning rule, environmental law or other governmental regulation limits the value of the land.

At first glance, that may seem fair, even attractive. But on closer inspection, it is clear that such supposedly pro-landowner legislation would hurt most homeowners.

Many of the bills under debate in state legislatures would require that taxpayers pay landowners affected by zoning laws. But zoning laws have a purpose; they are typically designed to prohibit incompatible uses in the same area -- for example, landfills or shopping centers in residential dkttkts. So while a few landowners might make less money because they aren't allowed create a landfill, the property values of the rest of the neighborhood are protected.

Similarly, the House has already passed a so-called takings bill targeted at wetland, water and wildlife laws that would require taxpayers to pay owners for foregone profit. In the Senate, Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, has introduced a bill that would require payment to landowners affected by any environmental or safety standard, including Federal rules that require cleaning up of toxic sites, prevent strip mining from ruining landscapes, keep air and water clean and limit development in flood-prone areas.

Yes, these standards might limit the potential profit from some land or even prohibit development in some areas, which could lower the value of the property. But the rules raise or protect the value of surrounding

PHILADELPHIA -- As a homeowner and real estate developer, I believe in

That is precisely why I am against the so-called property rights bill

The details of the bills vary, but they would all establish a general

homes. The advocates of these laws seem to have ignored the cliche that the

factors that most affect home values are location, location and location. An incinerator built close by or polluted water will immediately reduce home values in a neighborhood. Coastal protection and wetland laws protect property values by keeping communities attractive and by buffering floods and ocean storms. A band of wetlands along the coast invariably increases the value of homes behind it.

are threatened. Also, the sheer cost of paying property owners for their claims and the specter of continual litigation would dramatically undermine our environmental and zoning laws.

anything they want with their property regardless of the impact on others. But I rely on a contrary view: property owners have a right to be protected against abuses by others.

or shopping center developers would benefit from these bills. They have little concern about what their neighbors do with their land, and they can afford lawyers to seek payment in return for Government regulation. And 3 percent of all private landowners in these industries own 80 percent of all private land.

But the 2 percent of the land committed to housing possesses the majority of all real estate value. And most landowners own only the property around their home. Their investment is vulnerable to abuses by others.

I have experienced both the headaches and benefits of regulation when buying properties in two historic districts in towns on the Hudson River. Although I squabble with inspectors about the costs of replacing a roof with the original slate, I am confident that such rules have helped land values in these districts remain higher than the land values outside them.

Americans have safer water supplies, fish are returning to waterways long abandoned and woodlands are being restored. This trend benefits not only the environment but also the homeowner.

Over time, communities that tolerate high levels of pollution tend to decline. Homes lose their value because people do not want to live in polluted, unattractive places. Communities with strict standards tend to rise in value.

I chafe at regulations and red tape when I develop my own properties. But I'm generally very happy to have these safeguards in place to protect these sites. So-called property rights bills would not protect property but simply transfer control of property values from homeowners to large owners of undeveloped land.

So under the new anti-regulation agenda, homeowners' property values

The new takings bills assume that landowners have the right to do

Some big farm operations, timber and paper companies, mining companies

Because of Federal and state programs of the last two decades,

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Chapter 5 Economic Development as Environmental Policy: Public Lands and Internal Improvements

Land is different things to different people. The same physical acre may be simultaneously a vacant lot, a home site, a waterfiont property, a tax ratable, a wildlife habitat, a fishing hole, a wetland, a swamp, a forest stand, an ecosystem, and more. Some of these perceptions are compatible, but others are fundamentally in conflict. Beneath all the particular issues of land use conflict lies a basic dualism between its status as a natural environment and its status as an economic commodity. On the one hand, every piece of land is a unique physical and biological entity, an environment of living ecological systems, which provides essential and irreplaceable natural functions and services-materials and energy, watercourses, arable soils, photosynthesis and respiration, habitat, food and shelter

- ad-fiber-to humans and countless other species Every piece of land is also unique in its location, a characteristic that has both ecological and economic significance; and in its structure and composition, which includes topography and physical characteristics as well as aesthetic appearance. On the other hand, land in America is also a marketable commodi@, along with the natural resources that lie in it or grow on it: a property subject to ownership and teation, a location for human activities, and a source of materials and energy for economic use. These conflicts emerge in full force whenever a change is proposed in public policies governing the status or use of land, for every such proposal

. raises two fbndamental issues: what are the appropriate status and uses of that piece of land, and who has the right to decide it?

Land in America has always involved issues of governance and public policy. Of the total 2.3 billion acres of the United States, over 78% was once owned by the federal government, and over 113 of it was federal land as recently as the 1970s, including almost 45 percent of California, 52 percent of Oregon, 86 percent of Nevada, and 97 percent of Alaska (U.S. Department of the Interior, 1973:4,10).’ Most of the great U. S. cities west of the Appalachians were built on what had been public lands: Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Seattle. The agricultural breadbasket of the midwest was plowed out of public lands granted or sold by the government to farmers dagrrtrushesses; the transcontinental railroads were built with vast land grants given to railroad syndicates by the government for investment assets, and the great U. S. steel and timber industries that supplied them developed and prospered accordingly. Economic historians have estimated that without such government assistance, large-scale capital accumulation through individual savings might not have been possible in the united States for decades longer than it actually required (Peterson and Gray, -:240?). Even today the logging and pulp and paper industries, the mining industry, and others obtain much of their raw materials at low cost from the public lands; the aluminum industry obtains much of its energy, and California’s huge farms their water, at cheap rates from federally financed dams; ski resorts and other recreational businesses make their profits on inexpensively leased public lands; oil companies extract petroleum at low royalties from public lands of Alaska and the Outer Continental Shelt and western cattle and sheep businesses feed their animals on federal lands, at costs far below those of their eastern competitors who must pay for and maintain their own land If this is the “rugged

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individualism” of fiee-market capitalism, it could equally be described as individualism by government subsidy, socialism with a capitalist face. In reality the United States has always had ari intricately mixed economy, in which government policies promoting the extraction of marketable commodities fiom the environment have played a central role.

from the legacy and continuing reality of the public lands. In the Pacific Northwest, continued below-cost logging of public lands threatens to destroy the last 10% of the remaining old-growth forests, and with them fisheries, wildlife habitat, endangered species (such as the Northern spotted owl), and their ecosystems Mining policies and fees, largely unchanged since the 1870s, allow businesses and individuals and even foreign firms to extract valuable minerals from the public lands for a tiny fraction of their market value, and leave the resulting environmental damage for the taxpayers to clean up. Throughout the millions of acres of remaining public lands, conflicts among uses and users--logging and mining companies versus tourists, ranchers versus wildlife lovers, motorcycle racers versus soil conservationists, hikers and fishermen versus resort developers and motorized visitors, and simply the congestion of too many users seeking to enjoy the most popular national parks and recreation areas--dominate the agenda of American environmental policy (see e.g. Conniff, 1994:2-39).

During the 19th century, these so-called “public domain” lands were the single most important tool of government environmental and economic development policy. They were used to-s: land bounties totaling over 61 million acres were given to veterans of the Revolution and later wars. They were used to gayAe@s, land was sold wholesale to investment companies to raise revenues, then retaileflthem to individual settlers at higher prices. They were used to develop eduwaxal institutions: the so-called “land grant universities” were endowed in this way. More generally, they were used to

s of i m m i g s s and speculators, seeking better lives for themselves than Europe% in the eastern cities of the United States.

Public lands were also used to finance state and lo_sa l_govem, and to bankroll public investments. Privatized lands went onto the state and IGalproperty tax rolls, and in addition over 328 million acres were granted directly to states to finance infrastructure -~ development, including almost 78 million acres for support of common schools, 65 million acres for reclamation of swampland, 37 million for railroads, 6 million for canal and river development, 3 million for construction of wagon roads, and over 1 17 million for construction of other public facilities (such as water reservoirs and reclamation of desert lands). Public lands were used to m r i v a t e working capital as well between 1850 and 1973 the federal government gave away over 94 million acres to private railroad syndicates, including 10 to 25 percent of the total lands of the states of Arizona, California, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Washington, so that the railroads could then sell off or mortgage prime locations and resource-rich lands to eastern and European investors and thus raise the fbnds needed for construction (U.S Department of the Interior, 1973 :4, 9)

One scholar summarizes these policies by describing the public lands as a political and economic “balance wheel:” a resource that could be used as needed as a source of revenue (and an alternative to tariffs), as an incentive for national expansion, as a material resource base for prosperity, and as an outlet for discontented groups from the more urban

Many of the important current issues of American environmental policy also arise

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east (Hibbard, 1924557). Another states flatly that prior to 1900;the questions of how to dispose of the public domain, and whether the federal government should finance “internal improvements” (the euphemism for roads, railroads, and water development projects), “ranked with the tariff as the foremost domestic political issues in the United States, other than slavery” (Smith, 1971 :v). A leading environmental historian takes issue with traditional theories that economic value results mainly fiom the application of human labor to the environment, arguing rather that U. S. economic wealth came mainly fiom the ease with which limited labor could appropriate the vast abundance of natirrai value present in the landscape, which had been stored in the public lands by sunlight and natural environmental processes over millennia before the arrival of Europeans and their export trade economy (Cronon, 1991: 148-151).

A dominant strain of American environmental policy even today is the two-century - legacy of government policies actively promoting the extraction and use of environmental resources?%%?oromic gain. From the earliest land ordinances through the 19th century, U S . governm-icy was to promote the rapid transfer of public lands into private hands, to generate both short-term revenues and long-term economic development. Not until 1976, in fact--six years after Earth Day, and under the pressure of the modern environmental movement--did the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act finally authorize the Bureau of Land Management, successor to the 19th century General Land W c e and overseer of some 474 million acres of federal public lands, to .manage rather than dispose of these lands. Beginning with debates in the 1780s over the proper use of the public lands, these land disposal policies included large-scale privatization of public lands throughout the 19th century, under various regimes (most prominently sales, grants, and leases). They also included public investments in capital infrastructure: grants of public lands to finance canal and railroad construction, and direct payments for the costs of river and harbor construction to improve navigation and of levees to protect against flooding. From these early precedents grew three dominant sets of environmental policies that are still largely in effect today, all aimed at promoting the use of environmental resources as economic commodities: first, policies giving private owners of formerly public lands broad freedom to do as they wished with it, including stripping its resources, transforming its natural character, and subdividing and selling it largely free of government restricticmS; second, policies promoting extractive use of resources (logging, mining, and

market prices or the costs,of their environmental damage; and third, policies of using public investments to subsidize large-scale environmental transformation for infrastructure (such as water resource projects, highways, sewers and wastewater treatment plants, and others), likewise without full accounting for the costs of their environmental damage.

The presence of the public lands therefore has been a central and distinctive element in the history of American environmental policy. Without them we would not have had the vast stocks of natural resources that made possible today’s widespread material affiuence, nor the opportunities for prolonged open immigration and large-scale settlement that permitted the emergence of a relatively egalitarian civil society; nor the prolonged history of relative self-sufficiency that allowed the United States to develop the largest economy in the world, and one which was until only recently relatively independent of foreign supplies and creditors. We also would not have had most of our national parks

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cattle grazing in particular) on the remaining public lands, often at prices far below either --

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and forests, since no government could have afforded to purchase the quantities of such valuable lands that we were able simply to reserve and maintain in public ownership. Nor would we have seen the emergence of so many distinctively American attitudes about the environment--visions of superabundance of resources but also of desert wastelands, myths of pristine wilderness in the past and endless frontiers in the hture, images of a “manifest destiny’’ to populate and “develop” the resources of the continent and of a new Garden of Eden despoiled by human technology and pollution--that have shaped both American environmental policies and Americans’ broader world-view as a society. While recent attention has tended to focus on environmental policy as pollution control regulation, therefore, one must note equally the profound and enduring influence of the public lands as both a locus and a subject of American environmental policy.

Land Acquisition and Exploration

original thirteen states, and subsequently by treaties and purchases from other govemments and from Indian tribes. Land claims from the Appalachian Mountains west to the Mississippi River, some 233 million acres, were ceded by the original states to the federal government as a condition of the original Articles of Confederation, and its title to them was recognized by England in the 1783 treaty which ended the American Revolution. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 added in one transaction over 523 million acres, comprising the remainder of the Mississippi and Missouri River Basins, an area nearly as large as all of Europe; a treaty with Spain in 18 19 added Florida (43 million acres), and an 1846 treaty with England added 180 million acres of the Pacific Northwest, comprising the present states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and northwestern Montana. The vast area of California and most of today’s Southwest, over 334 million acres, was captured from Mexico in 1848 in the terms of the treaty ending the Mexican-American War; almost 79 million acres of today’s New Mexico and Colorado and adjacent states were purchased from Texas in 1850, after Texas had declared itself independent from Mexico and been annexed to the United States; and the southern edge of Arizona, some 19 million acres permitting a railroad to be built around the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, was acquired from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 Finally, the 365 fiiion acres of Alaska were purchased fiom Russia in 1867, as Russia retreated fiom its tramPacific colonial ambitions (U S. Public Land Law Review Commission [PLLRC],

The federal government acquired the public lands first by acquiescence of the

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1968:75-86). The government’s policy motives for acquiring these. lands varied with the times.

The Louisiana Purchase, the first after the original state cessions and by far the largest, was not even sought: U. S. envoys had been sent to France simply to buy the area around New Orleans as an ocean port for its midwestern farmers, but found France willing to sell the entire claim. Later acquisitions, such as the Oregon Compromise and the Mexican lands, were more purposefdly intended to benefit American settlers and hlfill America’s “manifest destiny” to settle and control the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The net effect was to bring under U. S. government ownership vast areas of land and natural resources, ranging in environmental conditions from the humid wetlands of Florida and the lower Mississippi to the woodlands and fertile prairies of the upper midwest and the arid plains and deserts of the intermountain basin, from the gold and silver mines of

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California and Nevada to the coal fields of Montana and the oil deposits of Alaska, and from natural wonders such as Yellowstone’s geysers and the Grand Canyon to unique ecosystems such as the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest and the Alaskan tundra.

American scientific exploration and environmental research. Government support for exploration began with the Lewis and Clark expedition through the Louisiana Purchase lands in 1803, and continued with support of some 102 such expeditions throughout the . century. Early explorations, up to about 1845, were elements of a larger foreign policy strategy to assert and document the expanding frontiers of the new nation, against the competing claims of the European empires in the region: key figures included Dr. John Sibley (up the Red River, 1803), Zebulon Pike (southern Colorado, 1 805-07), and Stephen Long (northern Colorado, 1819). Subsequent expeditions, between 1845 and 1860, were motivated by the domestic “Manifest Destiny’’ policy of westward settlement, and aimed more explicitly at the assessment of exploitable resources and infrastructure engineering potential (the “Great Reconnaissance,” in the words of one historian); this process was epitomized by the expeditions of Captain John Fremont of the Corps of Topographical Engineers between 1842 and 1845 (Goetzmann, 1993).

Finally, between the 1860s and the end of the 19th century the federal government sponsored a program of “Great Surveys,” intensive scientific inventories of environmental conditions and assets by both military and civilian expeditions, Major explorations of this period included the Army geological and geographical expeditions of Clarence King (1867-73), the Army geographical surveys of Lt. George Wheeler (1 869-78), the major geological and land surveys conducted by the Interior Department under F. V. Hayden (1868-72), and the famous explorations of the Colorado River by Major John Wesley Powell between 1869 and 1873 (Goetzmann, 1993).

President Jefferson and others expressed doubts about the constitutionality of federal support for purely scientific ventures, but justified these explorations in part by military and diplomatic needs for knowledge of the newly acquired public lands, and also as incidental to the federal government’s responsibility for interstate commerce. With repeated support .over time, including Congressional budget allocations in addition to the original Executive authorizations, constitutional doubts gradually became moot (Englebert, 1950: 157, 163). Many of these expeditions included civilian explorer- naturalists as well as engineers and military personnel--artist and ethnologist George Catlin, botanist John Torrey, paleontologist Othniel Marsh, and others--and over the course of the century they laid the foundations for much of U. S. scientific knowledge and public awareness more generally: in geography, natural history, geology, botany, zoology, archaeology and paleontology, and the ethnography of American Indians in particular. The data and artifacts brought back by such expeditions formed the basis for the collections and research of the Smithsonian Institution, and of later federal agencies such as the U. S. Geological Survey, Bureau of American Ethnography, and others.

expeditions served to document and thus promote the economic opportunities available fiom western environmental resources, and to promote as well the growth of the applied sciences and technological invention for exploiting them. scientific instrumentation,

The public lands were fiom the start a seedbed not only for economic use but for

Despite occasional errors and misperceptions, the reports of these exploratory

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engineering, agricultural and mining and transport technology, geology and metallurgy, plant breeding, and other fields. No less important, they formed the basis for dominant American beliefs about their environment: cornucopian beliefs about the superabundance

. of resource wealth of the Mississippi River watershed, Romantic images of the beauty and grandeur of the western landscape and the Edenesque nobility of its Indian peoples, and equally mythic imases of the more arid westward lands as barren and worthless deserts (Englebert, 1950: 163- 1 73; Goetzmann, 1993 : 1 8 1-228). These beliefs in turn were powerful motivating forces shaping American patterns of environmental development and use.

The exploratory expeditions also led to the creation of ongoing government agencies to survey and map the American environment, particularly those features that had potential military or economic value. A Coast Survey office was created in the Treasury Department in 1807, and despite several decades of infighting between the Treasury and the Navy, it made important contributions to understanding of U S. geography and resources, and was in fact the first major government-supported scientific agency. Army engineers began conducting topographic surveys after the War of 18 12, and feasibility surveys for river and harbor navigation improvements beginning in 1824; a separate Corps of Topographical Engineers fiom 18 18 to 1863 produced much of the most important- geological, topographical and hydrographical information about the country’s environment up to the creation of the U. S. Geological Survey in 1879 (Engelbert, 1950: 204-08, 214- 19,299). The General Land Oflice oversaw cadastral surveying to prepare the public lands for sale, and sponsored more specialized investigations to identiG mineral deposits and other natural resources, lands to be reserved for Indian tribes and other purposes, and later surveys of routes for the transcontinental railroads. Beginning in the 1830s, these federal efforts were augmented by widespread surveys sponsord by the individual states, focussing especially on agricultural and mineral resources but often including more systematic environmental assessments as well (Engelbert, 1950:296-3 1 1). Without more systematic legislative authorization and appropriations, however--Congress fbnded surveys for immediate political and economic purposes, but was uninterested in and unsupportive of systematic research--these surveys were often ad hoc, opportunistic and specialized, resulting in both errors and serious gaps in knowledge that hampered the development of well-informed environmental policies. Routine land surveying was also

produced work that was frequently of poor quality or even fraudulent (PLLRC, 1968:420- 22). In 1879 therefore the Congress established the U. S. Geological Survey, to unify, institutionalize and professionalize government scientific surveying of the American west; and USGS in turn established the scientific foundations--topographic mapping, resource inventories, hydrographic and irrigation potential surveys, and others--for far more active later federal roles in environmental management.

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carried out by private contractors at low pay under a political patronage system, which _ -

Whose Environment? Indians versus Settlers Acquisitions from Mexico and European claimants settled U. S. government

ownership fiom those countries’ perspectives, but they did not resolve the fact that these lands were already occupied and used by tribes of Native American peoples who had lived there for centuries. One of the most inglorious threads in the fabric of American history is

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the process by which waves of European settlers, backed by public policies favoring and legitimizing them--open immigration, military protection, treaties, incentives for westward settlement, and outright removal of Indian tribes--gradually but forcibly displaced these peoples onto the tiny residues of the least productive land which became known as Indian reservations. Conflicts between white settlers and Indians arose as early as the colonial period, and intensified in the 19th century as open immigration and railroad construction brought ever more settlers pushing westward, in disregard of Indians’ traditional occupancy and use rights and even of official policies and treaties with them. As white populations as well as military and economic dominance increased, treaties initially concluded as between equal sovereign nations were replaced by increasingly unfavorable terms and ultimately, in 1871, by an end to treatymaking altogether.

Officially, public lands could only be settled after Indian claims to them had been resolved, but in fact such resolutions generally occurred under situations of serious conflict between Indians and armed settlers, of misunderstandings or misrepresentations of the transactions, and of outright military duress. The U. S. treaty with Britain in 1783, for instance, required just compensation of the Indians for their land rights, but subsequent treaties of 1784 and 1785 with the 6 Indian nations of the Great Lakes region included no such compensation; later treaties also included a wide range of abuses, such as treaty language breaking up tribal lands into individual allotments (often as side payments to chiefs) and later proposals to sell Indian reservations directly to railroad companies, which then passed rapidly into the hands of white speculators (PLLRC, 1968:452). Even at their best, public policies towards Indian rights were usually developed only in reaction to conflicts between settlers and Indians: the reality was that settlement proceeded far ahead

. of official policies and agreements. Politicians as early as Thomas Jefferson saw the vast lands of the Louisiana Purchase as a safety valve to dehse these conflicts, a territory so far fiom current settlement that Indians could safely be offered permanent ownership of lands there in exchange for those already under settlement pressure in the east, and some tribes reportedly agreed to such exchanges voluntarily (whatever that may have meant, in the context of settler pressures). In 1830, however, after white gold-seekers overran the Cherokee lands in western Georgia and the federal government declined to defend the Indians against them, President Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which allowed ~- him to reserve public lands for them (hence “reservations”) in the west, to give the Indian tribes permanent title to those lands, but also to use military force to compel them to move--the infamous “Trail of Tears”-- from Georgia and Tennessee to what is now Oklahoma. *

Removal may have seemed to whites a realistic compromise among the humanitarian instincts of a Jefferson and the more avaricious land hunger of others. To the extent that it succeeded at all, however--disregarding, for instance, both the injustice and suffering inflicted on the Indians themselves, and the resulting tensions between them and other tribes already present in the lands to which they were displaced--its promise lasted less than 20 years before gold was discovered in California, and the resulting pressures for transcontinental railroads rekindled pressures for white settlement hrther westward, leading the government to breach its agreement and--in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854--to open large areas of the territories that had been pledged to the Indians to white settlement once again (PLLRC, 1968:369-70). The railroads accordingly found

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themselves in constant conflict with the Indians, as they sought to claim and sell lands granted to them as a means of financing their construction. More hndamentally, the railroads had a basic economic imperative to increase traffic throughout their lines, which meant for the transcontinental railroads to vigorously promote white settlement and commodity trade--timber, minerals, cattle, and other freight, immigration and tourism-- throughout the otherwise unsettled western lands. They also sponsored large-scale slaughter of the American plains bison herds: as a source of food for their workers, of sport for tourists, of buffalo hides as a commercial product, and as a deliberate means of driving the Indians away from their lines by destroying their subsistence, replacing them with settlers and cattle ranchers. Well over four million bison reportedly were destroyed in the southern plains alone within just four years of the coming of the railroads and the emergence of a market in tannable hides (Cronon, 199 1 :2 13- 18).

Treaty-making with the Indian tribes was ended in 1871, reportedly due to increasingly abusive uses of it to arrange deals favorable to speculators outside the normal framework of public land laws; Indians themselves however were not given American citizenship and voting .rights until 1924. In 1887, in another wishfbl compromise between humanitarian reformers and land-hungry western settlers and speculators, the Dawes Act broke up many of the reservations into individual allotments, leaving the remainder of the tribes’ common lands too small to sustain the Indians’ traditional common-use practices, and opened much ofthe remainder to white homesteading and preemption; most of the individual Indian allotments were eventually sold to whites as well. In 1862 the Indian

. reservations had included 175 million acres, and in 1887 about 138 million; by 1935 the total had declined to only 52 million acres (PLLRC, 1968:453-54).

The process and policies of Indian displacement remain an important element of American environmental as well as social policy today. Many of the 19th century issues are still active, for instance, and others have recently been reintroduced: Indian water rights (associated with the remaining reservations) are an important factor in the western water economy, Indian fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest and Indian land claims in Maine have both been subjects of recent litigation, and indigenous peoples’ claims to the vast resources of Alaska were the subject of major legislation as recently as 1980. Indian resources and policies are also important elements of American environmental policies ~ f e f e directly: coal burned in power plants that are damaging the visibility of the Grand Canyon, for one example, comes from mines on the Navajo Indian reservation, and native hunting with modem technologies in Alaska may destroy endangered species just as surely as poaching by whites.

More generally, the displacement of localized tribal economies by a globally- oriented market economy in 19th century America exemplifies many of the most important conflicts in global environmental policy today, in which central governments impose new property regimes on the environment that has served to support indigenous peoples at lower intensities in order to benefit national economic “progress,” to serve as a safety valve or source of opportunity for settlers from elsewhere, and to reap the economic advantages of global trade (Bromley, 19xx?) An obvious parallel is the Amazon Basin, where the Brazilian government has promoted westward settlement into rainforest lands occupied and used sustainably by indigenous peoples, as a safety valve against joblessness and land-reform demands in more settled areas. ’ Should one accept their claim that they

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are entitled to go through the same historical process that made the United States a world economic power, or argue that they should pursue more restrained policies (and by implication, that Americans should have also)? Similar cases can be identified throughout the world, fiom the tropics of Africa and southeast Asia to the autonomous regions and indigenous peoples of Siberia.

Economic Context The fundamental reality for U. S. public land policies of the 19th century was a set

of powefil economic forces which both shaped and were shaped by public policies. One was the revenue imperative of the new U. S government, to pay its Revolutionary War debts and assure its own fhture viability. A second was European economic conditions: European hatmakers and weavers and their customers created the demand for American h r s and cotton crops, repeal of the English “corn laws” in the 1840s created incentives for large-scale American “bonanza farming” in the midwest, Irish potato famines and European wars and revolutions drove generations of immigrants to seek new opportunities in America, and more favorable interest rates and speculative opportunities lured European investment capital to business ventures in the American west. A third was the continuous westward expansion of transportation networks--roads, river channels and steamboats, but especially canals and railroads--which opened more and more of the continent to commodity production for urban and export markets, capitalized both by private investors and by vast public land subsidies. A fourth was the resulting continuous westward movement of a growing white population, fbeled in turn by policies of unlimited immigration (which continued until the 20th century), by a widespread popular desire for land ownership, and by the growing perception of economic opportunities in the west: trapping beaver for European hatmakers, growing food for eastern markets and for war- tom Europe, growing cotton for export, later making quick fortunes in the gold and silver rushes, and providing the materials, construction and services demanded by the processes of settlement and railroad development themselves.

overlapping and gradually succeeding one another in importance, each defined by a particular set of opportunities to convert environmental conditions into economic esrrwnecfrtres. First came the trappers’ frontier, from the colonial period through the early 19th century, trading manufactured goods to the Indians for furs to ship to England; then the loggers’ and agrarian settlers’ frontiers, the latter peaking with the settlement of the fertile midwest and the agricultural boom of the 1840s, the former continuing to develop to supply the railroads and settlements across the treeless prairies, and then booming again in the Pacific forests. Then came the miners’ frontier, beginning with the 1848 California gold rush and moving thence back eastward into Nevada and the intermountain basin with successive mineral strikes; and the grazing frontier, as the transcontinental rail lines of the 1860s opened opportunities to raise cattle on the western public lands yet still ship them to eastern markets, and the frontier of dry-land farming and irrigated agriculture in the arid west. The boom periods of these frontiers were followed by a prolonged period of intensified conflicts among these competing claimants, most evident beginning in the late 19th century--white settlers and railroads versus Indians, farmers versus ranchers, settlers versus speculators and railroads--which are echoed today in environmental policy conflicts

The result was not one but a series of fiontiers, moving ever westward,

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between loggers and miners and environmentalists, between local communities and big corporations and distant governments, and between whites and Indians still.

The Civil War marked a turning point in several of these processes, as Southern secession fiom the Congress, as well as the economic and political imperatives of the war . and its aftermath, opened the way for policies clearly favoring western homesteading, transcontinental railroad construction, and large-scale resource extraction and industrialization in place of what had previously remained a predominantly agrarian economy. The transcontinental railroads themselves, driven as they were by their economic imperative to increase traffic on their lines, were perhaps the most powefil force luring settlement and resource extraction enterprises far beyond their previous limits and out across the arid Indian lands of the western territories. The “age of enterprise” or “gilded age” that followed was a period both of conversion from a predominantly agrarian to a predominantly urban and industrial society, and of resource extraction from the environment on an unprecedented scale, with both the economic wealth and the social and environmental costs, and the potential for social conflict--small holders versus large landowners and business corporations, conflicting resource claimants and users, Westerners versus distant eastern governments and banks, and others--that are associated with such unrestrained economic transformation (PLLRC, 1968:440). These forces both drove public policies, and were in turn hrther encouraged, legitimized, and amplified by them.

Land Disposal Policy

century was to promote the rapid transfer of public lands into private ownership, to generate both short-term revenues and long-term settlement and economic activity. The record of the 19th century is full of debate about how this should be done, how rapidly, for what purposes, and for whose benefit, but the basic policy of privatization was clear: there was no expectation that the government itself would take responsibility for active or ongoing management of these lands, nor make of them a colonial empire of its own. As early as the 1820s the government had sold off over 19 million acres of public lands, eleven new states had been added to the union, and the western white population had inme than tripled. More than 237 out ofthe 1,712 federal laws passed during this period were land laws.

these, established the uniform rectilinear survey of land for sale and guaranteed an absolute title to the purchaser clear of Indian rights and feudal dues; they also guaranteed non-interference by the federal government in private sale and use of land. Over the ensuing decades hundreds of land laws offered public sales of land at auction, for minimum prices per acre, in variously sized lots (initially 640 acres) These prices up through the Civil War were based solely on estimates of the land’s potential value for agrarian settlement, and had no relationship to variations in natural resource endowment among land areas. the only recognition of such variation, other than the auction process itself, was a provision reserving certain mineral-bearing lands (such as salt and lead) in government ownership, and much later, laws providing for cheaper sales of “refuse” lands that had not yet been bought at the standard prices Other laws allocated land by grants,

From its earliest land ordinances on, American government policy through the 19th

The Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the first of

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first to the newly established state governments and later to railroad companies, for such purposes as transportation, education, and economic development generally.

as to what pattern of economic development should be encouraged. Thomas Jefferson in the 178Os, for instance, advocated an economy based on small family farms, arguing that even if these were less productive than large-scale agriculture (let alone industry and commerce), they were more likely to produce a virtuous civic culture leading to “happiness and permanence of government” than would the “dependence, subservience and venality” which he associated with urban factories: “...for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe.” Consistent with this ideal, Jefferson advocated distributing public lands in small parcels at nominal prices, both by the state of Virginia in 1778-79 and subsequently by the federal government as well. Jefferson’s idealized economy was a classless society of self-sufficient land-owning farmers and communities, in harmony with the natural landscape in which they lived, whose desires were limited to their needs and who thus avoided dependence on the larger-scale forces of markets, trade, and the factory production system. Jefferson’s logic, if not his vision, was widely shared: industrialization had hardly begun in America, nine out of ten Americans lived on farms, and most influential writers--John Adams, for instance, and even Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations--agreed that America’s apparent natural advantages lay in fanning rather than manufacturing. Jefferson acknowledged that in reality most Americans were more interested in trade than his ideal would suggest--his proposals for land distribution were rejected, and by 18 16 he even acknowledged both the unattainability of his ideal and the risks of economic dependence on foreign manufacturers--but he maintained his idealized vision as a guide to long-range policies (U. S. Public Land Law Review Commission, 1968:62; Marx, 1964: 1 16- 144, 147- 148).

Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, in contrast, advocated vigorous and systematic government promotion of manufacturing, arguing that the U. S . economy was too vulnerable to foreign restrictions on trade, that a mixed economy would be both more stable and more prosperous than a purely agricultural one, and that manufacturing enterprises needed government assistance to surmount their initial obstacles (including for instance the support other governments were already providing to their foreign competitors). In his 1791 Report on Manufactures, he emphasized the desirability of

their stocks. His assistant Tench Coxe also argued eloquently that promotion of mechanized manufacturing (using water and steam power) was separable from the evils of factory labor, and in fact ideally suited to the abundance of resources and scarcity of labor that America then possessed: machines rather than laborers would do most of the work, and the “clear air and powerfbl sun of America” would give its textile producers a natural environmental advantage over their European rivals (Marx, 1964.158). On land policy, Hamilton advocated selling public lands not in small parcels at nominal prices to actual settlers, but primarily in large blocks to “moneyed individuals and companies, who will buy to sell again, and associations of persons, who intend to make settlements themselves.” his rationale was that both the encouragement of rapid privatization and the correspondingly greater revenues to the treasury were more attractive than Jefferson’s vision of a nation of farmers (Hamilton, Report on Land Disposal Plan, 1790, in Lowrie

Implicit in this policy, however, was a continuing tension among conflicting visions

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and Clarke, 1832; Report on the Sub-iect of Manufactures, 179 1, Englebert, 1950 1 15- 116; Elkins and McKitrick, 1993 258-263, Marx, 1964 150-169) The tension between Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s views--and more generally, the tension between agrarian and urbdindustrial aspirations for America’s future--underlay many of the debates over land policy throughout the 19th century.

were the first laws to establish the terms on which public lands were to be sold Key provisions provided for a uniform system of survey of public lands before they were sold, terms of minimum size, price, and method of sale; and reservation of some lands and resources for public purposes. These were the first of hundreds of federal laws dealing with the terms of public land sale, and exemplify many of the issues that were debated in public land policy for the following half century and beyond.

A first issue to be resolved was whether claimants should be able to obtain unclaimed land wherever they liked, or whether government should control and shape the westward spread of development. In the southern states, and on the southern frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee, settlers had been allowed to choose their own lands indiscriminately, marking the boundaries of their claims by identifiable landmarks and natural features. This traditional system, called “metes and bounds”, had the advantages of allowing individuals freedom to choose their own lands and of maintaining some continuity with the features of the natural landscape. However, it had disadvantages as well: it resulted in a patchwork ownership pattern, in which boundaries of the residual pieces were difficult to identie; it allowed speculators to capture the strategic and highest quality lands quickly (river crossings and lands with valuable resource endowments, for instance), leaving only poorer ones for later sale; and it was difficult if not impossible to administer without inadvertently recognizing conflicting claims. In New England, in contrast, land settlements had been granted and laid out by groups of settlers systematically, town by town, usually six to eight miles square (Hams, 1953 279 The New England system had the advantage of clear and systematic boundaries, compact and orderly development patterns, and easy record-keeping to prevent claim disputes. On the other hand, it had the disadvantage of imposing a rigid grid of ownership and jurisdiction cutting across streams and other features of the natural landscape, a problem not particularly obvious until a century later when settlement spread to the arid plains where natural features such as scarce water supplies dictated different settlement patterns. Nor, more immediately, did it recognize the reality of actual migration and settlement patterns, which proceeded rapidly along rivers and other transport routes rather than homogeneously across a rectilinear landscape. On the advice of Jefferson, the 1785 Ordinance incorporated the New England system, and its effect can be seen in any view of the Midwest. the entire region is laid out in townships six miles square, each divided into 36 sections of 640 acres each, with periodic offsets in the longitudinal roads to correct for the earth’s curvature. Four of the sections in each township were reserved for government purposes, and one for public schools

A second and more fundamental issue was, what should be the goal of land disposal policy? Should it be to maximize government revenues’ The government owed millions of dollars in war debts, yet had no major sources of revenue with which to pay them other than the public lands These lands could be sold or mortgaged to raise

The Land Ordinance of 1785, and under the Constitution the Land Act of 1796, i‘

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revenues, and of course could be granted directly to individuals as payment for military service. Alternatively, should the goal be to capitalize national economic development? The economy in 1785 was deeply depressed, and the liberal sale of land to investors might attract needed currency from Europe to finance capital investments that would have high payoffs for the nation’s economic health over the long run. Or should the goal be to increase the self-sufficiency of the ordinary settlers, thereby encouraging immigration and agrarian fieeholding? Frontier settlement would provide new sources of raw materials to the economy, and new home markets for its manufactured goods. Moreover, farm exports paid the nation’s bills, but individual farmers were chronically in debt; how could political democracy and self-govemance endure without individuals’ economic self- sufficiency? And did the society not owe some reward to the settlers who endured the hardships of frontier life to produce the raw materials, defend and expand its borders, and break the way for others? Finally, should the goal be to benefit settlers in new states, or investors and legislators in the existing states?

might the chosen goals be achieved? These several terms were interdependent. Low prices favored rapid settlement, and were essential to the individual settler; higher prices increased revenues per acre, but slowed the pace and favored wealthier investors. Liberal credit favored rapid sale (though not necessarily rapid settlement), but also encouraged speculation; tighter credit kept development slower but also reduced speculative vulnerability to economic fluctuations. Auction sales in New York also speeded the sale process (and thus government revenues from the sales), and offered some hope of capturing the true values of resource-rich or locationally advantaged lands, but favored large-scale investors and speculators; preemption rights--the right of a prior settler to buy the land without auction competition at the minimum price--and field offices in the territory were slower but favored actual settler; (though fraudulent claims were also a continuing problem). Finally, small minimum purchase sizes favored the actual settler, while larger minimum sizes obviously favored the land companies which would then subdivide and retail them to individuals.

retire the public debt. Under the 1785 Ordinance, Indian rights must first be cleared by pwehse, the tands surveyed, and some lands reserved for government use, schools, and

price of one dollar per acre; every other township would be sold in minimum lots of 640 acres (sections), and alternate townships as whole townships, no provision was made for terms of credit, nor for preemption rights of prior settlers. ‘The 1796 act reaffirmed the rectilinear survey system and the practice of selling land blocks in large units (quarter townships of 5,120 acres alternating with 640 acre sections), the land was to be sold at auctions in the Seat of Government and two field offices, at a minimum price of $2.00 per acre, with 5% cash required and credit for the remainder over one year Minimum acreages were a serious constraint, for few individual settlers could afford to purchase 640 acres; at the other end of the scale, the law set no maximum on the amount that could be purchased, nor did it require actual settlement or improvements of the land as a condition of ownership (unlike the later Homestead Act and Desert Land Act, for instance) In general, then, these terms made the land accessible primarily to the larger land companies

Third, by what terms of sale--price, credit, sales procedure, and purchase size--

The 1785 and 1796 land laws were aimed mainly at using land to raise revenues, to

military bounty claims. The remaining lands would then be sold at auction, at a minimum --

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and investors (PLLRC 125). In reality neither of these laws led to any general rush to purchase land, but they did establish the hndamental principles on which the later framework of public domain land sales was built.

newly settled territories, and for their eventual division into co-equal self-governing states, and it also established hndamental precedents of American land tenure policy: individuals had full rights to own and transfer land as they saw fit, fiee of government intervention; estates of persons dying without wills would descend to their children and next of kin, not revert to the state or to feudal grantors; and “no one would be deprived of property except that public exigency made it necessary, and then only upon hll compensation for the same” (Harris 1953:392). Finally, the Ordinance reserved important prerogatives to the federal government to dispose of and reserve public lands: state governments were forbidden to interfere either with the primary disposal process of federal lands, or with any federal regulations established to secure clear title to its purchasers; nor were they permitted to tax lands that were the property of the United States. These precedents secured federal authority over the public domain against state encroachment: federal lands did not automatically pass to state government when states were created, as is particularly evident today in such states as Nevada and Alaska (though these are, of course, outside the territory covered by the Northwest Ordinance itself).

gradual trend was the liberalization of the terms on which public lands would be sold. The Harrison Frontier Land Act of 1800 retained the minimum price of $2.00 per acre but extended credit to four years; an 1804 land act extended credit to 6 years, abolished interest payments on the balance not yet paid, reduced the minimum purchase size to a quarter section (1 60 acres), and opened additional field ofices in the areas being opened for sale. Land sales increased immediately, and surged with the economic boom and export opportunities after the War of 18 12; in 18 19 however the boom collapsed in a financial panic, as overexpansion of agricultural production drove down prices and both speculators and banks collapsed under the accumulated indebtedness of credit-based western land purchases, and the subsequent Land Act of 1820 reduced minimum land prices to $1.25 per acre but required full cash payment rather than credit for all future land sales. The process was repeated in different form in the 1830s, however, as a large-scale influx of eastern and foreign capital, attracted both by general prosperity and by the widespread construction of roads and canals and railroads into the west, heled another speculative boom in western lands, this time using paper money backed by state banks: once again widespread speculative land purchases bid up the level of indebtedness, until in 1836 President Jackson halted it by requiring hard cash rather than paper currency as payment (the “Specie Circular”) and the financial panics of 1837 and 1839 again collapsed the inflated land markets (PLLRC, 12 1 - 176).

other ways, on increasingly easy terms. First, the Preemption Acts, temporary in the 1830s but made permanent in 1841, essentially replaced the auction sale system by allowing settlers to purchase land at the minimum price without auction (to “preempt” it);. in fact both speculators and settlers already had long used collusive bidding practices (“claims associations”) to subvert the auction system, thereby avoiding higher payments

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established principles of governance for the

From these initial laws up through the General Land Law Revision Act of 189 1 , a

A series of laws beginning in the 1830s encouraged the privatization of land in

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for the true market values of resource-rich or locationally advantaged lands--and in the case of settlers, of improvements they had themselves made to the land--and speculators often used paid “entrymen” as well to pose as settlers and thus evade settler-oriented sales restrictions. Since the Preemption Act was not limited to existing settlers, in effect it opened up virtually the entire public domain to entry and staking of claims. Second, the 1854 Graduation Act reduced the price of most public lands left unsold to $1 .OO per acre after 10 years, and as little as 12 112 cents per acre after 30 years: the rationale was that these lands must be worth less than others, though in fact many valuable lands had merely been bypassed in the speed of the westward land rush and the periodic speculative collapses that had punctuated it. The law’s result was rapid and cheap privatization of the remaining public lands throughout the midwest (PLLRC 182- 196) Finally, in 1862 the Homestead Act offered virtually fiee public land to actual settlers, 160 acres for $26 with a promise of 5 years’ residency, or outright purchase at $1.25 per acre after 6 months with a right to sell it to someone else so long as the government was paid its due. The real impact of the Homestead Act was actually far greater in the 20th century than at the time-- through the end of the 19th century one to four million acres per year were homesteaded, while from 1908 through 1922 the total was 7 to 10 million acres per year--but as a symbol it represented the final victory of agrarian settler-oriented land disposal policy, Jefferson’s small-hslding yeoman farmers as victors over the expansion of both slave- based cotton cultivation and of large-scale cattle and sheep ranching and of large-scale land speculation.

None of these laws, not even the Homestead Act, ended or fundamentally changed or even rationalized the land sales system itself, nor its speculative character. Each in turn, and others to follow in the 1 8 7 0 ~ , ~ merely added one more legal mechanism to an incongruous patchwork of policy tools by which claimants could appropriate public lands at lower and lower cost. Each in turn, moreover, was based more and more on the principle of small-holding agrarian settlement as land reform, taking no account of differences in land characteristics--in forest and grass cover, mineral deposits, slopes and drainage, rainfall and fertility, even location and proximity to water or rail or road transport--that affected both its environmental and their economic values. Claiming to be an agrarian settler, for instance, one could simply enter and claim forested lands, strip and &tk trees for more than the cost of the initial payment, and sell the remaining land to

the Homestead Act was passed most of the best land for agrarian settlement--in the humid midwest, east of the 100th meridian--had already been claimed anyway, and most of what remained was in the far more arid west, where the real resource values of land were for timber and niinerals rather than agrarian settlement, and where 160 acre plots simply were not viable for agriculture anyway until irrigation projects--also subsidized by federal investments-provided water to them

someone else or simply move on and repeat the process elsewhere ironically, by the time --

Subsidies for Environmental “Improvements”

were accessible, both for initial settlement and especially for moving crops and other commodities to eastern and European markets. Paralleling the policy of land sales, therefore, the U. S . government provided immense subsidies for construction of

The public lands were only valuable for economic purposes to the extent that they

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transportation infrastructure--“internal improvements,” as they were called--including river and harbor clearing, roads, canals, and railroads. These subsidies were centrally important determinants ‘of both the extent and the patterns of environmental transformation that occurred, and of the rapid development of both internal markets and export trade. Seen in retrospect, they also set precedents for later subsidies to transform the environment for other purposes, such as multi-purpose dams and reservoirs, interstate highways, sewers and wastewater treatment plants, and others. Many of the defining environmental policy conflicts of recent decades, as well as of earlier eras, have centered on these federal subsidies for environmental transformation: the Hetch Hetchy Dam near Yosemite in 1913, the Echo Park Dam proposal in the 1950s, and many of the water resource and interstate highway construction projects planned in the 1960s and ’70s.

The federal government financed transportation infrastructure in three ways. One was from general revenues through the government budget, as public investments: as early as 1789, for instance, the government financed construction of a lighthouse near the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, and in 1802 spent $34,000 to construct public piers on the Delaware River (Smith, 1966:3); in 1824 it passed the first of many Rivers and Harbors Acts, under which the Army Corps of Engineers, from then to the present, has been allocated hnds for construction projects to make rivers and harbors more usable for navigation and other purpose^.^ General revenues provided only a limited resource for this purpose at the time, however, since they came primarily fiom tariffs on imports--the federal income tax was not instituted until the 20th century--and at least in its early years, the government had heavy debts from the Revolution to repay.

The second method was to use revenues from the sales of public lands themselves: 5% of these revenues were earmarked to benefit the states in which the public lands were sold, of which 2% was specifically to be used by the federal government to build roads and other internal improvements in support of land sales and settlement. In 1806 the Congress authorized construction of a National Road fiom Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio River, and appropriated $30,000 for it from land revenues; but while the states themselves subsequently used these revenues extensively for road construction, the federal government did not provide fbrther direct support of road construction until it established the federal highway system in 1916. The third strategy was to give grants of public lands themselves, first for the rights-of-way for transportation routes, but eventually for investment and financing purposes as well. Over the course of the 19th century the federal government donated nearly 3.4 million acres to the states for roads, 13.9 million acres for canals and other improvements, and 37 million acres for railroads; between 1858 and 187 1 it also granted over 94 million acres to the railroad companies directly (PLLRC,

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1968 13 84-85). In 1808 Albert Gallatin wrote a report to the Senate suggesting the possibility of

an extensive system of roads and canals to promote trade, both up and down the east coast (via an intercoastal waterway) and between the east coast rivers and those flowing into the Great Lakes, arguing that only the federal government had the means and the perspective to carry out such large interstate projects. Secretary of War Calhoun wrote a similar report in 18 18, sketching a systematic national plan for roads, canals and river navigation improvements to benefit both commerce and military security, but neither report was implemented due to constitutional objections against such large-scale federal

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investments. The State of New York, meanwhile, between 18 17 and 1825 financed construction of the Erie Canal on its own, and the phenomenal commercial success of this project--it reduced freight costs between New York and the Great Lakes by 85%, and shipping time from 30 to 8 days--spurred political pressures for federal support of similar ventures throughout the Great Lakes states. The Congress in 1820 authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to begin conducting surveys of the feasibility of river navigation projects-dodging the constitutional issues with the claim that this was merely gathering essential information, as the government by this time had precedents for financing’ exploratory expeditions into the public lands--and in 1824, with a supportive president now in office (John Quincy Adams), began funding federal construction of them It is worth noting that the Calhoun Report was the nearest approximation to a systematic plan of action that the Army Corps of Engineers has ever had: from the 1824 Rivers and Harbors Act to the present, its appropriations have reflected not a comprehensive program but a patchwork of specific local projects advocated by particular Congressional representatives. Since settlement and natural resource extraction activities tended to follow these lines of transport, moreover, they too developed in a similarly patchwork pattern.’

The federal government had donated rights-of-way to the states for road construction since as early as 1808, and from 1822 on it began doing the same for canals. Beginning in 1827 it took a major step further, granting additional lands to finance construction as well, especially to the Great Lakes states to connect their interior lands with the transporation route opened up by the Erie Canal. Advocates argued that since transportation access would greatly increase adjacent property values, canals and railroads

‘ could be financed--and constitutional objections overcome--by giving alternate sections of land to the construction companies to sell to investors at a profit, so that the federal government could then recapture the same total revenue by selling the remaining sections at twice the normal minimum price, as a prudent public investment (what advocates today would call a “win-win strategy,” by which everyone would benefit). State and local governments would also gain increased revenues by getting these lands onto the tax rolls, and the whole economy would benefit from the resulting growth of production and trade. The grants therefore donated alternate sections on either side within 5 miles of the route, thsmghuut the fength of the canal; later grants, beginning in 1838, specified that the remaining lands be priced at double the usual minimum price. Since some of these lands might already be occupied by prior claimants, the canal companies were also given the right to claim lands six to 15 miles fhrther away in lieu of these (“lieu lands”), which allowed them to claim many of the best lands and to hold far larger areas off the market while they made their selections. Claimants who had to be moved for construction also were given scrip allowing them to claim lands elsewhere.

construction, beginning with a grant to Illinois in 1850 for the Illinois Central Railroad and ultimately totaling over 37 million acres; and as the California gold rush and subsequent settlement of the west coast intensified pressures for transcontinental rail lines, across territories where there were yet no states, the government from 1862 to 1871 granted over 94 million acres to railroad companieS directly for the same purpose Initial grants typically gave the railroads a right-of-way plus 10 alternate sections per mile, plus the

The canal grants became precedents for similar grants to states to finance railroad

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right to take timberand stone from the public lands as well as 30-year government loans; later grants gave them 20 sections per mile, dropped the double-minimum-price justification on the remaining sections of public lands, let the railroads select lieu lands virtually anywhere they wished rather than within a specified distance of their routes, and allowed them to hold far larger areas of prime land off the market--blocking settlers’ ciaims, and also delaying paying taxes on them--for years while they made their selections. These practices allowed the railroads to gain control of large amounts of the most valuable lands, and were also, along with monopolistic railroad pricing practices, major sources of conflict between settlers and the railroads (PLLRC, 1968:356-38

The transportation grants, and particularly those to the railroads were among the most powerhi policy incentives which the government provided to promote immigration, settlement, and economic exploitation of the continent’s environmental assets. The railroads had overwhelming incentives to attract both investors and users of their services, and advertised vigorously for them not only in the eastern U. S . but throughout Europe as well, in order both to pay for construction and to generate traffic. They were, as a result, probably the most active and effective promoters of westward settlement, luring both settlers and investors westward far beyond the previous areas of settlement, and promoting commodity use and tourism as well as hrther displacement of the indigenous Indian peoples in the western lands. Statesmen of the early 19th century had uniformly believed that settlement of the West would take centuries; yet in fact by 1890, the Superintendent of the Census could declare that the unsettled fiontier no longer existed.

Administrative Agencies For all the vast government-supported transformation of the American

environment that occurred over the course of the 19th century, the institutional capacity of government itself to manage or even monitor this process was in retrospect appallingly limited. Initially the entire business of the government was carried out by just three departments: with respect to environmental hnctions, the State Department handled land acquisitions, through treaties with foreign governments and Indian tribes; the War Department handled frontier security and exploration, and later surveying and construction of engineering improvements; and the Treasury Department handled land surveying, disposal, and the resulting revenues. In 18 12 Congress established a General Land Ofice under the Treasury Department, to consolidate the public-land functions of the three departments under one Commissioner; thus was created the administrative unit that “was to manage close to a billion and a half acres spread over 30 states and to handle the transfer through sale, grants, and gifts of two-thirds of this acreage to individuals, companies, states, and railroads” (PLLRC, 1968: 127). Significantly, this consolidation served to integrate only organizational functions rather than policies for a full century and a half, until enactment of the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), the GLO and its successor Bureau of Land Management had no organic law to guide it, but was responsible merely for administering the hundreds of disparate, conflicting, and often loosely drafted land disposal laws and resulting claims that had emerged piecemeal over that period.

In retrospect, historians have speculated as to how much more wisely the settlement process might have proceeded had this ofice been given more authority and

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resources to document and monitor the environmental conditions and resources of the public domain, and even to develop a more coherent and farsighted plan for their development. Its first commissioner did in fact propose developing the capability to ’

collect and disseminate data on the natural sciences and environmental conditions, but he received no support fiom Congress for this purpose. In practice, the agency’s capabilities were simply overwhelmed by the demands of surveys and land claims, and by the associated political and economic pressures of claimants and their advocates (Engelbert, 1950:209-14). In 1849 the GLO was transferred to the new Department of the Interior, but internally it remained essentially unchanged until it was merged (with the later Grazing Service) into a Bureau of Land Management in 1946.

A lingering anomaly in American environmental policy is the fact that a military agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, remains one of the principal agencies responsible for civilian water resource engineering and management. In reality its staff consists of only some 200 military officers serving in rotation to direct a permanent staff of 32,000 civilians, but it remains a branch of the Army rather than of the Department of the Interior or of a Department of the Environment or of Public Works. The Corps developed initially to construct military fortifications, but after the War of 1812 and the establishment of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point it emerged as the main available source of engineering expertise more generally, and was asked therefore first to conduct topographic surveys and beginning in the 1820s, surveys of the feasibility of river and harbor improvements for both military and commercial navigation. With the 1824 Rivers and Harbors Act, it also became Congress’ general contractor for constructing water resource development projects as well. This role was based initially on the rationale of navigation projects’ dual value for military and commercial purposes. Owing to the political popularity of such “pork-barrel” projects, however--such projects are claimed to be for the general benefits of interstate commerce and economic development, but in fact provide particular benefits to the Congressional districts in which they are constructed-- they have remained an Army activity ever since, despite the recommendations of periodic government organization review commissions that they be consolidated with other natural resource and environmental functions in a civilian agency.’

Two other environmentally important agencies were created in the mid-1 9th century, the Interior and Agriculture Departments, and these agencies provide both important contexts for environmental policy issues today and an interesting study in institutional contrasts The Department of the Interior was created in 1849 in response to the internal pressures of federal administration. the Treasury Department had become a catch-all for diverse and time-consuming functions, and in the frenzy of the California gold rush, Congress finally accepted the argument that a separate “home department” was needed to manage the country’s internal affairs.’ The Department was formed merely by reorganizing the General Land Ofice, Patent Office, Indian Afiairs and Census Bureaus, and several other miscellaneous fbnctions from the existing three departments into a single new department, without giving its secretary any organic legislation that would authorize him to integrate or coordinate these agencies toward common goals or priorities In an ideal world it might have become the foundation for an institutional capability for integrative planning and management of the nation’s environment, and ultimately a

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Department of the Environment, but it remains to this day a loose collection of disparate and semi-autonomous agencies.’

public-land states, the department became almost immediately a de facto “department of the West,” the first federal agency to become clearly and consistently dominated, throughout most of its history, by particular economic and political constituencies. This dominance emerged within the first two years of its existence, when its secretary in 185 1 attempted to initiate more vigorous enforcement of the timber trespass laws, and was faced with a firestorm of political opposition from the western states; after the 1852 elections he was replaced, the timber agents were fired, and no firther forest protection enforcement was attempted for another quarter century. More findamentally, this result sent a message that the Department would find it extremely difficult to implement national policies that did not serve the regional and economic self-interests of its westem political constituencies (Engelbert, 1950:371-81). The timber enforcement issue is in most respects a direct antecedent of the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion” of the 1970s, which emerged as a reaction of western public land users--ranchers and mining companies in particular--against more active federal land management by the Bureau of Land Management following enactment of the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act of 1976. This modem movement too succeeded, under the Reagan Administration, in getting key policies changed and partisans appointed to key positions in the Interior Department, although these victories have been neither as total nor as enduring as those of the 19th century.”

The Department of Agriculture, in contrast, had a clear mission and client constituency from the start. Its antecedent was in the Patent Office, whose commissioner in 1839, as the tide of agrarian settlement and grain production were rising, obtained Congressional authority to gather and disseminate agricultural information and seeds. Farm interests had lobbied for a separate agency since early in the century, and with the election of Lincoln and the agrarian Republicans in 1860 they succeeded. a Department of Agriculture was created, and unlike the Interior Department, given an explicit statutory mandate to “acquire and ... diffise among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of the word.” This mandate included scientific experimentation as well, although not regulation or financial subsidies for agricultural investments. In the same year Congress passed the Morrill Act, providing land grants to the states to finance creation of a system of state agricultural colleges--the so-called “land grant” colleges and universities- -which ultimately became an important network of grass-roots allies for the Department in agricultural teaching, research and extension as well as political support In 1876 a Forestry Division was established within it, making USDA the first federal agency to pay systematic attention to the nation’s forest resources (Engelbert, 19503 8 1-89; PLLRC,

While the Interior Department thus inherited a legal patchwork and a regionally

Equally important, since most of its functions pertained particularly to the western

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defined and divisive set of political conflicts associated with land disposal, therefore, the Agriculture Department from the start was given a technical assistance mandate to serve a single and popular nationwide constituency, farmers and agricultural businesses The legacy of these differences has been a cause of severe inter-agency conflict and

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overlapping jurisdictions since--for instance, between USDA’s Forest Service and Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, and USDA’s Soil Conservation Service and Interior’sBureau of Reclamation--and it remains an important element in environmental policy conflicts with agencies responsible for competing missions, such as reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture and of commodity production on the public lands (for instance the Environmental Protection Agency, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service).

Differentiation of Natural Resource Values

disposal policy treated land by and large as a homogeneous commodity for agrarian settlement, disregarding its variability in environmental conditions and assets. This policy had the advantages of simplicity of administration and speed of disposal, and political popularity therefore with western politicians. It had serious limitations as well, however, particularly as settlement spread into regions that were not environmentally suited to family farming: the mining claims of California and the intermountain basin, the arid lands of the Great Plains, and the wooded mountains of the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. In these areas, settlers sought commodity use rights to particular resources, not merely or even primarily agricultural land, yet the existing laws were not designed to accomodate and legitimize those uses.”

Beginning around mid-century, therefore, a new set of policies began to emerge ,which gradually differentiated among property and use rights to particular environmental assets.’* These policies became a key transitional step fiom the policy of undifferentiated resource privatization which preceded them toward the reservation of these resources in public management which followed. Importantly, these laws were still clearly land disposal policies, intended to privatize resources for their commodity values; but by differentiating lands based on specific resource endowments, they began almost imperceptibly a process toward more formalized environmental characterization and classification, reservation, and public management.

One early form of resource differentiation was the recognition of poorly drained lands as less valuable than others (fiom an agrarian economic point of view, that is, since thekiffy;rert;rt.lce as flood buffers, fishery spawning grounds and waterfowl habitat was not yet well appreciated). Between 1849 and 1860, therefore, Congress passed three “Swampland Acts” donating wetlands “unfit for cultivation” to the states The rationale was borrowed fiom earlier policies to finance canals and railroads: swampland grants would provide a self-financing mechanism for transforming up to 20 million acres of unusable land into productive agricultural land, by selling the lands to investors and using the proceeds to finance levees along the rivers to protect them from flooding, in the process enhancing the value of adjacent public lands. In practice, however, the law did not carefblly define the “uncultivatability” of such lands, and was thus virtually unenforceable, states and speculators ultimately used these laws to privatize almost 65 million acres of land, many of them far more valuable than had been envisioned, and often based on false claims of their worthlessness (PLLRC, 1968.32 1-34; U S. Department of the Interior, 1973 :6) .

From the Revolution to the Civil War, the dominant mainstream of public land

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The mining frontier triggered a far more widespread form of resource differentiation, with the California gold rush in 1848 followed successively by silver strikes in Nevada in 1858 (the Comstock Lode), gold in Colorado in 1859, and other discoveries in Montana, Idaho, and neighboring states. Within months California’s economy was transformed from large Spanish ranches to boom-towns of entrepreneurial prospectors and land speculators. The federal government, however, had no specific policies for lands that were chiefly valuable for their mineral resources, and until 1866 made no new ones. Early laws (such as the land laws of 1785 and 1796) had provided that lead- and salt-bearing lands be reserved in public ownership and leased for the public benefit rather than sold or granted, and mineral leasing would later become an important form of federal policy for coal and oil deposits in the 20th century. Mining companies and land speculators had succeeded in abolishing the leasing system in 1829, however, were being offered for claim-staking and sale like any other public domain lands, with no special recognition of their mineral values (Mayer and Riley, 1985:20-39; PLLRC, 1968:707-08). govemment remained.content to leave the gold mines as simply “a common field, open to the enterprise and industry of all our citizens,” in the words of President Fillmore (PLLRC, 1968:713). Without benefit of federal policies, miners simply staked claims and

. developed a rough system of property rights based on the concept of prior appropriation: the earliest claimants had the strongest claims. Not until 1866, more than sixteen years after the California gold rush and subsequent mining booms, did Congress finally pass legislation confirming the system of mining claims that had developed.

Between 1865 and 1872, the Congress passed a series of laws establishing policies for mining on public lands that have endured virtually unchanged to the present. The first, the landmark 1866 mining law, declared that the “the mineral lands of the public domain ... are hereby declared to be free and open to exploration and occupation” subject to the customs of the local mining districts; it authorized the patenting of lode mining claims to valuable metal ores at a price of $5 per acre, with the only restriction that the claimant must have occupied the land and expended not less than $1,000 in labor and improvements.” The Placer Act of 1870 extended, these principles to placer mines (that is, hydraulic surface mining operations, as opposed to deep mining of concentrated lode deposits), and in a remarkable and problematic policy change, allowed miners for $2.50 per acre to preempt up to 160 acres that had virtually any kind of mineral deposits on them, even lands that had been exhausted for mineral purposes but could now be claimed for agrarian settlement (and with no limit on the number of separate 160-acre tracts that could be claimed).I6 Finally, the 1872 Mining Law restricted these principles to “valuable” mineral deposits (as opposed to all mineral lands), but at the same time extended them from the public domain per se to all lands owned by the United States government (that is, including later acquired lands); it also required $100 per year in development work in order to retain such claims, and in other ways codified the two previous laws. l7 While nominally intended to benefit the small miners, by allowing them to buy the lands they worked on, in effect these laws extended the same opportunities to large companies, which were by far their greatest beneficiaries They also made no provision either for royalties to the public from the enormous private wealth that might be extracted from these lands, nor even for repayment of the severe costs of environmental

and by 1846 mineral lands

Under the gold rush conditions of California, therefore, the federal

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damage--soil erosion, acid drainage into streams, destruction of habitat and vegetation, and visual scarring of the landscape--that are caused by many mining operations

. In short, mining companies thenceforth could obtain valuable mineral assets for $2.50 per acre, wherever in the public lands they might find them--prices that are still in effect today, a century and a quarter later--and persons under the guise of mining could also enter and claim public lands for virtually any purpose, fklfill the minimum occupancy and improvement requirements, purchase them for a modest price, and control their fkture use, whether that land was really suited for mining or agricultural settlement, or whether its real value lay in controlling the trailheads of such tourist attractions as the Grand Canyon, speculating in lands under consideration for irrigation dams, or other purposes (PLLRC, 1968: 708-723). As of 1976, the first year in which all such claims had even to be reported to the federal government, an estimated six million claims were outstanding; a General Accounting Ofice study in 1974 found that 237 out of 240 randomly selected claims had never been mined, and that most were being used for other purposes. Many mining land claims continue today as privileged inholdings and conflicting uses on lands that are otherwise protected as national parks or for other purposes (Mayer and Riley, 198514546, 78-82).

An important exception to the mining laws, and one which represents yet another differentiation of resource values, was the fact that coal-bearing lands were not included in its provisions. The particular value of coal had long been recognized: coal lands had been excluded from preemption claims as early as 1841, and an 1864 law offered them for sale at a.minimum price of $25 per acre, ten to twenty times the price of other public lands. These prices were reduced in 1873 to $20 per acre, or $10 if they lay more than fifteen miles distant fiom a rail line. Over 600,000 acres of coal lands were purchased under this system during the fifty years before the government changed its policy fiom sale to leasing of fbel mineral lands, in the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 (PLLRC, 1968:724- 25; Hibbard, 1924529).

policy. In the humid eastern United States, water law had adapted from England the principle of riparian water rights, under which every owner along a watercourse shared an ,

equal right to the flow of its water undiminished in quantity and quality These rights were QRgoiRg & m e ~ s of riparian land ownership, moreover, and continued whether they were actively used or not. In the west, where water was scarce and essential (especially to the crude forms of placer mining used to extract gold), the miners applied to water as well as minerals the principle ofprior appropriatiort, which allowed users simply to appropriate the water they needed from what was available, for “beneficial uses,” in the order in which they anived: “first in time, first in right.” This principle in effect treated water as an open-access resource owned by no one, but water iise rights as privately owned and salable commodities, separate from land ownership and conditional on use The federal government ratified this system in the Placer Mining Act of 1870 and the Desert Land Act of 1877 (Getches, 1990 3-13, 79-80) ’’ scarce than was riparian rights law. in arid areas, many lands were far from any watercourse, yet required water to be usable However, it left several issues unresolved that are important to current environmental policy First, it did not provide a clear system

The mining claims system had equally important consequences for water resource

_ -

The prior appropriations doctrine was better suited to regions where water was

Andrews draft -7 28 94 -- Do not cite or port! 224 24

for allocating water among upstream and downstream states, whose water demands and water rights systems might conflict: this has been a contentious issue between California and Nevada, and more generally among the states of the upper and lower basins of the Colorado River (and Mexico). Second, the hierarchy of water use rights is highly sensitive to changes in the use of the reserved water rights of the two earliest claimants of all, the Indian tribes and the federal government, whose use rights are not cancelled due to non- use, and whose increases in water use might therefore threaten lower-priority existing users. For instance, if the federal government were to sell or lease large quantitiesof water rights from public domain lands to oil shale mining companies, these could squeeze out many existing but lower-priority users. l9 Finally, the traditional prior appropriations hierarchy was based only on specific “beneficial uses,’’ which historically were associated with withdrawals of water for economic purposes and lacked formal recognition of the need to maintain in-stream flows for environmental purposes, such as sustaining fisheries and wildlife habitat. These conflicts have not only continued but increased in importance with the growth of western populations, water-demanding activities, and demands for maintenance of “fishable and swimmable” water quality in recent years, and have led some states to alter their water laws to provide increased protection for in-stream flows (Getches, 1990: 1 16- 19).

A third form of resource differentiation was the creation of a separate legal regime for disposal of “timber and stone” lands: that is, lands chiefly valuable for their forest resources (or others such as stone) and not suitable for ordinary agrarian settlement, such as the forested mountains of the western states. Timber trespass was a perennial problem on the public lands throughout the 19th century, ranging from the generally accepted practice of allowing individual settlers to cut timber for their own needs to the illegal but widespread practice of large-scale commercial logging for settlement and railroad construction, for steamboat and railroad fuel, for mine-tunnel shoring, and for other profitable purposes. Just as under the Broad Arrow policy of British colonial administration, however, efforts to control these practices only revealed the limits of central government policies as an absentee landlord in conflict with widespread and locally accepted practices: timber enforcement agents were either bribed or bullied, and ultimately driven from their posts by western political protests in the 1850s, after which timber trespass enforcement virtually ceased for a quarter century. Local businesses argued in their own defense that there was no legal means by which they could purchase these lands for logging: the public land laws were designed only for agrarian settlement after government survey of them into 160 acre farms, a process that lagged far behind the economic incentives for commercial timber harvest.

more vigorous Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz, sought to revitalize timber enforcement and prosecution, and even advocated the more farsighted policy that timberlands should be appraised and then sold at their market value rather than merely left open to private appropriation. Instead, however, Congress in 1878 substituted legal privatization for enforcement, enacting the Timber and Stone Act, which allowed the purchase of forested lands in 160-acre tracts for $2 50 per acre (an estimated 1/10 of its actual value at the time), the law also reaffirmed that it was illegal to cut or remove timber from the public lands, but exempted miners, farmers and ranchers from this restriction and

As settlement spread into the western mountains in the 1870s, therefore, a new and

II

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7 1 ’1 ’I .‘i

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even allowed those who were caught stealing timber to escape hrther penalties simply by paying the minimum land purchase price. Later in the same year, it also enacted the Free Timber Act, which allowed residents of the western states to cut timber on the public lands for agricultural, mining or “other domestic’’ purposes. In effect, these laws blocked forest protection enforcement and created yet another policy tool by which commodity users of environmental resources could transfer them cheaply into private ownership. nearly 14 million acres were eventually privatized under the Timber and Stone Act (U S. Department of the Interior, 1973:6). In the process, however, the timber agents of the 1870s and 1880s began to keep clearer records of the quantities and values of timber stolen from the public lands, and thus to provide documentary justification for policy changes that followed (PLLRC, 196853 1-55).

A final form of resource differentiation was the identification of desert lands as a distinct environment requiring different legal treatment from the mainstream of agrarian settlement laws. The arid region westward of the 100th meridian had been characterized since the Pike and Long expeditions as a “Great American Desert,” “wholly unfit for civilization, and of course uninhabitable by a people dependent upon agriculture for their subsistence” (Dick, 1970:298-99). By the 1870s it was evident that while settlement was in fact occurring there, the preemption and homestead laws were not well suited to its environmental conditions: the arid plains themselves were better suited to grazing than to farming, and productive farming required irrigation, which had already emerged as a natural technological extension of water diversions for placer mining (and an economic

.opportunities, since the influx of miners required food as well). Yet far larger areas than 160 acres were needed for cattle grazing, and much smaller areas would suffice for intensively irrigated agricultural holdings (though the total area to be irrigated also had to be far more than 160 acres, in order to pay for the capital costs of irrigation systems).

In response to irrigation and stock-raising interests, therefore, Congress passed the 1877 Desert Land Act, which allowed claimants to purchase single claims of 640 acres of desert land on unsurveyed land, at $1.25 per acre (25 cents initially, and $1 .OO more within three years), under the condition that they prove irrigation of it within three years. In practice, the requirement to irrigate proved unenforceable--to irrigate a full 640 acres in three years would have required major capital investment, and claimants’ “irrigation works“ were more often as nominal as a plow’s hrrow for a canal and a can of water for

capture of large acreages of western land, especially 640-acre strips along watercourses with which came de facto control of far larger areas of surrounding arid lands. The real effect of the policy was once again to permit transfer of large areas of land into private ownership, chiefly by large-scale grazing businesses and land speculators. Over a quarter of a million acres were claimed under this law within its first four months, and almost a third of a million the following year; in all nearly 1 1 million acres were privatized in the 14 years before the law was repealed (PLLRC, 1968 638-4 1, U S Department of the Interior, 1973.6).

irrigation-and the opportunity to claim unsurveyed land at such cheap prices led to rapid _ -

Resource Classification and Reservation

resources triggered a subtle but important institutional change as well, in that it required The gradual differentiation of legal regimes for lands endowed with different

J

226 Andrews drafr -7 28 94 -- Do riot cite or pore 26

more detailed information on environmental conditions and thus a larger and more technically trained government staff to administer. Congress’ appropriations act for the General Land Office in 1876, for example, directed it to focus on surveying lands that were arable, imgable, timbered at commercial values, coal-bearing, or related to town boundaries or private land claims (omitting grazing lands, and non-coal mineral lands since these were open to entry without survey). The Desert Lands and Timber and Stone Acts added further requirements for resource classification, and accusations of widespread land fraud and monopolization--increasingly common in the 1 870s --increased these pressures. Without accurate information on mineral deposits, for instance, valuable coal lands could simply be claimed as ordinary agrarian or even desert land at far lower prices (Hibbard, 1924:496-506).

Systematic geographic and geological surveys of the western territories began in 1867, therefore, and in the 1870s Major John Wesley Powell carried out a detailed scientific study of the Colorado River Basin, which identified its resources and made creative but controversial recommendations as to how they should be used. Powell’s seminal Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, presented to the Congress in 1878, emphasized the special environmental constraints of a region whose values were defined by rainfall and resources rather than simply by arable farmlands and transportation. He recommended that these lands be systematically classified, in advance of disposal, according to their best uses--mineral, coal, irrigable, timber, or pasturage--and be sold on terms appropriate to those uses. Low-lying land near streams should be sold in plots no larger than 80 acres, for intensive irrigated farming; pasture lands farther from water should be sold in units no smaller than four square miles (2,560 acres); and timber lands in the mountains should be sold and managed explicitly for commercial logging, not under the pretext of agrarian settlement. Rangelands and imgable areas, in Powell’s view, should be managed cooperatively in special-use districts, to coordinate the use of these shared resources.

From a scientific point of view, Powell’s recommendations were the first to propose a systematic set of policy and planning principles based explicitly on expert assessment of environmental conditions. Politically, however, they ignored equally important questions of governance: western settlers opposed them because timber, water, and Iarge areas of pasture might quickly be captured by powefil economic interests--at a time when such monopolization was already a rising concern in the west--yet the speculators themselves opposed any advance classification process that might slow or limit their opportunities under the loose existing system. Most of Powell’s recommendations were not adopted, therefore, but they did lead to consolidation of federal surveying activities into a far more professional U S Geological Survey in 1879 They also led to creation of a commission to review the whole system of public land disposal laws, and to propose a public lands classification system based on environmental characteristics and use potentials (Hibbard, 1924501-05; PLLRC, 1968 419-23) USGS rapidly became one of the most stable and respected government scientific agencies, producing systematic topographic maps, geological maps and reports, and eventually a broader range of environmental information.*’

politically charged form of analysis, which proved to be another key step toward Within ten years of its creation, however, the USGS was drawn into a far more

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Aridrews drafl --7 28 94 -- Do riot cite or qitote 27

I

government management of the environment. Land speculation under the Desert Land Act had become so widespread that it was actually hampering rather than advancing the settlement of irrigable lands, as speculators sought to claim key lands and hold them for price increases. In 1888, therefore, Congress directed the USGS (under Major Powell,

’ then its head) to conduct irrigation surveys to identify those public lands most suitable for irrigation as well as the sites necessary to store and transport water for them. Lest these surveys merely exacerbate the land speculation problem, moreover--by producing and publishing the very topographic and geologic information with which speculators themselves could claim the most strategic lands--USGS was hrther authorized to reserve the irrigable lands from private claims until it could complete its task, echoing the recommendation of Powell’s report for classification in advance of sale. These reservations blocked speculative capture, but also suspended the process of land claims and settlement generally, in effect closing the public domain and making Powell the arbiter of the whole public land system, and arousing the hostility of western Congressmen. In 1890 therefore Congress repealed USGS’ authority to reserve lands, except for reservoir sites it had already identified, and reopened the remainder to land claims; in I89 1 Congress moved to reduce the size of Desert Land Act claims, but otherwise left the land speculation problem and its consequences unchecked (PLLRC, 1968:640-42; Hibbard, 1924:504-05; Miller, 19xx:422-35).

Moment of Transition: The General Revision Act of 1891

public lands into private hands for economic commodity use, and by 1890 the Superintendent of the Census reported that there was no longer any identifiable frontier beyond the areas of continuous human settlement. The dominant ideology supporting these policies was the Jeffersonian ideal of small-scale agrarian landowners, but the primary consequence was the acquisition of far larger and more economically valuable areas by large landowners and corporations: railroads, stock ranchers, timber and mining companies, and land speculators in particular. In addition to the huge acreages given to the railroads, the Public Land Law Review Commission identified multiple examples of land acquisitions ranging from 67,000 to over a million acres, including some of the most valuable forest and mineral lands on the continent; cattle enterprises in the plains also used

The net effect of the 19th century public land laws was to transfer vast acreages of

barbed wire to enclose and control far more public lands than they in fact owned (PLLRC, -- 1968.440-4 1, 467, 482-83).

This perceived monopolization of public land and resources by large businesses, in stark contrast to the official spirit of the public land laws favoring small settlers, catalysed rising public hostility in the west as well as the east. In response, Congress in 1891 passed a general revision of the public land laws, which repealed the Timber Culture and Preemption Acts, limited homestead claims to 160 acres, and limited all fbture land claims- -except mineral lands--to a total of 320 acres per individual. It did not repeal other laws that were equally problematic, such as the Timber and Stone Act (indeed, the following year the Congress extended this law to all the public land states, and serious frauds continued to be identified in the use of this law to appropriate public forest lands), but it did eliminate several of the most abused and unpopular laws and thus simplified the land law system somewhat It also tightened the requirements of the Desert Land Act, limiting

22 Andrews drafr -7 28 94 -- Do riot cite or quote 28

claims to 320 rather than 640 acres and requiring more explicit evidence of irrigation plans and water access as well as annual investments in irrigation as conditions of sale (PLLRC, 1968:484-88, 642).

In addition to these provisions, however, the General Revision Act included a rider--a pivotal change in policy, as later events would show--which authorized the president to “set apart and reserve” forested lands as public reservations. Political support for this amendment came apparently from two sources: laymen and professional foresters concerned about private overcutting of timberlands, and western water companies seeking watershed protection for irrigation purposes (Hays, 1969:36). There had been public and scientific concern since the 1870s over the systematic deforestation that had taken place in the Great Lakes pine forests, and by the 1880s these concerns had grown into widespread fears of a “timber famine” that might leave the U. S . dependent on inferior trees or foreign suppliers, and large-scale forest privatization in the west under the Timber and Stone Act increased these concerns. Equally concerning was the apparent effect of deforestation on watersheds: a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1872 was devoted to .the subject, for example, and concern over the gradual drying up of the Erie Canal led to permanent protection of the Adirondacks as a state park. The American Forestry Association was formed in 1876, and a Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture 188 1 , and in 1889 the American Forestry Association, with the support of western irrigation interests, petitioned Congress to withdraw and protect the most valuable remaining public domain forests in permanent public management, which

. apparently prompted the 1891 amendment (PLLRC, 1968:563-66).

but the scale on which successive presidents implemented the 1891 law, as well as the intended purposes and permanence of the withdrawals, represented a fhdamental departure from the dominant 19th century policy of land disposal. Land reservations had been used for various purposes throughout the history of public land sales, to withhold lands fiom open entry and sale for such purposes as military bounty obligations, schools, mineral leasing, treaty obligations to the Indian tribes, and from 1888 to 1890 for imgation reservoirs. Several sites, but only a few, had also been reserved as public parks: ‘ the Yosemite Valley was granted to California in 1864 as a permanent trust for public reereation, and in 1872 the Congress reserved some 2 million acres of the Yellowstone Valley as a public park, with political support from railroad promoters who recognized its tourism potential.2’ Two million more acres were also reserved as federal park and forest land around the Yosemite Valley in 1890, at the lobbying of the newly-formed Sierra Club. Notwithstanding these few precedents, however, the fhdamental and virtually universal policy for the public domain lands up to 1891 was to transfer them into private ownership for commodity use, not to maintain them in government ownership for public management.

Within a month after signing the 1891 law, however, President Benjamin Harrison withdrew over 1.2 million additional acres of forest lands around the Yellowstone National Park, and by the end of his term he had withdrawn an estimated 13 million acres; by 1905 withdrawals by Presidents Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt had increased the total to nearly 86 million acres (PLLRC, 1968.567-68379) The creation of these vast reserves, followed in 1897 by the Forest Management Act which authorized the

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The principle of reserving lands in government ownership was not unprecedented,

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29

government to protect and manage them on an ongoing basis, marked a pivotal transition fiom the policy of resource privatization to a more mixed policy of privatization and public.environmenta1 management.

Assessment In summary, federal public lands policies of the 19th century amounted to an

incongruous and cumulative patchwork of laws, all promoting the privatization rather than public management of public lands and their resources, though serving varied and often conflicting purposes and beneficiaries. There was a fundamental difference, for example, between the agrarian settlement policies of preemption and homesteading on the one hand, and large-scale land grants to railroad investors--notwithstanding the ultimate economic interdependence of the two, in the settlers’ need for railroads to get their crops to distant markets and the railroads’ need for settlers as customers. In their almost exclusive emphasis on privatization of the public lands and resources, however, these policies differed both fiom the British colonial policies that preceded them, and from subsequent 20th century U. S policies which provided first for retention and more active management of these resources in public ownership, and more recently for radically increased regulation of the environmental effects even of private economic activity.

of American policy for natural resources up to 1862, comments that the years between 1828 and 1862 were a time when policies for conservation and protection of the environment should by right have emerged. The pace of resource exploitation had rapidly accelerated, and unmistakable signs of environmental damage had begun to be evident in soil, timber and minerals; and thanks to government-sponsored exploration and surveys, information both about this damage and about the limits of our environmental abundance was in fact becoming widely known. Instead, however, for more than a century American environmental policy was dominated by a conceptual outlook that placed a premium on immediate exploitation of the environment for its economic commodity value, with little restraint or even assessment of its value as a natural system or even its sustainability for fiture economic use. The rise of a philosophy of individualism and private enterprise remained the dominant factor in resource development before the Civil War, and was hked closely to popular goals of democratic egalitarianism and,of dismantling European and colonial policies that had previously restrained exploitation of environmental resources.

A particularly cautionary conclusion is that almost without exception, these policies were not only consistent with but driven by public sentiment. Some public protests arose against land and resource speculation, but others were at least as effective in blocking any meaningful restraint on environmentally destructive exploitation of natural resources. In Englebert’s view, the public often did not h i ly recognize where its true interests lay, and tended to select alternatives that were most politically and economically expedient in the short term, with consequences that were often environmentally disastrous. A primary consequence for environmental policy was an almost total failure of anticipatory planning or prudence: rather than forestalling problems, the government waited until emerging problems had caused compelling collective impacts before being willing to take legislative or administrative action to correct them, and even then its

Ernest Engelbert, whose 1950 study is in many respects the definitive assessment

Artdrews drarft -7 28 94 -- Do )lot cite or pore 30 230

compromises were often inadequate, ineffectual, or even perverse.. Only after the Civil War did there emerge the beginnings of a nationwide public concern about large-scale environmental destruction by big businesses--in essence, an alliance of environmentalism and populism-- that galvanized a more effective political movement for environmental protection and restraint (Engelbert, 1950:39 1-408). For modem advocates of greater government accountability and citizen participation, this conclusion is in a real sense a

to public concerns, but worrying in that it suggests that for most of an entire century in which patterns of environmental use were being set and serious destruction occurring, general public preferences were in fact causing rather than correcting the problem, and were just as subject to short-term and self-interested priorities as were many larger businesses and economic interests. Citizen participation in itself, in short, was not a panacea for the intrinsically problematic characteristics of environmental issues that were discussed in Chapter 1.

two-edged sword: reassuring in that it suggests American governance is in fact responsive ~~

~

Add to summary re post-Engelbert period: sequence of steps leading to public management; significance of public land reservations leading to expertise and multipurpose scientific management; similar process in multipurpose water management beyond just navigation (irrigation ’esp.).

Revisit key features of chap. 1, similarities and differences to other policy issues.

Revisit key issue of ownership, and implications of largescale privatization of resources in 19th century, and commodity use commitment to distant markets (cite eg Cronon re Chicago as central example of this alienation of first into second nature, ecolosystems into commodities defined by larger and faraway economic systems and markets)

A dominant strain of American environmental policy even today is the two-century legacy of government policies actively promoting the extraction and use of environmental resources for economic gain.

The tension between Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s views--and more generally, the tension between agrarian and urbadindustrial aspirations for America’s future--underlay many of the debates over land policy throughout the 19th century.

Seen in retrospect, internal improvements also set precedents for later subsidies to transform the environment for other purposes, such as multi-purpose dams and reservoirs, interstate highways, sewers and wastewater treatment plants, and others.

Andrews draft -7 28 9-1 -- Do riot cite or qtrote

The gradual differentiation of legal regimes for lands endowed with different resources triggered a subtle but important institutional change as well, in that it required more detailed information on environmental conditions and thus a larger and more technically trained government staff to administer.

The net effect of the 19th century public land laws was to transfer vast acreages of public lands into private hands for economic commodity use, and by 1890 the Superintendent of the Census reported that there was no longer any identifiable frontier beyond the areas of continuous human settlement.

The principle of reserving lands in government ownership was not unprecedented, but the scale on which successive presidents implemented the 1891 law, as well as the intended purposes and permanence of the withdrawals, represented a kndamental departure fiom the dominant 19th century policy of land disposal.

The environmental policies of 19th century public land settlement are important not only for their own sake, but for what they reveal about environmentalpoiitics, both then and now. .................. . . . . . . . 99999999

sectionalism: rising west vs. east and south Civil War competingkonflicting users and ideologies individuals vs. big businesses -- investors, mining & logging cos., railroads, industrialization- vs. populism

These conflicts echoed the early clash between the agrarian and industrial visions of Jefferson and Hamilton, and are strongly evident in environmental and other public policy conflicts even today: between family farms and agribusinesses, between citizen environmentalists and multinational corporations, even between corporate and populist versions of environmentalism.

American Public Works Association. 1976. History of Public Works in the United States, 1776-1 976. Ellis Armstrong, Michael Robinson and Suellen Hoy, eds. Chicago: APWA.

ConniK Richard. 1994. Federal Lands: New Showdowns in the Old West. National Geographic 185:2-39.

Cronon, William. 1991. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton.

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Dick, Everett. 1970. The Lure of the Land: A Social History of the Public Lands from the Articles of Confederation to the New Deal. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

&? 32 And.rews draft -7 28 94 -- Do riot cile or quote 32

Elkins, Stanley and Eric McKitrick, 1993. The A3e of Federalism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Englebert, Ernest A. 1950. American Policv for Natural Resources: A Historical Survev to 1862. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University (Ph.D. Thesis).

Getches, David H. 1990. Water Law in a Nutshell. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.

Goetzmann, William H. 1993 119671. Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West. Austin: Texas State Historical Association.

Hays, Samuel P. 1969 [ 19581. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiencv. New York: Atheneum.

Hibbard, Benjamin H. 1924. A History of the Public Land Policies. New York: MacMillan.

Jefferson, Thomas. 18xx. Notes on the State of Virginia. Thomas Abernethy, editor. , 1964.

Lowrie, Walter and Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds. 1832. Public Lands. American State Papers, vol. 1. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Offce.

Marsh, George Perkins. 1864, 1965. Man and Nature: Or. Physical Geography as Modified bv Human Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Marx, Lea. 1964. The Machine in the Garden: Technolog and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mayer, Carl J. and George A. Riley. 1985. Public Domain. Private Dominion: A History efpttbhc Mineral Policy in America. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

_ - Miller, Joseph

Peterson and Gray,

Smith, Frank E. 197 1. Conservation in the United States: Land and Water. 1492- 1900. New York: Chelsea House (Van Nostrand Reinhoid).

Smith, Frank E. 1966. The Politics of Conservation. New York: Harper

. --

Smith, Henry Nash. 1950. Virgin Land: The American West as Svmbol and Myth Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press [?I

d33 . Andrews drap --7 28 94 -- Do iiot cite or quote 33 .

Turner, Frederick Jackson. 1962. Rise of the New West. 18 19- 1829, New York: Collier Books.

U. S. Department of the Interior. Bureau of Land Management. 1973. Public Land Statistics. Washington, DC: U. S . Government Printing Otfice.

U. S. Public Land Law Review Commission. 1968. Historv of Public Land Law Development. Washington, DC: U. S . Government Printing Office.

The ownership of Alaskan lands was radically altered by enactment of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in [ 1979-80?], but federal land ownership in most other states remains more or less as stated.

The Cherokee confrontation also gave rise to one of the more celebrated early confrontations between Executive and judicial powers, as the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Marshall ruled in favor of the Indians but the President--a westemer himself and advocate for the white settlers-refused to use federal troops to enforce the court's decision r M r . Marshall has made his decision--now let him enforce it!"). ' The Timber Culture Act of 1873. for instance. allowed settlers to claim an additional 160 acres if they would agree to plant and cultivate trees on 40 of them. though there was no effective way of enforcing the success or even cultivation of the plantations: and the Desert Land Act of 1877 allowed claimants to patent as much as 640 acres of and lands for as little as 25 cents per acre, based on flimsy evidence of intent to irrigate it for farming (PLLRC. 1968:399401).

Constitutional objections to federal support for navigation expenditures were mooted in 1824 by the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Gibbons v. Opden. which established federal supremacy over navigation issues on all navigable rivers. as a matter of interstate commerce. opening the way for these sorts of investments (APWA. 1976:30). ' William Cronon notes for instance that for all its supposed "natural advantages" as a location for a major midwestem metropolis. even the city of Chicago had equally severe disadvantages--substantial unstable lowlands both underlying it and in surrounding areas. a sand bar that virtually blocked its harbor, and substantial obstacles to shipping in the areas separating the several Great Lakes--which were only overcome by major federal investments in transportation improvements (Cronon. 199 1:55-74).

Not unlike airlines today. the 19th centu'ry railroads engaged in price competition on lines between ' eastem cities where they had to match competitors' fares. but made up their losses by charging higher

This was recommended by the Hoover Commissions on Government Reorganization. and more recently

1

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rates to farmers in the west where their lines were the only routes available.

in 1969 by President Nixon's Ash Council on Government Reorganization. It has never occurred. hweyer, due to the political opposition of the Corps' client constituencies and Congressional protectors.

Several presidents and others had long advocated such a department. out of concern for the increasing burden. of the government's business and the inabilih of existing departments to cope effectively with the new problems of national development. Opponents however appeared to prefer a minimalist approach to government administration. and were supported in this by those who more specifically opposed expansion of the federal government's role in subsidizing internal improvements and to its preemption of state prerogatives (Engelbert. 1950:200-02).

recommended reorganizing it into a Department of Environment and Natural Resources. adding to it the Forest Service and the civilian water resouce functions of the Army Corps of Engineers. but this proposal was never adopted.

These controversies also illustrate the "logic of collective action" described by political scientist Mancur Olson. under which identifiable political minorities with personal economic interests in the outcomes can prevail over broader majority interests. since they can be mobilized more easily and have clearer personal stakes in the outcome (Olson. 196s).

7

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In 1969, in fact. the N'ison Administration's Ash Commission on Government Organization 9

434 Andrews draft -7 28 94 - Do tior cite or qriote 34

Early land laws did provide for suneying of the lands. for resenation of one-third of all gold. silver and lead mines for public revenue. and for resen-ation of some livesak plantations in the South for naval shipbuilding, but these were not significant exceptions to the dominant policy (Hibbard. 1924:491-96). l2 Hibbard (192)) deserves particular credit for noting the importance of resource classification as a step in the process of policy development for the public lands.

Typically a lease would run for 3 years, paying the government about 10% of the output as a royalty in kind. Operators. however. complained that 3 years was too brief a period to make a profit on the capital investment of opening and working a mine; and the administrative costs of the leasing system were often higher than thc royalties in any case. especially since royalties from undercapitalized or otherwise unreliable operators often proved uncollectible. The actual process of mining also often involved extensive unautori~ed use of timber from adjacent public lands. l4 For instance. the immensely valuable iron- and copper-bearing lands of the Great Lakes states were simply offered for sale as ordina? agrarian lands and bought up by speculators. '' 14 Stat. 251 (1866).

'' Though not until 1976. over a century later. were claimants even required to report their claims to the federal government: they need only file them with local land offices (Mayer and hley, 1985:44). 17 Stat. 91 (1872).

The details of the prior appropriation system vary somewhat from state to state, with Colorado and others following a relatively pure version of the doctrine whereas California and some others developed a hybrid mix of riparian and appropriation principles. which was clarified legislatively after a key court decision (the Haggin case) in 1881 (Dick. 1970:310-11). l9 The reserved water rights principle is founded in the Constitutional powers of the federal government to manage public lands (the property clause) and to provide for navigation (under the commerce clause), 'and in Supreme Court decisions holding that water rights for Indian tribes were necessarily implied by the treaties setting aside reservations for them (Winters v. United States, 1908) and that reservations of public lands for other purposes also removed water sources on that land from appropriation under state laws (the Pelton Dam case. Federal Power Conmission v. Oregon. 1955). USGS earned its scientific respect in part by dejning its mission as the production of scientific

information for general use rather than the support of GLO's land sales survey process per se; it thus avoided both the ad hoc priorities and the political pressures that were endemic to GLO's land disposal mission. This success bears comparison with the more problematic situation of science in the Environmental Protection Agency, whose research programs have frequently been criticized for being too narrowly tied to the od hoc demands of its regulatory programs. See discussion in later chapters.

On the Yellowstone history, cf. Martis p. 164 or his underlying references???]. Several smaller '

fites we= also reserved over the years. such as the Arkansas Hot Springs in 1832 and Michigan's Mackinac Island in 1875.

13

16 Stat. 217 (1870).

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20

ENVR/PLAN/PUPA 153 Environmental Management and Policy

Environmental Services and Public Health

environmental management different from the movements for conservation and preservation of natural resources? Why did they emerge so se arately, and what ' -d \J \dd intrinsic similarities and differences do they have?

. ~ ~ , ~ ~ k , i < ~ n 1. In what ways was the 19th century movement for environmental health and urban +c;&s -

u t ~

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2. To what extent do these similarities and differences still exist today? For example, the \ --e/ p6 environmental management programs with many of its programs for environmental (and other) health services, into a single "Department of Environment, Health, and Natural Resources;" what benefits and problems would you foresee from such a change?

3. Joel Tan, an historian who has written about 19th century problems of urban water supply and wastewater Ifianagement, argues that "Society continues to struggle with the problems of a waste removal technology based upon concepts over a century old." What does he mean? Do you agree? How do 19th century decisions such as these affect us today, if at all?

governor of North Carolina recently merged the state's natural resource and ,-L3y

4. In what ways were economic forces a cause of

5 . In what ways were govemmentpolicies a

century? In what ways did such forces help to

what ways did they help to solve such problems? e- - 04 6. How did urban environmental problems lead to govemment management of environmental

conditions? UVrtLJ- scds ? % S *

7. What were "contagionism," and the "filth" theory of disease? How did these views of science affect the environmental movements of the 19th century? The environment- related professions (public health physicians, sanitary engineers, etc.)? Public policies? How did changes in scientific beliefs affect the development of environmental policies?

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Chapter 6 The Environmental Sanitation Movement

American environmental policy today emerged in part from the natural resource conservation and preservation traditions, which demanded government action to restrain the destructive effects of market forces on natural landscapes and to preserve the most unique of these entirely. It emerged at least equally, however, out of demands for government action to protect human health from environmental causes of death and disease, and particularly out of the 19th century sanitation movement--led by doctors, engineers, and social reformers--to provide reliable sources of clean water, control the disposal of sewage and noxious wastes, reduce smoke, and improve living conditions more generally. These government interventions brought about profound improvements in the health status of urban populations both in America and elsewhere--cholera, for instance, was eliminated from most major cities by the 1870s-yet they were initiated well before science had provided clear knowledge of their bacteriological causes and ecological transmission routes (Ruckeishaus, 1992: 146). The fact that they thus did many of the right things for the “wrong” reasons affected both their immediate success and their ultimate decline as a political force: this coalition fragmented in the early 20th century, and while its several professional elements continued to develop and to make progress on some issues, the issue of urban and industrial pollution did not reappear again as a broad political movement until half a century later and in significantly different form in the modern environmental movement.’ Both the rise and the decline of the sanitation movement, therefore, provide important background for understanding environmental policy and politics today.

Cities throughout human history have been not only centers of commerce and culture. but also a particular kind of humanly created environment. Defined by high densities of human populations and economic activities, they represent inherently radical transformations of their own natural landscapes, which destroy and replace all but the most basic environmental processes (along with most of their indigenous species), and overload those that remain with the concentrated discharge of human, animal, and industrial wastes into the air and water and onto the land. The distinguished sanitary engineer Abel Wolman once characterized cities as having their own metabolism, whose cycle is not completed until the waste materials and energy of daily life are safely and efficiently disposed of (Wolman, 1968). Environmental pollution problems are not unique to the urban environment, but both their magnitude and their threats to human health are magnified by high population densities and by the close commingling of those populations with high densities of other animals (horses and pigs, for instance) and with industrial wastes.

Urbanization also creates new ecological opportunities for species that can adapt to the urban setting, such as some human disease organisms and their vectors. Urban demands and markets drive many of the transformations of distant natural ecosystems into commodities, and conversely, the technologies manufactured in cities provide the tools with which that transformation is made ever more efficient and complete These patterns of transport and economic exchange also create opportunities for long-range colonization in new locations, not only by humans but by any other organisms that can survive the trip,

.

Andkews &a$? - 5/30/95 - Do not cite or quote 2 23g from crops and domestic animals to weeds and diseases, each of which has the potential to alter the impacted ecosystem profoundly. The 19th century transformation of North American ecosystems into economic commodities was mirrored, therefore, in the intensification of air and water pollution and other environmental problems associated with rapid urbanization, and magnified by the heavy industrialization that took place in the decades following the Civil War. In the words of one historian,

The problem of public health was inherent in the new industrial civilization. The same process that created the market economy, the factory, and the modem urban environment also brought into being the health problems that made necessary new means of disease prevention and health protection (Rosen, 1958:201). Forgotten by most Americans today, the 19th century movement for urban

sanitation was as important a foundation for today’s environmental policies as were the more widely remembered movements for forest conservation and preservation of national parks. The sanitary reform movement joined health professionals, sanitary engineers, women’s organizations, and urban reformers concerned with the living conditions of the poor, into a widespread movement for sanitation, public health, and urban waste management. Although it had more limited immediate success in establishing federal policies and institutions, and indeed only mixed success in remedying urban pollution problems generally, this movement laid the foundation for public management of urban water supplies, wastes and wastewater, and for the establishment of public health agencies more generally. Its successes and failures as a political movement also deserve comparison with those of the environmental movement of the late 20th century.

The Urban Environment

with the conversion of the natural landscape into privately owned economic commodities, was the transformation of human settlements from decentralized towns and villages into large-scale urban and industrial regions. In 1790 the United States had 24 cities, in 1840 131, and by 1920 over 2,700. In 1790 the urban population represented only 5% of the country’s total, and only two cities were larger than 25,000; by 1840 the urban population was about 1.8 million, representing just under 11% of the total; by 1920 the total was over 54 million, and represented over 50% of the total population. By one estimate this trend amounted to at least 29% growth in the urban population each decade, and as much as 92% growth between 1840 and 1850. This rapid urban population increase alone, heled both by open immigration from Europe and by rural-to-urban migration within the United States, caused serious crises in living conditions: by 1894, for instance, the population density in one district of New York City was nearly 1,000 persons per acre (about 300,000 within five or six blocks), compared to about 760 per acre in Bombay and 485 per acre in the worst slums of Europe (Melosi, 198 1 : 13- 16).

Even in the early colonial towns, the environmental consequences of urban population densities and living conditions required government attention and public policy interventions. Sanitation was an ubiquitous problem, though mitigated by the small scale of the towns and the correspondingly closer proximity of the countryside. Human wastes were discharged into back-yard privies, or into neighborhood drainage ditches which rapidly became open sewers and receptacles for filth: a Boston ordinance as early as 1652

The major environmental transformation of America in the 19th century, along

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prohibited the construction of privies within 20 feet of highways or neighborhood houses unless they had vaults at least six feet deep. Solid wastes were simply put out on the streets by householders and carried away by private “cartmen,” a system which left the streets filthy and unsanitary; by the end of the 18th century all major towns had found it necessary to appoint official scavengers, who were responsible for supervising removal of garbage, rubbish, and dead animals from the streets and enforcing street-cleaning regulations against both cartmen and individuals.* Food inspectors were also appointed beginning in the 1660s, to stop adulteration of foods and unsanitary packing of meat barrels that were damaging to cities’ trade reputations. These policies were unevenly and sporadically enforced, however: public and business support for regulatory measures blossomed with crises, but then faded as the crises subsided and the constraining effects of enforcement on individual behavior and commercial opportunities came to appear more prominent ( D u e , 1990:9-15).

Business and industrial activities compounded these problems. Tanneries, slaughterhouses, fishmongers, and other businesses were sources of serious pollution and food and water contamination, as well as severe stench as their wastes putrefied, and of fiequent occupational hazards to their workers. Early municipal governments often sought to confine these noxious businesses to particular areas of the town--an early attempt at land use zoning--but even in separate areas they were major contributors to urban environmental filth and pollution. Between 1820 and 1870 American cities grew into regional commercial centers, largely as a result of the application of water and steam power, which permitted larger-scale factory manufacturing, and the development of the canal and railroad networks, which permitted larger-scale trade and more concentrated processing of materials fiom farms, forests and mines. All these enterprises added to the aggregate urban waste load, though the scale of most individual enterprises themselves remained relatively small and decentralized up through the Civil War (Warner, 1972:60- 62).

Between 1870 and 1920, with the introduction of coal and electricity as well as the completion of the rail network, American cities began to experience the f i l l consequences of the Industrial Revolution, both positive and negative, a s the largest cities evolved into giant industrial metropolitan areas and regional multi-city manufacturing belts dominated by far larger-scale and more specialized corporate enterprises than had previously existed. As businesses grew in scale, their environmental impacts also became more concentrated. Small slaughterhouses in many cities were replaced by giant stockyards and meat-packing industries in fewer cities, small foundries were replaced by giant steel mills, and water power was replaced first by wood and then by coal, adding a constant pall of smoke over industrial cities both from their industries and fiom the railroads which served them. By 1895 coal consumption had surpassed wood as the primary he1 for basic manufacturing and transportation, particularly bituminous soft coal, which was burned at low efficiencies and emitted heavy clouds of sulfirous smoke (Melosi, 1980.7, 198 1 : 17; Cronon, 1991 :207-59; ). Industrial employment grew similarly, adding about a million or more industrial workers per decade from 1870 to 1920; jobs in basic iron and steel-making alone increased by 50 to 150 thousand in every decade but one (Historical Statistics of the United States From Colonial Times to 1970, Series D152- 18 1). With these changes in industrial scale and employment came both more serious urban and industrial pollution,

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and sharper and sharper differentiation of living conditions: large corporations greatly exacerbated previous differences in pay and thus of standards of living between their well- educated elite managers and skilled personnel on the one hand, and their large pools of unskilled workers who lived in poverty and poor sanitary conditions (Warner, 1972:98-

Throughout the 19th century every American city had to deal not only with the

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wastes of its human population and industrial activities, but also with the enormous environmental impacts of horse-drawn transportation. New York and Brooklyn in 1900 were home to 150,000 to 175,000 horses, Chicago had over 83,000, Detroit 12,000 and even Columbus (Ohio) 5,000; overall there were an estimated three to three and a half million horses in American cities at the turn of the century. Milwaukee’s 12,500 horses in 1907 produced an estimated 133 tons of manure per day, and officials in Rochester (New York) calculated in 1900 that the city’s 15,000 horses produced enough manure each year to make a pile one acre in area and 175 feet high. This manure harbored tetanus and other disease spores; it created severe stench in wet weather, and was ground into clouds of unsanitary dust when dry; it provided a prime breeding ground for houseflies, which were disease vectors as well; and it required major municipal expenditures for street-cleaning equipment and personnel. When each horse died, it also left a 1,300 pound carcass to be removed and disposed: in 1880 the City of New York removed 15,000 dead horses from its streets, and as late as 1912 Chicago removed nearly 10,000. From this perspective, motor vehicles appeared to offer a vast improvement in urban life, not only in convenience, speed and mechanical efficiency, but also in reduction of the public health hazards (not to mention the aesthetics of smell and.noise) that were attributable to the “horse-infected city” (Tarr, 197 1 :65-69, 106).

The living conditions of urban dwellers included severe environmental health‘ hazards, on a scale unknown in the United States today. Yellow fever epidemics, imported with the shipping trade fiom tropical countries, swept through East Coast port cities repeatedly in the 1790s, then returned to the southern port cities in the 1850s, killing .

hundreds or even thousands of people in a single city in a single summer. Over 5,000 people died of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793, 1,500 to 2,000 in New York in 1798, and hundreds more in other cities from Bost0.n to New Orleans; the 1853 epidemic killed 9,000 in New Orleans alone ( D u e , 1990:38-48, 100). Asiatic cholera spread to the U.S.

’ in the 1830s and again in the 186Os, killing thousands more: 3,000 in New York City, 4,000 to 5,000 in New Orleans, over 2,000 in Cincinnati and over 3,500 in St. Louis ( D u e , 1990:79-84,12 1-23). Outbreaks of typhoid, typhus and other diseases were constant threats; and smallpox, diphtheria, and tuberculosis were widespread and important causes of death as well (Due , 1990: 194-201). Infant mortality rates in New York City were 65 percent higher by 1870 than they had been in 18 10 (Melosi, 198 1 : 19). The causes of these diseases were unknown, but they appeared to arise either through contagion (that is, direct transmission by contact from infected victims to others) or perhaps from the gasses emanating from the ground or associated with the stench of environmental filth--“miasmas”--in the urban wastes and summer heat when the disease epidemics typically occurred ( D u e , 1990:4).

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Public Health Regulation

power as early as colonial times, but until the mid-19th century it was implemented almost exclusively through quarantine laws, which authorized involuntary confinement of persons carrying contagious diseases in order to prevent their contact with others. Quarantine laws were enacted under state rather than federal authority, and implemented by municipal governments, The Supreme Court acknowledged and confirmed these powers in 1824, in the course of its famous Gibbons v. Ogden decision. That decision, which established the supremacy of federal authority over the states in interstate commerce (and specifically in navigation, a key precedent underpinning the emerging federal role in water resource development discussed earlier), also distinguished this federal authority from the far broader range of state inspection, quarantine and other health laws which epitomized the state police power.4 Typically, port cities enacted quarantine ordinances which authorized official port physicians to inspect arriving ships for signs of disease, and to confine their personnel and cargoes either aboard ships or in local “pest houses” until they were free of symptoms, a restriction that could last for 30 to 60 days or more if necessary; the inspection and quarantine process in turn was paid for by inspection fees on shipping.

tool available which might limit the spread of epidemics, but it was nonetheless controversial. It was attacked as a dictatorial and paternalistic form of government regulation: it caused unwelcome delays in business and commerce, and even in the daily lives of doctors who were themselves subject to quarahtine when they treated disease victims. It was attacked as corruptible: it was a source of revenues and patronage to local governments, in which the official port physician was a patronage appointee who supported himself by inspection fees charged to the ships, and might be tempted to bend his judgment in response to local political or economic pressures. Finally, critics attacked quarantine policies on the grounds of scientific uncertainty: since many people who were exposed to disease victims did not become ill themselves, and some persons who fell sick had had no obvious direct exposure to those who were sick, critics questioned the validity of the whole contagion theory of disease transmission on which quarantine was based, and ultimately advocated alternative solutions such as improvements in urban ~anitation.~

The Sanitation Reform Movement The idea of a broader government mission to protect public health was rooted in

the 18th century Enlightenment movement, which articulated powehl new beliefs in the efficacy of science and human reason to improve human living conditions; it paralleled the influence of the same ideas on institutions of democratic governance, such as belief in the primacy of an informed and reasoning citizenry.6 In Europe these ideas were championed by Voltaire, Wesley, Jeremy Bentham, Adam Smith, John Locke and others. Precursors of the public health movement also included British initiatives for penal reform in the 1770s and for the protection of industrial workers and child workers in the 1780s, reform movements which anticipated the 19th century movement to improve sanitation and public health for the broader population. Particularly important for English and American policies was the work of Jeremy Bentham and his Philosophical Radicals, who advocated addressing all public problems on a rational scientific basis and called for kndamental

The protection of public health was an accepted application of the states’ police

Given the medical theories of the time, quarantine seemed to be the only policy

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reforms including free trade, birth control, legal and parliamentary reform, and educational reform. These ideas framed a philosophical approach--Liberalism, in its historical meaning as opposed to its modern pejorative connotation--whose legacy remains one of several important and conflicting undercurrents in American environmental policy today (Winslow, 1923; Rosen, 1958: 13 1-37, 192-201).

of England’s Poor Laws and by the reports of Edwin Chadwick, Secretary of the Poor Law Commission and an ardent Benthamite. Chadwick was an active advocate of the . principle ofpreventing disease by improving the living conditions of the urban poor who were its most frequent victims. In the course of the Commission’s work, Chadwick hired three physicians to conduct a systematic survey of the sanitary conditions of the urban

The sanitary reform movement began in England in the 1830s, prompted by reform

oor and of preventable causes of their sicknesses, arguing that the expenditures necessary

he resulting 3-volume report, published in 1842 under the title The Sanitarv Condition of disease prevention could be shown to cost less than the costs of widespread disease.

the Labouring Population of England, provided a systematic and starkly detailed report of the conditions under which the’urban poor lived, and offered a compelling case that high disease and mortality rates were related to the filthy environmental conditions in which the urban poor lived: lack of ventilation and drainage, lack of safe water supplies, and lack of means to remove rehse regularly from houses and streets. Public health was redefined from a moral problem that could be blamed on the weak character and voluntary living habits of the poor, or a medical problem that could be treated by physicians one patient at a time, to an engineering and social reform problem that must be solved by municipal governments: providing proper environmental services for water supply, wastewater drainage, and waste removal (Rosen, 1958: 192-2 16).

The Chadwick Report is generally recognized as the most important single document in the history of the public health movement (Winslow, 1923; Barnes, 1935:45 1-53; Rosen, 1958:214). It produced a revolution in English sanitary science, a General Board of Health in Great Britain, and a model upon which other countries in Europe and America later proceeded--indeed, a model which is in many respects equally applicable to the cities of developing countries today. Its underlying theory of disease causation was later proven incorrect--Chadwick, like many in his day, believed that disease was caused not by contagion but by “miasmas,” the foul gasses arising from poor 1 drainage and stagnant wastes--but its program of solutions was in fact-an effective set of remedies for reducing human exposure to the environmental conditions in which the real causes flourished. As one American physician wrote, advocating adoption of similar measures in the U. S., the ultimate causes of these diseases were unknown, but their proximate causes were well ascertained: they lay

... in the filthy and crowded abodes of the laboring classes of large cities, where there is an entire absence of cleanliness and ventilation--an insufficient supply of pure water and an imperfect drainage; ... in natural defects of soil, or its impregnation with offensive effluvia from various decomposing substances; in proximity to burial-grounds, open sewers, stagnant water, or noxious manufactures.. . . Of all the means for the improvement of the sanitary condition of a great city like this, none can be compared in utility with an abundant supply of pure water (Clark, 1852:29-30, 36).

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The Chadwick Report inspired similar investigations in many American cities. In 1845 Dr. John Griscom, New York City Inspector, published a similarly titled report, The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of New York, which painted an equally grim picture of sanitary conditions there; the 1850 Report of the Massachusetts Sanitary Commission, drafted by Lemuel Shattuck, documented similar conditions in Boston (Winslow, 1923:25-26).’ Over the ensuing decades, sanitary surveys were conducted in almost every major American city, usually prompted by public reaction to cholera outbreaks. The surveys consistently recommended building municipal water and sewer systems, improving street-cleaning and garbage collection programs, creating stronger local health departments, and passing effective sanitary laws (Due , 1990:97-100). A New York Citizens’ Association report in 1865, for instance, identified stark disparities in disease and death rates among the city’s districts owing to environmental living conditions: in the worst districts, residents suffered sharply higher incidence of malaria, overcrowding, uncleanness, lack of ventilation, non-removal of putrefiable wastes, and filthy cesspools. It recommended sanitary laws for tenant houses, and improved buildings that would provide fresh air and sunlight, ventilation and cleanliness; the creation of an effective system of medical and sanitary inspection, as well as air sampling and chemical analysis of water supplies; a serious investment in sanitary engineering to increase urban cleanliness and remove public nuisances; and more generally, better record-keeping and administration of public health conditions and needs (Citizens’ Association of New York, 1865).

Like the Chadwick Report, these reports did not result in immediate policy changes, but they played key roles in reshaping the public agenda fiom moral criticism of the poor to systematic data collection and improvement of community living conditions; most of their recommendations eventually were adopted. In 1866, New York City finally passed a Metropolitan Health Law, which became a model for other U.S. cities;’ the first state board of health was created in Massachusetts in 1869, and others followed; and in 1872 the American Public Health Association was founded, providing a common professional forum and identity for the wide range of physicians, engineers and others who comprised the movement for urban sanitation and public health (Duffy, 1990:95-97; Rosen, 1958:243-48). By 1880 at least 94% of America’s cities had a board of health, a h d h commission or at least a health officer, and public-health officers and sanitarians dominated American thinking about waste collection and disposal problems as well as wastewater sanitation up through the 1880s and 1890s (Melosi, 1981 :33).

Public Health and Public Works

public works: that is, the construction and operation of water supply, wastewater management, and solid waste disposal services. It was also a matter of governance, by which waste disposal responsibilities that had been left to individual households were gradually assumed by governments. Urban water supplies before the 19th century were drawn entirely fiom local wells, rainwater cisterns, and local ponds and streams, and wastewater was simply dumped into backyard cesspools or privy vaults or neighborhood drainage ditches; street gutters. In a few larger cities storm-water sewers served to carry off rainfall, but these were not intended for removal of household or industrial wastes.

The sanitation movement in the U.S. was an issue not only of public health but of

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Moreover, responsibility for maintenance of these drains was an individual rather than a government responsibility, usually enforced only sporadically when overflows created a nuisance. With the rapid growth of cities in the early 19th century, these local supplies became both inadequate and contaminated. Larger populations and industries used more water and discharged far more wastes, and required more systematic fire protection and street-cleaning as well (Tarr et a/., 1980:59-60).’

largest cities, to bring more water fiom more distant sources into the cities; by 1880 598 had done so. The environmental result was to drain far larger hydrologic hinterlands into the cities, without any equivalent attention to the water’s removal: no city simultaneously constructed a sewer system to remove the water after use, and most simply discharged it into existing cesspools or storm-water gutters and ditches that had been designed for far smaller quantities. In effect, the land under the city became the “sink” for wastewater. Moreover, the greater availability of piped-in water promoted the use of more water per person, particularly the installation of flush toilets: in less than three decades, water use per capita increased fiom 33 to 144 gallons per day in Chicago, 8 to 55 in Cleveland, and 55 to 149 in Detroit. The result was a paradoxical mixture of environmental health improvement and deterioration, by which the greater availability of water improved personal health and hygiene for those who could afford it but exacerbated sanitary hazards for those exposed to cesspool and privy vault overflows, leakage into wells and cisterns, and poor drainage (Tarr et al., 1980:62; Tarr and McMichael, 1977:47-6 1).

The introduction of piped water without attention to its fate thus created a major element of the sanitation crisis, and ultimately necessitated additional investments in drainage and sewer systems for its removal. Between 1850 and 191 1 all major American cities constructed sewerage systems to transport wastewater back out of the cities, usually discharging it untreated into the nearest watercourses: 88% of the water was discharged untreated in 1909, and probably far more in earlier decades. There were serious debates at the time as to whether separate systems should be constructed to keep sanitary wastes apart from surface runoff, and in fact traditional municipal laws would often have required this separation, banning disposal of human wastes into public drainage sewers in order to protect people from exposure to their “miasmas” (APWA, 1976:400). Given the far Qher costs of dual systems, however, most large cities chose the cheaper option of single combined systems.” This decision reduced capital costs in the short term, but created a costly technological constraint for the future: combined systems indiscriminately mixed rainwater and other surface runoff with household and industrial wastewater that might be hazardous to health, so that when wastewater treatment plants ultimately were built they operated at far lower efficiencies, had more limited opportunities for resource recovery, and were subject to far greater variability in volumes as well as serious overflows and pollution episodes during periods of heavy rainfall (Tarr et al., 1980:68-69).

The construction of sewer systems without treatment in turn caused new and serious health problems--typhoid epidemics--for downstream cities that drew their water supplies fiom the same rivers. Ironically, these cities included many which had built expensive sewer systems to discharge their own wastes farther downstream. A few chemists and engineers raised questions about the health hazards of these decisions, but the dominant position among sanitary engineers and scientists at the time was that

Between 1802 and 1860 136 cities built water works, including all 16 ofthe


‘‘running water purifies itself’ and that therefore “the solution to pollution is dilution’’ (Tarr et al., 1980:68-72; Tarr, 1985b521-22). Only after severe outbreaks of typhoid in downstream cities did public officials recognize the fatal inaccuracy of this conventional wisdom: interdisciplinary research by bacteriologists, chemists and sanitary engineers in the early 1890s demonstrated the transmission of typhoid by sewage contamination of watercourses, and led to rapid introduction of water supply treatment processes: slow sand filters; then the addition of coagulants to mechanical filtration systems, and beginning in 1908 the addition of chlorine disinfectants to the water supply. In 1880 only 30,000 people in U.S. cities had filtered water supplies; by 1920 the total had increased to over 20 million, and outbreaks of typhoid thereafter declined rapidly (Tarr, 1985a: 1059-60).

By the early 20th century, then, both water supply and wastewater management had been transformed from individual responsibilities to public services, and from small- scale, labor-intensive technologies to the most capital-intensive municipal projects of the 19th century. Each city constructed a series of major public works designed first to bring in large additional quantities of water, then to carry it away again after use, and finally to filter and treat its own drinking water as a defense against pollution from other cities upstream. With the exceptions of a few whose sewage problems caused severe problems, however, they did not invest in treatment of their own wastewater to protect either other users or ambient water quality downstream: and industrial wastewater generally was disposed of in the same way. In a sharp professional clash between sanitary engineers and public health authorities, leading engineers argued that “a dollar spent in water purification goes much farther toward protecting a community from the dangers of sewage pollution in its potable water supply than a dollar laid out in sewage-treatment works,’’ and that on &onomic grounds municipalities should therefore invest in water supply filtration rather than in sewage treatment (quoted in Tam and McMichael, 1977:57-58). By the beginning of World War I, this position had generally won out over the arguments of “sentimentalists and health authorities,” as one engineer described them, who advocated more active treatment rather than merely dilution of wastewater discharges (Tarr et al., 1980:73).

to water, and from their own jurisdictions onto their downstream neighbors. They also -ctefirrecttfre wafer pollution issue almost exclusively in terms of the sanitary hazards of human and animal wastes, and paid little or no attention to industrial chemical pollutants except those that caused distaste or odor or interfered with the water filtration process: industrial water pollutants were otherwise believed to have only indirect effects on health. It was these incomplete links in the urban water metabolism, and the corresponding jurisdictional externalities in the governance process, that resurfaced as key issues for federal environmental policy in the 1950s and ’60s (Tarr and McMichael, 1977:58; Tarr, 1985a: 1059-67; Tarr, 1985b:522-23).

In effect, cities and industries simply displaced their wastewater disposal from land

Public Health and Public Services Urban solid waste management, meanwhile, also was gradually transformed from

an individual responsibility to a municipal service. Unlike water supply and sewerage, solid waste collection was not intrinsically a capital-intensive process, but rather a service which could be provided either privately for those who could afford it or publicly for

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everyone--and if publicly, either by municipal agencies directly or by hired contractors. Through much of the 19th century household waste disposal remained primarily an individual responsibility: those who could afford it hired “cartmen” to remove the wastes, and dump them on vacant land or in the rivers outside the city, while others burned them or simply dumped them into the streets to be scavenged by pigs and other animals and ultimately beaten into dust or muck by the traffic. Only street cleaning was a municipal responsibility, and even this was done irregularly and often haphazardly (Melosi, 1981 :43- 46).

With the dramatic increase in urban size and population densities, the accumulation of waste matter became a central issue for the sanitation movement. The Chadwick Report and the American sanitary surveys redefined wastes from a mere annoyance to a health hazard: the upper and middle classes might keep their own neighborhoods clean, but rich and poor alike had to live with the sight, the smell and the pedestrian contact with the filthy streets, and with the threat of disease which the sanitary movement associated with these conditions. Sanitary reformers also argued that a cleaner city would be an inducement to business and economic development, a more attractive place for everyone, and little if at all more expensive than the costs already spent on private cartmen and illness (Melosi, 1980: 1 10- 14).

As the sanitation movement spread and local health departments emerged, therefore, city govem’ents began taking more active responsibility for street cleaning and refke disposal services. This evolution was significant both as an environmental management hnction, and as one element in the broader political movement for municipal autonomy from rural-dominated state legislatures (“home rule”). Contracting with private scavenging companies was their initial preference, because it required little or no capital outlay or employment supervision by the cities and was favored by advocates of private enterprise, much as free-enterprise advocates argue for contracting out and privatizing municipal services today . In practice, however, the contracting system was criticized both for political corruption in the awarding of contracts and for poor service by unaccountable private monopolies; and these abuses, as well as more general arguments that community health and sanitation were proper responsibilities of the city governments themselves, led to direct municipal responsibility for waste collection and disposal in many cities.12 By 1880, 70% of the cities had direct responsibility for street cleaning; 24% were directly responsible for collection of garbage and ashes, 19% provided these services through private contractors, 30% still left this service to private haulers, and 25% had some combination of these services; and nearly all had authority to abate nuisances caused by unsanitary disposal. By the turn of the century more than 65% of the cities had some form of municipal collection service, and by 1920 this had increased to 89% (Melosi,

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1980:108-11, 19811153-55; APWA, 19761435). The most fhndamental reforms in urban solid waste management, however, began

in New York City in 1895 under the leadership of Colonel George Waring, sanitary engineer and newly appointed commissioner of street cleaning. Waring introduced the first practical and comprehensive system of municipal waste management in the U.S., pioneering both in administrative reform and in substantive innovation in waste separation and recycling. The core of his philosophy was that waste was a menace to health and to living conditions, and could be eradicated only by a combination of efficient municipal

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government services and civic action. Administratively, he transformed the street cleaning department from an inefficient agency dominated by political patronage jobs into an efficient and disciplined public service agency, whose street cleaners were dressed in white uniforms, paid better, and developed a sense of pride in their work. Unusually among engineers, he also promoted high-visibility civic involvement programs, such as street- cleaners’ parades, neighborhood improvement associations, and even a “junior street cleaning league” to promote sanitation among young people. Substantively, he introduced mandatory separation of wastes by householders (organic materials, rubbish, and ashes), and with the revenues fi-om byproduct sale and other practical uses (organic materials for fertilizer and pigs, and scavenging of reusable materials from rubbish, ash as fill material) as well as the greater efficiency of his work force, provided more comprehensive service at half the previous cost of collection. Death and disease rates also appeared to decline immediately as well, due in general to the whole range of sanitation measures then being introduced but certainly in part to improved street cleaning and waste collection. Waring’s innovations were widely adopted as models of an efficient and professional government service agency (Melosi, 198151-78; APWA, 1976:436-37).13

Even as a municipal service, however, waste disposal methods themselves remained crude. The largest fraction was simply dumped onto open land, with no sanitary precautions, and private scavenging and refuse-picking (gleaning from the waste barges and dumps) by the poor were widespread, practices now banned in the U.S. and Europe because of their health hazards but still common in the urban dumps of poor countries. Nearly 10% of the cities dumped their wastes into watercourses, including 1 1 of the largest: coastal cities such as New York dumped their wastes in the ocean, often so close off shore that it occasionally fouled harbors and beaches.I4 A large fi-action of the waste stream was organic food materials, since the 20th century transition to canned and processed foods had not yet occurred; over 20% of the wastes were therefore recycled to farms as pig feed and fertilizer.” Beginning in the 1880s both incineration (“purification by fire,” as advocates referred to it) and garbage “reduction” (oil extraction) were introduced, both advocated by their vendors as “ultimate solutions” to the sanitary problems of garbage (APWA, 1976:436-37,447-49). Neither, of course, was an “ultimate” solution: incineration in particular, using the technologies then available, simply redirected the wastes from pollution of the land or water into pollution of the air, and oil extraction was a somewhat noxious process in itself (Melosi, 198 1 : 103). Not until the 1950s or later were these practices generally replaced by “sanitary landfills,” more controlled dumps in which the wastes were compacted and covered daily to reduce their health and aesthetic damage.

transformed from a private good to a community-wide public service, justified initially by public health concerns and later, as the scientific basis of the health argument came under attack, by broader goals of technical efficiency on the one hand and aesthetics and civic pride on the other. It was institutionalized, as a subject for public environmental policy- making and government services Interestingly, concerns about resource conservation appear to have played almost no role in the urban solid waste debates, even though many of the key sanitation reforms occurred during the same period in which fears of a “timber famine” and the rise of the conservation and preservation movements were emerging as

In short, over the course of several decades urban solid waste management was

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major factors in the redefinition of American environmental policies towards the use of the public lands and natural resources. Unlike today’s solid waste debate, they involved no significant criticism of overall levels of material consumption or even of wastefbl production practices that produced the waste streams (Melosi, 198 1 :234-36). What is a common factor between these issues was a rising belief in the efficacy of government services: ofpublic management of environmental conditions for the benefit of the general public, in place of the previous Zuissez fuire ideology of private management for the benefit of those who could afford it. In this fbndamental respect both the natural resource conservation and preservation movements and the urban sanitary reform movements were not so much about the environment per se as about its governance.

outcomes and the professionalization of public environmental management: the rise of geology, forestry and water resource engineering in the natural resource agencies, and of the public health and sanitary engineering professions in urban governments. Professionally-staffed agencies were necessary to carry out the technically specialized responsibilities of environmental management, from the design and operation of water resource structures to the efficient removal of urban wastes, but their gradual specialization also caused schisms between their professional perspectives and the broader but less technical visions that motivated general public support. Where these two sets of agendas could be skillfidly orchestrated by a charismatic administrator, as under Colonel Waring in New York City, significant improvements in environmental management could be accomplished; but in the absence of such leadership, professional environmental management agencies and citizen reform groups often formed only uneasy partnerships, not unlike those among government agencies and environmental advocacy groups today.

What is also a common factor was the powefil interconnection between these

Professionalization of Environmental Health

alliance which united physicians, engineers, and a wide range of social reformers toward common goals for improving urban living conditions. In its early stages, beginning in the 1850s, this movement formed the vanguard of the liberal reform movement against the inadequate housing and appalling factory working conditions of a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing society (Rosen, 1958:289-90). Sanitation was the focus and code word of this effort, invoking preventable health hazards as a central argument for using the power of stronger and more professional municipal governance to improve their citizens’ living conditions, and thus catalyzing both the introduction of municipal water supply and sanitation services and the creation of public health laws and agencies.

public health not only in New York City, but in the United States as a whole.” The key significance of this law lay in its creation of the first clearly professional agency for local public health administration. Prior to 1866 public health had been advocated by loose coalitions of physicians and civic reformers through citizen organizations, but local governments themselves had limited health authority (primarily quarantine) and were staffed almost entirely by patronage rather than competence. Under the new law, health administration was delegated to a Board of Health consisting mainly of physicians and police commissioners, which was given broad discretionary authority to investigate,

The sanitation movement drew its political strength from a broad civic reform

The New York Metropolitan Health Act marked “a turning point in the history of

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regulate, promote and implement sanitation measures (Rosen, 1958:243-48). By 1880 at least 94% of America’s cities had a board of health, a health commission or at least a health officer, and public-health officers and sanitarians dominated American thinking about waste collection and disposal problems as well as wastewater sanitation up through the 1880s and 1890s (Melosi, 1981:33). State boards of health also proliferated, beginning in Massachusetts in 1869. The growth and professionalization of the public health movement also created increased demand for other professions, including sanitary engineers, chemists, bacteriologists, and statisticians; and in 1872 an interdisciplinary society for public health professionals, the American Public Health Association, was established to provide a common forum and identity for the wide range of professions who comprised the movement for urban sanitation and public health (Due , 1990: 129).

The professionalization of public health represented not only an important development within environmental health itself, but a leading edge of a more general trend toward professionalization which developed in a wide range of fields: medicine and engineering, forestry, chemistry and bacteriology and other natural sciences, and others. Significantly, this trend reflected a shift in attitudes about governance as well: from initial Federalist assumptions of government staffed by an intelligent aristocracy, to Jacksonian egalitarianism and its government staffed by political patronage, to a new emphasis on government staffed by technical professionals based on merit. The creation of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879 and the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 marked the ascendance of this principle at the federal level, but it was foreshadowed by the professionalization of local and state governments, beginning with their newly created health departments in the 1870s. The origins of this trend were more practical than ideological: water and sewer systems and other sanitation measures required the expertise of health and engineering professionals, and this need was hrther underscored by the bacteriological discoveries of Pasteur and others in the 1880s.

of sanitary engineering as a distinct expertise, specializing in the particular problems of urban water supply and wastewater and solid waste removal. Sanitary engineers were both environmental generalists and technical specialists: technical specialists in the design and construction of complex water supply and sewer systems, but in a broader sense the W kmwfectgeable generalists about the urban physical environment and its material and energy flows as well as its technological systems. Because of their commitment to urban service systems, their career opportunities lay in municipal government, and by the early 20th century they had emerged as key policy-makers on urban environmental services, even superseding public health officials as the latter shifted their agency missions to other health priorities (Melosi, 1981:79-104).

The sanitation movement involved a political debate not only about health and the environment but about governance. about the proper role of government in protecting public health and providing public services to improve its citizens’ living conditions, and about the proper roles of scientific, technical, and medical professionals in administering those services and thus acting as public officials. Even the apparently “scientific” premises that underlay their decisions, such as between contagionist and anti-contagionist medical theories, could not be clearly separated from arguments about the policy prescriptions they entailed. In retrospect both theories had key weaknesses, and decisions which their

The professionalization of public health was paralleled by a similar differentiation

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advocates recommended based on claims of science were therefore supported only by their own beliefs, often colored by nonscientific factors such as judgments about the acceptability of political, economic, and social consequences. Contagionism provided support for the quarantine laws and for the authoritative regulatory role and bureaucratic institutions of government which they entailed, whereas anti-contagionism was associated both with opposition to bureaucratic regulation and with advocacy of the liberal reform movement more generally (Rosen, 1958:287-90). Colonel Waring, for instance, the great “apostle of cleanliness” who pioneered the most far-reaching sanitary reforms and institutionalized them in an efficient municipal agency in New York City, was an outspoken advocate of the anti-contagionist argument: accepting the prevailing wisdom of the anti-contagionist health experts of his time, he advocated urban cleanliness as both a health-based attack on sewer gas and an aesthetic goal by which to gauge a community’s civilization (Melosi, 1981 :60-61).

The improvement of urban health and living conditions following the introduction of sanitary measures provided apparent support for the anti-contagionist argument, but the discoveries of bacteria as specific disease pathogens in the 1880s in turn discredited the miasma theory, and with it undermined the scientific position of the sanitation advocates who had based their policy prescriptions on this rationale.I6

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Bacteriology and the “New Public Health” The sanitation movement achieved major improvements in urban environmental

conditions: safe and sufficient water supplies, wastewater drainage and sewer systems, removal of rehse and excrement, cleaner streets and housing, significant reductions in death and disease, and professionally-staffed municipal and state agencies for record- keeping and analysis and protection of public health more generally. But it had been sold to the public based on what proved to be an inaccurate theory of health, that diseases were caused by the breathing of “miasmas” (the odors of filth) rather than by contagion (transmission by direct contact with the sick) or some other cause. In the 188Os, the scientific experiments of Pasteur, Lister, Koch and others overturned this theory, proving that diseases were caused not by gasses or even filth in general but by specific micro- organisms, and that artificial immunities to these could be developed. The work of Walter Reed and others on yellow fever in the 1890s took a hrther step, showing that traditional contagionism too had been overly simplistic: diseases were not necessarily contagious by direct contact only, but could also be transmitted ecologically, by intermediate host species (vectors) and healthy human carriers (Rosen, 1958: 294-343).

priorities, applying bacteriology to check the spread of diseases by abatement of specific heath risks, and immunology to prevent disease--especially in children, the most frequent victims of them--by vaccination. A major effect of these discoveries was to shift the locus of public health from environmental sanitation services to the laboratory: by the turn of the century, most major cities had not only health departments with professional staff, usually headed by a physician, but also bacteriologists, engineers, chemists and statisticians on their staff, and laboratory facilities for bacteriological testing. Key policy changes included far more targeted and bacteriologically-based initiatives to abate some of the most specific environmental hazards to health, such as contaminated milk (by requiring

These discoveries triggered a substantial reorientation of public health policies and

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“pasteurization” to destroy bacteria), drinking water (by filtration and disinfection), and exposure to insect vectors (by mosquito eradication). At the state level, typhoid outbreaks and bacteriological confirmation of their origins in urban wastewater discharges also led to state health laws regulating stream pollution, and to federal authority for stream pollution research by the Public Health Service (Tan- and McMichael, 19773-57; Tau, 1985a: 1059-67).

environmental programs in health departments. Charles Chapin, health commissioner of the city of Providence, for instance, argued that the new science required public health priorities to make distinctions between dirt that was dangerous and dirt that was not, rather than indiscriminately attacking decay and smells and general filth. He acknowledged that urban cleanliness was a legitimate value in its own right, and undoubtedly worthwhile for limiting the spread of communicable diseases as well, but it was not in his view a high priority activity for health departments themselves: “It will make no difference to a city’s mortality whether its streets are clean or not, whether its garbage is removed promptly or allowed to accumulate, or whether it has a plumbing law.. . . [It is] more important to remove adenoids from the child than to remove ashes from the back yard.” In his view, the health officer should be free to devote his energies to “...what he alone can do. He should not waste his time arguing with the owners of pig-sties or compelling landlords to empty their cesspools.” Personal hygiene could replace costly capital expenditures: “The introduction, or even the purification, of a municipal water supply may cost millions.. . . To wash the hands before eating and after the toilet costs nothing” (quoted in Starr, 1982: 190).

This debate and its consequences are most clearly illustrated by a major conflict over water quality policy between 1905 and 1914, over the question of whether sewage discharges should be allowed into waterways that served as sources of drinking water. In this case, it was actually several of the leading “New Public Health” physicians from several states who argued most strongly against sewage dumping: the New Public Health to them meant not simply personal hygiene, but vigorously controlling all direct routes of infection, particularly in this case typhoid fever.” A 1908 report to the Conference of State and Provincial Boards of Health by its Committee on the Pollution of Streams endorsed ttriS position, recommending that sewage disposal should not be allowed into streams used for water supply, and that it should be curtailed more generally because it was also hazardous to recreation; and by 1909 a number of states had even passed laws forbidding discharge of raw sewage into streams from new municipal systems (Tan et al., 1980:72-73; Tan and McMichael, 197756-57). l8

utilized to the fillest so long as it did not create a nuisance, endanger public health, or injure property rights, and thus placing a case-by-case burden of proof on opponents: in the homespun of engineers’ poetry, “the solution to pollution is dilution.” They also redefined the issue as a matter of professional autonomy, defending their discretionary judgment against oversight by the medical profession.”” Sanitary engineering was strongly influenced during this period by the apparent effectiveness of the new technologies for drinking water filtration and disinfection (chlorination), as well as by old beliefs that “flowing water purifies itself’ and that cost-effectiveness should determine the

The demise of the filth theory also led to a critical reappraisal of the role of .

Sanitary engineers, in contrast, argued that the dilution power of streams should be

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decision: one influential book by a leading sanitary engineer argued that one dollar spent in drinking water purification “would do as much as ten dollars spent in sewage purification.” The engineers’ arguments were also politically attractive to municipal governments--in addition to cost, drinking water treatment protects one’s own constituency, while sewage treatment protects downstream jurisdictions--and by the beginning of World War I their policies had won out over the anti-discharge position of the “sentimentalists and medical authorities,” as one engineer described them. The result was a widespread increase in urban wastewater discharges to rivers and waterways, creating and exacerbating the problem of ambient water pollution which would soon lead municipalities to lobby for federal financial assistance to build separate sanitary sewer systems and wastewater treatment plants as well (Tarr et al., 1980:73; Tarr and McMichael, 197756-57).

More extreme advocates of the “new public health,” however, flatly discounted any relationship between environmental service finctions such as garbage removal and public health as unscientific and anachronistic, and advocated removal of these finctions from the health departments’ responsibilities. The fact that poor sanitary conditions did in fact provide habitat both for bacteriological pathogens and for their intermediate hosts, so that better sanitation was in fact still an effective and important policy, was swept aside in - the wholesale shift of ideology among medical and public health professionals, from the “old” public health based on social reform impulses, public works and discredited science to a “new public health” based on bacteriological science and modem medicine.20 By 1925 less than 20% of the cities still had sanitary management hnctions in their health departments: garbage collection, water supply and sewerage, nuisance removal, and often housing were now handled by separate departments. Sanitary engineers inherited and took responsibility for them, with continuing authority in health departments only for enforcement against public health nuisances. The health departments themselves shifted to the new and more science-driven agenda opened up by the advances in bacteriology: food and milk inspection, health education and vaccination campaigns, and insect eradication initiatives to remove disease vectors (Melosi, 1981 31-84).

policies and institutions. From one perspective, it was a major step forward, which permitted more effective targeting of public health measures in place of the broader and more scattershot approach to sanitation and housing reform that had previously prevailed: “A scientific understanding of the elements involved in the transmission of communicable diseases led health authorities to act with greater discrimination in quarantine and environmental sanitation” (Rosen, 1958:335). From a different perspective, however, it provided a rationale for public health officials to disengage themselves from commitments to moral or social reform, and devote themselves to a narrower, more technical and professional, and more politically comfortable agenda:

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Historical accounts differ in their interpretation of this shift in environmental health

Whereas the sanitary movement had received a major impetus from civic groups and volunteer agencies, the public health movement was now firmly in the hands of physicians and other trained specialists. The proposals of the Progressive movement, with its emphasis on environmental reforms, required expensive social programs. Science, by providing new means for identifjling, curing, and

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preventing contagious diseases, was thought to offer health departments a way to promote health without the cost of major social changes (DufQ, 1990:206).

Or more succinctly, “The dividing line between the old and new ideologies of public health was an explicit denial of responsibility for social reform” (Rosenkrantz, quoted in Starr, 1982: 189, 196). To the extent that the health departments did continue to advocate a social reform agenda, the emphasis of the “new public health” was on personal hygiene, on universal medical examinations and health education, and on maternal and child health rather than on environmental sanitation: distribution of safe milk supplies to the poor, outreach by public health nurses, vaccination campaigns, school health inspections, education of mothers aimed at reducing high infant mortality rates, and neighborhood health centers for health education and social services for the poor (DufQ, 1990:209-2 15). Environmental sanitation in general, however, had been demoted once again fiom a health hazard to a mere “annoyance.”

Industrial Emissions: Pollution as Progress For all the policy reform devoted to urban sanitation during this period, there was

virtually no comparable progress in controlling the massive increases in industrial pollution that occurred during the same period, and in fact quite the opposite occurred: traditional common-law principles that might have protected people from these impacts were systematically weakened in favor of industrial “progress.” Before the widespread construction of municipal sewer systems, industrial wastewater discharges were frequently the leading causes of stream pollution and of consequent threats to urban water supplies, and a number of the 19th century sanitary surveys identified these effluents as poisonous and as threats to health. However, they were not as obvious or widespread a hazard as urban filth and fecal wastes, and therefore did not attract the same attention fiom the public health and sanitation movement as municipal wastewater and waste disposal. Once the sewers were built, the resulting typhoid epidemics reconfirmed the priority of bacteriological pathogens, and the public health professional community itself devoted its primary efforts to the development of bacteriological indicators and correctives for water quality.” Municipal sewage rather than industrial chemical discharges remained the primary policy issue; the latter were assumed by comparison to have only indirect effects unfreakh, by diminishing the natural capacity of flowing water to purify itself, and accordingly received little attention until after the first World War (Tarr, 1985a: 1059- 65).22

the heavy, dark “smoke evil” of inefficiently burned particulates and sulfur in the heavy- industry cities where by the 1890s bituminous soft coal had become the primary fuel for manufacturing and rail transportation. Smoke was recognized as a health hazard even at the time: it increased fatality rates from pneumonia, diphtheria and other lung diseases, it increased nasal, throat, and bronchial illnesses, and its constant darkness was even attacked as a cause of mental health problems. It also damaged property, discoloring and corroding buildings and statuary, smudging goods and soiling clothing, necessitating costly maintenance and repainting, and destroying urban vegetation Perhaps more than any other factor, it also destroyed any sense of comfort or amenity in urban living

Industrial air pollution was a far more visible and ubiquitous problem, particularly

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conditions, pervading daily life with visible aesthetic blight and requiring constant housecleaning and re-washing of clothes (Grinder, 1980:83-87). =

As in the case of urban sanitation, concern about disease in the industrial environment first spread to the United States in the 1830s from England, where the Industrial Revolution and accompanying rise of health-threatening living conditions emerged as serious problems some decades before they peaked in America. Early observers such as Benjamin Franklin and Cotton Mather were aware of a few specific hazards, such as the dangers of lead poisoning among typesetters and others who worked with lead, but occupational causes of disease more generally received little attention before the 1830s. British surgeons in Leeds and Manchester, C. Turner Thackrah and Philips Kay, published studies on the health of workers in 183 1 and 1832, and their work was echoed in a report by the American doctor Benjamin McCready in 1837 entitled QIJ the Influence of Trades. Professions and Occupations in the United States in the Production of Disease, virtually the only systematic study on the subject in the U. S. before the 20th century. Public policies dealing with occupational conditions were concerned not with specific environmental health hazards but with general working conditions for women and children: state child labor laws were.passed by most northern industrial states between 1848 and 1860, and laws limiting the length of the work day followed, but even at the state level there were few policies requiring industrial health and safety practices, and even less inspection and enforcement of them. . A modest medical literature on occupational health effects accumulated through the latter half of the 19th century, particularly on the health hazards of mining, but these studies led to no public policies until the 20th century (DuQ, 1990:95; Rosen, 1958271-75).

against the severe and even life-threatening hazards of air and water pollution? The traditional riparian law of water rights entitled each user to receive water “undiminished in quantity and unimpaired in quality” from upstream users; the common law of negligence required that each individual use his own property only in such ways as not to harm .

others; the principle of nuisance allowed legal recourse for abatement; and the police power allowed municipalities themselves to regulate public health hazards. The courts did provide relief in some cases: in some water pollution suits against municipalities, for instance, they distinguished a right to discharge surface runoff from the absence of a right to discharge wastes hazardous to health. In general, however, they were unwilling to take strong environmental protection positions in cases involving controversial scientific claims: they were willing to hold upstream polluters responsible for clearly demonstrated downstream property damages, but not for disease outbreaks.

and enforced the dominant public policy that industrialization represented progress, that its pollution damage was simply the unavoidable side effect of a desired social goal, and that the courts therefore should not interfere in this “release of productive energy.” They treated pollution, that is, as a mere annoyance rather than a legal nuisance or illegitimate health hazard. In essence, they adopted a rudimentary “social-cost balancing” approach: rather than protecting individuals from harm, they weighed the damage to the injured party against the economic burden to the industry of abating its pollution--or even worse, the imagined economic damage to society as a whole of slowing down industrial growth--and

One might ask of these conditions, why did the courts not provide protection

Towards industrial pollution, more fundamentally, the courts generally accepted

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generally sided with the industry (Grinder, 1 980:90-93).24 In effect, these decisions reinterpreted the strict liability principles of the traditional common-law doctrines into doctrines of “reasonable use,” which in practice permitted virtually all common forms of municipal and industrial pollution to continue.25 These precedents were overturned in several key states in the early 20th century, as a byproduct of the Progressive reform movement in American society more generally, as their courts returned to a standard of strict liability for pollution nuisances. They are similar in concept, however, to more recent legal arguments for balancing of the economic interests of polluters against those of their victims rather than upholding clearly the rights of the victims (Rosen, 1993:303-81).

With the undercutting of traditional common-law protections, the only remaining recourse for environmental protection was to expand the use of state and municipal police powers to regulate pollution as a public health hazard. By 1912, 23 of the 28 largest cities had smoke abatement ordinances, and nearly every major city had a smoke inspector, although they often had little power and many judges refbsed to levy more than token fines for violations. Smoke inspectors themselves, along with many of the advocacy groups that lobbied for abatement, were tom between adversarial and cooperative approaches: some argued for aggressive prosecution of polluters, while others were content with seeking merely to educate them, urging them to adopt more &el-efficient technologies in their own interest--what would today be called “win-win solution^'^ (“pollution prevention pays”). Some cities also passed water pollution ordinances, but local jurisdictions by themselves had no jurisdiction over many upstream sources, and most states except Massachusetts gave only advisory dnd investigative powers to state health authorities. Water quality control institutions for interstate rivers, moreover, which flowed through many of the largest urban areas, began to develop only in the 192Os, and even then only in a few areas such as the Delaware and Ohio Rivers and the Great Lakes (Grinder, 1980:91-95; Tarr el al., 1980:70-72; Tan, 1985b524).

In short, control of industrial water pollution did not become a significant element even of state or local environmental policy until the 1920s, and industrial air pollution policy, despite far more active political pressure during the Progressive era, was limited to relatively ineffectual local smoke abatement ordinances. The onset of World War I crippled and reversed even these limited reforms, justifjhg all-out production regardless of pollution in the name of the war effort; and both air and water pollution increased accordingly.26 By the 1920s, after the war, the climate of public policy had clearly shifted from the progressive reform agenda back to the laissezyaire spirit that had preceded it, in which the most that could be expected of environmental policy was pro-business efforts at education and friendly persuasion. As one author wryly put it, studies were more frequently the outcomes than the causes of action, buying time for industries and politicians to postpone more serious and costly control measures (Grinder, 1980:99- 101).

pollution was not that its effects were less serious, but that to do more than propagandize for pollution control demanded of government a regulatory role rather than merely a more active responsibility for providing public services (water supply and sanitation). More particularly, it demanded a regulatory role not simply toward individuals but toward their most powerful economic constituencies, the major industrial firms that provided the community’s jobs, taxes, political contributions and philanthropy. The sanitary reform

From a governance perspective, a key reason for the failure to address industrial

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movement itself drew some of its support fiom business and medical opposition to the regulatory role represented by the quarantine laws, and by the late 19th century the concentrated economic and political power of the major industrial corporations, as well as their promise of general wealth and prosperity, made them formidable adversaries to any regulatory initiative.

Environmental Policy as Civic Reform

from a sanitary reform issue advocated mainly by public health professionals to a far broader public issue of urban livability and civic reform. Its advocates were now voluntary citizen groups: some as elements of the broader Progressive movement for civic reform, popularizing cleanliness and efficiency in both waste management and urban governance, and others as more issue-specific lobby groups for particular causes--anti- smoke campaigns, noise-abatement leagues, sanitation advocates, urban beautification movements--which never coalesced into any overall environmental movement comparable to that of the 1970s and 80s. Women’s organizations played major roles in these movements: many women were “social feminists” who were actively committed to civic improvement, urban cleanliness and improving the living conditions of children and the poor as well as seeking voting rights and greater social justice for their gender. By the early years of the 20th century the involvement of women’s organizations with urban environmental improvement efforts had become so widespread that the term “municipal housecleaning” became synonymous with sanitation reform (Melosi, 1985:494-5 15; Grinder, 1980:88-90).

to broad civic reform--improvement of education and working conditions, protection of women and children, reform of elective processes, and other social issues--and a shared environmental commitment to improved urban livability, not rejecting city life or even industrial production per se, but pressuring government to take more active responsibility for its quality. A strong common thread, for instance, was a new advocacy for urban livability as a legitimate goal in its own right, not merely as a matter of health. The so- called “City Beautill” movement spread among American cities beginning with the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, arguing that an attractive urban environment need not be a matter merely of efficiency or even of health, but was an expression of a community’s aspiration to be a civilized place.

The urban reformers also brought with them a dual commitment both to lobbying for government action and to mobilizing citizen participation directly--city clean-up days, youth sanitation activities, and others--that were quite distinct from the more narrowly professional agenda of institutionalizing environmental management responsibilities in efficient and technically competent administrative agencies. Then as now, these approaches in fact complement one another, but often coexist in uneasy partnerships, in which public participants both lack the technical expertise and seek broader goals that the professionals, and the professionals in turn disdain both the more superficial understanding and the less efficient use of their time--and sometimes the broader goals themselves--that are unavoidable in working directly with broader public voluntary organizations.

By the beginning of the 20th century, urban environmental quality had evolved

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The common factors among these groups included both a Progressive commitment

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In a sense, therefore, the broader civic and aesthetic approach to urban environmental reform strengthened it, broadening its political constituencies and appeal at just the time when its older health justification was being undermined. Its actual accomplishments, however, were limited to relatively ineffectual smoke- and noise- abatement laws: significant reductions in industrial pollution did not occur until the 1930s and OS, with technological changes that made pollution abatement cheaper and more efficient rather than merely required by regulations. The Progressive anti-smoke movement has been dismissed by some later commentators, therefore, as fbtile and naive, particularly for believing that fbndamental economic and industrial processes could be changed by legislation rather than by technological progress. It was also more vulnerable than health arguments to other political forces and pressures, and no match for the arguments of patriotism and national security that took over the American policy agenda-- and swept away, at least temporarily, all concern with environmental protection--with the onset of World War I. Nonetheless, it was instrumental in creating institutional foundations-government responsibility for a broader range of environmental conditions, smoke inspectors, government studies documenting air and water quality hazards, and others--that were essential prerequisites for later and more aggressive policies.

National Policies for Environmental Health

success and significance of the sanitary reform movement in promoting public policies to remedy these problems, the federal government played virtually no role in environmental health policy, nor in occupational or industrial health, nor indeed even in public health policy more generally, before the beginning of the twentieth century. From the perspective of the present one can recognize the study of occupational health hazards as critically important foundations and precursors for EPA’s more recent regulatory policies to protect the health of the general public fiom industrial chemicals, but in fact before the twentieth century not even the medical profession or other public health leaders paid much attention to these hazards: even laws on child labor and working conditions for women, which emerged in Europe in the 19th century, were not enacted in t he United States until early in the twentieth century.

The predecessor of the U. S. Public Health Service (and later Environmental Protection Agency) was a system of federally sponsored hospitals for seamen, which was authorized in 1798 and expanded with the steamboat trade up the Mississippi River valley during the early 19th ~entury.~’ This system was formalized as a Marine Hospital Service under the Treasury Department in 1870, which professionalized its hospitals’ medical staff and began to produce scientific and technical papers on health questions as well as to provide care. In the 1870s its mission was broadened to assist state and local governments in applying local quarantine laws to interstate and foreign shipping, and beginning in 1878, it was authorized to impose federal quarantine regulations, which might if necessary be more stringent than those of state and local governments.28

Environmental causes of disease assumed new prominence as a military issue during the Spanish-American War of 1898, when American troops were first sent overseas to an environment where yellow fever was endemic (Cuba); and after the success of Army surgeon Walter Reed and MHS colleagues in identifLing mosquitoes as the disease’s

Despite the growing importance of environmental health as an issue, and the

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vector, the MHS in 1901 was given appropriations for a new Hygienic Laboratory, acknowledging its growing mission and capabilities in public health research. It was renamed the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service in 1902, and finally designated as the U. S. Public Health Service in 1912. The 1912 Public Health Service Act also extended the agency’s mission yet again, beyond epidemic diseasesper se, to include sanitation, sewage, water pollution, and occupational health hazards. 29 With these changes the Public Health Service became in effect both the first national agency for public health and the first federal environmental protection agency (Tobey, 1926:75-102; D u e , 19901239-42).

A key figure in occupational health during the Progressive era was Dr. Alice Hamilton, whose studies of the health of men and women working with phosphorus, lead, radium, and other dangerous substances are landmarks in occupational health. Company doctors tended to side with employers in blaming occupational injuries and diseases on the responsibility of individual workers, but policy changes were gradually developed in response to disasters. Mining disasters, for instance, led to the creation of a Bureau of Mines in the Department of the Interior in 191 0 to investigate safety and health in the mines; its activities were later expanded to include studies of other health hazards, such as lead poisoning in mines and from motor vehicles, in cooperation with the Public Health Service (Tobey, 1926:296-299). A Children’s Bureau was created in 191 1 to improve children’s working conditions, a Department of Labor in 19 13, and an Office of Industrial Hygiene and Sanitation in the Public Health Service in 1914. Fires and other identifiable health crises sparked ad hoc reforms--reports of phosphorus poisoning among match- factory workers, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, radium poisoning in watch-dial painters-but like the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and its regulatory authorities were not created until as recently as 1970

The only other important 19th century predecessors for current federal environmental health policy institutions were several bureaus of the Department of Agriculture. USDA’s Bureau of Chemistry was responsible both for the promotion of agricultural production by chemical research, and for studies related to adulteration of foods; with the enactment of the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, it became responsible not only for research but also for regulation of food and drug contaminants, which soon came to include pesticide residues as well (Tobey, 1926: 187-97). Until as recently as 1970 this program remained one of the few precedents for a federal environmental health regulatory program.3o USDA’s Bureau of Entomology, established in 1904 from programs dating to 1877, was responsible for studies of insects both as agricultural pests and as environmental vectors threatening to human health (for instance mosquitoes, fleas, flies, lice, and ticks), which laid the basis for many of the large-scale pesticide application programs of the twentieth century (Tobey, 1926:221-24). Finally, the Bureau of Biological Survey (prior to 1896 the Division of Ornithology and Mammalogy) began as a research unit concerned with native wildlife and their relationships to agriculture, but grew in the twentieth century into a major operational program for the eradication of species that were viewed as agricultural pests or environmental disease vectors, beginning with rodents (rats and ground squirrels) and later adding larger predators (for instance wolves,

(Du@, 1990:286-87).

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coyotes, and others) that have thus been driven close to extinction across much or all of their natural ranges.

Assessment

efforts that followed achieved important results in environmental living conditions and public health. Urban housing conditions were improved, drainage and sanitation were provided, clean water and purer food were also assured; and beginning as early as 1870, public health statistics began to show steady declines in mortality, clearly due at least in part to these measures. Among the chief beneficiaries were children: infant mortality rates in New York City, for instance, dropped fiom 273 per thousand in 1885 to 94 in 1915 (Rosen, 1958:338-43). In 1900 the average U.S. life expectancy at birth was under 50 years, and death rates for intestinal diseases were 143 per hundred thousand; by 1970 the average life expectancy was close to 70 years, and death rates for intestinal diseases were negligible. Other public health measures were also essential to the reduction of tuberculosis, influenza, diphtheria, and other health hazards, but contrary to the disparagement of early advocates of the “new public health,” environmental sanitation remained an important and effective set of measures for reducing public health hazards, as well as for providing better living conditions for urban communities more generally.

The movement also catalyzed enduring changes in American governance institutions for environmental policy. Urban water supply, sanitation, waste management, and smoke abatement were established as government responsibilities, as were public health agencies and programs more generally; and these agencies remain the primary policy-making institutions for public health and pollution control, though now more elaborately constrained by federal mandates (and in some cases, renamed as environmental departments). The scientific and technical aspects of these issues created the practical necessity for professionalizing government service, and this professionalization in turn opened political cleavages between expert and lay perspectives, between technical elites and citizen advocacy groups, that color environmental policy controversies today as well.

In the classic definition of the field by C.-E. A. Winslow in 1920, public health is ... the science and the art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical health and efficiency through organized community efforts for the sanitation of the environment, the control of community infections, the education of the individual in principles of personal hygiene, the organization of medical and nursing service for the early diagnosis and preventive treatment of disease, and the development of the social machinery which will ensure to every individual in the community a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health (Winslow, Science 5 1 :23, 1920).

Both the 19th century sanitation movement and the urban environmental reform

Public health in this view is not a concrete intellectual discipline, but a field of social activity, which includes applications of chemistry and bacteriology, of engineering and statistics, of physiology and pathology and epidemiology, and in some measure of sociology, and it builds on these basic sciences a comprehensive program of community service (Winslow 1923: 1). It carries within the internal diversity of this definition, however, substantial tensions among professions and priorities, and between public health, environmental quality for its own sake, and other civic goals with which it interacts.

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These tensions were evident at the time, and have remained persistent challenges for American environmental policy today.

of the Environmental Protection Agency’s programs were created primarily to protect public health--from air and water pollution, toxic chemicals and pesticides, hazardous wastes, and other exposures--yet public health professionals themselves remain deeply ambivalent about the priority of these hazards, at least in the United States today, compared to other causes of death and disease. To many professionals in public health, public fears of industrial carcinogens are the “miasmas” of the 20th century, unscientific fears that burden the economy with high costs and divert attention fiom more obvious causes of death and disease [cite Ames, Doll and Peto, Eisenbud]. Today as then, such professionals call for more scientific evaluation of relative risks and priorities, and more narrowly targeted measures to abate the worst of these, rather than for broader and more economically costly and politically controversial social reforms. To the general public, however, the environmental quality issue today, as in the Progressive era, represents a far broader complex of civic concerns: health risks for one, but also the preservation of naturpl landscapes and amenities, the attractiveness of human communities, and the restraint of big businesses and government agencies.

and sustaining political legitimacy for these broader goals and visions. In the context of American legal and political history, health hazards carry the long-standing political legitimacy to justify government action, from the quarantine laws to sanitation programs to modern risk regulations; broader visions of a desirable environment, in contrast, are dismissed as matters of mere amenities and individual taste, which if imposed by governments amount to elitist paternalism, and which are constantly vulnerable to undercutting by more self-interested constituencies. The cross-cutting tensions between health and other goals of environmental policy, and between expert and broader civic constituencies of stakeholders in these issues, remain a kndamental and problematic characteristic of the issue.

Today as then, environmental policy both is and is not a public health issue. Most

A continuing political challenge for environmental politics is the burden of creating

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References

American Public Works Association (APWA). 1976. History of Public Works in the United States. h s t r o n g , Ellis L.; Robinson, Michael C.; and Suellen Hoy, eds. Chicago: American Public Works Association.

Ayres, Robert __. 198x. Industrial Metabolism. In National Academy of Engineering, Technolom and the Environment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, pp. -.

Barnes, Harry E. 1935. Societv in Transition: Problems of a Changing Age. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Bingham, Eula. 1990. Standards, Regulation, and Public Health. Med. Clin. North America 74(2):527-35.

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Blake, John B. 1959. Public Health in the Town of Boston. 1630-1822. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Citizens’ Association of New York. Council of Hygiene and Public Health. 1970 [ 1865, 18661. Sanitary Condition of the City. New York: Arno.

Clark, Henry G. 1972 [1852]. Superiority of Sanitary Measures Over Quarantines. Origins of Public Health in America: Selected Essavs 1820-1 855. New York: Arno.

D u e , John. 1990. The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Grinder, R. Dale. 1980. The Battle for Clean Air: The Smoke Problem in Post-Civil War America. In Melosi, 1980, pp. 83-103,

Melosi, Martin V. 1980. Pollution and Reform in American Cities. 1870-1930. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Melosi, Martin V. 1981. Garbage in the Cities: Refhe. Reform, and the Environment, 1880- 1980. Chicago: Dorsey Press.

Morgan, H. Wayne. 1973. America’s First Environmental Challenge, 1865-1 920. In Margaret F. Morris, Essavs on the Gilded Age, , pp. 87-108.

Mullan, Fitzhugh. 1989. Plagues and Politics: The Story of the United States Public Health Service. New York: Basic Books.

Petulla, Joseph M. 1988. American Environmental History. Columbus, OH: Merrill (2nd edition).

Rosen, Chkstine. 1993. Differing Perceptions of the Value of Pollution Abatement Across Time and Place: Balancing Doctrine in Pollution Nuisance Law. Law and History Review 11/2:303-81.

Rosen, George. 1958. A History of Public Health. New York: MD Publications.

Rosenau, Milton J. 1935 [ 19131. Preventive Medicine and Hvgiene. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

Ruckelshaus, William D. 1992. The Role of the Medical Profession in the Environmental Arena. Academic Medicine 67(3): 146150.

Selleck, Henry B. and Alfred H. Whittaker. 19xx. OccuPational Health in America.

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Smillie, Wilson G. 1955. Public Health: Its Promise for the Future. 1607-1914.

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Stan, Paul. 1982. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books.

Tarr, Joel A. 1971. Urban Pollution--Many Long Years Ago. American Heritage 22:65- 69, 106 (October).

Tarr, Joel A. and Francis McMichael. 1977. Decision About Wastewater Technology: 1850-1932. Journal of the Water Resources Planning; and Management Division, American Society of Civil Enpineers, 103 :47-6 1 (May).

Tam, Joel A.; McCurley, James; and Terry F. Yosie. 1980. The Development and Impact of Urban Wastewater Technology: Changing Concepts of Water Quality Control, 1850- 1930. In Melosi, 1980, pp. 59-82.

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Tarr, Joel A. 1985a. Industrial Wastes and Public Health. American Journal of Public Health 75(9): 1059-67.

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Tarr, Joel A. 1985b. The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Air, Land and Water Pollution in Historical Perspective. In Kendall Bailes (ed.), Environmental Histoy: Critical Issues in Comparative Perspective. New York: University Press of America, pp. . 516-52.

Tesh, Sylvia. 198 1. Disease Causality and Politics. Journal of Health Politics. Policy and 6(3):369-90. [Hidden Arpuments].

Tobey, James A. 1978. The National Government and Public Health. New York: Amo.

Warner, Sam Bass. 1972. The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City. New York: Harper & Row.

Winslow, C.-E. A. 1923. The Evolution and Significance of the Modern Public Health Campaign. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Wolman, Abel. 1968. The Metabolism of Cities. In Cities: A Scientific American Book, pp. 156-74.

’ Far more recently, Robert Ayres has made a similar point about industrial processes (Ayres, 198x). ‘ Local governments from early on had authority under the police power to control and abate public “nuisances,” which Black’s Law Dictionarv defines as “everything that endangers life or health, gives offense to the senses, violates the laws of decency, or obstructs reasonable and comfortable use of property.”

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In 1900, the average U.S. life expectancy at birth was under 50 years, compared to over 70 today; death rates due to cancer were only 64 per hundred thousand (versus 163 in 1970). but those due to tuberculosis were over 194 (versus less than 3), due to influenza 202 (versus 3 1). to typhoid 3 1, to diphtheria 40, and to intestinal diseases 143 (versus negligible levels for all). Historical Statistics of the United States from Colonial Times to 1970, Series B149-166.

Gibbons v. Ogden, 6 L. Ed. 23. The decision held unconstitutional a New York state law which would have given exclusive navigation privileges in New York waters to a particular firm (Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton), on grounds that it interfered with interstate commerce which was a matter of federal authority. Later decisions also upheld state and local authority to regulate such activities as slaughterhouses, fertilizing companies, garbage disposal, wastewater discharges, and emissions of noxious fumes and smoke. (Respectively, the “Slaughter House cases,” 21 L. Ed. 702; Fertilizing ComDanv v. Hvde Park, 97 U.S. 659; California Reduction Company v. Sanitarv Reduction Works, 199 U.S. 306, and Gardner v. Michigan, 199 U.S. 325; Hutchinson v. Valdosta, 227 U.S. 303; and m i a v. Tennessee CoPDer ComDanv, 206 U.S. 230, and Northwestern Laundrv Comoanv v. Des Moines, 239 U.S. 486

An example of these attacks was the published lecture of a Boston physician to the Suffolk District Medical Society in 1852, in which he argued that both medical and commercial leaders agreed that quarantines had not worked-diseases spread anyway, often among people who had no obvious contact with those b o w n to be afflicted-thereby discrediting the theory that contagion could in fact be the primary or sole cause of these diseases, even of plague, cholera, and yellow fever. Further, he argued that quarantine actually concentrated these diseases, by keeping people locked up together; and he went on to attack the quarantine system as “despotic,” locking up rich and poor alike (including among others the doctors who treated them) until they recovered. He recommended therefore that the government abolish the quarantine system, and substitute instead “the more rational and philosophical system of modem Sanitary reform” which was then emerging in England (Clark, 1852).

It also reflected a more fundamental philosophical belief in the primacy of environmental information and influences-in the broadest sense here, not merely in the sense of natural ecosystems-as guides to human reasoning and practical action, as opposed to the “innate ideas” advocated by earlier philosophers.

In New York, for instance, an estimated 18,000 people were reported to be living in cellars, under filthy and dank conditions, many below the levels of nearby privies and subject to seepage and contamination by them; even some schools were no better (Winslow, 1923:8-11; Rosen, 1958:237-39).

The New York Metropolitan Health Act “marks a turning point in the history of public health not only in New York City, but in the United States as a whole.” The key significance of this law lay in its creation of the first clearly professional agency for local public health administration. Prior to 1866 public health had been advocated by loose coalitions of physicians and civic reformers through citizen organizations, but local governments themselves had limited health authority (primarily quarantine) and were stafFed almost entirely by patronage rather than competence. Under the new law, health administration was delegated to a Board of Health consisting mainly of physicians and police commissioners, which was given broad discretionary authonty to investigate. regulate, promote and implement sanitation measures (Rosen, 19W243-48).

The threat of fire was a serious concem in densely populated cities constructed largely of wood and heated and lighted by open flames, and may have been a greater motive for business support of water supply investments than health or even convenience puffy, 1990:30-3 1).

sanitary wastes only, actually was cheaper than combined systems. but left the problem of surface drainage unsolved (Tam and McMichael, 1977:53).

Cf. E. S. Savas, Privatizing the Public Sector (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House. 1982); and in response Lester M. Salomon, Beyond Privatization: The Tools of Government Action (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1989).

Then as now, contracting practices involved subtler issues than were apparent in the general public reports and perceptions of them. Most waste disposal contracts were relatively short-term, whch retained the greatest formal accountability to the cities but also required almost constant negotiation of renewals,

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and provided too short a time horizon to motivate contractors to invest in capital-intensive equipment or evcn long-term employees. The tight scheduling of the bidding and fulfillment processes also limited bidding by potential competitors who did not already have exqensive resources and welldeveloped programs (Melosi,‘1981:155). l3 Waring was strongly influenced by the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, designer of Ccntral Park and one of the visionary advocates of humanizing the physical environment of cities and preserving scenic areas for public enjoyment, for whom the young Waring had worked as drainage engineer for Central Park in the 1850s. He also was one of the few strong advocates of separate sewer systems, so much so that in fact the separate systems of the time were often known as the “Waring system;” and he served both as a compiler of the 1880 Census report on urban sanitary conditions, and as a member of the short-lived National Board of Health (see text below) in the early 1880s. He served as New York’s street-cleaning commissioner during the same Progressive administration in which Theodore Roosevelt served as its police commissioner before going on to becoming governor, vice-president and then president within the following four years (Melosi, 19815441). l4 Those who remember the famous “garbage barge” of the late 1980s, whch carried Long Island garbage all the way to the Caribbean and back before finally being required to incinerate them in New York, may be interested in a similar incident in which barges carrying garbage from Washington, DC to a downstream dump were sunk by angry citizens of Alexandria (APWA, 1976:435).

abandoned after disease outbreaks (trichinosis and exanthema) led to health-mandated slaughters and state requirements that wastes be cooked before being fed to hogs. By the 1970s only about 4% of food wastes were Still recycled as pig feed (APWA, 1976:448). l6 In retrospect this discrediting appears to have been too dismissive: understanding of the key roles of animal carriers in hsease transmission did not develop as quickly, and many of these vectors were in fact bred under unsanitary urban conditions. Modem assessments of the data suggest that sanitation measures did in fact bring about significant reductions in death and disease, even though the miasma theory itself was incorrect (Rosen, 1958:). l7 Examples included Minnesota, Pennsylvania and New York. ’* Examples included California, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Ohio. l9 A key event was a clash between the City of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania’s State Board of Health in 1910 over Pittsburgh’s application of temporary discharge permits for sewer extensions. The state required Pittsburgh to prepare a comprehensive sewage treatment plan for separating its sewage from its stomwater sewers and treating it; the city in response hired two leading sanitary engineering consultants who argued Vigorously on cost-effectiveness grounds for continuation of the city’s combined system of stormwater and sewage discharge. Faced with the combined opposition of the city and the engineering prafession, the state Board of Health backed down. Two years later, a 1912 professional report asserted the more general argument that it was impossible to maintain or restore waterways to “their original and natural condition of purity,” and that therefore “the discharge of raw sewage into our streams and waterways should not be universally prohibited by law.” The report was prepared by the committee on standards of purity for rivers and waterways of the National Association for Preventing the Pollution of Rivers and Waterways, a group reportedly dominated by sanitary engineers (Tarr and McMichael, 1977:57-59; Tan et al., 1980:73). *’ It should be noted that a hybrid position linking elements of these ideologies did in fact emerge among some practical experts during the mid-19th century, as exemplified by Dr. John Snow, the English contagionist physician who in the course of treating cholera patients during the 1854 epidemic in London identified the fact that nearly all of them had consumed water from a particular public pump in Broad Street, and that other residents even in the same neighborhood who got water from different sources were not affected. New cases of the disease fell off dramatically within days after he removed the handle from the pump, and subsequent investigation of the well itself showed clear evidence of contamination from the privy of a nearby house. This case is often cited as one of the forerunners of modem epidemiology, and can stand also as an example of an adequate basis for environmental protection intervention even without scientific proof of the actual causative mechanism of disease: the cholera organism was not actually

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Pig-feeding of garbage remained a common practice up to the mid-l950s, and was only then 15

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identified until the work of Koch almost 30 years later (Rosenau, 1935: 1090-93; Rosen, 1958:314). See also Rosen, 1958:287-90 re miasmas vs. contagion. 2’ The use of coliform bacteria as an indicator of water purity was developed during this period, for instance, and introduced as a basis for drinking water standards in interstate commerce by the Public Health Service in 1914 parr, 1985a:1060).

An exception was the U.S. Geological Survey, which unlike the municipal sanitary reformers was concerned with all aspects of water quality rather than merely its health effects. USGS created a Division of Hydro-economics in 1903 to investigate all aspects of the economic value of water supplies, and Marshall Leighton, who headed it, produced reports as early as 1905 that noted the wide range of problems associated with industrial water pollutants: hazards to drinking water purity. habitat for vectors, and damage to fish and vegetation as well as to other natural processes. An important shift in perspective occurred in the 1920s, when a bacteriologist and a sanitary engineer working for the Public Health Service developed the Streeter-Phelps “oxygen sag” equation relating dissolved oxygen in streams to the biochemical oxygen demand of waste discharges, thus providing a common denominator for comparing the effects of municipal and industrial wastes on one important indicator of water quality (Tarr, 1985a: 1060, 1064-65). 23 A 1912 investigation, for instance, estimated the economic cost of smoke pollution in Pittsburgh alone at $12 million per year; a 191 1 USGS study estimated the nationwide cost at over $500 million, not even including the general inconvenience and disamenity to individuals of living in it (Rosen, 1993:370-71). In St. Louis in 1905-06, smoke pollution killed an estimated one-third of the city’s trees; in Milwaukee, houses had to be repainted annually rather than just once every four to five years; in Pittsburgh a new American Bag turned totally black within just two to three weeks; in many cities laundry could not even be hung out to dry without being dirtied once again (Grinder, 1980:87).

In contrast to modem cost-benefit analysis, moreover, they typically compared these social costs of industrial abatement only with the private benefits to the plaintiff, not with the comparable social benefits to others in the community. 25 In the words of the New York Court of Appeals, for instance, “...each member of society must submit to annoyances consequent upon the ordinary and common use of property, provided such use is reasonable ... in view of the time, place and other circumstances” (Cogswell v. New York. New Haven and Hartford Railroad, 103 N.Y. 10 [ 18861). In other cases, judges explicitly held that even though private property was “being invaded by this smoke ..., ‘public policy’ is more important than private property,” and factories were held to be both “legal and necessary.” In urban areas where pollution came from multiple industries and other sources, moreover, it was virtually impossible for an injured party to identtfy and successfully b e particular sources: no one source could be proven to have caused measurable increases over the combined effects of all of them (Grinder, 1980:92-93).

In Milwaukee, for instance, the number of “smoky” days recorded by the weather bureau increased fr0IPl-I in 1916 to 212 in 1918 (Grinder, 1980:99).

This system is actually one of the earliest examples of federal entitlement programs: intended to care for sick or disabled sailors who were otherwise a frequent burden on public facilities in port cities, it was to be financed by per capita fees on s h p licenses and naval salaries. In practice, however, the funds appropriated by Congress to construct and operate these hospitals were well in excess of the fees collected, representing in essence pork-barrel appropriations for the benefit of particular cities, and the appointments of their personnel prior to 1870 normally represented a form of local political patronage rather than merit. By 1870 only nine of the 31 hospitals were even functioning (Mullan, 1989: 14-20).

It is worth noting that this federal role in public health regulation, even identified as intimately as it was with interstate and foreign commerce, emerged only after bitter opposition to it as a federal infringement of state and local police powers: quarantines were both a costly and unwelcome nuisance to local business interests, and a source of revenues and political patronage appointments to local governments. Only after severe epidemics in 1878 in New Orleans and the Mississippi Valley did Congress finally act, and only after a decade of conflicts and further epidemics did the states finally accept the need for a strong federal role @uf€y, 167-72). 29 37 Stat. 309.

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30 34 Stat. 768. A federal pesticide law was passed in 1948, but contained only weak regulatory authority; the initial federal clean air and clean water laws were also enacted in the 1950s and amended in the 1960s, but contained no significant federal regulatory authority until the Clean Air Act of 1970: previous laws were limited to federal research, technical assistance. and coordinative responsibilities to encourage more active environmental protection programs on the part of the states. See more detailed discussion in later chapters.

equally with protecting consumers and thus businesses from changes in content by unscrupulous competitors: adulteration included not only the addition of hazards to health. such as decomposed or otherwise unsanitary materials, but also substitution of cheaper ingredients or removal of valuable ones, or unt” or deceptive labeling (Tobey, 1926:191).

Note also that the Pure Food and Drug Act was not concerned strictly with health protection, but

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Chapter 7 Public Environmental Management Administrative Discretion, Planning, and the “Gospel of Eficiency”

American environmental policy today involves many federal agencies, each with specific statutory missions for use of the environment as well as other statutory and regulatory constraints-such as pollution control and protection of endangered species-- and a more general mandate to promote harmony between human activities and the natural environment.’ At the end of the 19th century, however, neither these policies, nor even most of the agencies now responsible for them, yet existed. The General Land Office was responsible for administering the privatization of public lands, the Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for clearing streams for navigation and building levees along their banks for flood protection, and a few relatively new agencies-the W S Geological Survey in the Interior Department, and the Bureau of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, for instance-were responsible for environmental data collection and applied research. Yellowstone and a few other national parks had been reserved in federal ownership, but they were merely policed by the Army. there was no National Park Service. Nor were any federal agencies responsible for water resource or forest management, for soil conservation, for wildlife protection, for air or water pollution control, or for the many other government responsibilities that are associated with environmental policy today. The dominant environmental policies were to encourage the conversion of the continent’s environmental assets into economic commodities, and to provide government-owned environmental resources to private entrepreneurs as subsidies to promote this goal.

In the half century between the 1890s and 1946, these 19th century patterns were overlaid by a new and superficially quite different policy: that both waterways and large areas of the public lands should remain in yovemment ownership, and that federal agencies staffed by professional experts should manage them. The primary goal of this policy was still commodity production for national economic growth, but by a different set of governance principles and policy tools: eficient planning by government engineers and scientists should replace the economically wastefbl speculation and inequitable monopolization of resources that had resulted from wholesale privatization, to better sen e the overall public interest. By 1946 this change of policy had radically transformed the governance of much of the American environment, from privatizationper se to private use rights--permits and leases--on government-administered lands and waters.

government, from merely administering a privatization process to actively managing lands and waters for multiple and often conflicting uses. It also created most of the major federal agencies that are responsible for American environmental policy today, including (among others) the Bureau of Reclamation, Forest Service, Public Health Service, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Soil Conservation Service, Tennessee Valley Authority and other hydropower agencies, the Bureau of Land Management, and a major expansion of the mission of the Army Corps of Engineers * American governance itself was thus transformed from a system largely limited to Congressional lawmaking :o one relying on extensive delegation of discretionary authority to administrative agencies--

This new policy pattern greatly enlarged and differentiated the role of the federal

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in a political scientist’s term, “sub-governments”--and from an administrative system largely staffed by political patronage to one largely staffed by scientific and technical professionals, and advocating “efficiency” as an overarching goal of government action. The creation of these agencies established the institutional context for most of the issues and conflicts of American environmental policy today, with the exception of pollution control.

Finally, the character of environmental politics itself shifted during this period. The politics of the natural landscape had already evolved from the simple regional interest coalitions of the early 19th century--sectional coalitions of western against eastern and southern interests, which dominated the politics of public lands as well as of slavery and tariffs up to the Civil War--into a more complex arena of conflicts among competing user interests: farmers and cattlemen versus railroad monopolies, settlers and water companies versus grazing interests and mining companies, cattlemen versus sheepmen, actual users versus speculators, local users versus distant governments, small-scale entrepreneurs versus giant corporations, and others. The politics of the urban environment, meanwhile, had evolved from an initial coalition of professional and civic sanitary reformers into the more ambivalent Progressive alliances of engineering professionals with women’s associations, civic reform groups, and ad hoc campaigns against urban smoke, noise, and other issues.

In the early 20th century, environmental politics at the national level was transformed twice more: first, by the creation of professionalized government agencies as

. a new political force opposing all “special interests” in the name of an overall public interest defined as economic efficiency, and subsequently, by the gradual re-absorption of these agencies into the politics of competing user interests, making the agencies in effect administrative brokers of the conflicting interests of their clients and constituents. The introduction of governance by scientific and technical experts also paved the way for new political conflicts between the environmental ideologies of particular professions and those of other professions, user constituencies, politicians, and the public at large.

Context The 1890s marked the beginning of a major transformation of the American

economy and governance structure. The period from the Civil War to the 1890s has been characterized as an “age of enterprise,” dominated by industrial and continental expansion and political conservatism (McCloskey, 1964). 1892 was the last year before the late 20th century in which the U. S. had an unfavorable balance of foreign trade: exports rose steadily and rapidly, foreign debt fell sharply, and by 1900 the’ U.S was well on its way to becoming the world’s largest and most powerhl economy Politically it was also beginning to express international ambitions, colonizing Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines, and asserting a new role as a global imperial power. The steamship, the telegraph, and the railroad connected American environmental assets with urban and global markets at a far larger scale than before, creating opportunities for enormous profits by efficiently converting the landscape into marketable commodities, but also exposing American farmers, workers and small businesses to far more powerful and impersonal international market forces than they could control or even understand.

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A wave of business consolidations, meanwhile, was replacing much of the relatively decentralized and competitive economy with a closely held and interlocking set of holding companies dominated by finance capitalists. The concentrated economic and political power of these “trusts” dominated both their markets and even governments: in just three years between 1 898 and 190 1 , the national railroad network was consolidated into just five or six groups of operators, and the census of 1900 reported the existence of 73 industrial combinations with a capital of more than $10 million each, many of which controlled more than 50% of the production in their fields. Only 20 of these had existed before 1898; by 1909, however, just 1 % of the country’s industrial firms were producing 44% of the nation’s total manufactured goods. Some of these firms, particularly the railroads and mining, grazing and logging firms as well as electric power companies, were among the most active speculators in western lands, seeking to capture control over profitable environmental assets for hture development. Then as now, advocates of corporate consolidation promised that these changes would be more ‘‘efficient,” reduce “wastehl” competition and duplication of resources, stabilize the economy, and permit more effective competition against foreign firms. However, it also left farmers and other small businesses at the mercy of monopolistic suppliers and purchasers, and concentrated enormous economic power in relatively few and unaccountable hands, far removed from the daily lives and jobs and communities affected by their decisions (Mowry, 1962:4-10).

As a result, the United States by the 1890s had become a highly stratified society, with a few immensely rich industrialists and financiers at the top, moderate numbers of small businessmen, professionals and others in the middle, and a vast and growing population of immigrants and native blacks living in appalling conditions at the bottom. Advocates justified these results by appeals to science: Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner’s “Social Darwinism” argued that industrialization represented “progress,” that successhl capitalists represented the social equivalent of Darwin’s natural selection by “survival of the fittest,” and that they should therefore be left fiee to continue succeeding without government interference--luissezfuire--Iargely ignoring the role of favorable government policies’in their success in the first place The great depression of 1893 exacerbated these differences: a collapse of global agricultural markets wiped out both farm product prices and the speculative western land values on which farmers also depended for credit, causing widespread unemployment, bankruptcies, farm foreclosures, and both urban and rural impoverishment (Hofstadter, 1955.50-54, 56-59)

The conflicts produced by these growing disparities transformed the “age of enterprise” into an “age of reform,” lasting from the agrarian Populist movement of the 1890s through the more urban and middle-class Progressive movement of the early 1900s to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s.’ It also produced two fimdamental changes in principles of governance. .One was the principle that the federal government should serve as a coirntenueighf to the concentrated economic power of big businesses, impartially protecting the overall public interest against economically wastefid or socially disruptive business practices by speculators and monopolies. The second was the principle that government should also be run more like an efficient business enterprise itself, and that government-owned environmental assets--watercourses, forests, grazing lands, and economically valuable minerals, for instance--should be managed efficiently and by

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businesslike principles, rather than merely as “free” assets to be given away as political “pork” or patronage.

the public domain lands based on their particular types of resource values: swamp lands, . desert lands, coal and other mineral lands, timber lands, irrigable lands, and others. To do this, it had begun to create the expertise in government to carry out these classifications, in the form particularly of the U. S. Geological Survey, created in 1879; but the dominant policy remained privatization rather than ongoing public ownership and administration. For several unexpected reasons, however, this policy was fbndamentally reversed in less than two decades beginning in 189 1. In a series of new laws and presidential actions, the federal government was transformed into the ongoing owner and administrator of public lands and waterways, espousing its own principles for management of the environment in the “overall public interest,” and arbitrating both among competing economic user interests and between commodity seekers and non-commodity interest groups that wished to have the environment protected for other values.

The new policy pattern was most clearly evident in the emergence of federal authority for multiple-purpose management of water resources, for multiple-use management of vast acreages of national forests, and for leasing of fbel mineral lands; it appeared concurrently but in somewhat different forms for national parks and monuments and for wildlife habitat. Underlying all these specific policies, however, were several fbdamental governance issues: public versus private management, multiple- versus dominant-use management, management for commodity versus appreciative purposes (“conservation” versus “preservation”), and management for “efficiency” versus management for political preferences.

American environmental policy by the 1890s had begun to differentiate and classifL

Multiple-Purpose Water Resource Management

almost unintentionally from a convergence of 19th century public land and internal improvements policies. Since the 1820s the federal government had both promoted agrarian land settlement and used land grants to finance infrastructures for its development: canals, railroads, swamp-land levees, and others. With the Desert Lands Act of 1877, it began specifically promoting the settlement of irrigable lands in the arid region of the west. The Army Corps of Engineers, meanwhile, had received budget appropriations since the 1820s to subsidize clearing of rivers and harbors, and since later in the century it had also subsidized construction of levees for flood protection; but it had argued consistently that the federal government’s role was strictly to improve navigation for interstate commerce. Before the 188Os, therefore, neither the Corps nor any other agency had asserted any broader federal authority or responsibility for water resource management. ‘

The development of irrigable lands, however, presented a new situation, due to the scale of coordinated activity necessary for viable irrigation projects. Land claimants were required to prove irrigation on large acreages within three years, which in turn required construction of dams at technically suitable locations, canals carrying water from them to imgable lands, property rights both in irrigable lands and in the water to irrigate them (under state prior-appropriation laws, which were separate from land titles), participation

Federal responsibility for water resource management evolved incrementally and

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by enough landowners along the canals to cover their costs, and time horizons sufficient to amortize the necessary investments Such ventures required larger-scale orchestration than merely incremental individual settlement; and they were frequently stymied by the widespread practice of land speculation itself, by which profit-seeking individuals could ‘capture key sites and large areas of the necessary lands, not to participate in an irrigation venture, but simply to profit from the increasing land values at its expense. During the 1880s many of the initial private irrigation ventures therefore failed, due both to land speculation and to drought; and in 1894 the federal government attempted a new version of its old land-grant policy, the Carey Act, offering one million acres of land to each of the western states to be used to finance irrigation projects This act had little effect, however, since most states lacked the financial capital to finance irrigation projects and the most promising sites had already fallen into private ownership (Hays, 1959.6-1 1; PLLRC, 19681648, 650-5 1).

The U. S . Geological Survey, through its scientific surveying responsibilities, began to articulate a more far-reaching federal role in water resource management. USGS was initially created simply to integrate and professionalize federal surveying activities for western lands and resources, but in response to the mounting problems in the irrigable lands program, Congress in 1888 directed it also to conduct hydrographic surveys to identify those public lands most suitable for irrigation as well as the sites necessary to store and transport water for them.’ Working in the context of the arid west, where irrigation competed with other potential uses of water as a scarce resource, and as a scientific rather than engineering agency, USGS hydrographers articulated a new approach. The water resource was a single hydrologic cycle, they argued, at the scale of river basins: it must therefore be studied systematically and allocated efficiently among uses rather than merely appropriated for a single use such as irrigation or navigation.6

The boom and bust of private irrigation development in the late 1880s, meanwhile, convinced irrigation advocates that larger-scale federal financing was necessary. Only the federal government had the necessary financial resources, the constitutional jurisdiction to override interstate conflicts over water allocations, and the statutory authority to prevent speculation in crucial sites from blocking development In 1902 therefore irrigation advocates, led by Rep Newlands of Nevada and with the support of newly inaugurated PFesident Theodore Roosevelt, passed the Newlands Reclamation Act, which created a

sales, and provided discretionary authority for the Secretary of the Interior to select projects and allocate hnds to them. Roosevelt created a new branch of the Geological Survey, the Reclamation Service, to administer the program, in 1907 this Service became a separate agency within the Department of the Interior (PLLRC, 1968 640-42; Hays,

federal Reclamation Fund to pay for irrigation projects from the proceeds of western land --

1 959 :6- 1 9). The Reclamation Fund was superficially similar to previous internal improvement

policies, by which the government set aside revenues from public land sales to finance internal improvements at no cost to other taxpayers In four key respects, however, it created a new and far-reaching innovation in environmental governance First, it created a large earmarked h n d to be used for a particular purpose previous internal improvements had either given public land revenues to the states to use, or kept them within the annual Congressional appropriations process where they were subject, for

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better or worse, to regular political debate about expenditure priorities.’ The idea was a “revolving hnd,” which would finance the capital costs of construction but then be replenished by water use payments from irrigators over the next ten years. In practice, however, as the time of repayment approached farmers mobilized politically to lobby for more lenient terms, and their successfbl results retroactively converted much of the program from loans to outright subsidies (Hays, 1959:246-48). The reclamation experience thus illustrates, among other things, the political difficulty of maintaining the integrity of market-oriented policy tools in the face of clearly identifiable beneficiaries with substantial economic self-interests at stake. *

Second, the Reclamation Act delegated extensive discretion over the use of this fbnd to an administrative agency: the Secretary of the Interior was empowered to make key decisions about projects and expenditures without project-by-project Congressional approval. The rationale for this innovation was to avoid both the land-speculation opportunities and the pork-barrel politics of the annual Congressional appropriations process, which had become a staple of the Corps of Engineers’ rivers and harbors projects. In so doing, however, the Newlands Act marked the first statutory affirmation of the Progressive idea that environmental assets should be managed not by elected representatives for directly accountable political goals but by technical professionals and politically neutral administrators towards the efficient realization of an overall public interest. It thus placed federal administrative oficials in a position of direct power over both private and state development plans throughout the arid west, and of brokering conflicts among all the western water-dependent user constituen~ies.~

Federal financing of irrigation projects, moreover, may have seemed superficially no different from federal financing of navigation or of flood control levees, but in practice it created a kndamentally new set of conditions, both environmentally and institutionally. Environmentally, the construction of dams created a new resource: stored bodies of water, each both ecosystem and commodity, available for multiple uses which were technologically interdependent and often competing. Stored water could be released in rainy periods, to make room to store anticipated floods; or it could be conserved from rainy to dry periods, to maintain downstream navigation or water quality by augmenting low flows; or released at a constant rate through penstocks and turbines to generate hydroelectric power. It could be released through pipes and canals, to provide either irrigation or urban water supply, benefiting different people and uses by diverting that water from its natural flow. Or it could be used in place, both by fish and wildlife and by humans for recreation, but its value for these purposes conflicted with uses that required significant releases or diversions. Institutionally, moreover, each of these pools of water was controlled by a human operator whose decisions either deliberately or by default allocated it among these uses, and thereby exercised monopoly power over those who depended on it.

Third, therefore, the Newlands Act authorized the federal government not only to finance but also to OMW atid operate the major irrigation dams and canals Most western politicians had wanted the federal government simply to subsidize three reservoirs in each state, then turn them over to private businesses for operation; but Newlands and Roosevelt argued for government ownership, to protect both the government’s investment and the farmers whose livelihoods would remain dependent on the resulting water

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monopoly. lo In effect, the Newlands Act thus nationalized the management of western water resources, to be operated by a technically competent federal agency in the name of a statutory mission rather than by private monopolies pursuing their own economic interests. The result was an unavoidable but problematic delegation of broad administrative discretion to technical professionals and administrators to make far- reaching policy choices in the prosaic form of incremental technical decisions.

Fourth, and finally, the Reclamation Act established a second federal agency for water resource engineering and management, separate from and inevitably competing-- since water uses were technically interdependent--with the long-established Army Corps of Engineers. In fact the Corps' own rigidity had necessitated creation of a new and separate agency for a mission that it could itself have served; and contrary to some political caricatures, such bureaucratic duplication was not necessarily an unmitigated waste, since like markets it could provide instructive comparisons among the services of similar agencies. However, the resulting bureaucratic competition also fragmented the management of water resources within the federal government, and led to several decades of unproductive inter-agency rivalry and infighting.

The issues of public versus private and multiple- versus single-use water management intensified as irrigation development was overtaken by even stronger pressures for hydroelectric power and waterway development. By the turn of the 20th century, demand for power production was growing rapidly as the nation electrified, and hydroelectric generation offered a source that was both cheap and clean compared to coal- fired boilers. Private companies and speculators were therefore moving rapidly to claim land preempting the best dam sites, using mineral land claims as a subterfhge; yet their projects were often too small or too narrowly conceived, capturing the best sites for small power dams and thereby blocking more broadly conceived projects that might also provide urban water supply and irrigation. The proliferation of private hydropower dams would also block navigable streams, thus interfering with water-borne commerce. Finally, in an era in which the economic power of large business monopolies was already a major political issue, private control over hydropower production risked the creation of new monopolies dominating not only localized groups of irrigated farms, but the entire population of households and businesses dependent on electricity.

larger-scale federal subsidies for interstate waterway development projects, and beginning around 1895 they began to mobilize widespread political support. major floods in the lower Mississippi River Valley increased pressures for federal flood protection subsidies, widespread public and scientific concerns had been expressed about decreased watershed runoff due to logging, eastern states were still lobbying for construction of an intra-coastal waterway system and cross-Florida barge canal, increases in railroad freight rates were leading shippers once again to lobby for expansion of the canal and waterway system to compete with them, and western irrigation advocates now joined the coalition. l2 Many of these proposals, moreover, were inherently multiple-purpose: the Bureau of Reclamation's first project had included hydroelectric power production as well as irrigation facilities, and the midwestem Deep Waterway proposal was intended to be financed in part by sales of hydroelectric power from its dams (Hays, 1959.9 1 - 100)

In the east and midwest, meanwhile, regional economic interests had long sought

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Roosevelt and his advisors therefore argued for multiple-purpose federal water resource development projects and multiple-use river basin planning on a nation-wide basis, .principles that necessarily implied far more active and pervasive government responsibility for water management.” By capturing and storing otherwise “wasted” and destructive flood waters, multiple-purpose projects could tame these forces of nature and “conserve” them for productive human uses; and multiple-use plans would make most efficient use of them and minimize wastehl conflicts among human users. In 1907, Roosevelt appointed an Inland Waterways Commission, and charged it to develop comprehensive multiple-use plans for the most efficient use of each river system to serve the overall benefit of the country; and based on its recommendations, a second Newlands Act was proposed, which would create an Inland Waterway Fund to finance such projects under the discretionary authority of the Commission. In effect, this proposal would have extended the Reclamation Act principles to authorize administrative discretion over a nation-wide program of multiple-purpose water resource development and management. This proposal failed, however, blocked by Congressional opposition to such sweeping administrative discretion, by apprehension at the magnitudes of pork-barrel expenditures that might result, and by continuing bureaucratic hostility on the part of the Army Corps of Engineers (Hays, 1959: 100- 1 14).

In short, the principle of federal sponsorship of multiple-purpose water resource projects was first promoted by the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, and implemented incrementally in federal reclamation projects over several decades before being generally adopted as statutory policy in the Flood Control Act of 1936, during the New Deal administration of Franklin Roosevelt. Similarly, Federal authority for multiple- purpose river basin planning was aggressively advocated by Theodore Roosevelt , s administration, but blocked by Congressional and bureaucratic opposition until the New Deal; and even under Franklin Roosevelt it was implemented only once, in the form of the Tennessee Valley Authority, while similar proposals for comprehensive management of the Columbia and Missouri river basins were rejected.“ The idea of systematic . environmental management on a river-basin-wide basis, which from a scientific and technical perspective would provide the most logical management unit for both sustaining and efficiently using environmental resources, has thus remained confined to the multiple- purpose management of specific projects. The one exception, TVA, has been constrained from its early years not to attempt any truly comprehensive approach to basin-wide management, but to confine itself to water management and power production per se; and in practice it has become predominantly a public electric power agency, heavily committed to coal-and nuclear-fired power production in addition to hydropower (Schlesinger, 1965:319-34, Selznick, 1949).

development of environmental assets more generally, was whether private claimants should gain windfall benefits from the use of these public resources or should pay the government (and thus the taxpayers) for them These issues had come up previously in 19th century mineral leasing and coal-land pricing laws, but the general 19th century policy had been essentially to give them away--mining, grazing, and timber use rights in particular--on the theory that the overall economy would benefit from their economic use

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An equally fimdamental issue in water resource development, and indeed in the

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In the case of water projects, however, private power companies would be benefiting not simply from resources there for the taking but from resources created by public investment subsidies (multiple-purpose dams), or in some cases impeding the use of those resources for other established public purposes (power dams blocking navigation), and their profits would be substituting for public revenues that could otherwise be used to ‘ finance the costs of the projects themselves. Beginning in 1907, therefore, Roosevelt reinterpreted existing statutes to require not simply federal approval but also user fees and rate regulation for private hydropower dams on navigable streams. President Tafi. initially reversed this policy, but ultimately endorsed the principle in 191 1, and the Water Power ’

Act of 1920 established a statutory policy of federal regulation of hydroelectric power production, leading to creation of the Federal Power Commission.” The 1920 Water Power Act was both the last act and the end of the Progressive legislative agenda, since it confirmed the principle of federal control over hydropower production but at the same time compromised away--until the New Deal--the principle of multiple-use federal water management.

Multiple-Use Forest Management Concurrently, Roosevelt and his advisors articulated an equally strong policy of

federal Executive authority for multiple-use management of the national forest reserves. Since the 1860s there had been growing public and scientific concern that deforestation, resulting from uncontrolled commercial logging, was both diminishing water supplies from forested watersheds and risking a future “timber famine;” these concerns led both cities and irrigation advocates to support the 1891 legislation that allowed presidential withdrawals of forested lands from settlement (Hays, 195936; PLLRC, 1968:575). Presidents Harrison and Cleveland each reserved millions of acres under this authority in the 1890s, but had no authority for active federal management of them, leaving the reserves open to western political attacks as merely a “lock-up” of valuable resources as well as an unwelconie disruption of the land claims process In 1897, on the recommendation of a National Forestry Committee of the National Academy of Sciences, a Forest Management Act therefore authorized the Secretary of the Interior to manage these lands: the Geological Survey was to survey the reserves, and the Secretary of the Interior was authorized to protect them against fire and trespass, and to sell “dead, mature, or large growth trees” at not less than their appraised value. l 6

The significance of this law was similar to that of the Reclamation Act for water 5 years later: it gave discretionary authority to a federal administrator, the Secretary of the Interior, to make technical decisions that had broad socioeconomic and environmental consequences Like a reservoir of stored water, a forest was inherently both ecosystem and commodity, a single resource available for multiple, technically interdependent and competing uses: logging, grazing, mining, watershed protection, wildlife habitat, recreation, and others (sites for water resource dams themselves, for example, might also be located on government forest lands). As in the case of water, effective management of such a resource required technical expertise on a day-to-day basis, at a level of detail impossible for a legislature, yet the cumulative results of these incremental technical decisions in fact comprised the real policy, and either deliberately or by default allocated them to some uses and users rather than others It thus placed federal administrators in

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positions of power over and brokers of all the constituencies who sought to use or preserve the environmental assets of these lands.

for this role, unlike the case of water resources in which its Geological Survey took the lead.” Federal forestry expertise was located in the Bureau of Forestry of the Agriculture Department, headed by Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot therefore campaigned for transfer of the forest reserves to the Department of Agriculture, and in 1905 Congress approved the transfer, creating the U.S. Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture to manage them. Like the Reclamation Act, this transfer created a second agency separate from and ultimately competing with an existing but more limited resource administration agency, in this case the General Land Office. Today both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (successor to the GLO) manage western forest lands for essentially similar sets of multiple uses, and in some regions these lands are even checkerboarded amongst each other where unified management would be far more logical. As in the case of water resources, the organizational competition engendered by this bureaucratic duplication has produced frequent and sometimes intense inter-agency political conflict.

national forest policy, and established an enduring institutional framework under which the national forests have been managed ever since. Pinchot recruited eastern support for the transfer by arguing that it would substitute expert professional management, efficient enforcement and user fees for the land frauds, political conflicts, and disposal mentality of the General Land Office, thus protecting the public’s environmental assets from environmentally wastehl destruction. The forest reserves were to be managed efficiently in the name of the overall public interest, “the greatest good of the greatest number over the longest time.” promising to open them to more active commercial exploitation than under the Interior Department, thus protecting them from economically wastefid preservation: the “overall public interest” was to be defined as management for commercial commodity production under federal administrative management. He cultivated forest industry support by advocating continued tariff protection for lumber as a conservation measure, lest foreign competitors force the U.S. forest products industry into pricing too low to pay for conservation practices, and into wastehlly selective logging of only the most profitable parts of the best trees; and he assuaged private forest businesses’ concerns with promises to treat the National Forests as strictly supplements rather than competitors to private holdings, and to make National Forest timber available only to meet local needs (Steen, 1976:93, 257, 280).19 Finally, he built additional support from the grazing industry by using a broad interpretation of the 1897 Forest Management Act as authority to reopen the forest reserves to grazing as well as logging and other marketable uses, rather than preserving them--as hunting, recreation, and wilderness advocates sought--for their beauty or ecological integrity or as hunting or wildlife reserves Symbolically, the 1905 legislation renamed the forest reserves “National Forests,” reflecting the idea of management for use rather than simply reservation; and the overall institutional mission of the Agriculture Department also favored the idea of “farming” trees for commodity use, as well as cattle- and sheep-grazing, rather than preserving forests as undisturbed ecosystems (Hays,

The Interior Department, however, did not have the technical expertise necessary

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The 1905 Forest Transfer Act marked the third major step in the creation of a

At the same time, however, he recruited western support by

1959138-46).

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These policy principles were clearly articulated in the Secretary of Agriculture’s charge to Pinchot (actually written by Pinchot himself) in appointing him the first head of the Forest Service. He was to manage the forests for “the most productive use for the ’

permanent good of the whole people, not the temporary benefit of individuals or companies.” However, the reserves were to be managed for zrse, including wood, water and forage, not simply locked up; and they were to managed “for the first benefit of the home builder,” and thereafter for agriculture, mining, lumber and cattle, “considering the locally dominant industry first .” Pinchot did introduce user fees for forest commodities-- , stumpage fees for timber, “animal unit month’ grazing fees (AMs)--but the rates generally remained far below true market costs of these commodities’ production. He also created a strongly decentralized administrative system within the Forest Service, in which local and regional forest managers lived in the regions for which they were responsible and exercised strong local autonomy, making them knowledgeable about local conditions but also more sensitive to local economic and political pressures from communities and businesses that lived on the extraction of economic commodities from the public lands than to broader national constituencies (Willtinson, 1992: 127-35).

foundations by a primary mission of commodity use and specifically timber production. Even “multiple-use/sustained-yield management,” which later became the official and in 1960 the statutory policy of the Forest Service, did not connote a truly ecological vision of sustainable, biocentric management of the forest as an ecosystem: to the Forest Service it continued to imply a primary commitment to sustainable production of economic commodities from the forest. Even today, the Forest Service’ planning and management decisions are strongly influenced by top-down allocations of annual timber cut expectations based on economic and political demands for commodities from the public forests, rather than by aggregation of ecological potentials and constraints from the local level up.’’

of lands reserved in federal management. At the beginning of Roosevelt’s administration these comprised 46 4 million acres; by his departure in 1908 he had added 148 million more acres, of which 26 million were in Alaska and the remainder in the contiguous 48 states(PLLRC, 1968:580) The purpose of these reservations was not merely timber production, moreover, but also to assert federal control over a wide range of economically productive uses of public environmental assets, including in particular coal and oil lands and hydropower dam sites2’ Not surprisingly, Roosevelt ’s aggressive assertion of Executive powers precipitated a showdown with Congressional advocates of management by private businesses and elected legislators In 1907 Congress attached a rider to the Forest Service annual appropriation bill to require Congressional approval for all future forest reservations in the western states, effectively repealing the President’s discretionary authority to reserve the forests.22 Additional forest reservations were later created, but primarily by purchase, under the 19 1 1 Weeks Act which authorized federal repurchase of cut-over eastern forest lands for watershed protection (primarily up and down the Appalachian Mountain chain, from New Hampshire to the Carolinas)

lands in federal ownership for active commodity production He did set aside exceptional

*

Environmental policy for the U.S. national forests was thus shaped from its

Roosevelt and Pinchot were also responsible for vastly enlarging the total amounts

--

In short, Theodore Roosevelt’s forest policy was to maintain the forested public

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areas for preservation. tourism, and appreciative rather than extractive use as national parks, national monuments, and wildlife refbges, but only as rare exceptions, and even on most of these his policy was to allow multiple uses rather than strict preservation per se. At the same time, he advocated charging market-based fees for the extraction of

. commodity resources from these lands, selling timber and minerals and grazing rights to the private beneficiaries of them at appraised prices rather than simply giving them away as privileges to those who had positioned themselves to capture them; and he supported enforcement of the laws against the informal systems of private use of public lands and resources that had developed over the 19th century.

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Leasing of Use Rights: Mineral and Grazing Lands Two further applications of the Progressive conservation philosophy were

Roosevelt’s proposals for leasing of minerals extraction and for fee-based permits for grazing use. In the case of fuel minerals, coal-bearing lands had long been recognized as having particularly high economic value, and had therefore been excluded from preemption claims as early as 1841; an 1864 law offered them for sale at a minimum price of $25 per acre, ten to twenty times the price of other public lands 23 In practice, however, claims under other land laws were widely used to capture coal lands in the -

absence of government information on their true values, while on the forest reserve lands mineral claims themselves could be used to capture private control for other purposes. Lacking Congressional support for correcting these abuses, Roosevelt and his advisors unilaterally withdrew all coal-bearing federal lands from land claims, directed USGS to conduct a systematic geological survey of all the federal coal lands, raised their prices fiom the traditional minimum prices per acre to levels more consistent with the true value of their coal content, and proposed that these lands henceforth be retained in federal ownership and leased rather than sold for coal extraction. Leasing was not approved during Roosevelt’s administration, but it was ultimately adopted for Alaska in 1914 and nation-wide in the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, which established the basis on which coal, oil, phosphates, and other minerals--including also today’s Alaskan oil and Outer Continental Shelf deposits--would be managed (Hays, 1959 82-90; Mayer and Riley, 1985: 123-54).*‘

The federal rangelands, meanwhile, had been left since the destruction of the bison herds as an “open access resource,” available to as many cattle and sheep as users wished -- to turn loose on them They could not legally be claimed and privatized in sufficient acreages for profitable grazing operations, since the laws were written to promote only small-scale agrarian settlement, but they were open for grazing use in the mean time In a classic example of the “tragedy of the commons,” they were rapidly overgrazed and denuded as a result. Protection of the range therefore required the imposition of some more stable ownership or use-rights regime, and cattle interests themselves advocated a shift to clear government ownership with leased use rights In fact this proposal served their private interests as well, since it would tend to favor established local ranchers they would thereby obtain effective long-term use rights to the range, and be able to exclude new cattle operations, seasonal sheep herds, potential settlers, and other competing users The Interior Department began controlling grazing on the public lands through a permit system in 1898, and in 1906 Pinchot instituted user fees per animal unit month ( A M ) for

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these permits (Hays, 1959.49-65). Roosevelt’s adoption of these policy recommendations was consistent with environmental protection of rangelands, but it simultaneously placed him on the side of the cattle interests against western farmers, and in turn was a major factor in Congress’ ultimate rejection of his overall conservation policies in 1907-08.

A hndamental tension in both the mineral leasing and rangeland use permit systems, in short, is that while they established federal management control over important environmental assets, they did so on terms that were highly favorable to and even heavily influenced by the particular commodity user interests that were ostensibly to be restrained by federal management: mining interests and stockmen themselves ultimately advocated these leasing systems as a means of stabilizing their own long-term economic interests in these resources and restricting or even excluding competitors (Hays, 1959. -7 . Mayer and Riley, 1985: 127-45). Once leases or permits were granted, they in fact conferred a kind of property right which was actually far cheaper than outright purchase, yet almost as durable: it was and is extremely difficult for the federal government to cancel or transfer such privileges, even in the face of only minimal compliance or even disregard of lease or permit requirements. Compared to the wastehl and destructive practices of the unrestrained competitive exploitation that preceded them, these policies did provide for more prudent environmental management. However, they also provided government- sponsored advantages as well as serious loopholes to the remaining users, which were often exactly the large corporate interests that were the symbds of excessive economic power and “special interests” to Populists, Progressives and modern environmentalists. This tension between environmental and populist values remains a contradictory tension in modern American environmental politics.

Roosevelt’s idea of conservation, in short, was not and could not be politically neutral, nor did it necessarily favor the sort of Populist advocacy for the “little guys” against larger and economically powefil businesses that is sometimes imagined for it. Rather, it favored protection of the rangelands as an economic asset, by converting them fiom an open-access to a common-property management regime in which organized and economically powerful interests in fact had greater opportunities to benefit than did smaller, more transient and less organized interests. He could in principle, of course, have structured the management regime in different ways, such as by rationing grazing permits by criteria that would have left them more available to other claimants, but at the time even the policy of legitimizing grazing as a long-term use represented a hndamental change fiom the settlers’ perception of grazing as a transient activity to be gradually replaced by agrarian settlement While user fees for grazing on the National Forests were authorized in 1906, a broader federal policy of leasing use rights for grazing was not enacted until almost 30 years later, in the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934

“Conservation” versus “Preservation” A common theme underlying the water, forest and other environmental policies of

the Progressive era was an explicit change in overall philosophy of governance. Roosevelt advocated active use of the powers of government, in the discretionary authority of the President and of technically competent administrators, to restrain the wasteful and destructive effects of anarchic market competition and to assure efficient use of society’s assets for the overall good of the economy and the society. From a fusion of these

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characteristics with some elements of earlier conservationist views--concern over natural resource scarcity, moral fervor against their excessive exploitation and waste, and belief that humans should exercise active stewardship over them--emerged Roosevelt’s program of what has been called Progressive conservation. The principles of this program were summarized by Roosevelt’s Chief Forester and close advisor, Gifford Pinchot:

The first principle of conservation is development, the use of the natural resources now existing in the continent for the benefit of the people who live here now.. . . In the second place conservation stands for the prevention of waste . . . . There is a third principle. It is this: the natural resources must be developed and preserved for the benefit of the many, and not merely the profit of a few .... Conservation means the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time (Pinchot, 1910:43- 48). Pinchot’s first priority was economic development, and his idea of “waste” could

as easily mean leaving nature unused as throwing away useful materials; his “longest time” was defined by the primary interests of “the people who live here principles of Progressivism, not of what today would be called an ecological or biocentric view of environmental conservation, let alone of the aesthetic or religious visions of appreciation for nature articulated by Emerson, Thoreau, Muir and others. As a practical matter, moreover, Pinchot’s paraphrase of the English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (“the greatest good for the greatest number”) only served to disguise the conflicts in priority that must be resolved among these objectives in any specific decision. A

.case could be made, for instance, that ecological values should be placed above current market values, in order that the length of time be maximized; or that the “greatest good’ should mean emphasizing spiritual over utilitarian economic values, as Muir had suggested. Pinchot and other Roosevelt advisors, however, clearly put first priority on the Progressive objective of development as efficient economic production.26

governance issue they implied. He believed in Executive management under broad grants of administrative discretion: a powefil but politically neutral state, administered by technical experts under an activist President serving as steward of the public interest. He attacked as “wasteful” both the destruction of resources and the “locking up” of them for non-commodity purposes, and took bold actions to reduce both: his criterion in both cases was the “national economic efficiency” of utilitarian Progressivism, not a biocentric or aesthetic or religious concern for nature for its own sake He populated his administration with experts in hydrology, forestry, agricultural sciences, geology and anthropology, professional technicians linked by the idea of efficiency in resource utilization; and his program received its primary support from other organizations that were attempting to promote efficiency, such as the professional engineering societies:

These were

Equally significant as Roosevelt’s substantive policies, however, was the basic

The broader significance of the conservation movement [under Roosevelt] stemmed from the role it played in the transformation of a decentralized, non-technical, loosely organized society, where waste and inefficiency ran rampant, into a highly organized, technical, and centrally planned and directed social organization which could meet a complex world with efficiency and purpose (Hays, 1969:2, 123, 265)

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In short, Roosevelt and Pinchot introduced the planning and management of natural resource utilization into the federal government on a broad scale, and in the process they identified that management with the objective of economic efficiency. Roosevelt was not so much an anti-big-business “trust-buster,” as an advocate for bringing into government the same methods of modern management, economies of scale, and efficient centralized management that were then transforming the private sector from small competing businesses into large monopolistic corporations (Nelson, 1984276-77). The goal remained the same, to convert the landscape into marketable commodities, but the agents and beneficiaries were different: public monopolies run by government experts to benefit a broadened middle class rather than a super-rich minority of finance capitalists.

An unresolved issue, however, was whether the goal should d w q s be commodity production, or whether some natural landscapes and species should simply be preseweu‘, for their ecological’ aesthetic and religious values. Commodity-use advocates might point to the Biblical injunction to “multiply and subdue the earth,” but others (Emerson and Thoreau, for instance) articulated equally ancient religious injunctions: that the earth is beautifid as an expression of the perfection of the Creator, that it is useful to humans not only for material sustenance but also for religious inspiration, and that humans owe a duty of stewardship of it for the common good, not simply an opportunity for personal gain.27 Nineteenth century naturalists and scientists added secular arguments for more purposeful restraint in the exploitation of the landscape, in particular the pathbreaking 1864 book by U.S. ambassador George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature. or. Physical Geogaphy as Modified by Human Action. Marsh was the first to document systematically the destructive effects of human activities on the earth’s natural systems and landscapes, to argue that these human impacts went far beyond those of other species, and to urge actions to minimize and mitigate these impacts.28

Despite Marsh’s insights and others’, however, environmental policy debate remained trapped for decades in a more simplistic dualism defined by Pinchot and others as “conservation versus preservation,” implying that to oppose his philosophy of conservation for commodity production was to advocate simply “locking up” America’s environmental assets and thus “wasting” them. In practice even Roosevelt and Pinchot recognized the value of maintaining the special character of a few unique landscapes as national treasures, but their more fkdamental philosophy was that environmental management should be for multiple-use commodity production, and that decisions among such uses should be left to the discretionary authority of technical professionals. John Muir and the Sierra Club and others, in contrast, were more deeply skeptical of the Progressive view of an efficient urban and industrial economy, and advocated more systematic restraint on human transformation of the landscape into economic commodities.

By 1900, Congress had in fact already approved the creation of six national parks: Hot Springs ( 1 832),Yellowstone( 1872), Mackinac Island ( 1875), Sequoia and General Grant ( 1 890), and Mt. Rainier ( 1899). During the Roosevelt and Tafi administrations, and with their support, Congress also approved five more. Crater Lake (1 902), Wind Cave ( 1 903), Platt/SulfLr Springs ( 1906), Mesa Verde ( 1906), and Glacier ( 19 10). Roosevelt also was responsible for creation of the first national wildlife refuge (at Pelican Island, Florida, in 1903), and a National Bison Range in Montana in 1908 A key constraint on

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the creation of national parks, however, was that unlike the forest reserves, they could be created only by specific Congressional legislation rather than by presidential proclamations, and by the time Congress could act speculators would have months or years in which to claim and capture the key lands. In the area of the Grand Canyon, for instance, speculators used “mining claims” to capture control of the canyon’s viewpoints and trailheads and thus of the potentially lucrative tourism business that might follow.

With the 1907 amendment ending the president’s authority to proclaim forest reservations, he also lost that key tool for holding potential national parks out of the land- claims process long enough for Congress to act. A substitute tool was inadvertently created in 1906, however, in the language of the American Antiquities Act. This law was passed in reaction to large-scale looting of Mesa Verde and other American Indian archaeological sites, to allow the president to act quickly to protect what were envisioned as limited and specific sites: “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historical or scientific interest situated on government lands.” Such sites could be set aside by presidential proclamation as “national monuments,” limited to the smallest area compatible with their proper care and management (to avoid the large-scale reservations which by then had attracted Congressional opposition); they were reserved for scientific, educational and recreational rather than commercial purposes, and defacement of ruins on them was prohibited. In practice, however, the Antiquities Act created a new tool for unilateral presidential action to preserve larger areas temporarily as potential national parks as well. Between 1906 and 1910 Presidents Roosevelt and Taft proclaimed 23 national monuments, including several that later were redesignated as national parks (Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Katmai, and Glacier Bay, for instance); .and in the late 197Os, faced with obstructionist tactics by Alaskan Congressmen over Alaskan lands legislation, Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus used the law to declare millions of acres “national monuments” and thus force Congressional action (Wilkinson, 1992: 5 5 ) .

The designation of national parks as reserved lands, however, did not resolve the question of how they should be managed: for preservation and appreciation only, or for commodity extraction as well--grazing, timber, hunting, even mining. The Yosemite Valley, for instance, had been granted to California as a park in 1863, but was then logged, burned, and over-grazed for decades under California’s permissive multiple-use concept of a park (Richardson, 1962: 120; Udall, 1963, 128) John Muir led the Sierra Club in a campaign first to appoint a trained forester to administer the park, and later, beginning in 1893, to have the park re-ceded by the state to federal management; he convinced President Roosevelt of the need for recession in 1903, and in 1905 succeeded, with Roosevelt’s support, in getting recession bills through both the state assembly and the

Conflict immediately resurfaced, however, over a proposal to dam the Hetch * Congress.

Hetchy Valley--adjacent to Yosemite and a part of the same land reservation, and described by some as even more beautihl--to meet demands of the city of San Francisco for increased water supply and hydropower Reservoir advocates defined the issue in Progressive economic efficiency terms, arguing that while there were several other possible sources of water for San Francisco, Hetch Hetchy would be the cheapest and would generate the most electric power; Muir and his allies responded that the valley was even more beautifid and pristine than the Yosemite Valley itself, and should be preserved

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inviolate (Udall, 1963 133, Hays, 1959 193-95). In this case Roosevelt and Pinchot sided with the reservoir advocates, supporting both the political agenda of urban Progressivism in San Francisco and the more general utilitarian principle of multiple-purpose water resource development over Muir’s aesthetic and religious arguments for pre~ervation:~~

[Pinchot and Muir] had fought on the same side in the first stages of the fight ... against waste and mismanagement of the national estate. Unavoidably, however, Pinchot’s philosophy of conservation for use collided with Muir’s conviction that the best parts of the woodlands and wilderness should be preserved inviolate as sanctuaries of the human spirit (Udall, 1963: 130-32). The Hetch Hetchy project was not finally approved and constructed until 19 14,

years after Roosevelt and Pinchot left office, but the issue produced a permanent schism between the “conservation” forces--Roosevelt and Pinchot, commodity production and water resource development advocates, the commodity-oriented natural resource management professionals in the federal agencies, and other advocates of efficient multiple-use management-and the “preservationists,” led by Muir and the Sierra Club, who came to totally distrust the multiple-use management philosophy of the forest and water management agencies and their professionals. The immediate practical result was a successfil preservationist campaign in 19 16 to create a separate National Park Service in the Interior Department, which would manage the national parks explicitly for their preservation and secondarily for public enjoyment and education. Creation of the Park Service was a direct rebuff to Pinchot’s philosophy of commodity-oriented multiple-use management; and since many of the most pristine natural landscapes had already been set aside in the national forest system, it set the stage for long-term bureaucratic rivalry as national park advocates sought to redesignate and preserve lands that were already held by the Forest Service for multiple-use management (Hays, 1959.189-98).’”

Not surprisingly, Roosevelt’s ambitious policies also attracted increasingly strong opposition both from powerfid economic and bureaucratic interests and from their supporters in the Congress. In the face of this growing opposition, Roosevelt appealed to the public:

Faced with this opposition, those in the vanguard of the Roosevelt resource movement turned more and more to the general public for support, and unleashed a veritable crusade of enthusiasm for conservation In this fashion a movement

public at large (Hays, 1969.122) peculiar to federal scientists and planners became deeply rooted in the minds of the - -

In distinct contrast to the modem environmental movement, that is, the early 20th century conservation movement was orchestrated from the top down, as a Presidential initiative to mobilize support for policies stalemated by legislative opposition

beyond Washington-level technical professionals, and to mobilize others under a broader umbrella of “conservation ” engineers and other professionals, inland waterways advocates, moral crusaders against private resource exploiters, public power lobbyists, and Progressives in general The strategy achieved results. a White House Governors’ Conference in 1908 issued a “Declaration for Conservation of Natural Resources,” supporting Roosevelt’s policies, Roosevelt appointed a National Conservation Commission, which completed the first broad inventory of the nation’s natural resources,

To make this appeal, however, Roosevelt sought to broaden his constituency

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and whose report was also endorsed by the governors; and the popular support that was built up provided the impetus for Gifford Pinchot ’s National Conservation Association, founded in 1909.

The creation of a broader popular movement, however, required alliances with constituencies‘who had far more diverse and conflicting views of environmental policy than Pinchot’s “gospel of efficiency.” Like “environment,” “conservation” served as a broad conceptual umbrella for groups who differed significantly in their specific values and priorities (in President Tafi’s words, conservation was “a good thing, whatever it

This bid for popular support brought into the [Progressive] conservation movement a new and disturbing influence. Heretofore, specific interest groups.. . had comprised the major political backing for the administration’s resource policies. Concerned primarily with economic growth, they aided Pinchot and his fiiends because of a common interest in rational development. Those who came to the support of conservation in 1908 and 1909, however, were prone to look upon all commercial development as mere materialism, and upon conservation as an attempt to save resources from use rather than to use them wisely. The problem, to them, was moral rather than economic.. . . The common denominator which drew all these groups together and attracted them to the conservation movement was a feeling that a desire for material gain had become too prominent in America, and that other values should be stressed . . . . A wide difference in attitude separated Roosevelt, Pinchot and [Secretary of the Interior] Garfield fiom the new enthusiasts (Hays, 1969: 141-42 and 145-46). The result of Roosevelt’s “co-optive strategy,” therefore, was a heightened level of

conflict among factions within the conservation movement, and eventually-after Roosevelt left ofice--a fragmentation of that movement into subgroups arguing over the utilization of particular resources.

In summary, the environmental legacy of Theodore Roosevelt’s administration is mixed. He set aside vast areas for public management of resource commodity production as well as some key sites for permanent preservation, human enjoyment and wildlife protection. He made the problem of natural resource scarcity a national issue, a real and important concept in the consciousness of the general public, and he provided active national leadership against the waste and destruction of natural resources for private profit. Most important, he asserted the need for stewardship of resources at the highest level of government, and brought the functions of natural resource planning and management to the federal government in order to fulfill that responsibility. On the other hand, his adoption of economic efficiency as the fundamental objective of that management sacrificed other legitimate environmental values and goals, such as those that had been articulated by Marsh half a century before. He thus unwittingly laid some of the foundations for later attacks on federal resource management agencies. from the perspective of the present, the narrowly commodity-oriented values and practices of “Progressive” conservation were not and could not be politically “neutral,” and came to appear as simply a new version of the old problem of environmental overuse and destruction.

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Environmental Agencies as “Sub-governments”

contours of American environmental policy The turn-of-the-century business consolidation movement permitted introduction of far larger-scale production

accelerated these processes; post-war demobilization led these companies in turn to seek civilian markets for continued production at wartime levels. Mass production assembly lines were introduced into automobile manufacturing and other industries, and electrification and radios (as well as increasingly literate urban populations, and the resulting growth in newspaper circulation) opened the way to mass advertising. A federal income tax was created in 1913, permitting lower tariffs and thus expansion of international trade, while also providing a far broader revenue base to support federal agencies and programs; a Bureau of the Budget, forerunner of today’s Office of Management and Budget, was created in 1921 to oversee the allocation of these revenues.

reinforced the Progressive doctrine of activist management by government, but also subordinated virtually all other policies to the single priority of winning the war: timber from the northwestern spruce forests and even from the national parks was heavily logged for aircraft construction, national parks were used for troop quarters, and domestic environmental programs were put on Wartime propaganda did exhort frugality in consumer demand for material goods and energy--“Hooverizing” was a popular expression for conserving on food and he], named for then-director of the wartime Food Administration Herbert Hoover, and home “victory gardens” were encouraged to augment food supplies-but these policies were intended solely to free up more resources for the war effort rather than to protect the environment, and both industrial pollution control and occupational health protection programs in particular were sidetracked in the name of all- out production for national security.33

More pervasively, World War I was the first global-scale war fought with modern industrial technology-tanks, trucks, aircraft, toxic chemicals, and others--and its policy consequences therefore included massive government incentives for expansion of those sectors of the economy. Once scaled up for wartime needs, these sectors would not Simpbj disappear again, but would seek both continued government support and new

environment as a source of raw materials and sink for their wastes.34 By the same token, World War I was the first global-scale war fought with petroleum-heled technology, which dramatically increased the extraction and use of this resource but also increased policy concern for its conservation, since it was not only strategically essential but also finite and exhaustible--unlike wood and other material resources, fossil he1 once burned could not be recycled or reproduced 35

Finally, the totality of war mobilization both galvanized and exhausted public support for activist government management, leaving in its wake a postwar period of popular disinterest in civic reform, business pressures to “get the private economy going again”, and over a decade of standpat, lamrz-jaire governance by Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover 36 In this vacuum of presidential leadership and popular mobilization, interest groups seeking particular uses of the nation’s environmental assets

The war years of World War I and its aftermath again shifted the context and

‘ technologies, and war mobilization policies and associated government purchases

The war effort itself had important consequences for environmental policy. It

civilian markets, with all their associated high levels of continuing pressure on the natural -.

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renewed their political pressures--stock grazers, water power speculators, irrigation developers, and other commodity user groups, and now sportsmen, park lovers, wildlife enthusiasts, and others as well. These pressures reopened intense domestic political conflicts over how the nation’s environmental assets should be used, but now in the new context of administrative decision-making by federal management agencies

In this postwar context of diminished presidential leadership and intensified stakeholder pressures, the environmental agencies that had emerged during the Progressive era came to operate more and more as specialized sub-govenimertts, responsible by law for administrative decisions in “the public interest” among competing resource claimants, but in reality constrained to develop stable alliances with political stakeholder constituencies in order to support their budgets and decisions. These constituencies thus came to have as much influence over the agencies as the agencies had over them: the agencies controlled resource use rights, but the organized user cdnstituencies could mobilize either Congressional support or opposition to the agencies themselves. Each needed the other, and the resulting pattern of “interest-group pluralism” has dominated American environmental policy in particular, and American public policy- making in general, for the past half-century or

An important change in the character of these client-constituency relationships was the emergence of noii-commodify stakeholder groups as political forces in their own right, no longer as marginalized by the dominant ideology of commodity production that dominated both 19th century privatization policies and Pinchot ’s almost exclusively utilitarian policies of multiple-purpose resource development. Key stakeholder groups now had their own experts within the Executive branch--the National Park Service for landscape preservation, the Biological Survey and Bureau of Fisheries (forerunners of the Fish and Wildlife Service) for wildlife protection, along with the Forest Service for timber and grazing and the Bureau of Reclamation for irrigation and hydropower--and these agencies served in practice not only as disinterested managers but as bureaucratic advocates for competing public purposes. The threat of effective competition from the National Park Service, for instance, forced the Forest Service to address non-commodity values such as wildlife protection and recreation lest it lose key lands by transfer to the national park system or wildlife rehges; and the examples of Reclamation dams, along with major floods in the 1920s that overwhelmed its levee systems, ultimately forced the Army Corps of Engineers to accept the principle of multiple-use water management. These adaptations in turn, however, increased the tensions among conflicting constituencies within each agency’s own decision-making process, setting the stage for many of the pivotal policy conflicts of the modem environmental era

The Reclamation Service was the first and in a sense classic example of administrative sub-government, since its water users were of necessity economically dependent on it from the outset By the 1920s, however, its program was in disarray, wracked by uneconomically slow settlement and participation rates, higher than expected costs, user complaints, and Congressional relief acts that had reduced anticipated repayments. Beginning in 1925, the renamed Bureau of Reclamation under Elwood Mead instituted reforms to decrease its constituents’ complaints and stabilize its financing, particularly by redefining repayment schedules in proportion to land productivity, completing existing projects rather than starting new ones, and placing completed projects

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under the control of local user organizations. In addition, despite the conservatism of the times, severe flooding in California’s Imperial Valley catalyzed support for the first truly large-scale multiple-purpose water project, the Boulder Canyon Dam (Hoover Dam) on the Colorado River. to provide a combination of irrigation and flood control plus hydroelectric power production to finance its cost. This project in turn set the precedent for the later large federal water projects of the New Deal and post-World War I1 periods: Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia Basin project, Upper Colorado and Missouri River Basin proposals, and others (Swain, 1963:73-95).j8

The example of multiple-purpose water development by the Bureau of Reclamation, and the reality of basin-wide coordination required by large-scale waterway projects approved in the 192Os, finally forced the Army Corps of Engineers to accept multiple-purpose water development itself, along with th’e inherent diversity of conflicting interests and constituencies that came with it.jg Major floods on the Mississippi River in 1927 refbted once again the Corps’ “levees only” approach to flood control--ecologically, levees simply contained the river and thus increased flood impacts downstream, and sediment accumulation led to constant increases in river levels rendering them ineffective- and Congress in the same year finally directed the Corps to systematically study the navigation, hydropower, flood control and irrigation potential of some 200 rivers. These “308 reports” in turn laid the foundation for the nationwide water resource development program implemented during the Depression and postwar years, which became a central target of environmentalist opposition in the 1960s and ’70s (Swain, 1963:96- 122).

The Forest Service, meanwhile, adapted to the Inissez-fcrrre Republicanism of the 1920s by emphasizing cooperative programs with state forestry agencies and private forest owners rather than activist federal regulatory initiatives:“ exemplified by the 1924 Clarke-McNary Act, these cooperative programs emphasized forest fire protection, reforestation, and forestry extension services.“ It also expanded its emphasis on research programs, both to increase its service to forest user constituencies (imitating the long- standing success of USDA agricultural research programs) and to justifjr its programs with “better science.’7J2 At the same time, however, it found itself increasingly on the defensive against proposals by wildlife, recreation and wilderness advocates, and their advocates within the new rival National Park Service, to set aside areas of the national forests for permanent preservation rather than commodity production--and even to transfer them to the Park Service if necessary to assure that result. To avoid outright loss of these areas, the Forest Service sought to accommodate these non-commodity constituencies by adding wildlife protection and wilderness preservation programs, while still maintaining its own discretionary authority for hture use changes. The result. however, was an unresolved and ultimately increasing tension among the agency’s commodity user clients (timber, mining and grazing users) and its wildlife, recreation, and wilderness constituencies (Swain, 1963:9-29). Pinchot’s vision of a single “overall public interest” best known to government scientists was difficult to sustain against the evidence of this constant brokering of interest groups that was the day-to-day reality of the Forest Service’s task.

The National Park Service, meanwhile, set aut under the exceptional leadership of Stephen Mather to solidif) and expand its role. Administratively, Mather consolidated the parks into a unified system under three clear and enduring policy priorities. unimpaired preservation, active public use consistent with preservation, and business enterprises in the

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parks (such as commercial services) determined solely by the “national interest” consistent with preservation and public use. Politically, Mather aggressively mobilized and broadened the parks’ constituencies: publicizing the parks with enormous amounts of pictorial propaganda to the general public, promoting park tourism both directly and with road and hotel construction (and associated economic interests, such as the railroads, construction industry, and concessionaires), organizing “park safaris” for Congressmen and prominent journalists, and even obtaining a resolution from the American Association for the Advancement of Science urging permanent protection of the parks against commercial use.43 Unlike the Forest Service, Mather successklly resisted the political pressures of most conflicting user constituencies, fending off proposals to open the parks for hydropower production, grazing and other commodity uses It still had to contend with conflicts between wilderness purists and advocates of more intensive recreational uses (including the economic interests of concessionaires allied with the latter), but this was a far less complex task than that facing the Forest Service

At the same time, Mather and his successor Horace Albright effectively used the political support they had mobilized to expand the national park system--often at the expense of the Forest Service--and even to propose Park Service jurisdiction over recreational programs on National Forest lands, arguing (correctly) that the Forest Service considered these uses merely incidental and subordinate to its commodity production goals, and forcing the Forest Service to incorporate recreation and preservation more explicitly into its management as welI.jJ

Yet another administrative sub-govemment which illustrates the difficulty of maintaining the Progressive claim of efficient and politically neutral scientific management was the wildlife management program of the Bureau of Biological Survey. Wildlife protection laws had existed since colonial days as a subject of state policy, prompted by over-hunting of deer and fur-bearers, and by 1900 both state and federal laws sought to protect and promote some valuable species of mammals, birds and fish: the Lacey Act of 1900, in particular, established federal regulatory authority over interstate and international commerce in wild game, effectively ending the commercial hunting practices that had driven the passenger pigeon and other species to extinction. The 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act established federal authority over migratory waterfowl, by 1920 Congress had established a series of 70 federal wildlife refuges as well, and 102 by 1933 45 A federal Bureau of Fisheries was created in the Agriculture Department in the 1870s, and an economic ornithology office in 1885, the latter renamed the Biological Survey in 1896 and given Bureau status in 1906.

By the I920s, however, the Biological Survey faced constant conflicting pressures from two powefil and fundamentally antagonistic constituencies. wildlife protection advocates on the one hand, and sportsmen, arms manufacturers, and eventually farmers on the other. Both animal protection advocates and scientists urged far stricter regulation of hunting seasons and bag limits, for instance, against the determined opposition of hunters and gun manufacturers; the pro-hunting faction maintained control of this issue until the late 1920s, despite intense criticism.and lobbying by animal protectionists led by the distinguished zoologist William Hornaday of the New York Zoological Society, until a systematic waterfowl survey in the late 1920s proved Hornaday’s concerns correct On the issue of wildlife refuges, animal protectionists argued that they should be managed as

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sanctuaries, while hunters argued that they should be managed as hunting preserves; this battle the animal protection forces won,46 but their own absolute position against hunting was in turn undermined by the disastrous starvation of deer on Arizona’s Kaibab plateau, caused by their own overpopulation in the absence of predators or hunting pressures (Swain, 1963:30-43).”

A third major constituency became a powerful and divisive influence on the Biological Survey Bureau after 1915, when stockmen and farmers persuaded Congress to support large-scale programs to exterminate predatory and other “pest” species. Between 1921 and 1924 alone the Biological Survey was responsible for killing almost 400,000 animals-wolves, bobcats, mountain lions, bears, coyotes, and many others by indiscriminate poisoning--and in later years this program was continued and expanded, despite perennial criticism by wildlife conservationists and many scientists, to include ferrets, prairie dogs, and other species that farmers and ranchers considered “pests.” In effect, the Biological Survey’s mission was substantially reoriented from scientific research to large-scale environmental intervention, providing wildlife extermination services for farmers and ranchers. Wracked by such constant conflicts among its constituencies, and failing to stop the decline of American wildlife species, the Bureau of Biological Survey ultimately alienated much of its support and fell increasingly into disrepute. In 1939 it was finally consolidated with the far less controversial Bureau of Fisheries into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, though this consolidation did not end its responsibility for controversial activities such as its predator control programs (Swain, 1963 :43-52).

Managing Environmental “Commons”

commons” that occurs when multiple users share uncontrolled access to a common resource: each user has an individual incentive to use it more and more intensively, but the aggregate effect of these individually rational decisions is to overuse and destroy it, unless there is some legally binding management regime--“mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”--to cap the overall effect and ration it among its users (Hardin, 1968). Hardin’s example was historically flawed,J8 but the problem he described was already well illustrated by several environmental policy issues as early as the 1920s. One was hunting: without adequate controls on hunting seasons and bag limits as well as habitat destruction, the cumulative effects of individual hunters’ successes and individual farmers’ land conversions was to reduce or even destroy the wildlife populations themselves, as had already happened to the passenger pigeons, eastern hr-bearers, and some other species. The problem was compounded for migratory waterfowl by the inter-state “commons” of competing policy incentives, requiring a federal or even international regime for adequate protection.

Another example was fisheries: the valuable Alaskan salmon fisheries were steadily declining by the 192Os, so much so that even the otherwise Iaissez$aire President Harding in 1922 signed an Executive Order, on the recommendation of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, creating a fisheries reservation under the regulatory control of the federal Bureau of Fisheries Congress confirmed this regime in the Alaskan Fisheries Act of 1924, authorizing federal regulatory control over both seasons and fishing methods and equipment as well as programs to improve spawning waters; the result was a clear

In a famous article published in 1968, Garrett Hardin described the “tragedy of the

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reversal of the fishev declines by 1926, and a persuasive example of the necessity and effectiveness of a competent governance regime for such resources (Swain, 1963 47)

A third environmental commons problem of the 1920s, which foreshadowed both the 1970s “energy crisis’’ and many other environmental “tragedies of the commons,” was the competitive over-exploitation of American oil fields. World War I had clearly demonstrated the strategic importance of petroleum, and the associated national interest both in using it efficiently and in maintaining domestic reserves. Mass production had also begun to make automobiles widely affordable, however, and a federal construction program for a national highway system had been established in 1916, both these forces, and the evident benefits of automobiles over horses, were rapidly increasing public demand for fuel. Unlike solid minerals such as coal, however, oil was usually found in large underground pools that could rarely be controlled by a single producer. Since multiple producers were pumping oil from the same deposits, the practical incentive to each was to pump as fast as possible, so as to capture more than the other producers; but the overall result was to drive down prices, reducing the profits to each producer and simultaneously promoting wastehl consumption of energy by businesses and consumers (and in the long run, promoting reliatice on cheap energy, by encouraging capital investments in long-lived but energy-wasteful buildings, technologies, and urban settlement patterns). These incentives were exacerbated by the policy of virtually unlimited prospecting for oil on the public lands under the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act, whose incentive was similarly to find and claim (by developing and pumping) these assets as fast as possible before a competitor did consumers supported these policies, since their immediate and visible effects were cheap fuel prices and erosion of the economic power of the large oil companies; but these political attractions conflicted with both environmental sustainability and even long-term national security.

The unsustainably low prices of domestic oil during this period, and the resulting business and consumer commitments based on them, created a hndamental and problematic dogma in American policy, namely the doctrine that national economic growth depended on cheap energy and thus that U.S. policy should be to keep it cheap. This doctrine was not especially new, echoing as it did the 19th century legacy of exploiting environmental assets for economic gain, nor was it even sound economics: keeping a scarce resource cheap destroys market signals to conserve it, to adapt to its scarcity and to develop alternatives to it, and thus allows a more serious crisis to build up.50 Its basic premise was also incorrect: in response to rising energy prices in the 1970s, many industrial economies in fact substantially reduced their linkages between energy intensity and economic performance [cite Simonis]. The policy was nonetheless fateful, in that it shaped the modem U.S economy in a pattern deeply and structurally dependent on cheap fossil hels This pattern produced many material benefits- technological innovation, widespread comfort and convenience, mobility, and low-density suburban residence patterns, among others--but also serious costs and risks, including more air pollution and oil spills, declining and more costly domestic supplies, economic and political vulnerability to foreign he1 sources, and consequent military costs and risks to maintain access to them 5 ’

Many energy-user businesses and

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From a public policy perspective, the overproduction pattern could only be corrected by reducing the incentive for competitive pumping. Two solutions were possible: either allow the oil companies themselves to collude in restricting production . and thus controlling prices, or ration output under government regulations, and operate each oil field as a single unit with an overall production quota prorated among its producers. President Hoover demonstrated the effectiveness of the latter approach at the government’s Kettleman Hills oil field in California, providing a model both for other federal oil fields and for state programs by most of the oil-producing states. Oil prices historically have remained low in the United States--perhaps too low for long-term national and economic security, as well as for environmentally sustainable development patterns-but Hoover’s policy change did significantly reduce the extraordinary waste of oil and associated natural gas that had previously occurred.52 A subsequent federal statute, the Connally Hot Oil Act of 1935, promoted additional oil conservation laws at the state level by prohibiting interstate shipment of oil produced in violation of state laws (Owen, 1983:118).

Commons problems are particularly characteristic of many environmental policy issues, but they remain a pervasive challenge both for economic markets and for public policy-making more generally as well. A subtler and more pervasive market example is the commons aspect of agricultural markets: high prices for agricultural products in one year lead each producer to plant more the following year, creating aggregate surpluses which reduce prices to levels often below the farmers’ production costs (and in the presence of any unexpected additional market disruptions, driving many into bankruptcy, as happened repeatedly until agricultural stabilization policies were instituted in the 1930s)? An equally ubiquitous public policy example is the commons aspect of the federal budget: each elected representative has a powetfbl individual incentive to seek as much hnding as possible for his own state or district (“pork-barreling”), thereby creating an aggregate tendency to spend a greater total budget than is economically wise. The natural resource commons problems of the 1920s provided some of the clearest and most persuasive examples of this phenomenon, as well as models for federal management responses to them.

.

New Deal Conservation

federal environmental management, confronting the economic boom and lnissez-&aire presidential philosophy of the 1920s with a profound national crisis. When Franklin Roosevelt took ofice in 1933, the entire economic system was essentially in collapse: total national income had declined by more than 50% in just four years, an estimated 25% of the work force was unemployed, and people were starving in the richest country in the world. Vast numbers of debt-ridden farmers were facing foreclosure, and on the very day of his inauguration the entire U.S. banking system had locked its doors. Economic collapse was compounded by environmental disaster, as years of drought followed by giant dust storms and floods swept across the country’s agricultural heartland. Under these circumstances, the public and even the Congress were prepared to support almost any decisive presidential leadership that might provide solutions; and Franklin Roosevelt brought to ofice both a willingness to use government initiatives to remedy social and

-- The economic crash and Great Depression created a radically changed context for

Andrews draft - 7.28 9-1 - Do not cite or quote 26 9P.q environmental problems, and a lifelong personal commitment to environmental con~ervation.~~ FDR’s New Deal therefore offered the most sweepingly activist approach to federal governance in American history, ranging from short-term emergency relief measures to more far-reaching reform of banking and stock markets, agriculture and

the overall economy (Schlesinger, 1965: 1-23, 68-70).

examples included creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Soil Conservation Service and the Tennessee Valley Authority, multiple-purpose water resource development and river basin planning, other public works projects (such as federal subsidies for construction of wastewater treatment plants), public purchases of key lands, key reforms in grazing and wildlife policies, and serious attempts at interagency coordination of federal conservation programs. Other New Deal initiatives also had far- reaching environmental consequences, most obviously agricultural stabilization policies.

of government intervention for the general public welfare, and some of their initiatives, such as multiple-purpose water resource development, in fact represented long-delayed victories for Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive agenda: progressive Republicanism finally implemented in alliance with liberal Democrats. This should be no surprise, as FDR himself had been a conservation leader in New York during the days of the earlier Progressivism. They differed, however, in important respects as well. TR and Pinchot used government as a counterweight to centralized economic power: to make an expanding economy more efftcient, to correct the destructive side effects of unrestrained environmental exploitation (such as speculation, monopolization, and destructive stripping of environmental assets for immediate profit), and to replace growing economic disparities with increased professionalization and middle-class economic progress. FDR and the New Dealers, in contrast, of necessity used it to rebuild the economy, and its environmental conditions, from a state of collapse. They used government to provide jobs, used those jobs in turn to achieve conservation goals (reforestation, erosion control, water resource development, and other public works infrastructure construction), and used federal spending to rebuild investment and purchasing power (to “re-prime the economic pump”). At the same time, they redesigned key elements of the underlying socioeconomic systems-

particular--to increase their long-term stability (cf Hofstadter, 1955.302-1 6) 5 5

One of Roosevelt’s first emergency measures was creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, to provide earnings and a work ethic for some of the thousands of unemployed young men during the Depression era. From 1933 to 1941, unemployed young men aged 18 to 25 were recruited by the Labor Department and put to work on conservation projects by the Agriculture and Interior Departments; the camps themselves were run by the Army. In the National Forests, CCC projects ranged from planting trees and controlling insect and tree disease infestations to building trails, bridges, lookout towers and firebreaks; CCC workers also helped the Forest Service to plant over 200 million trees in “shelterbelts” across the Great Plains to forestall recurrence of the great dust storms. In the National Parks, projects similarly included trail-building as well as clearing beaches and campgrounds, restoration of historical sites, installing water and

’ business, labor and social security, as well as a newly explicit federal role in stabilization of

Environmental policy initiatives were explicit elements of this agenda: major

FDR’s New Dealers shared with the Progressives a willingness to make active use

-agricultural production, banking and investment, and labor laws and social security in --

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sewer lines to recreation areas, and a wide range of other improvements. CCC teams also worked nationwide in soil erosion control, rangeland restoration, wildlife habitat improvement and drainage projects (Schlesinger, 1965:337-40, Owen, 1983.128-45).

In all more than 2.5 million young men worked in the CCC, most for six months to a year; it was finally terminated and replaced with the military draft in 1941, when the U S. entered World War 11. Assessments have counted it not only as the most successful of the New Deal relief programs, but also as the single most effective eight-year legacy of conservation work in U.S. history, advancing the nation’s forest and conservation programs by as much as 20 to 50 years and increasing the value of the nation’s environmental assets by hundreds of millions of dollars. Perhaps equally significant, it introduced some 2.5 million young men to the knowledge and appreciation of nature, the principles of conservation, and the pleasures of outdoor life, many for the first time; and one may suspect that many of these young men of the 1930s became the parents who would he1 the outdoor recreation boom of the 1950s, taking their children to camp where they had camped, to walk the trails they had built, and to see the places they had seen and the trees they had planted.

A second major relief program was the Public Works Administration (PWA), which provided government jobs and investment hnds for larger-scale infrastructure construction projects intended to revive heavy industry (economic “pump-priming”). Chief among these were multiple-purpose water resource development projects, but others included highways and bridges, docks and airports, schools and courthouses and other public buildings, and precedent-setting federal assistance to build municipal water supply . ad even over 500 wastewater treatment facilities. Examples included the Boulder, Grand Coulee and Bonneville Dams as well as TVA’s, California’s massive Central Valley Project, Denver’s water supply system, Chicago’s sewage system, the port of Brownsville, and hundreds of other structures and facilities (Schlesinger, 1965:287-88; Owen, 1983:84- 85; Armstrong et al., 1976:418).56 Taken together, these projects represented a massive new government investment in environmental transformation, intended to promote industrial revitalization but in effect also profoundly reshaping the landscape for human infrastructure and economic use.

Water resource development projects epitomized this process. In 1936, devastating spring floods in the eastern states led to powerfbl pressures for federal subsidies for flood protection, arguing that the upstream causes of such disasters were beyond the reach of the victim states. The Flood Control Act of 1936 in response established permanent federal government for flood control work and federal hnding of 100% of the costs of flood control projects, thereby attracting political support from residents of flood-prone regions such as the Mississippi Valley.” Multiple-purpose dams and water projects would finally tame destructive floods, and store their water instead for controlled release to other economically useful purposes, irrigation channels would protect against drought, locks and water level controls would expand commercial navigation, and vast new flows of cheap and clean energy would be provided by hydroelectric power facilities, and revenues from electric power sales would defray much of the cost of the projects

The New Deal water development program thus represented the triumph of both the New Deal and the Progressive ideal that a benign government could not merely

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preserve but actively control, manage and improve the workings of natural processes for human use. The immediate objectives of work relief and economic pump-priming were thus rapidly subsumed into a far broader and more long-term program of federal water resource engineering for economic development, and for the sake of organized regional political and economic constituencies who stood to benefit from them.

The advent of federally financed flood control, however, created an extraordinarily powerful new incentive for Congressmen to seek pork-barrel projects to benefit their own districts. The New Deal water development policies thus set in motion one of the most massive environmental transformation processes in history, a 40-year program of large- scale federal subsidies for water control projects, interrupted only by the war years of the 1940s. Between 1936 and 1976 the Army Corps of Engineers built over 400 multi- purpose dams in 42 states; the Bureau of Reclamation built 300 more, the Tennessee Valley Authority 23 more, and the Soil Conservation Service nearly 1,100 smaller projects; scores of others were under consideration (Armstrong et a/., 1976.25 1,333, 272, 288). These projects dammed virtually all the nation’s major rivers at almost as many locations as was technically feasible and politically attractive: the Tennessee, Columbia and lower Colorado Rivers in the 1930s, the Missouri and upper Colorado in the 1950s and OS, and many others. Federal water projects provided massive subsidies to the localities where they were built, and thus galvanized local economic and political interests into alliances with the water development agencies to compete for them.58 Through successive statutory amendments between 1936 and 1956 the Soil Conservation Service

. also expanded its agricultural erosion-control programs into a “small watersheds program” of.multi-purpose water projects indistinguishable from those of the Corps and BuRec except in scale and fbnding mechanism, adding another bureaucratic competitor to vie for federal hnds to build headwater dams and re-engineer stream channels (Armstrong et a/., 1976:249-80).59

Ironically, the very success and political momentum of this policy converted it by the 1960s into one of the chief targets of rising environmentalist opposition. Water projects were inherently damaging to some values even while they advanced others, and as early as the 1930s this led fish and wildlife advocates to demand “fish ladders” to protect spawning runs for Pacific salmon and other anadromous fish; the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1934, passed at their instigation and strengthened in 1946 and 1958, required the water agencies to consult with the fish and wildlife agencies to minimize and mitigate these impacts in their project designs. The Echo Park Dam, proposed in 1954, would have backed up water into the National Park Service’ Dinosaur National Monument, prompting a revival of Sierra Club activism under the banner of “No more Hetch Hetchys!”; this successful campaign, eight years before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, was actually a far earlier defining event in the emergence of the modern environmental movement. By the 1960s, successive campaigns against other water projects had redefined the water resource agencies from Progressive heroes to environmental villains, mindlessly destroying the landscape for short-term economic, political and bureaucratic purposes. Ironically, the Corps of Engineers, which until the 1930s had been the most dogged opponent of such projects, now became in the public mind the chief perpetrator and symbol of them.60

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In an effort to constrain Congressional pork-barrel pressures, the 1936 Flood Control Act directed that projects should only be approved if “the benefits, to whomsoever they accrue, exceed the estimated costs.” It thus established economic benefit-cost analysis as a formal analytical requirement and decision criterion for water resource project approval. This was logical for water projects: since the explicit justification for federal fbnding of them was to promote national economic development, it made perfect sense to argue that their measurable benefits to that goal should exceed their costs.61 Ironically, however, this analytical requirement later became in itself a target of environmentalist attack, for excluding many kinds of environmental benefits and costs. To restrict pork-barreling, benefit-cost analysis was defined as strictly as possible, in order to justiQ only projects that clearly benefited national economic development; but this very narrowness also ruled out consideration of environmental benefits and costs, lest non- economic environmental “benefits” be inflated to escape the restraining influence of the analytical requirement. In practice this is precisely what happened: to justify politically popular projects, the water agencies gradually stretched the analytical methods so as to include ever more speculative economic surrogates for environmental “benefits” of the projects to be built, while continuing to count as costs only the actual outlays for construction, operation and maintenance and not the broader social opportunity costs of environmental conditions the projects would destroy.

the Tennessee Valley Authority, the first and only working example of large-scale, multiple-use river basin management in the United States. The seven-state watershed of the Tennessee Valley was one of the regions most severely impacted both by poverty and by deforestation, soil erosion and flooding; it was also the site of a federal war-surplus dam and munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, which private businesses had lobbied for years to take over at a bargain price for power production and fertilizer manufacturing, yet which the remaining Progressives in the Congress had so far successklly argued to retain as a public hydropower “yardstick,” against which to measure electric power rates charged by private monopolies.62 Roosevelt converted this public-power proposal into a far larger experiment: a federally sponsored river basin authority, managed as a public corporation, to oversee comprehensive development of the valley’s environmental assets, economy, and society.63 Not just one dam, but a series of multiple-purpose water management structures would control flooding, open navigation throughout the river, and produce cheap and clean electric power. Unlike a regular government agency, moreover, as a public corporation the revenues from electric power sales would be returned to TVA itself to finance broader conservation and development programs Immediate construction jobs would alleviate poverty, and lead to additional long-term employment in industries that would be drawn to the valley by waterways and cheap power; and erosion control, reforestation, fertilizer production, and better waterway transport would promote agricultural revitalization as well (Schlesinger, 1965.3 19-34)

TVA became a worldwide model for integrated river basin management, and achieved major results in improving both economic and environmental conditions in a severely impoverished region; it is still far more highly known and regarded by water resource development experts around the world than by most Americans Its early success led Congress in 1934 to request a comprehensive plan for the development of the nation’s

Perhaps the most radical innovation of the New Deal environmental programs was

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rivers, and Roosevelt in response proposed similar management institutions for seven major river basins--a Columbia Valley Authority, a Missouri Valley Authority, and others- -each of which in turn, however, was blocked by political opposition (cf Richardson, 1973: 19-38). Major multi-purpose dams were built, transforming river after river into controlled series of storage reservoirs for economic use, but the idea of a comprehensive river-basin governance institution was never repeated.

In practice, moreover, TVA itself evolved into an institution both more limited and more controversial than its initial vision. Its putative purpose was comprehensive regional development, but most of its budget was tied to specific construction projects rather than broader regional planning.64 Its directors’ philosophies also diverged immediately, with the majority favoring “grass-roots democracy”--constituency-building alliances with local client interest groups, similar to the patterns of the other federal conservation agencies, in all matters except power production--over the more ambitious planning favored by its first chairman (Selznick, 1949).65 By the late 1960s it had completed the most attractive water projects, and was advocating far more marginal and controversial proposals: the Tellico Dam, which would destroy a legendary fishing stream, ancient Cherokee burial grounds, prime farmland and an endangered species (the snail darter) to create a dubiously justified industrial site, and the Upper French Broad project, a series of 14 headwater dams (“toilet tanks,’’ as environmentalists labeled them) to subsidize downstream paper mills by flushing their pollution.66 Even more controversial, it gradually became dominated by the electric power program that generated its revenues and in which it had its greatest autonomy, branching out fiom clean hydropower to huge coal-fired plants--it became the nation’s largest consumer of strip-mined coal--and ultimately to nuclear power production, operating some of the nation’s largest nuclear reactors (including Browns Ferry, whose control room was destroyed by a major fire in the 1970s) and in turn subsidizing nuclear power production with cheap electricity to the federal nuclear he1 refinement plant at Oak Ridge, Tenne~see.~’

The economic boom years of agriculture’s “golden age” between 1909 and 191 4, meanwhile, had created pervasive incentives for agricultural expansion, settling and plowing up more and more of the western prairies for new crop production, and grazing more and more cattle and sheep on the remainder, at levels far above those at which the vegetation could regenerate itself?* Beginning in the early 1930s, just as economic depression undermined the socioeconomic system of American farming, half a decade of droughts and windstorms created a simultaneous environmental disaster, sweeping across the plains and midwest in giant dust storms and carrying away vast amounts of unprotected topsoil, depositing it in huge drifts against houses and fences and sometimes as far away as Washington and New York. Floods in subsequent years then eroded away the underlying landforms into gullies and muddy rivers. These “natural disasters’’ of the 1930s--or more correctly, these natural consequences of imprudent human transformation of the environment --catalyzed political awareness of the destructive overuse that had resulted both from unrestrained sod-busting and dry-land farming and from virtually unrestricted grazing on the arid western lands.

the New Deal era was the Soil Conservation Service, which began as a technical assistance program for farmers but evolved rapidly into yet another national water resource

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One of the most important new permanent environmental agencies created during

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development program as well. Throughout the 1920s Hugh Hammond Bennett had conducted almost a single-handed campaign for more serious attention to soil erosion in the Agriculture Department, and when the dust storms of the 1930s proved him right, he was put in charge of a new agency to address the problem. First created as the Soil Erosion Service in the Department of the Interior in 1933, it was transferred to USDA and renamed the Soil Conservation Service in 1935. The SCS operated from its inception through a network of some 3,000 local “conservancy districts,” ultimately covering 98% of America’s farm acreage, each administered by district supervisors elected by its client farmers and other “land occupiers” (Morgan, 1965:37-40). It achieved major environmental protection gains through technical assistance in soil classification and analysis and in promoting conservation farming: terracing, strip-cropping, crop rotation, and even planting and utilization of woodlots.

To conserve soil, however, was inherently to manage water, by assuring that there was enough to prevent wind erosion but also that it flowed slowly enough off the land not to erode the soil itself The Flood Control Act of 1936 therefore authorized SCS to study watersheds above flood control projects to determine the effect of watershed treatment methods in reducing erosion and retarding runoff, and the Flood Control Act of 1944 expanded this mandate into an authorization to plan and carry out a complete watershed protection and flood prevention program in eleven designated river basins.69 In 1953 a new Pilot Watershed Program was initiated to test the concept .of federal assistance for watershed planning, in place of the previous practice of direct federal planning and installation; and in 1954 this concept was institutionalized in the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act (Public Law 566), which authorized federal financial assistance to “local sponsoring organizations”--conservation districts or local governments directly--to prevent erosion, floodwater and sediment damage and to promote the conservation, utilization and disposal of water.

100% of the costs related to flood control, and for 50% of those related to recreation and fish and wildlife development; its only additional requirement was that at least 50% of the lands in the watershed be put into conservation farming practices These incentives led SCS projects to evolve from primarily farm conservation programs to multi-purpose water resource engineering projects: amendments in 1956 broadened its scope to include

seeking shares of the program’s benefits, and between 1957 and 1960 the number of multi-purpose projects increased from 21% to 61% of the total projects approved for installation [Andrews dissertation 167-68: cite book instead]. Except in being generally smaller in scale, many of its subsequent project projects thus became virtually indistinguishable from those of the Corps and BuRec, with one key exception. SCS projects were fbnded as federal assistarice to local sporisors rather than as federal projects per se, restricting their designs to purposes supported by specific local user interest groups rather than including other features (such as recreation or fish and wildlife improvement) that would benefit broader but unrepresented constituencies In this respect SCS was even more explicitly dependent on its client constituencies than were the other water resource development agencies.

Like those of the Corps and BuRec, SCS projects included federal subsidies for

additional water uses, at the behest of Congressmen from non-agricultural constituencies --

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A related but far broader New Deal farm initiative was the agricultural adjustment program, which was designed primarily to stabilize the devastating economic impacts of agricultural price downturns but also to promote soil conservation. Agricultural adjustment policies set a target price for each basic commodity crop based on “parity” with the agricultural golden era of 1909- 19 14, and sought to guarantee maintenance of this price through a combination of acreage reductions and rationing (“allotments”), marketing agreements (“quotas”) and processing taxes, and government purchases of surplus crops. When the Supreme Court invalidated the original production control provisions, the Soil Conservation and Domestic Mlotment Act of 1936 redefined the basis of panty from prices to farm incomes (that is, a fixed ratio between farm and urban incomes), and redefined the production incentives to provide payment incentives for shifting acreage from soil-depleting to soil-conserving crops and retiring marginal lands from production altogether,’’ As FDR advisor Rexford Tugwell put it, “Under this plan, it will pay farmers, for the first time, to be social-minded, to do something for all instead of for himself alone” (quoted in Schlesinger, 1965:72).

Agricultural adjustment had its desired effect on farmers’ economic welfare, and remains a form of government-supported income guarantee unique among the nation’s economic sectors: the concentrated political power of farm organizations and national sympathy for the image of Jefferson’s farmers continue to maintain support for these programs. These programs also continue to act as one of the most powerfbl influences on agricultural land conservation, both positive and negative, promoting increased conservation when subsidies for acreage retirement increase and triggering significant destruction of marginal lands, wetlands, shelterbelts and other lands when incentives are reversed to encourage fencerow-to-fencerow planting. Ironically, agricultural overproduction in the 1930s was reduced far more significantly by droughts than by these policy incentives, and from the war years on federal price supports served far more to stimulate than to curtail overproduction, since farmers now were guaranteed a minimum price for their output: increased production was a policy goal during the war, and was politically difficult to reduce again thereafter. The resulting surpluses were diverted in part to welfare relief and school-lunch programs, and after 1954 to poor countries under the “Food for Peace” program (Public Law 480)--ironically and tragically, thus weakening farm prices and undermining the farm economy in those countries for the benefit of urban

seemed to most Americans a humanitarian gift to other countries in fact served a narrower economic and political interest of their own, at the expense of other countries’ own farmers: product “dumping” by any other name (Schlesinger, 1965:35-84; Rasmussen el al., 1976).

To solve the problem of overgrazing, meanwhile, Roosevelt’s Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior joined forces with western Congressmen to pass the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, under which 80 million acres of federal public lands used for grazing would be formally redesignated as rangelands, administered in “grazing districts” subject to permits and fees under the overall management of a new Grazing Service in the Department of the Interior. Like the progressive conservation laws of the earlier Roosevelt’s administration, the Taylor Act thus established formal federal management authority over the rangelands, but on terms that in effect confirmed and strengthened

consumers--and thus encouraging large-scale urbanization in those countries. What then _ -

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existing users’ control over actual use rights and practices. Grazing was now recognized as an official use subject to use rights against settlers and other sorts of land claims; statutory priorities favored existing ranchers, and blocked any significant reduction of total grazing levels; and grazing fees were set at levels the Forest Service had charged in 1906,

Amendments to the law in 1936 expanded its jurisdiction to include virtually all western rangelands, but also created formal national and local advisory boards dominated by the ranchers themselves to recommend the agency’s management policies for each district. Such user-dominated groups in principle represented institutional solutions to the commons problem of overgrazing, but it did so both by creating privileged, government- sponsored oligopolies of existing users and by effectively excluding use values other than domestic livestock production, such as wildlife protection (and particularly the protection of wildlife predator populations, which stockmen regarded as enemies or pests). The Grazing Service was merged with the General Land Ofice in 1946 to create the present Bureau of Land Management, but not until the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act of 1976 was it given statutory authority for multiple-use management of these lands. Until then, and to a significant extent still, its policies were essentially controlled by the rancher user constituencies and their Congressional advocates, and any hint of management initiative on the part of BLM led to immediate threats by the western Congressmen who controlled its oversight and appropriations committees to slash its budget or simply give the rangelands to the western states.72 Grazing fees remained far below market levels, and more importantly, cattle and rangeland management remained lax, with the results that only 15 % of the range was improving, an equal amount was in outright decline, and

* rather than at comparable levels in 1934 which were nearly three times higher.”

. nearly 70% of the rangelands continued in only fair or poor condition (Wilkinson,

A less widely noted but effective series of New Deal environmental policy innovations was in federal wildlife policy. Federal wildlife responsibility prior to FDR had been divided between the competent but limited authority of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Fisheries and the politically-torn Biological Survey in the Agriculture Department, both of which had only limited authority and resources for their missions. FDR appointed a highly respected wildlife conservationist, Jay N “Ding” Darling, head of the Biological Survey, and in 1939 consolidated the two agencies in the Interior Department as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. To solve the fbnding problem, Darling obtained legislation extending to the wildlife agency the Progressive idea of earmarked hnding based on user fees: the Duck Stamp Act of 1934 established a licensing fee on hunters, and the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 broadened this to a tax on sporting goods and ammunition, the proceeds of which were specifically earmarked for wildlife rehge acquisition, federal wildlife research and management programs, and tax-sharing with state wildlife agencies (by a formula based on their area and numbers of hunters). A similar levy on fishing equipment, the Dingell-Johnson Act, was added in 1950. The effect was to create not only a dedicated revenue source outside the annual budget struggle, but also a powerfbl set of client constituencies to support the agency, hunters and fishermen and state wildlife agencies Earmarked fbnding mechanisms create important and enduring political problems, as witness the near-impossibility of redirecting the timber-cutting commitment of the Forest Service, the dominance of power production in TVA, the road-

1992:93-101, 110-1 1).

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building juggernaut .of the Transportation Department, or even the subsequent domination of wildlife policy itself by hunter and fishing interests, but it did provide a critical new source of institutional support and stability for a previously marginal sector of environmental policy.

development, fish and wildlife advocates found themselves increasingly on the defensive against federally financed projects for agricultural wetland drainage, flooding of riparian wetlands and wildlife habitat for reservoirs, and destruction of trout streams and salmon runs by damming. In 1934, therefore, they successfblly lobbied for a Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, requiring the water development agencies to formally consult with the wildlife agencies in planning their projects, so as at least to minimize damage and when possible to press for inclusion of mitigation measures, such as “fish ladders” for salmon around dams. Amendments in 1946 required them not only to consult but also to prevent such damage insofar as possible; and hrther amendments in 1958 directed them to include enhaiicemenr of wildlife habitat in their projects. The Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act was a direct forerunner of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which required a comprehensive inter-agency review and comment process on all “environmental impact statements” on major federal actions that might affect the environment

Another important but often overlooked environmental initiative of the New Deal was its sponsorship of large-scale land acquisition for expansion of the national forest and park systems, this time by repurchase rather than reservation. One large category of such .purchases included sub-marginal, deforested and eroded agricultural and forest lands purchased for restoration: Roosevelt ’s National Resources Board identified an estimated 75 million acres of such lands, and under FDR the federal government added over 1 1 million acres of abused farmlands to the national forests and parks and other land management agencies; more than a million acres were transferred to the states, and the Fulmer Act of 1935 helped states to acquire some 19 million acres of state forest lands while economic conditions allowed them to be purchased cheaply. A second major category included lands to round out the national park system, particularly those benefiting expanding public interest in recreation’ important examples included the Blue Ridge, George Washington and Natchez Trace Parkways, Florida Everglades, and Cape Hatteras seashore. (Graham, 1976.37-39; Owen, 1983 106-07, 120-21) Finally, the Park

as along the lakes being created by multiple-purpose water projects, and National Historical Sites, which had previously been scattered among the military services, several Interior Department agencies, and other government agencies

collection of isolated issues that could be solved by individual agencies and programs, but a complex of interrelated economic and environmental problems which required integrated patterns of solutions This external policy agenda was mirrored within government in the proliferation of fragmented, narrowly mission-oriented administrative sub-governments that had occurred since the turn of the century, whose bureaucratic fragmentation and rivalries thwarted the very efficiency of management that the Progressives and their successors had created them to provide FDR and his administration therefore advocated two more hndamental changes in environmental policy-making institutions to achieve

With the New Deal boom in both agricultural assistance and water resource

Service successhlly expanded its jurisdiction to include National Recreation Areas, such --

At a hndamental level the public policy agenda of the 1930s was not merely a

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greater policy integration: reconfiguring the Department of the Interior as a Department of Conservation, and creating a more effective policy planning capacity at the level of the President’s staff.

ambitious Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, who sought to unite in one department all the major federal soil, water, and forest conservation programs, including particularly the Forest Service and Soil Conservation Service from the Agriculture Department. Ickes’ ambition aside, there were good practical and philosophical reasons for the proposal: in the west many Forest Service and Interior Department lands are literally checkerboarded amongst one another, demanding coordinated management, and the Interior Department was arguably more congenial to the full range of uses and constituencies of these lands than was the timber-production ethos of the Agriculture Department. In 1936 a President’s Committee on Administrative Management, chaired by the distinguished public administration expert Louis Brownlow, also endorsed the name change, as part of a far more sweeping set of proposals to consolidate 97 administrative agencies into 12 more logical department^.'^ The Forest Service and agriculture and forestry interests successfhlly blocked these proposals, however, as they have similar initiatives by later presidents: President Nixon’s Ash Commission, for instance, in 1969 unsuccessfUlly recommended reconfiguring the Interior Department into a Department of the Environment, with the addition of the Forest Service and the Corps of Engineers. The result was an enduring politically-determined fragmentation even of the federal agencies .which most directly share responsibility for environmental protection and management missions (PLLRC, 1968:6 16- 1 7).

of any institutional capacity for coordinated policy planning or management across the fiagmented array of federal agencies that had been created. When Roosevelt entered office there was no Executive Office of the President, no ongoing technical staff except the Budget Bureau to provide institutional memory to each new president’s personal aides, no real mechanism for presidential oversight or purposefbl management of the Executive branch other than ad hoc meetings. Throughout his presidency Roosevelt persistently sought to create such a formalized institutional capacity for policy planning. He established first a rudimentary National Planning Board in the Public Works

development of the nation’s rivers; then broadened it into a more widely inter-agency National Resources Board in 1934, then a National Resources Committee in 1935, and finally a National Resources Planning Board (NRPB) from 1939 to 1943, with modest changes in membership but continuity of staff.

The NRPB and its predecessors produced a wide range of valuable information and assessments on both natural and socioeconomic conditions, despite the opposition of the agencies and their client constituencies as well as conservative political attacks on the socialist-sounding concept of “national planning.” From 1936 until the early 1940s, legislation was repeatedly introduced to create a permanent “National Resources Board,” but the Congress with equal regularity rehsed to act on it, finally in 1943 Congress destroyed it outright, by striking its entire appropriation from the budget and forbidding use of any other hnds for its continued support.. Like its antecedent Inland Waterways

The idea of a Department of Conservation was a major initiative of Roosevelt’s

An even more fbndamental barrier to effective governance, however, was the lack

Administration in 1933, to produce a Congressionally mandated comprehensive plan for - -

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Commission and National Conservation Commission (under Theodore Roosevelt), it was unable to survive as a creature of the Executive, and as a mechanism for stronger presidential management, against the traditional prerogatives and opposition of powehl agencies, their client constituencies, and Congressional protectors of both (Graham, 1976:49-68).

FDR’s efforts did lead to creation of the Executive Office of the President to unifL Presidential advisory and oversight staffs. The more general pattern of U.S. governance established by the 194Os, however, was not the efficiently planned and managed state envisioned by either business-oriented industrialists or by socially and environmentally oriented liberals, but rather a “Broker State,” in which fragmented administrative sub- governments intervened on an ad hoc and piecemeal basis to help particular client constituencies which were organized and powerfbl enough to get government attention (Graham, 197650-66; Schlesinger, 1965:352). Each agency was directed in principle to serve the overall public interest, but each in practice tended to define that interest through the narrower and conflicting visions of its own professionals and client constituencies.

cumulative broadening of the range of purposes that they were directed to consider in planning the development and management of water resources: navigation and flood control, irrigation and hydropower, drainage, beach erosion control, water quality improvement, and more recently fish and wildlife protection, recreation development, and most recently [culminating in NEPA] the protection and enhancement of environmental quality in general. Despite this broadening of statutory authority, however, the agencies remained focused on specific and limited sets of missions, explicitly or implicitly disregarding other important public values--even the missions of other agencies--impacted by their actions. As noted in testimony by the Corps of Engineers’ Director of Civil Works in 197 1, for instance,

The history of the water resource development agencies, for instance, reflects a

In practice ... only demonstrable economic benefits and costs based on market values were considered.. . . . It wasn’t until the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act that we really had in our hands the authority to spend money, time, and effort in this field over and above what were the precedent- setting studies in which economic development and the benefit-cost ratio were the be-all-and-end-all [Maj Gen. Frank P Koisch, in Stream Channelization, Hearings, U. S. Congress, House Committee on Government Operations, June 1971, part 2, pp. 557, 5801 In the face of Congressional rehsal to support integrated policy planning at the

Presidential level, the primary mechanism that evolved to insure the consideration of new purposes was increasingly comprehensive coordirintioii of planning with all conceivably affected agencies and interest groups, rather than the development of truly comprehensive multi-purpose planning either within or across the agencies. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 reflected a culmination of this trend, but the trend itself dates at least from the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1946 if not earlier As one scholar notes

Agencies with limited rather than general interests in river basin development . have promoted administrative procedures and in one case [the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act] legislation that require the principal planning agencies . to refer to them for review all proposed plans, so that the limited-purpose agencies

Andrews drafr - 7 28 94 -- Do tior cite or qirore 37 aF can determine whether their interest has received proper attention .... In the case of water resource planning this stratagem got off to a good start in the late 1930s and early 1940s because the principal planning agencies were themselves more interested in developing certain purposes than others--the Corps of Engineers in navigation and the Bureau of Reclamation in irrigation and electric energy; and because the technique of benefit-cost analysis was developed in those years in a way that restricted the types of benefits and costs that could be counted, so that most of the benefits and costs of some special purposes were of necessity excluded fiom the important planning calculation (Maass, 1970:2 13- 16).

Summary Overall, Franklin Roosevelt’s environmental policies were thus in many respects

extensions of the policies enunciated by the earlier Roosevelt, but aimed toward a broader vision of integrated social and environmental management for economic development rather than merely toward more efficient production of resource commodities. FDR achieved only temporarily the integrated resources planning that he desired; but short of that goal he put into effect numerous policies that had been first proposed by his Republican predecessor and cousin. Supported by an overwhelming national consensus on the need for governmental action, by the discretion allowed to a leader in time of national crisis, and by the ideological and political roots of Progressive conservation laid at the turn of the century, FDR put into practice many of the principles and measures of Progressive conservation that had been blocked by Congress in earlier administrations.

By his very success in this enterprise, however, coupled with his inability to create an equally effective capability for policy planning and coordination across agency lines, FDR also fostered and extended the creation of a “Broker State” of fragmented sub- governments, defined in practice by the interests of their most powerfLl client constituencies and profoundly resistant both to other competing interests and to changing public values and priorities. As Mancur Olson and other political scientists would later point out, the most persistently well-organized and effective client constituencies were usually likely to be those with well-defined economic self-interests in the outcome, leading to domination or even outright capture of many of the agencies by some of the very interests they were supposed to restrain or regulate in preference to other values and responsibilities [cite Olson, Sabatier]

In summary, the central development of American environmental policy in the early 20th century was the emergence of public environmental management agencies as stable but fragmented sub-governments, overseeing and brokering the use of many of the nation’s environmental assets for multiple and often conflicting purposes This framework did not yet include many important environmental issues--notably absent, for instance, was any significant federal policy for addressing air or water pollution, waste disposal, toxic chemicals other than food and drug contaminants, or land use other than on federal lands-- and even many policies that did exist were far more limited than those of today. It did, however, include wide-ranging mandates and capabilities for the ongoing management and protection of environmental assets and natural conditions and processes Federal administrative agencies now provided an institutional framework for decision-making about environmental assets as a matter of explicit public policy, rather than merely of

3ch Andrews drarft - 7 28 94 -- Do not cite or quote 38

private ownership and market opportunities for profit. The wastehl and destructive side effects of unrestrained private exploitation of environmental assets necessitated government management, and both the rise of professionalism--the “gospel of efficiency,” in both private and public sectors, and the recognition by key stakeholders that they themselves could benefit from government management--supported this trend. The reality of technical interdependence among the uses of environmental systems, meanwhile, led unavoidably to an interpenetration of scientific and political issues in their management; and the broader interconnection between socioeconomic and environmental goals led to ongoing and still unresolved tensions both among the stakeholder constituencies of each “subgovemment,” and across the disparate sub-governments themselves. unresolved issue is the enduring American ambivalence toward effective exercise of central Executive authority in government at all: both self-interested client constituencies and broader environmental-protection and preservation groups demand government intervention, yet each also distrusts government power too dee ly to allow any more effective overall presidential capability for policy coordination. 3 fiagmented set of disparate, mission-oriented agencies, each populated by its own professionals who share both particular training, a particular organizational context, and particular ideologies about goals and methods with one another and with their principal client constituencies. Each agency in turn pursues different, sometimes conflicting, and and often competing views of the “overall public interest” in environmental policy. The politics of unrestrained competitive exploitation was succeeded by a politics of user group conflicts in the arena of discretionary administrative decision-making; and by a de facto regime of “new property rights” to use of the resources the agencies administered, often favoring existing users over new ones and existing commodity uses over others, and reflecting the negotiating power of existing resource users [cf. Nelson critique].

’

core

The cumulative result of these largely separate initiatives was the creation of a

References

American Public Works Association (APWA). 1976. History of Public Works in the United States. Armstrong, Ellis L.; Robinson, Michael C.; and Suellen Hoy, eds. Chicago: American Public Works Association.

Foresta, Ronald A. 1984. America’s National Parks and Their Keepers. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future.

Foss, Philip. 1960. The Politics of Grass.

Graham, Otis L., Jr. 1976. Toward a Planned Societv: From Roosevelt to Nixon. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hays, Samuel P. 1969 [ 19591. Conservation and the Gospel of Eficiency. New York: Atheneum.

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. Andrew draft -- 7 28 94 - Do riot cite or yirote 39 .

Hofstadter, Richard. 1955. The Aee of Reform. New York: Vintage (Random House).

Lacey, Michael J. 1979. The Mvsteries of Earth-Makine Dissolve: A Study of Washingon’s Intellectual Community and the Origins of American Environmentalism in $he Late Nineteenth Century. Washington, DC: The George Washington University ph.D. dissertation].

LoWi, Theodore. 1968?. The End of Liberalism.

Maass, Arthur. 1970. Public Investment Planning in the United States: Analysis and Critique, Public Policy 18:213-16 (Winter 1970).

Marsh, George Perkins. 1965 [ 18641. Man and Nature: Or. Phvsical Geosraphy as Modified bv Human Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Mayer, Carl J. and George A. Riley. 1985. Public Domain, Private Dominion: A History of Public Mineral Policy in America. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

McCloskey, Robert G. 1964 [ 195 13. American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise. New York: Harper.

McConnell, Grant. 1966. Private Power and American Democracy.

Morgan, Robert J. 1965. Governing Soil Conservation: Thirtv Years of the New Decentralization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Mowry, George E. 1962 [ 19581. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modem America. New York: Harper & Row.

Nelson, Robert H. 1986. Private Rights to Government Actions: How Modern Property Rights Evolve. U. Ill. L. Rev. 1986:361-86.

.

Nelson, Robert H. 199 1 . Reaching for Heaven on Earth. Lanham, MD: Littlefield Adams.

Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action.

Owen, A. L. Riesch. 1983. Conservation Under F.D.R. New York: Praeger

Pinchot, Gifford. 1967 [ 191 01. The Fight for Conservation. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Rasmussen, Wayne D.; Baker, Gladys L.; and James S. Ward. 1976. A Short History of Agricultural Adjustment, 1933-75. Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 39 1 .

30 8 Andrews drnft - 7 28 94 -- Do riot cite or yirote 40 I Richardson, Elmo 1973 Dams. Parks and Politics Resource Development and Preservation in the Truman-Eisenhower Era Lexington University Press of Kentucky

Schlesinger, Arthur M 1965 [ 19581 The Coming of the New Deal Boston Houghton Mifilin i

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Schlesinger, Arthur M 1986 The Cvcles of American History Boston Houghton Mifflin.

Selznick, Philip 1949 TVA and the Grass Roots Berkeley University of California Press

Smith, Frank E 1966 The Politics of Conservation New York Harper

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Smith, Frank E. 1971a. Conservation in the United States: Land and Water. 1492-1900. New York: Chelsea House (Van Nostrand Reinhold).

Smith, Frank E. 1971 b. Conservation in the United States: Land and Water 1900-1970. New York: Chelsea House (Van Nostrand Reinhold).

Steen, Harold K. 1976. The U. S. Forest Service: A Histoq. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Swain, Donald. 1 963. Federal Conservation Policy 192 1 - 1933. Berkeley: University of California Publications in History, Volume 76.

U. S . Public Land Law Review Commission. 1968. History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Ofice.

I Wengert, Norman. 1962. Ttie Ideological Basis of Conservation and Natural Resources Policies and Programs. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences I

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Wilkinson, Charles F. 1992. Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West. Washington, DC: Island Press.

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This broader responsibilih was imposed on all federal agencies by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). which is most commonly known for its more specific requirement of “environmental impact statements” for all major federal actions affecting the environment but also articulated a broad statutory statemcnt of national environmental policy for all federal agencies (42 USCA 432 1 et seq.). ’ Exceptions include the Council on Environmental Qualih. Environmental Protection Agency. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Department of Energy. and National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. which werc not created until the 1970s.

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See especially Hofstadter (1955). Hofstadter notes particularly the "status revolution" of this period. which increasingly alienated professionals from the standpat conservative. aristocratic and luissezf&re values most would previously have embraced.

been characterized as an ambitious agency. always seeking funds for all sorts of economically and environmentally questionable water projects [cite anti-Corps literature]. In the 19th century. however. its narrow perspective was apparently shaped both by the narrow experience and interests of its staff--it was an engineering agency. not a scientific one. and its experience and expertise were in navigation- related engineering-and by the political conflicts that shaped its experience through much of the century as to whether federal funding other than for interstate commerce (Le. navigation) was even constitutional (Hays, 1959:s). Even more recently. its view of its mission seems more consistent with seeking to maintain a stable workload and good relations with powerful Congressional supporters than with bureaucratic expansionism: note that since most of the Corps' projects are approved as individual line items rather than as a general budget category. the Corps actually has far less administrative discretion than most other federal environmental agencies. and that its military leadership rotates in and out of the Corps on relatively short cycles: other than maintaining the morale and therefore the workload of its staff. it is thus far more responsive to year-to-year Congressional pressures than to bureaucratic ambitions (Andrews. 1976).

What Congress apparently intended was that USGS simply perform a "quick and dirty" survey to assist private developers in identifting and developing the most promising sites. The USGS. however-then directed by Major John Wesley Powell. whose 1878 report had first articulated the need for scientifically- based classification and development of the western lands--took this legislation as a mandate for a systematic assessment of the imgation potentials of the western lands. and by implication as authorization to suspend the land claims process For the several years necessary for this process. By 1890 fierce political opposition from westem interests led Congress to halve the USGS budget and reopen most of these lands to settlement claims.

constitutionality of internal improvements that had influenced the Corps to restrict its mission so M ~ ~ O W ~ J J to navigation.

representatives, rather than any coherent or well-justified program of national priorities for water resource development.

On this general point see also Mancur Olson. The Loaic of Collective Action (1967). Initial arguments by the irrigators included complaints that the Bureau of Reclamation was charging them far higher actual construction costs than had been originally estimated later arguments begged relief also on grounds of poor agricultural prices. Note that this issue pitted beneficiaries of initial projects not only against the general taxpaying public. but also against potential beneficiaries of additional hture projects which were

This narrow view of its mission may seem surprising to modem readers. for whom the Corps has often 4

USGS also came to this task as a new agency, unencumbered by the 19th century battles over the 6

The result was frequently "pork-barrel" projects serving a majority coalition of politically powerful 7

8

to have been financed from repayment revenues as the Fund "revolved." -- Note too that the Newlands Act was intended to provide irrigation water only to homesteaders.

and to that end explicitly limited beneficiaries to 160 acres per landowner. In practice. however. larger farm operators have systematically evaded or ignored this restriction. with the support of their political representatives and agency officials. (PLLRC. 1968:6%. 689-90).

Federal fbnding of river and harbor projects had long been advocated on the grounds that they would enhance interstate commerce. a constitutional authority of the federal government: that such projects would be too costly for local or even state governments alone to finance. and the benefits of them would be shared too widely for the states and localities to recoup: and that the federal government. therefore. was not only empowered to construct them but was the only institution broadly enough empowered both to finance them and to recoup their benefits. Conversely. however. it was obvious to any Congressman or local booster that whatever these general benefits. every federal expenditure also provided concentrated benefits to the particular places where they were spent. The resulting pattern of legislative behavior. by which statutory appropriations are earmarked to benefit particular states and Congressional districts. is commonly known as "pork-barrel" funding: the process by which such appropriations bills are passed. by

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assembling into a single bill enough such projects to attract the votes of a majority. is known as --logrolling." The appropriateness and even the constitutionalih of such expenditures was debated throughout the early 19th century for esamples of the arguments on each side. see e.g. Smith. 1971a: 176-253. 584-

lo The Act passed because late in the Congressional session. western politicians had to accept it or be left with nothing. " This concern had already produced laws in 1890 and 1899 requiring federal approval of all proposed dams.

A major proposal. for esample. was for a Deep Waterway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mesico that would accommodate ocean-going vessels all the way from New Orleans to Chicago (Hays, 196991-

Key figures included Frederick Newell. who headed the Reclamation Service. and WJ McGee and

86.

100). 13

Marshall Leighton of USGS. as well as Secretan. of the Interior James Garfreld and Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot.

TVA is organized as a public enterprise. whose board of directors serves staggered sis-year terms to assure their independence from federal electoral politics: unlike other federal agencies. it retains control over its revenues from electric power generation. requiring Congressional appropriations only for its non- power programs such as new dams and technical assistance programs. TVA has long been perceived by other countries as an ideal model for integrated water resource development and management. Domestically. however. it is often viewed as at best a regional anomaly and at worst an arrogant and unaccountable bureaucracy: in its early years its more visionary ideas for basin-wide agricultural programs were resented by indigenous farmers. and more recently its water projects have been attacked as both environmentally and economically unjustified (the Tellico Dam-snail darter controversv). and its power program for large-scale augmentation of hydropower production with strip-mined coal and nuclear

.reactors. A Missouri River Basin Commission. with a coordinative role and far more limited powers. was finally created in 1965. .

the notorious "Ballinger-Pinchot af€aii' in 1909. in which Forest Service chief and former Roosevelt advlsor Gifford Pinchot accused President Taft's Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger of misconduct in the approval of Alaskan coal land claims and was ultimately fired for insubordination. The real issues concerned Ballinger's willingness to ease the RooseveltPinchot policies of developing natural resources as public rather than private enterprises. particularly for hydropower development (Hays,

14

Policy disputes over public control of hydropower sites and coal-lands management were at the heart of IS

1959: 1-17-74). 16 The provision allowing sale of timber was inserted as a compromise with mining interests who wanted continued access to timber from these lands. the law also reopened these lands to mining claims even though they were reserved from other forms of entry (Hays. 1959:37: PLLRC. 1968:568-69). An important modern sequel to this Act was an environmental lawsuit in the 1970s. which challenged the Forest Service proposal for clearcutting of the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia on grounds that clearcutting removed far more than the "dead. mature. or large growh trees" authorized by the 1897 law. The Supreme Court reluctantly agreed. leading Congress to pass a pivotal new piece of legislation. the National Forest Management Act of 1976. in which clearcutting would be permitted but Forest Service decisions would be subjected to far broader public scrutiny under procedural requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act [cite re NFMA, APA and Monongahela decision-Fairfax & Dana?].

Interior's General Land Office was staffed by law clerks processing land transactions. often appointed based on political patronage. and the GLO was also the long-standing target of criticism for all the abuses of the public land laws more generally: a second Public Land Law Review Commission. for instance. studied the implementation of the land laws between 1900 and 1905 and reported on widespread land frauds.

public enterprise supported by commodity user fecs. similar to the original idea of the Reclamation Service. The 1905 Act did in fact provide for a special earmarked fund placing the proceeds of forest

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Pinchot actually envisioned a more ambitious model for the Forest Service. as a largely self-financing 18

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commodity sales under the discretionary control of the Secreta? of Agriculture. but this fund was abolished in 1907 when Pinchot sought to have it made permanent (Hays. 1959:46). l 9 The peak year for National Forest timber cut before World War I1 was 1907. with a cut of 960 million board feet representing only 2% of the total national timber cut (Steen. 1976:90). ’’ Despite explicit new statutory mandates and a growing body of criticism both from reputable outside studies and even from within the Forest Senice. the total annual cut has remained constant at about 11 billion board feet of timber per year. One possible reason is the power of logging business interests, and of local communities which receive payments in lieu of taxes (PILT) amounting to 25% of all federal timber sale revenues; another is the bureaucratic interest of the agency itself, which since the Knutson- Vandenberg Act of 1930 has received discretionap funds. currently amounting to an estimated 20% of its budget. &om the proceeds of timber sales (Wilkinson, 1992: 168-71). ” Some hydropower dam sites were reserved as potential ”ranger stations.” ” During the 10 days before signing it. however. Roosevelt added 17 million more acres to the national forests.

line. Over 600.000 acres of coal lands were purchased under this system during the following fifty years before the government changed its policy from sale to leasing of fuel mineral lands. in the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 (PLLRC. 1968:724-25; Hibbard. 1924519). 24 In contrast to the hard-rock mining laws. under the Mineral Leasing Act the claimant has no vested right to mine (permission must be granted.by the government); the government receives an economic return. ranging from 10% to 25% of the proceeds: leases are for fixed terms. usually 5 years for oil and gas and 20 years for coal, which can be renegotiated if renewed: the government can require reasonably prompt development. and cancel the lease if it is merely held or misused; and the government can require environmental standards and other restrictions by lease conditions (Wilkinson. 199233-54). ’’ Pinchot’s primary example of “waste.” for instance. was forest fires. which he argued were not part of the ‘‘natural order of things” but were rather a wasteful and destructive phenomenon “wholly within the control of men.” which it was the duty of the human race to control (Pinchot. 1910:44-46). Scientists today would argue. however, that forest fires are very much a part of the natural order. and even. essential to the maintenance of prairies and the regeneration of some forest ecosystems. As to the “longest time.” Pinchot was equally emphatic: “Conservation demands the welfare of this generation first. and afterwards the welfare of the generations lo follow .... The development of our natural resources and the fullest use of them for the present generation is the first duty of this generation” (Pinchot. 1910:42.44). 26 Hays notes that Roosevelt and P’inchot’s administration in practice showed definite priorities as to what they considered ”the public interest:” domestic use of water should have highest priority, followed by irrigation and hydropower production: homesteading should take precedence over grazing use of the .

public lands; and commercial use of the public lands should take precedence over recreational use (Hays. 1959:7 1).

John James Audubon. a Haitian of the same period. whose bird paintings heightened public interest in nature; and Francis Parkman. historian of the westward migration (The Oregon Trail. 18-19), who described the wilderness of the American west). Emerson and other Transcendentalists articulated the view that the earth is beautiful as an expression of its Creator, not just for human use; that we should therefore seek ”the miraculous in the common”. and find God in nature and wilderness (Nature, 1836). His contempora? Henn David Thoreau argued that one must find oneseyin nature. and thus learn how to live rather than merely to make a living: he was consumed with human estrangement from nature. rejected “getting and spending” as a model for life. distrusted the industrial revolution. and pleaded for national nature preserves in 1858. more than a decade before Yellowstone Park was first set aside. All these voices were well ahead of their time: Emerson wrote poetry and Thoreau a private journal. while as they wrote the west was being settled. the forest cut over and stripped for agriculture or abandoned. the beaver and bison driven almost to estinction for their skins. the passenger pigeons hunted to extinction. But thejr ideas were to have important influence in later policy debates. as sources of influence and intellectual precedents.

These prices were reduced in 1873 to $20 per acre, or $10 if more than fifteen miles distant from a rail

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. 27 William Bartram. a naturalist contemporary of Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Boone (Travels. 179 I): --

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Other and more secular naturalists also wrote in the 19th century--William Banram. John James Audubon. and Francis Parkman. among others--and a scientific basis for environmental understanding was also emerging in the European literature. both in the traditions of German forestry and in Charles Darwin's exposition of the principles of evolution. natural selection. and the "web of life." 28 Man and Nature was widely read at the time. catalyzed widespread debate about the potential consequences of forest and watershed destruction in the U.S.. and inspired influential environmental policy advocates (among them John Wesley Powell. Carl Schurz. and John Muir). In 1873. the American Association for the Advancement of Science devoted its annual meeting to the subject and drafted a memorial requesting the federal government to establish a forestry commission and government forest reserves; New York State in the same year created a special commission on the relationship between logging of the Adirondacks and diminished water flows in the Hudson kve r and Erie Canal; more widespread public fears of a possible "timber famine" also developed over the ensuing decades (Marsh. 1965 [ 1864]:ssi-~xii). Active federal forest management was not established for another three decades. and the Adirondacks were constitutionally protected as "forever wild at about the same time. but Marsh's book was a key influence in setting public and scientific concerns in motion. 29 According to Hays. Pinchot's opposition to "preservationists" revealed' his basic view that the federal lands should be developed for commercial use rather than preserved from it, and that his major problem therefore was to restrain the influence of those who wished to leave them in their natural con&tion, untouched by lumberman or stockman. "The object of our policy." he told the Society of American Foresters in 1903. "is not to preserve the forests because they are beautiful ... or because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the wilderness ... but ... the making of prosperous homes .... Every other consideration comes as secondary" (Hays. 1959:41-2. 189-91). 30 Many national parks also were subject to pre-existing claims and use rights. ranging from land claim "inholdings" which allowed privileged residences within the parks to far more damaging mining operations still privileged to continue under the 1872 mining act.

conservation of peace and friendship among nations. the conservation of the morals of youth. the conservation of children's lives through the elimination of child labor. the conservation. of civic beauty. the elimination of waste in education and war. and the conservation of the Anglo-Saxon.race (Hays. 1959: 176). 32 Note however that the regimentation of military life. in both world wars. also included newly widespread*e.uposure to organized recreational activities; some historians credit this exposure for the subsequent dramatic rise in interest in recreation. parks. and leisure activities more generally (Armstrong et al., 1976562-70). 33 Herbert Hoover. an engineer and businessman. was Director of the Food Administration during the .

First World War. and later Secretary of Commerce in the early 1920s before being elected president in 1928.

wartime propaganda for war bond purchases. by the incentives of large-scale producers to create larger national markets for homogeneous mass-produced products. and by a new federal excess-profits tax- aimed at wartime profiteering--which created an incentive for businesses to redirect more of their profits into market development expenditures. 35 The Mneral Leasing Act of 1920 arose in part from these wartime and postwar strategic concerns. as did the creation of Naval Petroleum Reserves on federal lands in the west. 36 Hoover was a more active president in some respects than Harding and Coolidge. such as in his support for water resource development and some other initiatives: the Saint Lawrence and Mississippi watenvays and Boulder Dam. for instance. Some historians have therefore viewed him as a active advocate for the orderly development of natural resources. a constructive conservation leader who prepared the way for many of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal conservation programs (Swain. 1963: 165-66). His vision of governance. however. was limited to voluntan. business cooperation by businesses rather than formal law and regulation by ':demon government." and management of environmental assets by corporate trade associations rather than by Progressive government agencies: he was at odds both with spokesmen for

The first session of the National Conservation Congress in 1909. for instance. included speeches on the 31

The widespread use of mass-market advertising also emerged in this period. spurred by the-success of 34

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Progressivism in the Republican mold of Theodore Roosevelt and with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal ideas of active national planning by the federal government (Schlesinger. 1986:377-87). 37 By the 1960s this pattern had also led political scientists to posit a “clientele capture“ theory of administrative agency behavior in place of their Progressive “public interest” image [cite McConnell, Sabatier, Lowi].

Swain notes that once completed. Boulder Dam -‘watered more than a million acres of land; ... generated in excess of 3.000.000 kilowatt hours of hydroelectric power: and ... and regulated the flow of the Colorado River, providing both a constant supply of water and flood control for the Imperial Valley.. (Swain. 196330). 39 Despite his otherwise conservative Republican philosophy. Herbert Hoover as an engineer and former Secretary of the Navy and of Commerce was a strong advocate of watenvay development projects: he was an active supporter of the Saint Lawrence Seaway and of completion of the ”Lakes to the Gulf system of deep-channel navigation.

Administration. which emphasized voluntary incentives for industries to adopt pollution prevention measures: the “33/50 Program” by which industries would pledge voluntary percentage reductions in their toxic pollutant emissions by specified deadlines. for instance. and the ”Green Lights” program under which they would receive EPA recognition for voluntarily substituting more energy-efficient lighting.

The “Smokey the Beai‘ campaign to promote public forest fire awareness was considered one of the great success stories of Forest Service histon.. Ironically, however. later ecological research raised serious questions about the wisdom of this campaign. noting that many forest fires are of natural origin (particularly lightning). play essential roles in some ecosystems (allowing some valuable species to regenerate, and reducing competitor species). and even serve to burn off deadwood before it builds up to the point of a major conflagration. [cite Schiff, Fire and Water: Heresy in the Forest Service?]

The 1928 McSweeney-McNary Act. which culminated this effort, established continuing statutory authoriv for a forest research program in the USFS as well as eleven forest experiment stations and a ten- year budget for each.

The Park Service also took advantage of wartime restrictions on foreign travel to promote park tourism, and of postwar nativist rhetoric-anti-immigration prejudice, the ”Red scare,” and conservative “Americanism”-to promote the parks.as a fundamental manifestation of the national heritage (Swain, 1963: 142).

Mather succeeded in capturing significant National Forest lands for expansion of the National Park system, including the Teton Mountains. Mount Whitney, and parts of the Kings Canyon area adjacent to Sequoia National Park, and in gaining authorization for a new series of eastern national parks including Shenandoah. Great Smoky Mountains. and Mammoth Cave (Swain. 1963,: 137).

Migratory waterfowl posed a particular sort of commons problem. since not only must their overall numbers be sustained against the cumulative effects of individual hunters and poachers. but they often

responsibility of protecting them to adulthood and others the benefits of then hunting them. An interesting footnote to the I9 18 Act was its predecessor. the 19 13 McLean Act which authorized federal jurisdiction over migraton. waterfowl under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution but was struck down by the Supreme Court in one of the few rebuffs to expansionary use of this power in environmental regulation. As an alternative. the Wilson administration negotiated a similar treaty with Canada and Congress approved it under the Treah Power (Swain. 1963:32-33).

The Norbeck-Anderson Act. passed in 1929. declared the refuges inviolate sanctuaries protected by federal wardens (Swain. 1963:41-43).

The Kaibab preserve (Grand Canyon National Game Preserve) was in fact on Forest Service land. and the hunting prohibition on it was invoked not by the Biological Survey but by the Arizona Game Commission. but its disastrous result forced recognition that both ecological understanding and active management rather than merely preservation per se were necessary to a viable wildlife management policy.

38

A similar recent example is the policy stratep of EPA Administrator William Reilly under the Bush

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were located in different states before and after their reproductive periods. leaving some states with the - -

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The English grazing commons. which Hardin used as his esample of destructive self-interest. were in 48

. fact managed sustainably for centuries by just such mutual controls at the local level. They were . . ultimately destroyed not by the self-interested decisions of the shepherds but by the self-interested decisions of landowners who responded to powerful new external economic forces by enclosing them-- fences were cheaper than shepherds--and converting them to other uses for market agriculture [cite source].

Oil policy in the 1920s also produced one of the famous scandals of American political history, the so- called “Teapot Dome affair.” which ultimately sent a Secretary of the Interior to prison for accepting bribes. Teapot Dome (Wyoming) was one of several naval petroleum reserves established by the Tal? and Wilson administrations to meet future military fuel needs; the Harding administration however took the position that they should be opened for development rather than “locked up’‘ for the future. and so transferred them to the Interior Department whose Secretary, Albert Fall. leased them without public notice to two personal friends. Fall was convicted of briben when it was discovered in 1924 that these friends had concurrently made several hundred thousand dollars‘ worth of personal loans to him. and became a partisan political symbol of corruption and cronyism in the Harding administration. The underlying political issues. however. included Fall‘s concern (supported by the Bureau of Mines) that the reserves were in fact suffering significant drainage losses and therefore needed to be developed and used if they were not simply to be lost: conservationists‘ hostility to Fall’s more general reversion from Progressive to laissez-faire policies of resource exploitation.. which also included proposals such as transferring the national forests from the Agriculture Department back to Interior: and Democratic eagerness for an election-year issue with which to attack the Harding administration (Swain. 1963:66-69).

Resource economists today. for esample. have argued that the only way to achieve sustainable rates of use of a non-renewable resource such as fossil fuels is to price them at the cost of both mitigating their environmental impacts and phasing in sustainable substitutes for them by the time they are exhausted Icitation-Daly?].

this policy. when a cutoff of Middle Eastern oil for political reasons caused serious shortages and sudden price increases--energy conservation measures increased dramatically. and energy use rates slowed sigruficantly over much of the following decade--but U.S. energy price levels adjusted for inflation have now returned to historically low levels, along with even higher dependence on foreign suppliers and renewed complacency [cite reference].

Related incentives to conserve natural gas--gas was found with oil and often simply vented in the process of oil pumping. until the Interior Department began charging five cents per 1.000 cubic feet of all ktural gas wasted (Swain. 1963:65)--may have encouraged the subsequent capital investments in gas pipelines that made this far cleaner fuel available as a substitute for coal in urban heating 53 Throughout the 1920s. for example. years before the Great Depression began. farm journals and farm organizations had been advising farmers to reduce production voluntarily. in response to shrinking markets and declining prices. but without success: voluntaI?; programs were not a sufficient response to the logic of individual incentives that drove the commons problem. especially in large national and international markets in which farmers could not trust others not to gain advantages by “cheating.” A second solution was therefore to promote cooperative marketing organizations. voluntary organizations of producers (consistent with President Hoover‘s vision of governance by coordination among producers) to manage output and stabilize surpluses and prices. under the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929: this too failed. however. leading the Federal Farm Board which oversaw it to recommend explicit regulation of either acreage planted or quantities sold or both. The failure of these voluntap measures for dealing with the agricultural commons led directly to the agricultural stabilization policies of the New Deal era (Rasmussen et al.. 1976:l-2).

FDR had not only a sentimental love of nature since his childhood. but over 20 years of practical personal expericnce in scientific forest management on his 1.250-acre Hyde Park estate. As a New York State Senator (191 1-13) he chaired the state Commission on Forest. Fish. and Game and helped create the state Department of Consemation. and as its governor (1928-32) he championed state programs for reforestation and forest management. land utilization planning. water power protection and development.

49

The “energy crisis” of the early 1970s provided a rare glimpse of both the inaccuracy and the danger of

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pollution control. and other initiatives which foreshadowed key elements of his New Deal programs (Owen. 198313-1 1). ” A further difference was one of style of governance: TR emphasized efficient management by professional foresters. engineers and other specialists. while FDR’s New Dealers were far more pragmatic generalists, “idea people” willing to innovate to achieve both socioeconomic and environmental goals and to use public policies as esperiments (Schlesinger. 1965: 18-19). %Yet another relief agency. the Works Progress Administration (WPA). spent 10% of its budget on recreational facilities and 2% on the performing arts. building over 15.000 parks and playing fields and over 11.000 swimming pools, golf courses. outdoor theaters. band shells and other outdoor-recreation facilities (Armstrong ef a/.. 1976563-63). WPA also provided jobs for unemployed scholars. teachers and artists. among others: from its support came important esamples of public art. photo archives, and historical scholarship on socioeconomic and environmental themes. such as two classic conservation films--The Plow That Broke the Plains and The kver--portraying and esplaining the Depression and Dust Bowl themselves. ’’ 49 Stat. 1570. ” Among the best-known esamples. for instance. are the projects that provided cheap water to convert California’s Imperial and Central Valleys into large-scale. federally subsidized intensive agricultural production regions (PLLRC. 1968:689-90; see also cite Cadillac Desert, Worster’s Nature’s Economy.

Bureaucratic rivalry and infighting were major features of this period. as the Corps and Bureau of Reclamation competed for hegemony over key river systems (the Missouri River Basin in particular was resolved only by a formal joint report to Congress in 1941. the Pick-Sloan Plan). and the.SCS lobbied openly against both in favor of smaller headwater dams which it would build.

regionally defined. BuRec had already built most of its projects. and the Soil Conservation Service was not as visible or vulnerable a target: the Corps was the most visible nation-wide water development agency, and had the most unfinished projects at stake.

More recent extensions of such requirements. such as President Reagan’s Executive Order requiring that environmental regulatory proposals also be justified by economic benefits in excess of their cost. sound superficially similar but are in fact far less logical. since environmental regulations are intended to protect health and ecological processes rather than merely to promote economic development. See Executive Order 12.291. 1981: ai& Smith, VK 1981?

Chief protagonists were Henry Ford for private industry. and Senator George Noms for the Progressives. Nitrate production was a process common to both explosives and fertilizers.

In Roosevelt’s words. TVA would be “a corporation clothed with the power of government but possessed of the flesibility and initiative of a private enterprise. It should be charged with the broadest possible duty of planning for the proper use. conservation and development of the natural resources of the Tennessee Rver drainage basin and its adjoining territory for the general social and economic welfare of the nation” (quoted in Smith. 1966:205).

priority to recreation in the operation of its reservoirs. “No matter how persuasively the claims of recreation may be pressed. the management of TVA must adhere to a plan of operation which achieves the benefits construction was undertaken to provide .... Priority was established in the law .... Power comes last of the three major objectives of TVA’s existing system of reservoir control. but the requirements of all three must be met before the demands of other water uses are met“ (TVA. Nature’s Constant Gift. 19663t7-48).

water management and powcr and fertilizer production. but a comprehensive quasi-governmental program at a river-basin scale-a true regional sub-government-including self-help cooperatives. “subsistence homesteads.” industrial development incentives. health and housing improvements. educational reform. and other initiatives. His co-directors. Harcourt Morgan and David Lilienthal. preferred grass-rools service and constituency-building in all matters escept electric power production. as they did not trust the private electric power companies as partners (Schlesinger. 1965327-36).

59

Probably because the Bureau of Reclamation. TVA and most other water agencies were more 60

62

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As stated in one of its publications. for instance. responding to political pressures to give greater 64

Arthur Morgan, like FDR. envisioned TVA as providing not merely a few specific services. such as 65

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66 Tellico Dam eventually was built. due to political chicanen by Tennessee politicians. after fierce environmental opposition. a Supreme Court decision stopping it. and several independent evaluations showing it unjustified even economically as well as environmentally. 67 The Browns Ferry fire was a serious embarrassment to the nuclear power industry, occurring just after the release of a major risk assessment study. the Rasmussen report. which claimed to show that because of numerous independent safety systems a serious nuclear power accident was virtually inconceivable. The Browns Ferry fire. however. was caused by a workman using a candle to search for leaks in an area directly under the control room. where all these systems converged in a single vulnerable location.

The Forest Service had controlled grazing by permits and fees on the National Forest lands since 1906, but no such management regime yet existed on the vast public lands remaining under General Land Ofice jurisdiction in the Interior Department. 69 58 Stat. 887. 70 Key statutes included the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936 and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 (Rasmussen et al.. 1976:1-8). 71 Section 3 of the law, for instance. states explicitly that ”preference shall be given in the issuance of grazing permits to those within or near a district who are landowners engaged in the livestock business.. . . (PLLRC. 1968:617). 72 This user veto was ruthlessly applied during the 1930s in a vendetta by Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada against the Grazing Service: McCarran reacted to proposals for grazing fee increases with Congressional investigations. draconian budget and staff cuts (totaling two-thirds of its staff in 1947). and systematic intimidation; only a well-publicized counterattack by western historian and columnist Bernard DeVoto and others blocked the stockmen from destroying federal conservation policies and taking over the rangelands entirely (PLLRC. 1968:617-229). This controversy also provided one of the starkest examples of interest-group capture of the agencies. which led political scientists in the 1950s and 60s to reject the Progressive “public interest” paradigm and replace it with the ”interest-group pluralism” and “agency capture” theories of agency behavior. [cite Wengert and others?, Sabatier, Lowi] 73 Foreshadowing, for instance. the later creation of the Department of Health. Education and Welfare. and the removal of the Bureau of Roads from the Agriculture into a Department of Transportation (Brownlow et al. had suggested a Department of Public Works).

i \ I

I I

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I I

1 I _ -

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Andrews draft - 7 28 94 - Do iiot cite or quote 47

pollution control. and other initiatives which foreshadowed key elements of his New Deal programs (Owen. 1983:3-1 I) . ” A further difference was one of style of governance: TR emphasized efficient management by professional foresters. engineers and other specialists. while FDR’s New Dealers were far more pragmatic generalists, ”idea people’’ willing to innovate to achieve both socioeconomic and environmental goals and to use public policies as esperiments (Schlesinger. 1965: 18-19). %Yet another relief agency. the Works Progress Administration (WPA). spent 10% of its budget on recreational facilities and 2% on the performing arts. building over 15.000 parks and playing fields and over 11.000 swimming pools. golf courses. outdoor theaters. band shells and other outdoor-recreation facilities (Armstrong ef a/.. 197656343). WPA also provided jobs for unemployed scholars. teachers and artists. among others: from its support came important esamples of public art. photo archives, and historical scholarship on socioeconomic and environmental themes. such as two classic conservation films--The Plow That Broke the Plains and The hver--portraying and explaining the Depression and Dust Bowl themselves. ” 49Stat. 1570. ’* Among the best-known esamples. for instance. are the projects that provided cheap water to convert California‘s Imperial and Central Valleys into large-scale. federally subsidized intensive agricultural production regions (PLLRC. 1968:689-90; see also cite Cadillac Desert, Worster’s Nature’s Economy. ’’ Bureaucratic rivalry and infighting were major features of this period. as the Corps and Bureau of Reclamation competed for hegemony over key river systems (the Missouri River Basin in particular was resolved only by a formal joint report to Congress in 1941. the Pick-Sloan Plan). and the.SCS lobbied openly against both in favor of smaller headwater dams which it would build.

Probably because the Bureau of Reclamation. TVA and most other water agencies were more regionally defined. BuRec had already built most of its projects. and the Soil Conservation Service was not as visible or vulnerable a target: the Corps was the most visible nation-wide water development agency, and had the most unfinished projects at stake. “ More recent extensions of such requirements. such as President Reagan’s Executive Order requiring that environmental regulatory proposals also be justified by economic benefits in excess of their cost. sound superficially similar but are in fact far less logical. since environmental regulations are intended to protect health and ecological processes rather than merely to promote economic development. See Executive Order 12.29 1. 198 1: also Smith, VK 1981? 62 Chief protagonists werc Henry Ford for private industry. and Senator George Noms for the Progressives. Nitrate production was a process common to both explosives and fertilizers.

In Roosevelt’s words. TVA would be “a corporation clothed with the power of government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise. It should be charged with the broadest possible duty of planning for the proper use. conservation and development of the natural resources of the Temessee River drainage basin and its adjoining territory for the general social and economic welfare of the nation” (quoted in Smith. 1966:205).

priority to recreation in the operation of its reservoirs. “No matter how persuasively the claims of recreation may be pressed. the management of TVA must adhere to a plan of operation which achieves the benefits construction was undertaken to provide .... Priority was established in the law ... . Power comes last of the three major objectixes of TVA’s existing system of reservoir control. but the requirements of all three must be met before the demands of other water uses are met“ (TVA. Nature‘s Constant Gift. 1966:47-48). 65 Arthur Morgan, like FDR. envisioned TVA as providing not merely a few specific services. such as water management and pow‘cr and fertilizer production. but a comprehensive quasi-governmental program at a river-basin scale--a true regional sub-government--including self-help cooperatives. “subsistence homesteads.” industrial development incentives. health and housing improvements. educational reform. and other initiatives. His co-directors. Harcourt Morgan and David Lilienthal. preferrcd grass-roots senice and constituency-building in ail matters except electric power production. as they did not trust the private electric power companies as partners (Schlesinger. 3965327-31).

.

As stated in one of its publjcations. for instance. responding to political pressures to give greater 6-4

Anu’rews draft - 7 28 94 -- Do riot cite or qrrote

3h$ 48

Tellico Dam eventuall! was built. due to political chicanen by Tennessee politicians. after fierce environmental opposition. a Supreme Court decision stopping it. and several independent etahations showing it unjustified even economically as well as environmentally.

The Browns Ferry fire was a serious embarrassment to the nuclear power industry. occurring just after the release of a major risk assessment study. the Rasmussen report. which claimed to show that because of numerous independent safety systems a serious nuclear power accident was virtually inconceivable. The Browns Ferry fire. however. was caused by a workman using a candle to search for leaks in an area directly under the control room. where all these systems converged in a single vulnerable location.

The Forest Service had controlled grazing by permits and fees on the National Forest lands since 1906. but no such management regime yet existed on the vast public lands remaining under General Land Office jurisdiction in the Interior Department. 69 58 Stat. 887. 70 Key statutes included the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936 and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 (Rasmussen er al.. 1976:1-8). 71 Section 3 of the law. for instance. states explicitly that “preference shall be given in the issuance of grazing permits to those within or near a district who are landowners engaged in the livestock business .... (PLLRC. I 968:6 1 7). 72 This user veto was ruthlessly applied during the 1940s in a vendetta by Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada against the Grazing Service: McCarran reacted to proposals for grazing fee increases with Congressional investigations. draconian budget and staff cuts (totaling two-thirds of its staff in 1947). and systematic intimidation; only a well-publicized counterattack by western historian and columnist Bernard DeVoto and others blocked the stockmen from destroying federal conservation policies and taking over the rangelands entirely (PLLRC. 1968:617-229). This controversy also provided one of the starkest examples of interest-group capture of the agencies. which led political scientists in the 1950s and 60s to Fject the Progressive “public interest” paradigm and replace it with the ”interest-group pluralism” and “agency capture” theories of agency behavior. [cite Wengert and others?, Sabatier, Lowi] 73 Foreshadowing, for instance. the later creation of the Department of Health. Education and Welfare. and the removal of the Bureau of Roads from the Agriculture into a Department of Transportation (Brownlow et al. had suggested a Department of Public Works).

67

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Amhvs &@t - 7/10/95 - do not cite or quote 32 /

Chapter 8 The Rise of Modem Environmentalism

The Progressive era introduced federal management of environmental assets, in response to free-market environmental destruction but also as an efficient engine of economic development. Large-scale transformation of the environment would continue and even increase, both for commodities and for infrastructure, but without the wastefblness and petty profiteering of unrestrained privatization, competition, and self- interested exploitation. Both economic depression and war amplified the role of the federal government, and generated an unusual degree of consensus on its policy goals: to revive the economy, and to win the war.

perceived no longer as the neutral, expert voice of a general public interest, but as a patchwork of powerful sub-governments, each acting as either a broker or even a captive of powefil client constituencies and interest groups and as a vehicle for its own staffs ideologies and aspirations. Federal resource m‘anagement agencies themselves came to be perceived as part of the problem rather than a clear solution. Key changes in environmental policy during this period therefore included changes both in the substance of policies and in the processes by which they were made.

large-scale consequences for environmental policy. Among the most long-term consequences were those not only of wartime production, but unexpectedly, of post-war demobilization as well. These consequences included an extraordinary continuing boom in material commodity production, fueled both by Cold War military spending and by widespread affluence and mass consumption, which generated ever-increasing pressure for exploitation of environmental assets at home and worldwide. Additional changes resulted from the “baby boom,” from suburbanization of settlement patterns, and from consequent changes in job and recreation patterns as well as in political attitudes and legislative representation.

both for material goods and for the very amenities threatened by their production. This conflict emerged concurrently in several sets of political forces, which were initially separate but ultimately converged into the overall “environmental” issue and movement. One force was pressure from the municipal government lobby, seeking federal financial assistance to pay for the rapidly rising costs of infrastructure to serve urban revitalization and suburban growth: roads, schools, housing, water and sewer services, public transportation, and others. A second force was conflict between exploitative and appreciative users of the natural environment itself, specifically between the postwar booms in water project and highway construction and logging of the National Forests-- each involving both public agencies and powerful commercial interests as advocates--and rapidly growing public constituencies for recreation, wilderness, and other non-destructive uses and amenities of the natural environment.

Finally, powerful new pressures and conflicts resulted from rising public awareness of the environment as a living system, heightened by the emergence of the science of ecology and by resulting fears--dramatized by the discovery of nuclear fallout in human

In the postwar era, however, .this consensus fragmented, as government came to be

World War II plunged the country once again into war mobilization, producing

Rising general affluence and suburbanization in turn produced conflicting demands

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milk, and by Rachel Carson’s compelling best-seller on the overuse of pesticides--of the unexpectedly destructive effects of human pollution, from local to global scales. The newly ubiquitous television reporting galvanized and mobilized these concerns, producing not only mass markets for material consumption but also mass constituencies for political causes such as environmental protection.

exploitation of environmental assets for economic development, and concurrently increasing public concem about its environmental consequences. These conflicts produced serious new debate about governance of the environment. On the one hand, people demanded a larger federal role, both in protecting the environment and in financing environmental services such as wastewater treatment. On the other hand, they were increasingly distrustfbl of federal agencies’ behavior, of the close relationships that had developed between the agencies and their powerfbl economic beneficiaries, and therefore of Progressive claims that such elites could be trusted with discretion to make apolitical decisions in the overall public interest. By the end of the 196Os, a diverse range of constituencies representing previously separate aspects of environmental protection-- pollution abatement, national parks and nature preservation, natural beauty, and others-- coalesced into a far broader environmental movement, demanding changes in both the substance and the process of environmental policy. In substance, they sought stronger government protection of the environment from the effects of urban and industrial growth; in process, they wanted more direct access for those who held these values, extending the “Broker State” of interest-group pluralism to include access for all interest groups, rather than just for the commodity producers and other economic users of the environment who had previously dominated environmental policy-making.

The period from World War 11 to 1970 thus produced both rapidly increasing

World War and the Environment’ The United States’ entry into World War I1 in 1941 triggered an all-out war

mobilization, which finally brought the entire national work force back to full employment, replaced the New Deal relief programs, revitalized the economy with government spending on a far more massive scale than the programs of the 1930s, and thus ended the Great Depression. World War I1 was above all, in fact, a war of industrial production. Government purchases increased fiom $10 billion in 1940 to $95 billion in 1945, nearly all defense-related; and the gross national product more than doubled in five years, from $100 billion in 1940 to $213 billion in 1945, 40% of it related to the war. Despite wartime rationing of most commodities, civilian standards of living increased over the depressed levels of the preceding decade, and inflation was even limited to 35% over the course of the war (Graham, 1976:72).

New Deal programs that were consonant with the war effort were continued and even expanded, while others were terminated or scaled back. The CCC was disbanded, and replaced by the military draft, and staffing of the National Park Service, Forest Service, and other civilian conservation agencies was severely reduced. Multi-purpose water projects continued, however, providing cheap hydroelectric power for the expansion of defense production in the Pacific Northwest, Tennessee Valley, and elsewhere.* Agricultural adjustment subsidies were increased, offering farmers 1 10% of parity to promote increased production for the U.S. and its European allies. At the local level,

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pollution and occupational hazards were once again accepted as necessary adjuncts of industrial production (see e.g. Tarr, 1985526).

A long-term environmental consequence of war mobilization was a vast expansion of the resource extraction and manufacturing industries. War mobilization required huge quantities of transport vehicles--aircraft, ships, trucks, tanks, jeeps, and others--leading to major expansion of the auto, aircraft and shipping industries. It required massive production of armaments and munitions, resulting in similar expansion of the chemicals and weapons industries and ultimately the creation of a nuclear industry. It required vast quantities of housing, food, and other durable goods and day-to-day supplies necessary to equip and sustain armies. The manufacturing industries in turn demanded greatly increased extraction of raw materials and primary production--mining and smelting of iron, steel, aluminum and other metals, coal, oil and uranium, timber and other forest products-- each of which intensified both commodity-extraction and pollution pressures on the envirox~ment.~ Manufacturing of durable goods nearly doubled between 1939 and 1947; electric generation increased by more than 50%, and total energy consumption by almost as much.4 Wartime priorities were also used as an excuse for legislative attempts to open the national forests and parks to more intensive commodity extraction, such as logging of Sitka spruce in Olympic National Park for aircraft construction (Steen, 1973:250; Richardson, 1973: 1 1-13).5 Most such overt challenges to national parks and forests were rebuffed, but the actual rate of logging in the national forests doubled during this period, from 2 to 4 billion board feet per year, and resource extraction on private lands also was vastly increased ( U . S . Department of Commerce, 1975534, L15-17).

War mobilization also increased federal subsidies for scientific and technological research. During the 1930s the federal government paid for an estimated 20% of total U.S. research expenditures; during World War 11 this increased to 65%, and it remained at over 50% after the war (President's Materials Policy Commission, 1952: 16). Military investments in the chemical industry promoted the expanded development and production of organic chemicals, cheap and easily mutable substances with military uses but also many civilian applications in rayon and nylon fabrics, pesticides and solvents, and plastics of all kinds. Military research produced radar, sonar, and other remote sensing technologies, early computers, and even new fields and applications such as systems analysis. Military R&D played equally important roles in the field of health, such as the development of modem antibiotics and of DDT and other pesticides for control of insect vectors of disease.

For the general public, the war years produced full employment but also new hardships: a half decade of regimentation and rationing even of such basic commodities as food and hel, of postponed families and careers, and for many, death or disability. For the longer tem, the war produced widespread changes in life-styles that had important environmental consequences of their own. Thousands went into combat units, but many more went into support units, starting their working lives in the technical and administrative job skills of bureaucratic employment. At home, thousands migrated from impoverished rural areas to defense industries in and around urban regions, and shifted from farm or independent employment to blue- or white-collar jobs in industry or government. All built up hopes for peace, prosperity and family life, as well as savings to be used, after the war.

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Finally, war mobilization reshaped both institutions for governance and attitudes toward them. Congress abolished the National Resources Planning Board in 1943, but it approved even more sweepingly autocratic powers for wartime agencies--the War Production Board, Office of Price Administration, and others--to regulate the allocation of food and fbel, labor, transport, and virtually all other aspects of the economy. The United States became in effect a centrally planned and controlled economy for five years, on a scale far beyond anything attempted by the New Deal. Many of the st& of the wartime agencies were volunteer businessmen, which ironically convinced many of them of the value of government planning--for coordinating production and transportation, for instance, and restraining labor demands in the name of inflation control--while these very restraints, as well as rationing and paperwork, led workers, small businesses and others toward greater hostility to it. In practice, farmers got 110% of parity and business profits were left essentially uncontrolled, while workers’ incomes were controlled in the name of inflation, leading to frequent strikes and an increased general sense of inequity and resentment toward government planning (Graham, 1976: 74-77).

“Resources for Freedom” As the war ended, it was widely feared that demobilization would trigger a

recurrence of pre-war economic depression and unemployment. In fact, however, what followed was a sustained inflationary boom, fbeled by continued federal expenditures for military production and civilian public works projects, by expanding export markets, and by dramatically increased consumer purchasing power resulting from war savings, veterans’ benefits, and well-paid jobs (Graham, 1976:88-89). Industries expanded for war production did not simply scale down or disappear, but sought new civilian and export markets as well as continued government support. Auto and aircraft industries sought new markets for cars, airplanes, and rockets; the chemicals industry sought new markets for fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic fabrics, plastics, and other outputs of their manufacturing capacity; the nuclear industry sought civilian applications of nuclear energy, both as markets and to allay public fear of its destructiveness; even the timber industry sought new access to the public forest lands to replace privateasupplies over-cut during the war.

well as a military rationale for federal policies to keep these industries’ productive capacities high. During World War 11, enemy attacks had severely reduced imports of critical raw materials, including for instance 22% of aluminum ore shipping during the first seven months of the war and 3.5% of the oil and gasoline tankers each month (President’s Materials Policy Commission, 1952: 156). Immediate responses included rationing and development of domestic alternatives, such as a crash program to grow guayule in the southwest to produce a rubber substitute for tire manufacturing (Steen, 1976:248-49). Post-war military reviews, as well as Cold War and Korean War fears, promoted a new consciousness of environmental assets as a national security and geopolitical issue. The result was a new and broader policy concern about the adequacy of U.S. and “Free World” supplies of strategic materials, and a new internationalism in U.S. foreign policy aimed at maintaining access to foreign supplies of these materials.

The Cold War itself provided continuing direct markets for military production, as

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In 195 1 President Truman appointed a President’s Materials Policy Commission (PMPC), chaired by William Paley, to examine the role of strategic materials in military preparedness. The commission’s five-volume report, published in 1952 under the title Resources for Freedom, provided both an articulate documentation of this concern and a detailed snapshot of U.S. commodity use at that time. The Paley Commission reported that the United States was using up its own known reserves of strategic materials far more rapidly than other countries, and had shifted from a raw-materials exporting economy to an economy far more dependent on raw materials imports. In 1900 the US. produced 15% more materids than it consumed, while in 1950 it consumed 9% more than it produced, and was expected to consume as much as 20% more by 1975. As of 1952, for instance, the U S ’ largest supplier of chromium for steel-making was Turkey; it imported copper from Africa and South America, bauxite and petroleum from South America (not yet the Middle East), and tin fiom Bolivia and Asia. It was totally dependent on foreign sources for three key materials (tin, quartz crystal, and industrial diamonds), and becoming increasingly import-dependent for 25 others; and it produced only 55% of the lead, 26% of the antimony, 10% of the cobalt, 9% of the mercury, and 8% of the manganese that it used (PMPC, 1952: 156). Perhaps most significantly for the future, in the mid- 1940s the U.S. had become for the first time a net importer of petroleum (PMPC, 1952: 12). The Commission did not recommend that the U.S. attempt to regain self-sufficiency in raw materials except under wartime necessity, but it urged deliberate expansion of trade with the resource-rich but economically undeveloped countries of South America, Afiica, Asia and the Middle East, both for economic advantage and for “Free World” political and strategic alliances (PMPC, 1952: 12).

materials production, processing and transportation capacity within the United States, particularly in steel, oil, aluminum and electricity, as war-preparedness measures (President’s Materials Policy Commission, 1952: 1 56).6 Such policies would exacerbate the U.S.’ risk of raw-materials scarcities, but they would also avoid repeating the World War I1 crash programs to scale up industrial production to wartime levels, and coincidentally would also maintain peacetime economic growth and industrial employment. The result was that military spending continued at high levels, first for maintenance of Cold War force levels and for the Korean War (and later Vietnam), then for the arms race and the space race, and more generally simply to keep defense industries operating at a high productive capacity for any future war. Environmentally, all these policies served to continue and even increase the U. S.’s already-high levels of extractive and pollution pressures on environmental resources, both domestically and, increasingly, on the environments of other countries from which we imported raw materials.

dramatically during the postwar decades. Federal expenditures for research and development increased ten times over from 1952 to 1970, from !§ 1.5 to !§ 15 million (v. S. Department of Commerce, 1975:W126). Military R&D investments both created and maintained the nuclear and aerospace industries as well as the weapons research and production industries more generally, fueled first by wartime weapons and rocket programs, then by the nuclear arms race and broader claims of a “missile gap,” and by the “space race” triggered by the Russians’ first launch of the Sputnik satellite.

Paradoxically, the Commission also recommended policies to accelerate growth of

Federal science and technology expenditures not only continued but increased

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These F&D programs had major environmental consequences, though some were not confirmed publicly until decades later. Both nuclear weapons testing and civilian nuclear power applications resulted directly from Federal policies promoting them; so did the legacy of environmental contamination problems at other weapons research and production facilities, and the increased use of toxic chemicals in both military and related civilian manufacturing. Weapons developed during this period permitted not just more effective destruction of military facilities and personnel, but deliberate ecological warfare on a devastating scale, such as the widespread use of napalm firebombs and herbicides in Vietnam. At the same time, remote sensing research funded for military intelligence made possible both systematic global reconnaissance of the earth’s environmental conditions and resources, and also the first photos of the earth from space, which radically refocused public awareness on the smallness rather than the vastness of the planet, and on the finitude and apparent fragility of the earth as a unique environment for living organisms.’

A key difference from the 192Os, in short, was that after World War I1 there was no attempt to fbndamentally dismantle the government’s enlarged role in the economy. As after World War I, there was a general conservative yearning for peace, prosperity, and fieedom &om wartime regimentation, but d e r World War I1 this was coupled with continued activist policies to maintain wartime levels of materials extraction and manufacturing and even to promote overall economic prosperity. Both political parties competed to do the most to increase Gross National Product, using government as both a gigantic investor and consumer and a fiiendly regulator of markets, and thus to achieve economic progress by enlarging the economic pie rather than redistributing it (Graham, 1976:91-93). Significantly, major forces within the business community now supported continuation of a strong government role: businessmen who had managed the economy during the war had come to believe in the value of government planning with a “conservative face,” using fiscal and monetary tools along with “sensible” regulation to damp down economic fluctuations, control labor unrest, and in many cases to provide government subsidies and markets for their own industries (Graham, 1976: 80-81, 100).

The post-war economy and the federal policies that promoted it had profound environmental consequences. They produced historically unknown levels of widely-shared material affluence, comfort and convenience, but at the costs of greatly intensified levels of commodity extraction and pollution pressures on the natural environment, and of an overall economy more and more driven by the goal of increased material production and consumption for its own sake. Government-sponsored construction projects caused massive transformation of the face and functions of the landscape itself, as the lure of federal financing created powerfbl incentives to build dams, highways, and other public works projects wherever they could be successfblly promoted. Finally, federal policies and post-war economic opportunities produced a particular type of economy, shaped by military innovations and imperatives as well as mass marketing, which generated far higher levels of pollution per unit of production than the prewar economy.

Nuclear Weapons and Civilian Power

civilian industries for military purposes than its creation and support of the nuclear industry. Created by the federal government during the war years to produce nuclear

Probably no technology more vividly exemplified the Federal policy of promoting

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- weapons, it was both continued for that purpose and deliberately expanded as a civilian industry, with federal policy support and economic subsidies, after the war as well.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 established a five-member Atomic Energy Commission and a Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, to insure close and continuing federal supervision of nuclear technology. The initial policy focus was to assure both security and civilian control over nuclear weapons; the primary military interest, other than in the weapons themselves, was in nuclear propulsion reactors (the first nuclear-powered submarine, Nautilus, was launched in 1954). By 1950 however the nuclear industry had developed a growing interest in use of nuclear energy for electric power production, in which they would use the heat of controlled nuclear reactions to drive steam turbines: “clean” nuclear energy could replace both the severe urban air pollution of coal and oil combustion, and the country’s rising dependence on foreign sources of petroleum.’ In 1953 the Atomic Energy Commission declared the development of civilian nuclear power a ‘‘national objective,” and President Dwight Eisenhower, in a major speech to the United Nations (“Atoms for Peace”), promoted the expansion of Civilian uses of nuclear technology. The Civilian Nuclear Power Act of 1954 chartered the AEC to develop peacetime applications: in part to sustain the industry’s strategic capacity for military purposes, in part to serve the industry’s own aspirations, and in part for propaganda purposes, to allay public fears of nuclear weapons by demonstrating its civilian bles~ings.~ The 1954 act authorized federal licensing of commercial applications of nuclear power, and encouraged “demonstration” and “experimental” reactors for civilian nuclear power.

The federal government thus both promoted and subsidized the development of nuclear power production, with glowing propaganda visions of electricity “too cheap to meter;” and it encouraged electric utilities to construct nuclear-powered generating stations as a “clean” alternative to coal and other fbels.’’ In this policy it was rapidly successfbl. In 1957 there were 3 civilian nuclear power reactors in operation; by 1962 there were 7, by 1970 thirteen, and by 1975 fifty-five in operation with 158 more under construction or on order (Armstrong et al., 1976:393). The size and capacity of these facilities grew as well: installed nuclear power production capacity increased from 1 12,100 kilowatts in 1957 to 5.6 million in 1970, and actual output fiom 10 million kwh in 1957 to 1.7 billion kwh in 196 1, 12.5 billion in 1968, and 2 1.8 billion in 1970. This capacity was still only a small fraction of total U.S. electricity production, but it was a remarkably rapid growth rate for a new industry.

important unexamined aspects of its environmental and even economic risks. Environmentally, nuclear power plants were “clean” in the sense that they produced none of the choking levels of urban air pollution generated by coal- and oil-fired power plants, which were clearly a serious hazard for public health and ecological degradation as well as property damage. However, nuclear power brought its own environmental hazards: large quantities of waste heat, damaging downstream water quality; serious pollution in the mining of nuclear fuels, and in the energy generation necessary for refining it; high costs and long-term hazards in spent fuel disposal and reactor decommissioning after use; increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation from spent fuel re-use or diversion; and risks of reactor accidents, such as near-disasters at the Browns Ferry and Three Mile

.

The superficial success of the civilian nuclear power program, however, masked

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Island reactors and the genuine disaster at the USSR’s Chernobyl plant. Even economically, federal subsidies and policy incentives promoted a risky and ultimately unstable pattern of development in the U. S. nuclear industry: a simplistic but widespread ’

belief in increasing economies of scale, combined with the licensing of reactors as “research” facilities, led U. S. companies to build reactors rapidly but idiosyncratically, every facility different and larger than the last, rather than standardizing designs at a known scale for carefd study and refinement over their lifetimes. These practices increased costs, delays, and unanticipated errors and failures, as well as public fears and opposition to them.

framework for nuclear policy-making also represented a troubling conflict of interest. Nuclear power plants were to be built and operated by private utilities, but the Atomic Energy Commission was charged not only to regulate but also to develop nuclear energy; and creation of a single Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy meant that even Congressional oversight would be conducted only by a small group of insiders operating largely in secrecy. l 1 These arrangements may.have seemed warranted by security concerns, particularly in the context of the nuclear espionage scandals of the time, but they also created dangerous bureaucratic incentives to concentrate narrowly on its clients’ promotional interests and to overlook or underestimate potential risks. l2 The agency’s unwillingness to deal openly with these risks exposed it to increasing public attacks, leading to the decline and virtual demise of the U.S. nuclear power program in the 1970s and more generally to increased public distrust of scientists’ and engineers’ authority as public officials--a distrust that came to pervade many U. S. environmental policy debates. l3

From the point of view of skeptical citizens and some scientists, the governmental

The Economy of Mass Consumption The war and subsequent industrial boom reshaped the consumer economy and

workforce as well as that of producers. Businesses’ search for new markets found a powerful match in American households’ pent-up yearnings for peace, prosperity, and family, and in their substantial savings--from war bonds bought with incomes that could not be spent due to rationing, from GI veterans’ benefits, and from wages available in well-paid post-war jobs--that could now be devoted to these goals. Military and defense- industry employment trained a generation of young workers for manufacturing, technical, clerical and administrative employment rather than agricultural or entrepreneurial careers, and relocated many from rural areas to cities where the defense industries were expanding. GI benefits opened the door to higher education for returning servicemen, hrther distancing them from pre-war occupational patterns. Agricultural employment dropped by 72% from 1940 to 1970, while manual and service employment increased by almost 50% and white-collar jobs by nearly two and a half times (U. S . Department of Commerce, 1975:139). Gross personal savings, which had totaled only $4 billion per year between 1929 and 1940, swelled to an artificial $27-37 billion per year during the war, then grew steadily from $7-15 billion in 1946-50, to $16-22 billion in 195 1-63, and $20-56 billion per year from 1964 to 1970 (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975:F553).

era of unprecedented general affluence, in which not just the most wealthy but most In short, a decade and a half of depression and war were suddenly succeeded by an

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households now lived in urban rather than rural areas and could afford a house, a car, major durable goods and conveniences, recreational trips, and other amenities. From 1934 to 1972 the percentage of American families owning their own homes increased from 44% to 63%; annual automobile sales doubled, car ownership increased from 56% to 82% of the population, and ownership of second cars even increased fiom 3% to 28% of the public (Jackson, 1985:205; U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975:Q148, Q175). Coupled with the extraordinary new access to education made possible by veterans’ benefits, the war and its aftermath transformed the United States for the first time into an overwhelmingly urban middle-class nation.

as thousands of young couples delayed by military service now started families, and women displaced fiom defense jobs by returning servicemen found new vocations in raising families. Between 1946 and 1957 U.S. birth rates increased by almost 25%, to about 25 per thousand, before gradually receding again to about 18 per thousand in 1970 (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975:B5). l4 This surge in young children produced with each succeeding decade a new set of demands and impacts on both socioeconomic and environmental resources: the larger-than-normal cohort of infants of the 1940s became the young families demanding housing, schools and recreation in the 1 9 5 0 ~ ~ the teen-agers seeking college educations in the 1960s, the young workers seeking jobs in the 1970s, the families raising their own children in the 1 9 9 0 ~ ~ and the disproportionately large cohort of retirees anticipated in the coming century.

and per-capita consumption of environmental commodities increased dramatically: the Paley Commission reported in 1952 that the U.S. had become the biggest materials consumer of the non-Communist Free World, with only 10% of the population and 8% of the land area yet consuming close to half the total annual volume of materials, and its demand was continuing to rise. Per capita consumption had tripled since 1900, and yearly use of coal had increased by two and a half times, copper by three times, iron ore by three and one-half times, zinc by four times, natural gas by 26 times, and crude oil by 30 times (President’s Materials Policy Commission, 1952: 1-6). Similar increases in consumption occurred in lumber, pulp and paper, and other commodities; and these trends continued and even accelerated over the following two decades, fbeled by steadily rising population, Gross National Product, and disposable income.

Wartime disruptions in family patterns also produced the post-war “baby boom,”

These socioeconomic shifts had major environmental consequences. Both overall

I

Pollution Pays: Environmental Impacts of Technological Change

and economic opportunities promoted during this period was a major shift in the mix of products and production technologies themselves. This shift included both increased production of pollution-intensive commodities and displacement of less-polluting .

substitutes, which caused pollution to increase by an estimated ten times faster than the Gross National Product itself. Between 1946 and 1970, for instance, the production of materials for basic human needs, such as food, clothing, shelter, and basic metals, increased more or less in proportion to population, and overall production of non-durable goods tripled. Chemicals production, however, increased six-fold, aluminum production four times over, and rubber and plastics nearly five times (U. S. Department of Commerce,

A profoundly important consequence of the type of economy that federal policies

10

1975:M83, P18-39). Synthetic fibers production increased by 5,980%, mercury for chlorine production by 3,930%, mercury in mildew-resistant paints by 3,120%, air conditioner compressors by 2,850%, plastics by 1,960%, fertilizer nitrogen by 1,050%, electric housewares by 1,040%, synthetic organic chemicals by 950%, aluminum by 680%, chlorine gas by 600%, and electric power by 530% (Commoner, 1971 : 143). Whole new categories of environmentally significant materials were introduced into widespread use for the first time: examples include organic chemical pesticides, detergents, plastics, and man-made radionuclides.

Pollution-intensive consumption increased as well. Annual automobile sales doubled; car ownership increased from 56% to 82% of the population; and ownership of second cars increased fiom 3% to 28% of the population (U. S. Department of Commerce, 1975:Q148, Q175). Small automobile engines were replaced by far larger and less hel- efficient ones, which also required more heavily leaded fuels; inter-city highway travel in private cars more than doubled, and fuel use more than tripled (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975:Q1-11, Q156). Air conditioning came into widespread use, and annual energy consumption rose to over 20,000 kilowatt-hours per capita (Commoner, 1971 : 168-72). Phosphate detergents began rapidly displacing soap products in 1948, increasing tenfold to over 5 billion pounds in 1970 while soaps declined by 60%. In agriculture, total production increased about 45% between 1949 and 1968, while population grew 34% and harvested acreage declined by 16%; but use of pesticides increased 168% during the same period, and use of fertilizer nitrogen by about 648% per year, reflecting a dramatic intensification of chemical inputs to farmland and crops (Commoner, 1971: 149-50).

Pollution of many kinds increased accordingly, at rates far above either population growth or increases in general affluence and consumption. Annual phosphate discharges in municipal sewage increased seven-fold from 1940 to 1970 (versus two and a half times from 1910 to 1940); nitrogen oxides from automobiles increased 630%, tetraethyl lead from gasoline 4 15%, mercury fiom chloralkali plants 2,100%, synthetic pesticides 270%, and inorganic nitrogen fertilizers 789%. One of the few significant trends in the opposite direction was the gradual replacement of coal by natural gas for urban heating, as new pipelines made gas more widely available and reduced the most severe forms of smoke and sdfk polktion in cities accordingly (Tarr, 1985527-28). Overall, by one estimate population increases accounted for 12 to 20% of pollution increases between 1946 and 1971, rising affluence for 1 to 5%, and increased pollution per unit of production accounted for about 95% of the increased pollution levels other than those associated with auto travel (Commoner, 1971 : 176-77).

It is worth noting that some of these trends were in fact identified and publicized at the time, two full decades before the emergence of the contemporary “environmental movement,” even though often unsuccessfully. The 1952 report of the President’s Materials Policy Commission, for instance, explicitly discussed the disparities between physical and economic concepts of waste, and the resulting need for pollution prevention and waste reduction. Large amounts of materials were simply wasted, in physical terms: 50% of most coal and oil deposits were left in the ground, 10% of copper was discarded as slag during smelting, 35% of the average tree was thrown away, more sulfbr was emitted as air pollution than was consumed in products, and enough natural gas was

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wasted annually to supply the needs of 11 million homes. In some cases, the report noted, these physical wastes were not necessarily economic wastes, since it might cost more to use them than they would be worth; but in many others they were consequences of outmoded and wastekl production technologies, or of firms that “had not explored carehlly enough the potential profit in waste reduction.” The report also noted the wastehlness of poorly made products that must be replaced fiequently, of over-design and over-specification of products--heavier cars than needed, adomed with wastehi and unnecessary chromium decoration and burning heavily leaded high-octane gasoline, all wasting materials on trivial and transient tastes--and of corrosion caused by pollution, costs of paint and protective coatings to prevent it, and failure to recycle and re-use materials.

well as far-sighted publicists had identified many of the environmental problems of industrial pollution and recommended increased attention to correcting them: by materials conservation, by demand management, by more efficient utilization and waste reduction, and by increased scrap recovery and recycling (PMPC, 1952:8-11, 160-61). l5 These recommendations, however, had little immediate impact on the “affluent society” of postwar America, in which the self-interests of wartime-scale manufacturing industries, of newly affluent consumers, and of government all coincided in continued large-scale exploitation of the environment for economic benefit (Gottlieb, 1993 :75-80).

The Heyday of Federal Water Control Projects

that the Congress continued to finance massive nationwide public works programs in the post-war era of economic prosperity. Multi-purpose dam construction had expanded during the 1930s to provide jobs and “re-prime the economic pump” during a depression; now it continued and even expanded because it was politically popular, and every economic interest and Congressional district wanted to claim “their share.” In each case projects typically resulted from political lobbying coalitions among construction and beneficiary businesses, local and state governments, and Congressional representatives seeking credit for delivering federal expenditures to their districts. Projects begun in the 1930s and ’40s were completed, and new projects were initiated up and down the Missouri, the Upper Colorado river basin, and others. Water projects became in effect a high-value political currency, both for distributing federal largesse and for enforcing discipline within the Congress: each project was fbnded by a specific budgetary line-item each year, and enough of them were bundled into one omnibus bill to attract sufficient votes for approval (“log-rolling”); critics of this practice were punished by being excluded fiom it.

federal multipurpose dam construction. No longer needed for depression-era jobs, such projects were now urged instead to control flood damage, to provide cheap public electric power, and to promote regional economic development in general. Water projects were promoted as public investments: projects too big or too multi-faceted to leave to commercial syndicates (and involving the allocation of an historically public resource, flowing water), yet which, like the 19th century canal grants for navigation, would

Almost twenty years before the modem “environmental era,” in short, experts as

Perhaps the mast telling example of the continued postwar role of government was

The period from World War I1 through the 1960s thus became the heyday of

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arguably return greater benefits to the economy than their costs. Overall, the federal budget for water resource projects increased from $323 million in 1940 to $1.1 billion in 1950, and contihued high throughout the following decades. Between 1936 and the 1970s the Corps of Engineers alone completed some 3,400 flood control projects, including over 400 dams in 42 states; TVA completed 33 on the Tennessee and its tributaries (Armstrong et ul. , 1976:25 1 , 272). The Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration built 3 1 multi-purpose dams for power production on the Columbia River and its tributaries, and others throughout the West (Armstrong et ul., 1976:366). The Small Watersheds Act of 1954, and its amendments two years later, gave the Soil Conservation Service its own program to build dams and re-engineer watercourses for local business interests. The ultimate goal of water development advocates was to totally manage the flows of all the major rivers, from the tributaries to the sea, in order to extract the greatest economic benefits from the “free” natural assets of water and gravity.

As the most cost-effective projects were built, however, and more and more reaches of the rivers were dammed, the remaining projects became increasingly controversial. Some were less justified economically: not surprisingly, many of the best projects were built first, and the economics of others were more and more marginal, leading advocates to include increasingly speculative claims of benefits in order to claim justification for them. l6 Others were transparent and even hypocritical monuments to regional self-interest, as Westerners and Republicans who publicly deplored federal spending lined up for their own shares to subsidize local economic development schemes. Still others re-ignited old conflicts over preservation of natural areas and fisheries, as dams were proposed that would back water up into National Parks and National Monuments (the specter of “Hetch Hetchy,, again), or destroy fish spawning runs or the last remaining whitewater stretches of rivers (such as Hells Canyon on the Snake River). More generally, public demand for outdoor recreation was rising dramatically, and with it the popularity of sports that required free-flowing rivers, such as trout fishing and wild- river running (Richardson, 1973 :47-48).

proposed in the 1950s. In 1948 the five states of the upper Colorado river basin signed a compact for development of its rivers, to draw population and industry into the region. However, the plan proposed by the Bureau of Reclamation was far more costly and extensive than previous plans such as the Columbia River Basin project, and proposed a set of high dams backing water up into a whole series of deep, spectacular canyons of the Rockies and impinging on over a dozen units of the national park system. One in particular, Echo Park Dam on the Green River in northwestern Colorado, would flood portions of the Dinosaur National Monument, a particularly beautifid network of canyons that had been set aside as a national monument in 19 15 and even enlarged in 193 8. President Truman’s administration approved the dam in 1950, siding with local chambers of commerce over strong opposition from preservation advocates, and President Eisenhower did likewise in 1954. These actions, however, catalyzed a massive publicity campaign by the preservation groups--under the rallying cry, “No more Hetch Hetchys!”, alluding to the famous conflict of the Progressive era--to stop the dam.”

League, the Wilderness Society and others into a new and effective coalition, the Council

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These forces collided directly when the Upper Colorado Storage Project was .

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The campaign against Echo Park Dam united the Sierra Club, the Izaak Walton

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of Conservationists, which used the mass media to produce nationwide publicity and to generate intense and sustained public protest against the dam (Richardson, 1973: 134- 52).'* They publicized photographs showing the natural beauty of the canyon, and increased visitation six times over by organizing raft trips through it; they forced the Bureau of Reclamation to acknowledge both errors in its technical analyses and speculative assumptions about the need for the project; and they hammered at the high cost involved, noting that it would cost sixteen times more than the total assessed value of farm lands and buildings in the four surrounding states, and thus represented a massive subsidy from taxpayers elsewhere. '' Project supporters responded by vilifjllng the opposition, portraying them as a conspiracy of a few long-haired fanatics and wealthy, idle elitists from the east and west coasts; but this served only to broaden the conflict, alienating other states and constituencies and opening debate on a much larger policy issue, the whole concept and economics of federal water development subsidies.20 In a surprise victory, the preservationist coalition won the Echo Park battle, and the proposed dam was removed from the Upper Colorado Basin Project authorization in 1956 (Richardson, 1973:139).

dam while the rest of the Upper Colorado Basin Project (including other projects just as debatable, such as Glen Canyon Dam) went ahead. Nor did it alter the broader momentum of federal subsidies for water projects. It was nonetheless a key turning point in American environmental politics, both symbolically and practically, as a precursor and training ground for the modern environmental movement.21 The preservation groups became one major element of that movement. The Echo Park controversy marked their post-war rebirth as an effective political force, taught them new tactics for using the mass media to mobilize broad-based political opposition, and began to generate organizational momentum for more far-reaching campaigns: for wilderness protection and pollution control, and against the large-scale federal development subsidy programs for water projects, highways, nuclear power plants, and others that dominated the era.

The Echo Park victory was only a single battle, and ironically stopped only one

Outdoor Recreation

the boom in young families and the widespread increases in both automobile ownership and leisure time, outdoor recreation emerged in the 1950s as both a major American activity and a rapidly expanding sector of the economy (Armstrong et al., 1976565-67). Wartime hardships and rationing had limited recreation and tourism demand, although it exposed growing number of Americans to organized outdoor recreation activities, both in the military services and for the children left behind while wives worked in the war industries; National Park use had shrunk during the war years to less than half its 1941 use. After the war, however, recreation and tourism rebounded and surged to unprecedented levels. From 1946 to 1955 visitor levels at national parks increased to their 1941 levels, then to double those numbers within just 6 years and to almost 2 112 times greater by 1956 (Foresta, 198450)

One major result of this rising demand was increased pressure for hnding of the National Park Service, not so much to acquire or preserve parks but to accommodate more outdoor recreation and tourism. In 1956 the National Park Service embarked on

With the postwar emergence of a largely middle-class, suburban American society,

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“Mission 66,” a decade-long program of construction and improvements to existing parks intended to restore them to high quality by 1966, the 50th anniversary of its creation, and to upgrade public outdoor recreation facilities at federal water resource reservoirs. The national parks were to be marketed as “Parks for People,” rather than just preserved undisturbed as natural wonders. The Park Service astutely cultivated political support from President Eisenhower and in the Congress, and from the major park-related interest constituencies, and successfully obtained large and steady increases in appropriations as a result. Mission 66 was aimed especially at building recreational user constituencies at those parks that were most vulnerable to resource exploitation schemes: for instance by building 2,000 miles of scenic roads to counter proposals for logging roads, and thus to attract the support of the driving public and American Automobile Association, and more generally to reassert its leadership after the Echo Park battle in which its own lack of effective leadership had left the lead to citizen preservation groups. Mission 66 was also aimed at not just accommodating but increasing public use of the national parks: it included a public relations campaign oriented to auto-based and overnight accommodations, ostentatious visitor centers, and development of large-scale tourism in the parks, to a degree that aroused concern among the parks’ traditional preservation constituencies that the parks could be “overrun” with “honky tonk” development. It also included expansion of Park Service jurisdiction to include flat-water recreation areas around federal dams, such as those built as part of the water resource development program in the west: this expanded the agency’s jurisdiction and influence, but also blurred the distinction between the “crown jewels” of the parks--the truly unique parks, which had been set aside as natural wonders and distinctive ecosystems--and a far larger collection of sites and facilities managed primarily for tourism and mass outdoor recreation.

both outdoor recreation demand and other economic pressures continued to mount, on the parks and on other natural lands of all kinds, particularly on the remaining seashores, lakeshores, and other open-space lands near urban areas to which public access was still available. A National Park Service report in 1956, VanishinqShoreline, calculated that out of 3,700 miles of U.S. coastline, only 640 miles were still available for public acquisition, and recommended that government agencies purchase half of that total. The Eisenhower administration opposed public land acquisition, but under the Kennedy administration in 196 1 Cape Cod National Seashore was created, a series of other national seashores, national lakeshores, and national recreation areas were proposed,** and funds were added to the 1961 Housing Act for local acquisition of park and open space lands.

In 1958, meanwhile, a prestigious Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC) was created to review the overall status and trends in the supply and demand for outdoor recreation opportunities, and its report, completed in 1962, made a powerfbl case for more aggressive policy initiatives. The ORRRC report predicted a tripling of outdoor recreation demand by the year 2000, and recommended that outdoor recreation therefore be made an integral part of future metropolitan growth; that additional public recreational lands be acquired, especially near urban areas; and that a federal Bureau of Outdoor Recreation be created in the Interior Department to coordinate these efforts. In 1965 Congress went further, creating a Land and Water Conservation

The tensions between preservation and recreational development intensified as

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Fund (LWCF) to finance acquisition of public recreational lands by all levels of govemment. Revenues for .the fbnd--$200 million per year initially, increasing to $2 billion per year by 1975--came primarily fiom federal royalties on offshore oil and gas leases, as well as ,from park entrance fees, motorboat fuel‘taxes, and sales of federal real estate; 60% of the revenues were designated for grants to the states for land acquisition, park development, and recreation planning. In its first few years, the fbnd paid for the public acquisition of 9 new national parks and recreation areas, several protected wild rivers, and innumerable additions of land to “round out” existing parks; and it created an important new source of federal financial assistance for state and local parks as wellz

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Logging the National Forests The post-war decades also produced rising public opposition to logging of the

National Forests. Like the water project issues, these controversies revealed the changing environmental perspectives of an increasingly suburban, middle-class population, with rising preferences for outdoor recreation and for nature as an amenity rather than for commodity production. However, they were also reactions to a sharp change in Forest Service policy itself, fiom local use and otherwise custodial management to large-scale commercial timber production. The reality was not just that a more middle-class public perceived logging less favorably: logging was itself being increased dramatically on the National Forests, at larger scales and using more destructive methods than ever in their previous history.

Forest Service policy since the time of Gifford Pinchot had been to give highest priority to timber production for home building, but also to manage the National Forests as local supplemental sources rather than competitors with private holdings (Steen, 1976:90). National Forest timber was made available, therefore, only to meet local needs rather than national or international commercial markets, keeping the local mills running at steady and comfortable levels. As a practical matter the private forests also were generally more accessible, since the commercial logging companies (not surprisingly) had claimed the more accessible commercial-quality Iands in the 19th century privatization era. As a result, the amounts of timber actually cut from the National Forests remained relatively low until World War 11, amounting to less than 1 billion board feet per year before 1922 and growing to only 1.8 BBF/year by 1939.

During and after World War 11, however, the National Forests came under increasingly heavy pressures for higher rates of logging. The wartime annual cut was doubled, from 2 to 4 BBF, although even then most of the total national timber demand was met fiom private commercial forest lands. By the end of the war, private commercial forest lands had been heavily cut over and were rapidly declining in productivity: a Forest Service reappraisal in 1946, for instance, estimated that the U.S. timber supply was dwindling by 18.6 BBF per year. The President’s Materials Policy Commission in 1952 estimated that ninety percent of the virgin timber in U.S. commercial forests had been cut, that reforestation had not kept pace, and that the current rate of annual use was 40% greater than the growth rate of replacement timber (President’s Materials Policy Commission, 1952: 1-6). The immediate reason for this decline was wartime demand, but the more fbndamental cause was a long history of poor logging and inadequate reforestation practices: the private growers had been practicing “one-shot forestry” rather

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than long-term management, often simply taking the best trees or even clear-cutting entire stands without systematic reforestation and management: in effect, mining the forests rather than managing them (Wilkinson, 1992: 136-39). Demand, however, continued high, heled by continued military and industrial uses, by the boom of suburban housing construction, and by the growth of post-war export markets.

National Forests--particularly the profitable old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest-- to intensive commercial logging (Steen, 1976257). Because the National Forests were generally less accessible than the private commercial lands, such a policy also required a major forest road-building program to open them for commercial use. President Eisenhower supported this policy change, steadily increased the annual cut, and included in his first budget request a doubling of the appropriation for building forest access roads (Richardson, 1973: 101). As a result, both road-building and logging on the National Forests increased dramatically. Forest road mileage doubled between 1940 and 1960, from 80,000 to 160,000 miles; the annual cut more than doubled even from its already-doubled wartime levels, to 9 BBF by 1962, and tripled to over 12 BBF in 1970. Domestic pulpwood production increased by three and a half times between 1950 and 1970, and per capita consumption of both plywood and newsprint more than tripled; exports also increased dramatically, including a tripling of softwood exports and a quadrupling of Douglas Fir log exports from the Pacific Northwest between 1963 and 1970 alone. Overall, between 1950 and 1966 twice as much timber was cut from the National Forests as had been cut in the previous 45 years since creation of the National Forest system (Steen, 1976:284,314; U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975:L15-17, L138-39, L146, L155, L166; Wilkinson, 1992136-39).

changes, which the Forest Service described as a policy of “sustained-yield” forestry. The Sustained Yield Forest Management Act of 1944 formalized the principle of “sustained yield” for management of public forest lands, and authorized a system of “cooperative sustained yield management units” both on National Forest lands themselves and combining public and private lands. The ordinary-language public image of “sustained yield” was to plant a tree for each one logged, thus in principle assuring a continuous supply into the indefinite future; this same intuitive vision underlies more recent calls for “sustainable development” more generally. To the Forest Service and the timber industry, however, sustained yield management meant not just replanting, but also harvesting the maximum biological potential of each acre; and since relatively little logging had yet occurred on the National Forests, this meant dramatically increasing logging on those lands, particularly of the mature old-growth trees that could be replaced with younger, faster growing ones. It also meant applying to the public lands the industrial practice of clear-cut logging, harvesting the entire biomass of an area rather than merely the dead or mature trees.24

The creation of “cooperative units” for sustained-yield management thus allowed the Forest Service and the timber industry to combine the unlogged National Forests with cut-over private lands for purposes of sustained-yield calculations, thus averaging the “sustainable” yield across both while in reality cutting the entire remaining stands on the public lands. The practical result was to clear-cut the public lands while the cutover

_-

The forest industry therefore turned to the public lands, and advocated opening the

-

A kind of technical double-speak initially blurred the implications of these policy .

Ancirews &a9 Chapter 8 - 7/10/95 - Do not cite or quote 17 33.7

private lands were supposedly re-growing to harvestable dimensions (Hirt, 1994:34-4 1).25 To the public, however, this looked like the very practices which the Forest Service had long held up as examples of bad land management by private firms, as justification for public management of the National Forests and as causes of a potential fiture “timber famine” (Pinchot’s term; Steen, 1976:285, 302).26

rising urban population, increased automobile ownership and mobility, increasing affluence, and a family-oriented population structure were creating a conflicting set of demands for outdoor recreation and preservation in the national forests and parks. With the growth of mobility and outdoor recreation, the public was now out in the forests themselves, using them for recreation and seeing the practices and effects of large-scale commercial logging. Whether for intensive activities such as ski resorts or for more individual activities such as hiking, camping, hunting and fishing, or even simply to appreciate the beauty of unspoiled mountains and forests--or to view with pride the trails, facilities and conservation projects built by fathers who had once been young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps--recreational visitors created rapidly growing new constituencies opposed to large-scale logging, and particularly to industrial-scale clearcutting. Even Westerners themselves felt the pressures of conflicting priorities: benefiting fiom the commodity-extraction economy, many were also hunters and fishermen whose own favorite areas were now targets of the new cross-pressures for increased logging, increased tourism, and permanent protection (Wilkinson, 1992: 136-39).

The result was a frontal collision between commercial pressures for commodity production and public demand for amenity uses such as outdoor recreation, wilderness, and pristine natural beauty. The Forest Service had long accepted the principle of “multiple use” of the forests, but had always defined it as a mix of uses compatible with a primary goal of timber production (“dominant” use), rather than a varying mixture of all uses on an equal footing. It also had adamantly opposed proposals to set lands aside fiom commodity production uses, such as the national parks: this was viewed contemptuously, in the language of Pinchot and his successors, as “locking them up” rather than “wise use” of them. As recreation and preservation advocates saw the massive expansion of commercial clear-cutting that was taking place on the National Forests, however, and heard the Forest Service describe this practice as “multiple use” and “sustained yield,” they findamentally lost faith in the Forest Service’s commitment to genuine multiple-use management of the forests, or even to protecting the long-term ecological health of the forests themselves (Htrt, 1994: 162-70). Preservation groups therefore began to lobby for designation of the most pristine National Forest lands as legally protected “wilderness areas,” which would put pristine areas of the forests off-limits for commercial timber and mining exploitation and even for intensive recreation development (and in particular, would protect them fiom the forest road-building program which would open the way for these more intensive uses).27

commercial-quality National Forest lands to recreational uses--or worse yet, to restrictive designation as wilderness areas (Steen, 1976:295). The Forest Service therefore joined the call for a new Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act, as an alternative to preservationists’ proposals for wilderness legislation. The Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960

This increased logging occurred in precisely the period, moreover, in which a

By the end of 1950s, the forest industry’s biggest worry was the loss of

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reaffirmed the principle of multiple-use management of the forests, and specifically recognized recreation as a new official use to be incorporated into forest management: it stated in law that “the National Forests are established and shall be administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes. ” Forest resources were to be utilized in combination to meet needs, in principle on an equal footing, and economic return was not in all cases to be the limiting factor (Steen, 1976:298-307). Since the Act set no specific priorities among these uses, however, it did not explicitly challenge the traditional priority of logging, but left this judgment to the discretion of the forest manager. The timber industry was unhappy with this result, since by making all uses equal in priority, the forest manager would probably have to act on a case-by-case basis on the basis of public pressure; but the Sierra Club was equally unhappy, since the law left this to the discretion of the forest managers, the very people whose judgment had always favored commodity production (Hirt, 1994: 1 88-89).28 Forest preservation advocates therefore continued to campaign for wilderness legislation, and succeeded in 1964 with the enactment of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which authorized setting aside up to 9 million acres of National Forest lands as permanent pristine wilderness areas outside of the multiple-use management system (Wilkinson, 1992: 136- .

39).

Suburbanization and Its Consequences

residence and population densities, from rural to urban and suburban communities. Between 1950 and 1970 the number of urbanized areas with populations of 1-2 million people increased by three and a half times, and those of one-half million to one million increased by 50%. The populations of central cities increased by 25% during the same period, while the populations of their surrounding suburbs doubled (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975:A264-75, A82; Jackson, 1985:283-84).

The roots of this suburban growth lay not only in wartime rural-to-urban migration, but in earlier New Deal programs to revitalize the construction industry by providing easier credit for home ownership. The growth of suburbs was not itself new: it became widespread in the 19th century, for instance, as new forms of transportation-- steam femes, omnibuses, commuter railroads, horsecars, elevated railroads and cable cars- -opened access to expanding residential areas on the edges of cities2’ Changes in annexation and incorporation laws in the late 19th century made it harder for cities to expand their boundaries to include developing areas, and easier for the more affluent of these areas themselves to incorporate in order to resist annexation, thus keeping control of their own destinies and resources at the expense of the cities. Rising automobile ownership after World War I hrther encouraged the trend, coupled with government road-building programs financed by he1 taxes, and made possible for the first time suburbs of much lower densities remote from public transit.30

The most pervasive impacts, however, resulted from the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the Federal Housing Administration to reinsure mortgage loans up to 93% of property value, and thus made home ownership possible to far more households and home construction lending attractive to far more investors; a similar program specifically for veterans was added in 1944.31 New housing starts increased dramatically

Changes in industrial production were accompanied by sweeping changes in

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as a result; and since FHA underwriting standards heavily favored particular kinds of housing over others--new single-family residential developments, for economically stable and segregated white communities, on the urban fringe, rather than multi-family units or those in core cities--much of the construction occurred in suburban areas (Jackson, 1 98 5 ) . 32

the construction of low-density, automobile-dependent suburbs for affluent white families

.

The net effect was a set of federal and state policies which powerfully promoted

on the urban fringe, while undermining both the economic vitality and the socioeconomic integrity of the core cities themselves. Between 1950 and 1970 the suburban population doubled, from 36 to 74 million, and 83% of the nation’s total growth took place in these areas: between 1946 and 1955 more than twice as many houses were constructed as in the previous 15 years, and in the peak year (1950) over one million single-family homes were begun (Melosi, 1980:25). Eighteen of the nation’s 25 largest cities in 1950 actually suffered net losses of population over the following three decades, and by 1980 suburban populations exceeded those of their cities in all but one of the nation’s 15 largest cities (Jackson, 1985:283-84; the sole exception was Houston). Federal mortgage insurance subsidized suburban housing, and federal income tax deductions for mortgage interest payments subsidized its owners, while state and federal gasoline taxes subsidized the roads that provided access to them.

they opened up to a large fraction of the population a living environment that had previously been available only to the wealthy: the American Dream. However, their achievements cannot be separated from their other consequences, which included economic decline and even abandonment of large areas of existing cities, increasing segregation by race and economic class, geographic separation of homes from work, shopping, and recreation, and a pervasive transformation of the landscape from relatively coherent urban communities and rural hinterlands into low-density, automobile-dependent sprawl (Jackson, 2 16- 17).

materials, for appliances and the environmental raw materials necessary to supply them, and for the municipal infrastructures and services--roads, water supplies, wastewater treatment plants, solid waste disposal, schools, electric and gas utilities, and others--to serve them. These pressures resulted in major new Federal domestic spending programs for urban and transportation infrastructures in the 1950s. A massive new program of federal expenditures for road building, for instance, was authorized in 1956, to construct a 42,500 mile system of interstate highways with 90% of the cost financed paid for by earmarked federal motor fuel taxes through a Highway Trust Fund. Nominally justified as a “national defense highway system,”33 its real backing came from the American Road Builders Association, a political coalition of powerful beneficiary industries who stood to gain economically from increased road construction and highway use.34 Between 1945 and 1970 the number of miles of federally aided highway more than doubled, from 309,000 to 895,000; more than 20,000 miles of new highways were completed each year from 1952 to 1962,32,000 in 1959 alone (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975:Q64-68). Other new programs of federal “categorical grants” to states and municipalities were also

The remarkable achievement of these policies should not be underestimated, as

The suburbanization of America also greatly increased pressures for construction

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created: for roads, for housing and “urban renewal,” health and other human services, and ultimately for water and wastewater treatment facilities and other purposes as well.

Paradoxically, however, the construction of these infrastructure facilities often exacerbated the very problems they were intended to solve. Expressways, for instance, did not just relieve existing congestion but generated up to 60% new traffic, as well as generating major new economic pressures on newly accessible areas and foci (interchanges, shopping centers).35 Similarly, installation of sewers in suburban areas encouraged land speculation and increased real estate values by an estimated two to ‘five times, and encouraged additional dispersedlsprawl development rather than more compact urbanization (Harbridge House, 1974:27-46).

_. -

Nationalizing Pollution Control

was a “uniquely local” problem that should be solved by state and local authorities rather than the federal government (Sundquist, 1968:323).36 The reality, however, was that many major cities were Iocated on interstate rivers, that water and air pollutants flowed constantly across municipal and state boundaries, that polluting industries could usually block local or even state controls by threatening to relocate, and that local investments in wastewater treatment facilities had almost never kept pace with their growth rates: wastewater treatment, after all, benefits downstream communities rather than the city that builds it. Within a year after President Eisenhower’s veto, President Kennedy signed a $100 million per year subsidy program for wastewater treatment, and by the following decade the federal government had not only expanded this program seven-fold but also assumed primary responsibility for nationwide air and water quality regulation. Two central elements of the modem environmental policy agenda were thus put m place: the nationalization of pollution control, and the adoption of large-scale federal subsidies and regulatory authorities as its primary policy instruments.

The 19th century sanitary reform movement. had established government responsibility for urban water quality and waste management, but until the post-war era these authorities were left almost exclusively to local government. State policies for water quality management developed gradually, focusing primarily OR drinking water purity and municipal sewage disposal rather than industrial discharges; a few broader interstate initiatives were begun on rivers in heavily urbanized and industrialized region^.^' State sanitary engineers formed a professional association in 1920 (the Conference of State Sanitary Engineers), which provided a forum for development of uniform state laws and practices, but by 1935 only 8 states had effective water pollution control laws; 26 had partial or ineffective control, and 14 had none at all. By 1946 the number of states with effective control had increased only to 21, and many state statutes simply exempted major industries or municipalities, or even entire rivers. Depression-era subsidies more than doubled the volume of wastes receiving treatment, representing more progress in six years than in the preceding 25; but even so, as of 1940 only 25% of urban sewage received secondary treatment, another 25% primary treatment, and the other 50% still was simply discharged raw (Dworsky, 1971:15, 108-12, 116).

pollution as early as 1912, and it produced important studies of the Great Lakes watershed

As recently as 1960, the President of the United States argued that water pollution

.

The U. S. Public Health Service was authorized to conduct research on water

21 341 Andravs &ajl Chapter 8 - 7/10/95 - Do not cite or quote

and several industrialized rivers, of water quality biochemistry and measurements, of wastewater treatment technologies, and of shellfish sanitation. It developed cooperative programs with state and local agencies in the 1920s to improve drinking water purification and sewage disposal, and after World War 11 it expanded its research more intensively into industrial pollutants. Not until 1948, however, did its authority extend beyond surveys and research investigations, except with respect to health standards for drinking water on interstate transport (e.g. ships and trains).38

under-funded, meanwhile, due to competing local priorities and resistance to urban needs by rural-dominated state legislatures. Federal hnding was provided by Depression-era public works programs (CWA, PWA and WPA), and financed construction of over 500 wastewater treatment plants, 2,300 miles of sewer lines, millions of sanitary privies in rural and suburban areas, and other water and sewer facilities in some 8,000 communities: only during this six-year period did municipal construction of wastewater treatment plants keep pace with urban growth rates.39 These programs were discontinued during the war years, however, though they provided precedents for later federal aid programs (Sundquist, 1968:323; Dworsky, 1971 :20, 23-25; Armstrong et ul., 1976:418).50

With the post-war suburban development boom, local governments mobilized through the American Municipal Association to seek federal hnds for infrastructure facilities, including sewerage and wastewater treatment plants as well as housing, roads, schools, and other needs. Public Health Service studies in the early 1950s documented more than 22,000 sources of water pollution nationwide, over 50% municipal but almost half industrial, reflecting the vast expansion of industrial production during and after the war. Municipal officials in 1956 estimated a backlog of almost $2 billion in funding needs for wastewater facilities, plus over $3.4 billion more needed for renovations and service to

’ new populations over the following decade. The Eisenhower administration resisted these pressures for federal spending on urban needs, but Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, whose political constituencies included far more support from urban and suburban areas, reversed this policy and advocated increases in federal support. The result was a steady expansion of federal financial assistance for municipal wastewater treatment facilities. “Internal improvements” in previous eras justified federal expenditures for river and harbor clearing, canals, railroads, irrigation and hydropower, then multi-purpose dams; now they were broadened once again to help provide wastewater treatment for cities and growing suburbs. The primary form of assistance was outright construction grants; in 1961 Congress also added water quality control to the multiple-purpose objectives of federal water projects (for instance, allowing releases of greater quantities of water in dry periods to dilute pollution by “low flow augmentation”).

expansion of federal water pollution research as well as planning grants and low-interest loans to local governments:l and amendments in 1956 (PL 84-660) authorized $3 million per year for federal support of state water pollution control agencies, and $50 million per year for local construction grants, under which the federal government would pay 30% of the costs of constructing municipal wastewater treatment facilities. President Eisenhower proposed in both 1957 and 1959 to return the program to the states, along with some federal revenue sources, but failed due to Congressional and state opp~s i t ion .~~ In 1961,

_ -

Construction of municipal sewers and wastewater treatment plants was perennially

The Water Pollution Control Act of 1948 (PL 80-845), for instance, authorized

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with a supportive Kennedy administration in office, Congress enlarged the grants program to $100 million per year (PL 87-88).

In 1963 federal pollution control policy gained an important new champion in the Congress when Senator Edmund Muskie @-ME) was appointed chairman of a new Subcommittee on Water and Air Pollution of the Public Works Committee. 43 His Water Quality Act of 1965 (PL 89-234), signed by President Lyndon Johnson, again expanded the construction grants program (to $150 million per year), and allowed up to $1.6 million (up fiom $600 thousand) per project. Amendments in 1966 increased fbnding to $3.5 billion over five years, removed the limits on amounts per project, increased the federal share to 50% for projects receiving state as well as local support, and added fbnds for state planning efforts for region-wide water quality management (Sundquist, 1968:324-27; Dworsky, 1971:26-3 1, 275, 364-66).44

This series of laws not only increased federal hnding, but also represented a gradual nationalization of the authority to set and enforce water quality standards. Prior to 1948, federal water quality standards were limited to drinking water standards for interstate transportation caniers; these standafds in turn became de facto national norms for purity of public water supplies, adopted by some judicial decisions as reasonable standards for water purity. The 1948 water pollution law for the first time authorized the federal government to initiate legal proceedings against pollution on interstate rivers: to notify the states and dischargers, to convene a hearings board to recommend solutions, and with the consent of the affected states, to bring a federal lawsuit for abatement (62 Stat. 1155). The 1956 amendments removed the requirement for state consent, and authorized the federal government to initiate interstate “conferences” to encourage cooperative abatement programs; the 196 1 amendments extended federal jurisdiction fiom interstate to all navigable waters, and even to intra-state waters at the request of the governor. These procedures remained cumbersome, however, and still sought to leave states in charge, with the threat of federa1 intervention as an incentive rather than a primary mode of operation.

The nationalization of water pollution moved a major step hrther, however, in the Water Quality Act of 1965 (PL 89-234). This law for the first time stated an explicit “national policy for the prevention, control and abatement of water pollution.” It required the states to establish ambient water quality standards or face loss of eligibility for federal grants; and it set a two-year deadline for this process, and authorized the federal government to set standards for states that failed to set adequate standards of their own. In short, the federal government not only mandated that the states set standards as a condition of getting federal fbnding, but also asserted authority to approve or disapprove the states’ standards, and to impose its own standards if it did not consider the states’ adequate.

establishing federal authority to set criteria for minimum water quality standards nationwide. It did not yet authorize federal discharge standards for particular sources, and it still fimctioned only through enforcement conferences and threats of federal lawsuits; but it marked a major new departure in authorizing a federal agency to compel and approve state environmental regulatory programs, and set the stage for the fbndamental revision of federal water pollution policy that subsequently occurred in 1 972.45 President

‘

This principle marked a hndamental shift in environmental governance, in effect

Andrews drap Chapter 8 - 7/10/95 - Do not cite or quote 23 343

Johnson also issued an Executive Order (EO 1 1288, July 2, 1966) requiring secondary wastewater treatment for all federal facilities, and directing that pollution be minimized by all federal grantees, contractors, and other operations (Dworsky, 197 1 :30-32, 4 13-24).

Finally, the 1965 act directed a major reorganization of federal water pollution activities, removing water pollution control from the Public Health Service and creating a new agency, the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, which reported directly to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. President Johnson almost immediately moved the agency again, fiom HEW to the Interior Department, and renamed it the Federal Water Quality Administration. These organizational changes reflected several powefil demands for water pollution control that were not being met within the Public Health Service. 46 Water quality was important for many reasons in addition to health-- recreation and nature conservation, agriculture and industry, and others--but these reasons were peripheral to the mission of the Public Health Service and therefore undervalued there; both the scale of the construction grants program and the enforcement authority now delegated to the agency had outgrown the branch status to which the Eisenhower administration had demoted it. Moreover, the Public Health Service more generally had resisted taking on a strong federal regulatory and enforcement role in air and water quality, preferring to retain the more limited and less controversial role of research and technical assistance, as well as their comfortable working relationships with the resistant states rather than with those local governments that were lobbying for federal leadership (Sundquist, 1968:332-33, 352).47 From Interior’s perspective, conversely, water quality management had important but poorly coordinated relationships with other aspects of water resource management (especially on the growing number of rivers whose flows were managed by federal multi-purpose dams) as well as other conservation missions; and Interior Secretary Stewart Udal1 had strong ambitions to revitalize his department into a broader Department of Conservation (Sundquist, 1968:364-67; Dworsky, 1971 :30-32, 320-28). 48

immediate effect was a loss of many key staff members, as an estimated 50% of the professional staff opted either to remain in Public Health Service career tracks or to take early retirement. More hndamentally, the change split apart the Public Health Service’s environmental health programs, separating water quality organizationally from air quality, waste management and other sanitation programs, and thus fiagmenting the government’s capabilities--limited though they were at the time--for dealing with these inherently interrelated problems (Dworsky, 1971 :55 1; Eisenbud, 1978: 35 1 -53).49 No organizational structure can coordinate all fbnctions equally well, and in this case the benefits of adding the water quality agency to the “conservationyy structure involved a simultaneous loss in the effectiveness of the “environmental health” structure.

A similar evolution occurred in air pollution policy. Urban air pollution was protested as both a health hazard and a nuisance as early as the late 19th century, while the Progressive movement was successfblly establishing municipal responsibility for wastewater and waste management; and its most serious forms were well understood scientifically as well. Urban studies as far back as 1910, for example, documented most of what needed to be known to control smoke, soot, and ash, and studies in the 1920s began to document the health hazards of carbon monoxide fiom urban automobile emissions as

These organizational changes imposed important costs as well, however. One

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well (Dworsky, 1971544-48). However, urban air quality did not have the political impact of water-borne infectious diseases, and it could not be solved by public sanitation services: it required more costly changes in industrial and household combustion technologies, and less popular forms of policy intervention, such as regulation, to impose them.50 Real progress occurred only as coal-fired locomotives were gradually replaced by diesel-electric engines, and more generally as cheap natural gas became available via new pipelines after World War 11; even then, however, this progress was evident in only a few leading cities (Tarr, 1985525-28; Dworsky, 1971 560-62, 629-30).

prior to federal policy initiatives in the 1960s. Pittsburgh and several others passed smoke- control ordinances in the early 1 9 4 0 ~ ~ but did not begin serious implementation and enforcement until after the war; Los Angeles established a county-level air pollution control office in 1945, and a special Air Pollution Control District with enforcement powers in 1947. The first state-wide air pollution control law was not passed until 1947 (by California), and a few other states followed in the 1950s, but most were merely enabling acts which left enforcement to local agencies.51 Even with these laws, moreover, state governments could not control upwind sources, and they risked industrial flight if they tightened their own regulations unilaterally. By 1963 only 14 states had even enacted statewide air pollution laws (Dworsky, 197 1 : 560-62, 629-33, 666).

Severe air pollution episodes beginning in the late 1940s, however, galvanized nationwide public concern. In Donora, Pennsylvania, a prolonged atmospheric thermal inversion in October 1948 produced dense smog over several days that sickened over 40% of the population and killed 20, triggering a national investigation; similar events killed at least 4,000 people over 5 days in London in 1952, and at least 200 in New York City in 1953. Los Angeles experienced a severe episode in 1954, and similar crises recurred in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere during the 1960s (Dworsky, 1971 548-49, 570- 82).

The mid-century smog disasters forced air pollution onto the federal policy agenda: as in the case of water pollution, the federal role to that time had been limited to research.52 The first federal air pollution law was passed in 1955 (PL 84-159) and extended in 1959 (PL 86-365); both asserted that the primary responsibility for air pollution control lay with state and local governments, but authorized $5 million for federal research and technical assistance. Additional laws in 1960 and 1962 authorized federal studies on motor vehicle emissions (PL 86-493 and 87-761).

modest support of state and local initiatives to a filly nationalized framework for air pollution regulation. The Clean Air Act of 1963 (PL 88-206) provided federal grants for two-thirds of the costs of state air pollution programs, but also authorized federal regulation of motor vehicle pollution and federal enforcement against health and welfare hazards; and it ordered air pollution abatement by federal facilities. Amendments in 1965, the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act (PL 89-272), authorized federal emissions standards for mobile sources; and 1966 amendments (PL 89-675) provided 60% federal subsidies for state and local air pollution control programs (previous grants had been limited to program initiation Finally, the Air Quality Act of 1967 (PL 90-148) established an explicit national policy goal for air pollution control: “to protect and

.

Air pollution control therefore was not a well-developed function in most cities

Beginning in 1963, a series of five federal laws moved in just seven years from

Andkews drafi Chapter 8 - 7/10/95 - Do not cite or quote

enhance the quality of the Nation’s air resources so as to promote the public health and welfare and the productive capacity of its population.” It also spelled out this policy in a dramatic expansion of the federal regulatory role. Among its specific provisions, it authorized the Secretary of HEW to regulate stationary as well as mobile sources; to seek immediate court-ordered abatement for air pollution that presented an “imminent and substantial danger;” to establish both inter- and intra-state air pollution control regions; to require state air pollution control standards for selected regions, and to impose federal standards if states failed to act; to develop and publish “criteria documents” for control of ,

specific pollutants; and to study the possibilities for developing national emissions standards for major industries (Dworsky, 1971:555-59, 652, 665-66).54 As in the case of water pollution, a presidential Executive Order (EO 1 1282, May 26, 1966) mandated air pollution control by federal facilities.

air pollution control that followed in the Clean Air Act amendments of 1970. In contrast to water pollution control, moreover, federal mandates and grants actually created and supported many of the state air pollution control programs as well: only 14 states had statewide air pollution laws in 1963, yet within the following four years 3 1 additional states had passed air pollution control laws, and federal grants catalyzed the creation of 80 new state and local air pollution control programs and upgrading of 40 existing ones (Dworsky, 1971 :638-39, 646, 666-67). Federal regulation and enforcement were opposed by major industries, particularly chemical manufacturers, pulp and paper, coal, and the Fdm Bureau Federation, and even by the Public Health Service, which preferred a less controversial role limited to research and technical assistance to state and local agencies. These regulatory authorities were created despite the opposition, however, with vigorous support both fiom civic and conservation groups and particularly fiom city and county governments (Sundquist, 1 968: 3 32-3 3 , 3 5 1 -55).55

states’ traditional opposition to it, and highlighted the growing divergence between urban needs and the continuing rural dominance of state legislatures. Even some states, however, found it politically convenient to have uniform national standards: so that upwind states must also comply, so that their own industries could not evade them by moving, and so that they could blame the federal government for compliance costs rather than confront powefil industries on their own. Unlike many other federal mandates, moreover, the federal government did support air pollution control compliance with continuing subsidies for state and local programs.

This series of statutes progressively laid a foundation for the primary federal role in

.

Local government support for federal intervention stood in sharp contrast to the

Environmental Perceptions and Preferences A nation of middle-class suburban families had radically different perceptions and

preferences about the environment than a nation of rural settlers and entrepreneurs, or a nation of finance capitalists and urban masses, or a nation in economic depression or at war. Middle-class families wanted the security of their own homes, the mobility of an automobile, and the material comforts and conveniences of a consumer economy; they also wanted the amenities of natural beauty, outdoor recreation, travel and tourism, and enjoyment of nature. To farmers, loggers and miners, and mining and manufacturing businesses, nature was at best the ordinary raw material of economic commodities and

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livelihoods, and at worst a resistant or even threatening adversary (though they might also enjoy hunting and fishing). To a suburban family, in contrast, it was an unspoiled and idyllic ploce: ari extraordinary outing, a vacation trip, a day at the beach or weekend in the mountains, or a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Grand Canyon. It was the experience of nature as an unspoiled and enduring environment, as a respite from the crowds and noise and t r a c , the regimentation of work, the uncaring destruction of the natural landscape for suburban land development, the pollution and ugliness and stress of urban life.

Widespread education and the growth of the mass media, particularly the introduction of television in the 1950s, amplified and mobilized these perceptions. On the one hand, television promoted ever more wastefbl uses of materials and energy: financed by advertising, its true business was to spur continuous growth in mass consumption, by incessantly urging consumer spending. Paradoxically, however, it also created national constituencies for nature itself People in northeastern suburbs could now see the beauty of the Grand Canyon and the redwood forests as well as the smog of Los Angeles and the oil spills of the Santa Barbara channel; people on the west coast could be aroused by threats to the Everglades in Florida or salt marshes in Connecticut--or for that matter, by starvation in Africa. Previously localized issues could now arouse far larger constituencies, symbolize national or global threats, and sometimes even outweigh the -

traditional power of local businesses and political elites: mass markets for commercial advertising were also mass constituencies for political mobilization.

The emergence of nation-wide mass-media constituencies thus propelled several new kinds of environmental issues onto the national agenda. One was a resurgence and expansion of support for nature preservation: groups such as the Sierra Club, the Izaak Walton League and the Wilderness Society found new opportunities to dramatize their concerns to a broader public, to mobilize public opinion to their causes, and to build far larger and more nationwide memberships. A second was outdoor recreation, promoted both by the expanding commercial travel and tourism industries and by user interest groups (hunters and fishermen, cyclists and wilderness back-packers, motorcyclists and off-road vehicle owners, and others). A third was urban environmental problems, including both air and water pollution and traffic congestion on the one hand (some would include run-down housing and broader forms of environmental degeneration in central cities as well), and demand for federal financing of wastewater treatment and solid waste management infrastructure services on the other.56 A fourth was the gradual emergence of broader fears of toxic hazards in the environment: from fluoridation of water supplies to fallout of nuclear radiation, pesticides (as in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring), and exposure to toxic contaminants in air and water pollution.

Radiation, Toxic Chemicals, and Public Science

coin in a vending machine to see the bones of one’s feet under a radiation-emitting fluoroscope. One could see children at public swimming pools hosed down with DDT solutions in the hope of preventing polio and other diseases. Yet during the same period, powefil public fears were also beginning to emerge against the hazards to both public health and the “balance of nature” from humanly introduced chemicals and radiation. Conventional wisdom dates this shift to Rachel Carson’s best-selling book Silent SDrine.

As recently as the mid-l950s, one could walk into American shoe stores and put a

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which was serialized in The New Yorker and published in 1962 (Carson, 1962). In fact, however, the issue had already been building for a decade or more.

The earliest post-war example of such fears was public opposition to the addition of fluoride to public water supplies, which public health authorities promoted to prevent tooth decay.57 Research in the 1930s had identified the benefits of this treatment, and Public Health Senrice experiments in several cities in the mid-1940s confirmed it; Madison (Wisconsin) fluoridated its water supply in 1947, and other cities followed. Organized opposition appeared, however, and fluoridation proposals were often defeated in public referenda. Some scientists and physicians argued that it was unnecessary and might be hazardous (it can in fact have adverse side effects in some individuals, such as kidney disease victims); libertarians, health-food stores, Christian Scientists and advocates of natural medicine argued that it was “compulsory medication,” an unconstitutional infringement on their personal rights and preferences, and an example of “socialized medicine.”’* The Daughters of the American Revolution and the Liberty Lobby even attacked it as a “Communist plot” to poison the American water supply. By the 199Os, after half a century of evidence of its effectiveness, only about half of the U.S. population yet received fluoridated water, and referenda on it still were frequently defeated ( D u e ,

.

1990 1288-90). Ironically, the anti-fluoridation battles pitted citizen opponents not against self-

interested businesses, but against public health authorities, doctors and dentists, and other scientists of the Progressive tradition who viewed themselves as apolitical experts acting in the broad public interest (indeed, in the case of dentists, acting against their own economic self-interest). One unfortunate result may have been to increase public health professionals’ disdain for laymen’s concerns more generally, heightening mutual distrust. In almost every year of the 1950s, the leading public health joumal carried editorials reiterating the scientific evidence and benefits of fluoridation, and attacking the opposition movements as reflecting an alliance of vested interests and fanatics promoting “an exaggerated fear of change .... [ofJ any departure from the supposedly beneficent processes of nature.7759

radioactive fallout from above-ground testing of nuclear weapons was dispersed worldwide, and that some of this fallout--particularly the isotope Strontium 90--was not simply dispersed harmlessly, as government nuclear scientists had assumed, but was taken up with calcium into grass, eaten and reconcentrated into milk by cows, and thus consumed in far higher quantities by humans.60 Suddenly the authoritative reassurances of government scientists were proven false: because of environmental connections such as stratospheric air currents and ecological food chains, radiation could be released at the farthest point on the globe, carried around the world, reconcentrated through ecological food chains, and end up in human bone tissue and in the milk of mothers nursing infants.

The nuclear fallout issue produced a 1958 moratorium and 1963 treaty banning above-ground testing of nuclear weapons, but it also drove a wedge within the scientific community as well as the general public, between those who continued to support such experiments and to advocate uncritical faith in “progress” through modem technology, and those who were increasingly apprehensive of its hidden hazards. Atomic Energy Commission officials, for instance, continued to promote above-ground applications of

A far more serious issue arose in the mid-l950s, however, with the discovery that

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nuclear explosions, creating a whole new program in 1957--“Plo~share~~--to develop proposals such as blasting canals and clearing navigational obstructions. A growing number of scientists, on the other hand, were now convinced that decisions involving such hazards were matters of social and moral judgment, which must be made by the f i l l public

was formed to lobby for civilian control and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons; in 1958, biologist Dr. Barry Commoner and others created the Scientists Institute for Public Information (SIPI) to promote wider public awareness of technological hazards. FAS and SIPI in turn built broader alliances between citizen activists and concerned scientists against government actions that appeared to threaten both human health and ecological effects (Whelan, 1985:62-63).62

Health, Education and Welfare announced that traces of a herbicide that might cause cancer, aminotriazole (3-AT), had been found on cranberries in Oregon and Washington. Positive evidence of any health hazard was weak,63 and even detection of 3-AT residues at the levels found--less than one part per million--was only possible with a newly developed analytical method. Secretary Flemming, however, chose to “get out in front” of the issue with a strong posture favoring health protection. He ordered impoundment of more than three million pounds of cranberries for testing, and urged consumers not to buy them unless they could determine where they had been grown; supermarkets and restaurants removed them from their shelves and menus, and several states banned cranberry sales. Ultimately the government seized only 1% of the cranberries tested, presidential candidates John Kennedy and Richard Nixon both pledged to eat cranberries during their campaigns, radio and television reduced the issue to jokes, and public fears subsided, but growers estimated losses of over $40 million before sales filly recovered several years later (Wildavsky, 1995:l 1-19).64

Wildavsky (1995) has characterized the cranberry scare as “the first shot ... for the nascent environmental movement ... in a campaign to raise public fears about cancer from synthetic chemicals in food and water.” Ironically, however, in this case the “first shot” came not from the public but from a Cabinet official in a conservative Republican administration. It was HEW Secretary Arthur Flemming, acting on data from the Food and Drug Administration and from scientists in the National Cancer Institute, who broke the news and ignited public fears: public health should be government’s top priority, he argued, and a substance that had been proven to produce cancers in animals should be considered dangerous at any dose until proven safe (Wildavsky, 1995: 19, 15-16). It seems likely that Secretary Flemming’s initiative also reflected his sensitivity to the larger public concerns of the times--the Congressional hearings on food additives and resulting Delaney amendment, and the more general public concerns about pesticide residues, nuclear fallout, and ecological food chains--and perhaps especially a desire to reassert the leadership and trustworthiness of HEW’S public health agencies amid the rising distrust of government scientists over these issues.

A more enduring and similarly divisive controversy emerged over the rapid proliferation of persistent synthetic organic pesticides, including DDT, dieldrin, and others. First identified as an insecticide in 1939, these compounds were used by the wartime Army against insect disease vectors (of malaria, typhus and others) and hailed as

rather than by closed groups of experts.6’ The Federation of American Scientists VAS) __-

In November 1959, just seventeen days before Thanksgiving, the Secretary of

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virtual wonder chemicals by public health and agricultural scientists: they were cheap to make, highly effective (at least initially), had low acute toxicity to humans, replaced less desirable pesticides such as nicotine and lead arsenate, and retained their effectiveness for long periods of time (Eisenbud, 1978:229-30). Some wildlife scientists raised concerns as early as the mid- 1940s about their ecological hazards, particularly since they were highly persistent in the environment and could be accumulated in fatty tissues; but these warnings were dismissed by others who dwelt overwhelmingly on their benefits. A 1946 editorial in the leading public health journal, for instance, hailed DDT as “with penicillin, one of the two greatest contributions to public health science ... in the last decade;” the writer noted that indiscriminate use of it might pose dangers, but concluded that its “use in general will not be such as to threaten the wide disturbances of the balance of nature which have been anticipated by some timid quoting approvingly a statement that “DDT when used as an insecticide, with reasonable intelligence and the precautions normal to the use of modern insecticides, is harmless to man and animals.”66

Between 1947 and 1960 the use of synthetic organic pesticides increased more than five-fold, from 124 million to over 637 million pounds per year (Carson, 1963:25). In the Northeast, they were widely used in aerial spraying against the gypsy moth and elm bark beetle; in the South, on cotton and in an Agriculture Department campaign to “eradicate” a minor nuisance, the fire ant; nationwide they became the insecticides of choice in general use as well as against disease vectors. The 1948 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FEU) required that all pesticides shipped in interstate commerce be registered with the federal Department of Agriculture, be labeled for specific crops and conditions of use, and be supported by evidence that they were both effective and non-hazardous to public health or wildlife. In reality, however, it was the federal agency rather than the manufacturer that had to bear the burden of proof for any decision to prohibit or de-register a pesticide (U. S. DHEW, 1969:7); and the Agriculture Department in practice was largely concerned only with acute toxicity, and had neither the resources nor the knowledge of ecology to investigate them more critically.

By the late 195Os, however, studies of fish and wildlife had begun to increase ecologists’ concerns, and other scientists also suggested the possibility of human cancer effects, calling into question the claims of public health scientists who had confidently asserted their safety to both humans and wildlife. In 1962, biologist Rachel Carson published a wide-ranging and compelling critique of the hazards of persistent pesticides, Silent Spring (Carson, 1962). A gifted science writer with long experience in the Fish and Wildlife Service, Carson combined what scientific evidence existed with powefil anecdotes and emotionally compelling arguments to make a case for more vigorous policies to control these chemicals. More systematic research confirmed that in just 20 years, the residues of these chemicals had become virtually ubiquitous in wildlife and their habitats worldwide, especially in aquatic and wetland species, where they were transferred and accumulated (like Strontium 90) from one species to another through ecological food chains; and that in some species they reached concentrations that were disastrous to reproduction even though not toxic to the individuals affected (Eisenbud, 1978:232; American Chemical Society, 1969:224-30).67 A 1963 report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee supported many of Carson’s arguments, as did a more detailed

.

A 1948 editorial took an even stronger position,

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subsequent study in 1969;68 and massive fish kills in the lower Mississippi River, traced in 1963 to a Memphis pesticide manufacturing plant, underscored her concems (Graham,

.- 1970176-80, 94-108). . Silent Spring became an immediate best-seller. More than any other work, it

catalyzed public awareness of the concepts of ecology, of the risk that ecological effects could be as threatening to both humans and nature as acute poisoning, and of the fact that ecological processes could quickly thwart even the intended purposes of “pest eradication” programs.69 Coming as it did on the heels of the nuclear fallout issue as well as the thalidomide and cranberry scares, in the midst of rising public interest in nature and concern about the impacts of urban and industrial impacts on it, and with new interest in conservation on the part of the Kennedy administration and Democratic Congress, it sparked an outpouring of both public concem and political response.”

Responses by industrial and government scientists, however, reconfirmed the widening rift not only between these public concems and the agencies, but also between the scientific and professional communities who defined their missions as food production and public health and those who were concerned with the consequences for wildlife and ecosystems. Some scientists defended the book while noting its shortcomings, but others condemned it in terms far more unscientific than what they professed to criticize in her writing, reducing her argument to a false dichotomy between food and health on the one hand and a banning of all pesticides on the other, a position which Carson had not advocated. A contemporaneous report by the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council heavily emphasized the benefits of pesticides and downplayed their ecological hazards (Graham, 1970:36-47).’l The Public Health Service in 1964 even began an expensive and ineffective new program to eradicate Aedes aegvpti mosquitoes nationwide, through widespread DDT spraying campaigns rather than localized sanitation measures (Graham, 1970:76-80,211-21); and the Army, during the Vietnam War, soon introduced indiscriminate aerial spraying of herbicides as a deliberate policy of ecological warfare against the Southeast Asian forests.

concurrent battles over multiple use of the national forests and water projects, showed that public agencies and even their scientific professionals often developed narrow and ideological commitments to particular views of their missions, which led them to discount the evidence of broader ecological consequences of their actions. This revelation seriously eroded public belief in the unity and objectivity of scientists, and in the Progressive ideal of public administration by politically neutral experts. To many government scientists in agriculture and public health, the public outcry over radiation and pesticides probably looked like new instances of the fluoridation issue, pitting knowledgeable and public- spirited experts against the emotional opposition of fearful know-nothings and fanatics. To concerned citizens, however--and importantly, to scientists from other fields such as ecology and wildlife biology as well--the claims of such experts looked increasingly like the arrogant assertion of personal judgments in the name of science but in the service of particular missions and ideologies.

In short, the radiation and pesticides controversies, along with the earlier and

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The Discrediting of Progressivism The cumulative result of these controversies was a gradual discrediting not merely

of individual scientists or agencies, but of the Progressive philosophy of governance itself, amplified immeasurably by larger events such as the Vietnam War. In each case, the belief that scientific or technical expertise conferred a special knowledge of the “broad public interest,’’ let alone a dispassionate commitment to act on it, came to appear a myth: agencies and their administrators acted on behalf of particular personal and political views of the public interest, which were no longer accepted as either scientific or consensual. Indeed, a rising consensus of political scientists and economists challenged the very idea that there was any overall “public interest.’’ The reality, they argued, was merely a sea of conflicting interests, and the proper approach to public policy therefore was not governance by technical experts but governance by open political processes--“interest group pluralism”--in which groups representing diverse views of the public interest might organize and compete in a free marketplace of ideas. This questioning undoubtedly was also a product of post-war de-regimentation, in which neither economic depression nor wartime necessity still justified passive public acceptance of administrative authority.

Beginning in the late 1940s and O OS, a growing number of political scientists as well as citizen activists thus began to attack the disparity between the Progressive ideal and the political reality of the agencies’ behavior.’* Others attacked the ideal itself, arguing on empirical grounds that political decisions tend to reflect not the interests of broad majorities but those of organized minorities with economic self-interests at stake; that administrative agencies tend to be “captured” by self-interested clients and Congressional subcommittee members whose gains from their decisions are symbiotic to the agencies’ needs for their political support (Olson, 1965); that agencies also tend to become advocates for their own organizational interests; and that they become advocates for the individual and shared interests of their employees (e.g. Wildavsky, 1964; Tullock, 196x). By the late 1960s political theorists had developed a new consensus that the actions of government agencies did not demonstrably represent an overall “public interest” discovered and implemented by apolitical expert administrators, as the Progressive philosophy had argued, but rather, merely the political results of competing pressures and influences by organized interests--“interest-group pluralism”-- both within and outside government (Lowi, 1969).

In the pluralist view, the “overall public interest” therefore lay not in delegating discretionary authority to administrative elites, but in making them more accountable politically. The essential question was how best to do this.

One option was to radically narrow the hndamental principle of delegating discretionary authority to administrative agencies, by requiring either more explicit statutory standards for implementation or even requiring statutory rather than administrative standard-~etting.’~ The latter solution was actually incorporated into several major environmental regulatory statutes of the 1970s and %Os, such as statutory air quality standards and statutory deadlines for EPA rulemaking, but in practice it substitutes even more rigidity and places on the Congress a set of day-to-day technical demands that that institution cannot effectively sustain (Andrews, 1993).

compel them to justify their decisions more explicitly by science and economics (that is, to A second option was to continue delegating responsibility to administrators, but

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32

articulate their definition of an “overall public interest” and its statutory basis, and defend their decision’s congruence with it). Beginning in 1950, for instance, administrative guidance documents within the Executive branch mandated benefit-cost analyses for all federal water development projects, based on language in the 1936 Flood Control Act which limited federal water projects to those whose economic benefits exceeded their costs.74 Unlike later requirements such as environmental impact statements, however, these documents were mandated only by administrative guidelines, and as such were enforceable only by presidential decisions and Congressional appropriations, not by citizen challenges through the court^.^'

A third option was to make administrative decision processes more transparently political, subject to formal coordination requirements as well as judicially enforceable procedures, and thus formally open not just to economic beneficiaries but to any affected interests that might organize themselves to participate. A series of laws and judicial precedents laid the foundation for this result. The Administrative Procedures Act of 1946 spelled out procedural standards for the Fifth Amendment’s “due process’’ protections to constrain discretionary federal actions: burden of proof on the proponent of government action, notice and comment, public hearings, a reviewable record, substantial evidence, and judicial reversal of administrative actions that were judged arbitrary and capricious or beyond statutory authority.76 The Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act required the water resource development agencies to consult formally with the fish and wildlife conservation agencies, in order to minimize and mitigate impacts of their projects on fish and wildlife habitat, and the 1965 Federal Water Project Recreation Act required full consideration of recreation and fish and wildlife enhancement in all future federal water resource projects (Armstrong et al., 1976:3 disclosure of most government documents and decision rationales.’”

Finally, a fourth response was to increase pluralism through the courts, allowing legal challenges to the agencies by a far wider range of interests. Civil rights challenges to the licenses of segregationist radio stations in the 1960s led to dramatic liberalization of the judicial doctrine of “standing to sue:’’ where previous plaintiffs had to prove that they had suffered personal economic injury, federal courts now alldwed suits to remedy “injury in fact” to any “legally protected interest.”” Environmental plaintiffs first used this opportu&ty in 1967, in a challenge to a hydropower license (Storm King vs. Federal Power Commission); their success in this case led to a revolution in the use of litigative tactics to challenge administrative decisions on environmental grounds, and to the formation of a whole new spectrum of environmental advocacy organizations--“public interest environmental law” groups--whose goal was to change federal policies through strategic legal challenges rather than merely to organize and represent the interests of national memberships. Examples included the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, among others. What was important to these groups was in part to win cases on their merits, but more broadly, to force the agencies to defend themselves both in sworn testimony and in the glare of publicity, where the differences between scientific evidence and unsupported or self- interested ideologies could be publicly exposed.” Later environmental statutes even included provisions specifically permitting citizen suits to compel or challenge agencies’ actions.

_-

,

The Freedom of Information Act required public

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These tactics were a radical departure fiom the strategies of more traditional conservation and preservation advocacy groups, which relied on lobbying rather than lawsuits to influence public policy. They represented an equally radical shift in American doctrines of governance, fiom ostensibly apolitical administrative discretion to openly political administrative decision processes. Taken together, they amounted to a radical “reformation of American administrative law,” whose consequences for governance have been a central element of both the strengths and limitations of environmental policy in the quarter century since (Stewart, 1975).

.

Political Representation of Environmental Preferences The transformation of administrative accountability was paralleled by equally

fundamental changes in the Congress, as its districts were redrawn in the 1960s to reflect the great rural-to-urban demographic shifts of the post-war decade. Throughout the 1950s, the Congress still predominantly represented the less urbanized demographic patterns of the preceding decades, and its seniority principles gave disproportionate power to representatives of agricultural and resource extraction interests from safe rural districts over representatives of urban areas where political turnover was more common. In turn, rural representatives exercised these preferences to control committees of general power (such as Appropriations and Rules) as well as those dealing with their own district and state interests, such as Agriculture, Interior and Public Works. These were also the committees to which environmental legislation was most often referred, and they used this over-representation to block, weaken, or delay environmental legislation that reflected conflicting interests. 81 Rural representatives typically viewed pro-environment legislation either as a costly new tax burden to serve other constituencies (urban sewers, for instance), or as imposing urban recreational or aesthetic preferences in conflict with traditional resource-extraction livelihoods; and in either case as representing traditionally unwelcome increases in federal power and spending.82 In a few cases the system produced successors with different values, such as Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine who succeeded Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma in 1963 on the Senate Public Works Committee--Muskie too was fiom a rural state, but one whose lobster industry had strong interests in clean water, and he himself saw air and water pollution legislation as a pathway to higher national office--but this was a rare exception.

With the redistricting and elections of the 1960s, the balance of power shifted dramatically fiom rural to urban, and the power of entrenched resource user interests was significantly reduced, first by turnover and eventually, in the 1970s, by changes in rules and proliferation of subcommittees which distributed power more widely among the members.83 Representatives who voted most consistently in favor of “environmentalist” positions in the 1960s came disproportionately from urban districts and their surrounding

: the Boston-Washington comdor alone produced one-third of the votes, and the rest came predominantly fiom urban areas throughout the country. In part, this reflected the environmental problems and preferences of their constituencies: pollution, congestion, and outdoor recreation preferences. However, it also reflected a more positive attitude among urban constituencies toward federal intervention more generally: cities had many special needs, not just environmental, which rural-dominated state legislatures had been unwilling to support, and urban Congressmen therefore sought federal intervention and

.

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assistance to meet them. These differences were evident irrespective of region, party or ideology, although a higher proportion of Democratic than Republican and of “liberal” than “conservative” representatives also favored pro-environmentalist positions (Martis, 1 976 1299-3 02).

Changes in presidential leadership also reflected this political shift, with the changes of policy from the Eisenhower administration to those of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. President Eisenhower sought to dismantle some of the New Deal agencies (TVA in particular), to devolve additional federal powers to the states (control of offshore “tidelands” for oil extraction, for instance), and to avoid new federal spending for environmental purposes such as wastewater treatment plants and parklands acqui~ition.’~ Kennedy and Johnson’s political constituencies, in contrast, were the Democratic activist constituencies of the growing urban and suburban areas, and their different priorities were evident constantly: federal leadership and hnding for air and water pollution control, for outdoor recreation initiatives and wilderness preservation, for natural beauty and billboard control, and for other environmental initiatives. President Kennedy appointed an active environmentalist from the west, Stewart Udall, as his Secretary of the Interior, and convened a White House Conference on Conservation in 1961 to echo and redirect Theodore Roosevelt’s utilitarian conservation agenda of 1908 (the “new conservation,” in Kennedy’s term). President Johnson in 1965 sponsored a White House Conference on Natural Beauty for America, defining not only pollution cleanup but natural beauty more generally as an essential element of his “Great Society” vision for America (Sundquist, 1968:36 1-63). Both presidents initiated as well as endorsed important environmental legislative initiatives, and made the protection of public health and nature visible priorities on the agenda of the federal government.

Convergence of Agendas: Environment as the Focus In 1963 an article appeared in the leading journal of public administration, Public

Administration Review, under the title “Environment: A New Focus for Public Policy?’’ The article, by Professor Lynton Caldwell of Indiana University, focused not on pollution or natural resource conservation or landscape preservation per se but on the govemance problem that pervaded all of these: the radical segmentation of U.S. actions and policies affecting natural resources and the human environment, and the pervasive problems resulting from this pattern (Caldwell, 1963). Throughout U. S. history, Americans had invoked the powers of government to “develop” selected aspects of their environment, to reduce environmental hazards to public health, and for other purposes; but despite all these particular uses and policies, no overall public responsibility had ever been assigned for the environment as such. This “practical” approach to problems had again and again created new problems even as it attempted to solve old ones: each agency pursued its own mission without regard to those of the others, equating the overall “public interest” merely with benefits to their own client constituencies.

Caldwell proposed instead that “environment” be adopted as a central integrating focus for public policy. The environmental problems of the late 20th century, he argued, required a more comprehensively ecological approach, focused in an integrated fashion on the interrelated problems of particular environments. Such an approach was no panacea--it would still require constant effort to reconcile the interests and values affected--but it

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would at least focus attention on the central questions: what is a “good” environment, what kind of environment should we aspire to, and what valid indicators could be used to monitor it. Two things would be needed to achieve this focus: public demand for it, and more effective coordination among the agencies that shared environmental responsibilities.

Caldwell’s idea was not adopted as public policy for another seven years, but his idu le %used attention on the environmental governance problem--conflicting agencies, conflicting missions, and conflicting public values--which was increasingly identified as a public crisis during the 1 9 6 0 ~ ~ ~ The water resource development agencies--Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and TVA-were building dams on every reach of every river that the Congress would approve, gradually converting every fishing stream and rafting rapids into flat-water reservoirs and even flooding portions of national parks. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management were approving ever more extensive logging, grazing, and mining on the public lands,. at the expense of their ecological as well as aesthetic and recreational values. The interstate highway program was paving over thousands of miles of natural lands across the country, even bulldozing through parks where those were the cheapest or most direct corridors, and in the process promoting both urban traf€ic congestion and ever more rapid suburban and commercial development of the countryside. The Atomic Energy Commission was promoting rapid proliferation of commercial nuclear power reactors with little concern for their thermal discharges to watercourses or the long-term costs and risks of their radiation hazards; the Soil Conservation Service was “channelizing” streams to benefit towns and farmers with little concern for either downstream flooding or the natural habitats it was destroying.

public. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio actually caught fire and burned for eight days in 1959, due to the high concentration of chemicals discharged into it (Whelan, 1985:225). A large oil tanker, the Torrey Canyon, went aground in 1967, spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean off England; an offshore oil platform in 1969 spilled large quantities of oil into southern California’s Santa Barbara Channel. Lake Erie was declared “dying” due to the destruction of its natural life by accumulated pollution; steel mills, refineries, and power plants continued to belch smoke and chemicals into the air (Commoner, 1963: 12). Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, published in 1968, carried popular concerns to a new sense of global crisis: population, resource use and pollution were increasingly not merely steadily but geometrically, by compound interest, adding yet more urgency to the need to correct them. Television brought these events directly and vividly into Americans’ living rooms, building larger and more general stories of their patterns, and galvanizing public outrage against their wanton destruction of life, health, and natural beauty.

brwder environmental movement mobilizing the concern of a far larger American public. Traditional nature preservation groups such as the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society; sportsmen’s groups such as the Izaak Walton League, Ducks Unlimited and National Wildlife Federation; civic groups such as local garden clubs and the League of Women Voters; city governments seeking federal hnding for wastewater treatment; neighborhoods in the path of highways or dams; more diffise constituencies such as college students, and even many conservatives and commercial interests (water utilities

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At the same time, pollution itselfbecame more visible and less acceptable to the

The result was a gradual coalescence of previously disparate interest groups into a

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and recreation and tourism businesses, for instance)--all these groups could find common cause in their demands for.federal action to protect the environment.

Protecting the environment offered a powefil new sense of broad-based consensus toward a positive common purpose. Previous sources of common national purpose had lost much of their urgency or consensus, or both: an abundant economy had been achieved, protecting the world fiom tyranny had become far more divisive with the Vietnam War, and civil rights was also divisive even if profoundly important. Perhaps equally important, both the goals and the villains of the environmental movement were traditional ones. The beauty of America had long been.a powefil common value, reflected in the preservation of national parks as an American equivalent to the “crown jewels” of Europe as well as in the words of “America the Beautifbl” and the pages of National Geographic. The villains, in turn, were the traditional villains of American populism, the greed of big business and the bureaucrats of big government. In reality, pollution and environmental damage came also fiom small businesses and land developments and farms, fiom local governments’ sewage outfalls and landfills and fiom millions of individuals’ consumption decisions; but at least initially, the most obvious polluters were fewer, easy to identifl, and big enough to be called to account by public opinion.

Eramework of environmental politics and policy for the quarter-century “environmental era” that followed. The first event was enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act, signed by President Nixon on national television on New Year’s Day of what he declared the “decade of the environment,” in which he declared that the time was “now or never” to clean up pollution and correct environmental destruction by federal agencies. The second was Earth Day, an extraordinary nationwide mass public demonstration of environmental concern that vividly demonstrated public support for strong government action. The third was enactment of the 1970 Clean Air Act, the first in an unprecedented series of federal environmental regulatory laws which defined nationwide minimum standards, permit requirements, and implementation mandates for reducing and cleaning up pollution. Finally, the fourth was the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, a single agency to integrate the diverse and growing federal regulatory programs for pollution control.

.

In 1970, these forces coalesced in a series of defining events, which set the

References

American Chemical Society. 1969. Cleaning Our Environment: the Chemical Basis for Action. Washington, DC

Andrews, Richard N. L. 1980. Class Politics or Democratic Reform: Environmentalism and American Political Institutions. Natural Resources Journal 20:221-24 1.

Andrews, R. N. L. 1993. Long-Range Planning in Environmental and Health Regulatory Agencies. Ecologv Law Ouarterlv, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 5 15-82.

Anakws &a3 Chapter 8 - 7/10/95 - Do not cite or quote 37 3R"-

Armstrong, Ellis L.; Robinson, Michael C.; and Suellen Hoy, eds. 1976. Historv of Public Works in the United States. Chicago: American Public Works Association.

Barnett, ,Harold and - Morse. 1963? Scarcity and Growth.

Caldwell, Lynton K. 1963. Environment: A New Focus for Public Policy? Public Administration Review, Vol. 22, pp. 132-39.

Carson, Rachel. 1962. Silent Soring. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Commoner, Barry. 1963. Science and Survival.

Commoner, Barry. 1971. The Closing Circle. New York: Knopf

Dales, Edwin?. 1968? Pollution. Propertv. and Prices. .

D e , John. 1990. The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Dworsky, Leonard B. 1971. Conservation in the United States: Water and Air Pollution. New York: Chelsea HouseNan Nostrand Reinhold.

'Ehrlich, Paul and Anne Ehrlich. 1968. The Population Bomb.

Foresta, Ronald A. 1984. America's National Parks and Their Keepers. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future. .

Foss, Philip. 1960. Politics and Grass. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Gottlieb, Robert. 1993. Forcing; the Sprina: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Graham, Frank Jr. 1970. Since Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Graham, Otis L., Jr. 1976. Toward a Planned Societv: From Roosevelt to Nixon. New York: Oxford University Press.

Harbridge House. 1974. Kev Land Use Issues Facing EPA. Springfield, VA: National Technical Information Service, Report prepared for the Environmental Protection Agency, NO. PB-235 345.

Herfindahl, Oms. 1958? What is Conservation?

Hirt, Paul. 1994. A Conspiracy of Optimism: Manayement of the National Forests Since World War Two. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

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Jackson, Kenneth T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kapp, K. William. 1950. The Social Costs of Business Enterprise. New York: Schocken.

Kennedy, John F. 1962. Message on Conservation to the Congress of the United States (March 1, 1962). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Kneese, Allen and Blair T. Bower. 1968? Managing: Water Quality: Economics, Technolow. and Institutions. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Krutilla, John V. 196x?. Conservation Reconsidered.

Leopold, Ado. 1966 [ 19491. A Sand Countv Almanac. New York: Ballantine.

Lowi, Theodore. 1969. The End of Liberalism. New York: Norton.

Maass, Arthur. 195 1. Muddy Waters: The Armv Engineers and the Nation’s Rivers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Martis, Kenneth C. 1976. The History ofNatural Resources Roll Call Voting in the United States House of Representatives. Ann Arbor: Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan.

Mayer, Carl J. and George A. Riley. 1985. Public Domain, Private Dominion: A History of Public Mineral Policv in America. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

McConnell, Grant. 1966. Private Power and American Democracy. New York: Vintage.

Melosi, Martin. 1980. Environmental Crisis in the City: The Relationship Between Industrialization and Urban Pollution. In his Pollution and Reform in American Cities. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 3-3 1.

Morgan, Robert J. 1965. Governing Soil Conservation: Thirty Years of the New Decentralization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Nelson, Robert H. 1986. Private Rights to Government Actions: How Modem Property Rights Evolve. U. Ill. L. Rev. -1986:361-86.

Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Rasmussen, Wayne D.; Baker, Gladys L.; and James S. Ward. 1976. A Short History of Agricultural Adjustment, 1933-75. Washington, DC: U. S . Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 391.

Raushenbush, Stephen. Conservation in 1952. Annals of the American Academv of Social and Political Science 28 1 : 1-9 (May).

Reich, Charles. 1964. The New Property. Yale Law Joumal, : .

Richardson, Elmo. 1973. Dams. Parks and Politics: Resource Development and Preservation in the Truman-Eisenhower Era. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

Rose, Harold M. 19xx. Conservation in the United States.

Rubin, Charles T. 19,. The Green Crusade: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism. New York: Free Press.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. 19.-. The Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement. 1962- 1992. - : Hill and Wang.

Selznick, Philip. 1949. TVA and the Grass Roots. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Shabecoff, Philip. 19-. A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement. : Hill and Wang.

Smith, Frank E. 1971b. Conservation in the United States: Land and Water 1900- 1970. New York: Chelsea House (Van Nostrand Reinhold).

Steen, Harold K. 1976. The U. S. Forest Service: A History. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Stem, Arthur C. 195 1. Air Pollution: The Status Today. American Joumal of Public Health 4127-37.

Stewart, Richard B. 1975. The Reformation of American Administrative Law. Harvard Law Review 88:1667-1815.

Sundquist, James L. 1968. Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower. Kennedv. and Johnson Years. Washington, DC: Brookings.

Tarr, Joel A. 1985. The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Air, Land and Water Pollution in Historical Perspective. In Kendall Bailes (ed.), Environmental History (Lanham, MD: University Press of America), pp. 516-52.

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Tullock, Gordon. 196x.

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Udall, Stewart. 1963. The Ouiet Crisis. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Reprinted with additional material, The Ouiet Crisis and the Next Generation, Salt Lake City: Gibbs-Smith, 1988.

Udall, Stewart. 1994. The Mvths of August. New York: Pantheon.

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~

U. S . Department of Commerce. 1975. Historical Statistics of the United States. 1975. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

U. S. President’s Commission on Materials Policy. 1952. Resources for Freedom. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

U. S. Public Land Law Review Commission. 1968. History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, DC: U. S . Government Printing Office.

Wildavsky, Aaron. 1964. The Politics of the Budgetary Process. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.

Wilkinson, Charles F. 1992. Crossing the Next Meridian: Land. Water. and the Future of the West. Washington, DC: Island Press.

~~~

’ An entire volume could and should be written on the overall impacts of war on the environment, especially the effects of technology-intensive modem mass warfare, from the direct impacts of bombardment and destruction to the more widespread if lesser impacts of troop movements and

* fortifications, and the pervasive impacts of mobilization, materiel production, and post-war reconversion. Within the focus of the present volume one can only note its more limited (but still far-ranging) impacts on US. environmental conditions and policies, resulting both from World War I1 itself and from the Korean and Vietnam wars and the continuing Cold-War military-preparedness policies that underlay them.

The massive hydroelectric power capacity built by federal dams in the Columbia River Basin, for instance, powerfully reshaped the environment and economy of the region during the war years, creating a cheap and abundant source of electric energy for defense industry production. The Bonneville Power Administration grew rapidly into the second largest power system in the nation, and provided the power necessary both for the development of the aircraft and aluminum industries, for other west-coast defense and munitions production, and for the refinement of plutonium at the Hanford Engineer Works near Richland (WA) for nuclear weapons and fuel production. Postwar consumer demand, combined with the cheapness of aluminum supply given the “free” water resource, promoted continuing use of cheap energy both dnectly and in manufacturing (Armstrong et af., 1976:360).

By one estimate, for example, it required three trees to equip each soldier-timber for barracks, bridge, and railroad construction, specialized light woods for aircraft, packing crates for war materiel, cellulose for explosive, resins for flame-throwers, and a myriad of other uses--not to mention comparable demands for minerals and other resources (Steen, 1973:246-50).

From 180 to 300 billion kilowatt hours per year, and from under 20 to 30 quadrillion British thermal units respectively (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975:P40-57, Q565, S32, M83).

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Similar raids were also attempted during the Korean War, also fortunately unsuccessful: the Defense Department turned down proposals to use the Everglades National Park as a bombing range. and the National Park Service deflected a proposal for a reservoir in Capitol Reef National Monument in Utah (Richardson, 197359).

In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, demobilization policies encouraged growth in aluminum and other light-metals production by making wartime plants and electric power available at low cost (Armstrong et af., 1976:360). Additional PMPC proposals included stockpiling key strategic materials as well as deliberately holding some U.S. resources as reserves while buying cheaper ones on long-terin contracts from other countries in the mean time (PMPC, 1952:156, 161). Cold-War arguments were used more generally to just@ the National Defense Education Act, which

subsidized higher education for an unprecedentedly large fraction of the population to compete with the USSR in science and technology, and in the process created mass access to higher education on a scale unknown in other societies. As early as the wartime mid-l940s, the U.S. had become increasingly dependent first on offshore oil

extraction from the Outer Continental Shelf (accompanying the development of new drilling platforms that made ocean oil wells feasible), and subsequently on foreign sources. With the dismantling of the British Empire worldwide resulting from World War II, American oil companies moved immediately into the resulting vacuum in Iran, Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries, and began extracting growing quantities of oil at far lower cost than was possible in the nowdeclining known domestic oil fields. [cite key book(s) on history of US oillenergy policy]

appeared that the Eisenhower administration was also encouraging private powerplants to serve AEC in order to stop expansion of the TVA (and perhaps ultimately to privatize it) [cite sour&-Richardson?].

Among these federal subsidies were the initial federal investments in developing nuclear knowledge and technology themselves, inexpensive charges for nuclear fuel refinement costs, liberal terms for treatment of nuclear power stations as “research“ rather than commercial production facilities, underestimation of the full costs of the nuclear fuel cycle and of the daw" costs for reactor closure and decommissioning, and federal laws such as the Price-Anderson Act of 1957 which asserted statutory limits on the utilities’ financial liability for any mishaps that might occur.

Most members of Congress in fact simply did not want to know what was being done in their name in the field of nuclear secrets, lest they either be held responsible for it or be accused of un-American disloyalty-the McCarthy era was then at its height-if they criticised it (Udall, 199~:). ’* The AEC asserted preemptive jurisdiction over all regulation of radiation hazards per se, for instance, but prior to the enactment of NEPA it successfully disclaimed any responsibility for nuclear reactors’ non- radiation effects, such as thermal pollution of watercourses, aesthetic nuisance, or non-radiation-related conflicts with adjoining land uses [RA dissertation 393-4, NH vs AEC 406 F.2d 170 (1969), cert. denied 23 L.Ed. 748 (1 969)]. This decision left state environmental agnecies angry and frustrated, since the decision both denied AEC responsibility to consider such impacts prior to licensing and also in effect prevented state regulation of them until the plant wqas poised to begin operation, its design already fixed at enormous sunk cost. l 3 Nuclear science and engineering were initially an unusually cohesive and secret scientific community, with little public debate or dissent; public scientific debate first arose in the late 1950s as biologists (such as Barry Commoner at Washington University, and the Scientists’ Institute for Public Information which he founded) dlscovered biologically mobile radioactive byproducts such as strontium 90 that had been overlooked or discounted by physicists. Nuclear reactor accidents in the 1970s and 1980s, such as a serious fire in the control room of TVA’s Browns Ferry reactor, the unanticipated pressure buildup and meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania, and the catastrophic meltdown of the USSR’s Chemobyl reactor near Kiev, belied the history of one-sided safety reassurances by AEC officials, and revealed also the vastly greater magnitude of potential economic claims resulting from such accidents. Increasing operating experience showed the electric utilities themselves that the radiative stresses on materials might yield substantially shorter operating lifetimes than anticipated, as well as far higher costs of closure and perpetual care. Finally, new access to declassified records in the 1990s provided evidence

7

Federal promotion of the nuclear industry also gave rise to the Dixon-Yates scandal, in which it

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that the AEC had in fact known but deliberately suppressed evidence of radiation impacts of its activities on possible victims, such as uranium miners and downwind human and animal populations (Armstrong et al., 1976:390-97; U.S. Department of Commerce. 1975565, S99; Udall, 199~:). All these contributed to a decline in the U.S. nuclear power industry that has been almost as rapid as its rise, during a period in which other countries have continued to develop and utilize it successfully. Annual U.S. birth rates had been as high as 40 per thousand in the 19th century. but balanced by high

infant mortality rates due to contagious disease (over 100 per thousand up to 1918); by World War 11 birth rates had declined to about 20 and death rates to less than 50 per thousand. Infant mortality rates continued to decline. to less than 30 per thousand by 1954 and about 21 by 1970 (US. Department of

Is others also articulated related concerns. Aldo Leopold, whose earlier work in the Forest Service had defined the field of WildIife management as “Westing” the “surplus” of wildlife populations for human hunting and fishing demand [check this; cite], now spoke in a vexy different voice, argung in his famous Sand Countv Almanac for a biocentric “land ethic” in which humans would be viewed as “plain members and citizens of the land-community rather than conquerors of it.” In his words. “[Qluit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise’’ (Leopold, 1966 [1949]:23840,262). Both conservation and natural resource economics also emerged as explicit fields of study during the early postwar years: The University of Michigan, for instance, in 1952 became the first university to rename its School of Forestry a School of Natural Resources, creating in it a Departmtnt of Consemtion distinct from its departments of forestry, fisheries, and wildlife management; and smral major philanthropic foundations funded the creation of the distinguished resource economics research center Resources for the Future in Washington in 1947[???]. In resource economics, see for instance the seminal work of Barnett and Morse (1 ~xx) , Herfindahl(l9xx), Kapp ( 1 ~xx), and others during this period; these laid the foundations for the emergence of environmental economics in the 1960s (see tspecially, for instance, Dales, 19m; Kneese and Bower, 19xu, 19xx; Krutilla, 1 9 q Conservation Reconsidend; Kneese & Bower, Managing Water Quality, then REQM). ’‘ TVA’s rationale for Tellico Dam, for instance, was a speculative industrial development area that did not areas already existed nearby.

Alsp by the articulate westem columnist Bernard DeVoto, and by a more self-interested California lobby who stood to lose fiiture water supplies from upper basin development (Richardson, 1973).

U.S. House Speaker Sam Fbybum is quoted as saying that congressmen received more mail in protest against Echo Park Dam than on any other subject (Sundquist, 1968:337). ’’ The taxpayers of Massachusetts, New York and other states, for instance, would each have to pay larger shares of the cost than would those of Colorado. 2o As Bernard DeVoto had once advised his fellow Westerners, “Don’t snoot those unfortunate [easterners] too loudly or too obnoxiously. You might make them so mad that they would stop paying for your water development” (Rrchardson, 1973:61). 21 It also marked a beginning of the end for the Bureau of Reclamation, which failed to find new missions as the number of good unbuilt dam sites in the west diminished: between 1950 and 1955 BuRec’s appropriations dropped more than 50% (Foresta, 198453). The Corps of Engineers continued, and thus became the central target for the rising environmental movement of the 1960s and ’70s.

- (MI? MN?), Los Padres? and others. One justification for these was to preserve these shorelines in their own right; a second was to meet burgeoning water recreational demand; a third was to preserve the truly unique national parks themselves, by providing additional opportunities for mass recreation nearer to urban areas. 23 Ironically, however, this vigorous acquisition program also catalyzed an opposition movement of self- interested landowners around the borders of existing parks, and particularly those whose antecedents’ historical land claims had given them ownershp of privileged “inholdmgs” even within the park

. am“, 1975:B5, B181-82).

others claimed inflated benefits for creating flat-water recreation areas, even when other such

Examples include Cape Hatteras (NC), Fire Island (NY), (CA), Indiana Dunes (IN),

365 Anakews &a$t Chapter 8 - 7/10/95 - Do not cite or quote 43

boundaries, who now resisted k ing bought out. These inholders became one of the principal constituencies of the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion” of Western opposition to federal environmental management in the late 1970s. whose interests the Reagan Administration represented: Reagan’s notorious secretary of the Interior, James Watt, previously served as Commissioner of the Bureau of Outdoor‘Recreation during the administration, in which role he had established himself as a dissident from the policy of increasing public parklands acquisition and buying out inholders [check..]. 24 The Forest Management Act of 1897, the statutory authority for management of the National Forest reserns, had specifically authorized removal of dead [or mature? check] trees; cleartutting at that time , was considered forest destruction rather than good standard practice. By the 1950s the Forest Service had adopted the industry’s practices itself, arguing that clearcutting and replacement with “even-aged mauagemcnt” (“tree farming”) were the “modem” approach to forestry. Its position was challenged in COUR in the early 1970s, however, in a lawsuit over clear-cutting on the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia which led to fundamental rewriting of the forest management laws in 1976. On the first such cooperative sustained yield unit created, for instance, 60% of the land was private but

82% of the standing timber was federal, as the private land had already been heavily logged over (Steen,

76 Particularly controversial was the Forest Service practice of “sanitary” logging of dead and dying tres in remation areas themselves, such as the Deadman Creek area of California Sierra where Sierra Club strongly active (Steen, 1976:303).

Wildema areas were legally as well as poetically defined as areas “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain ... an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.” The political campaign for wilderness began in 1955, on the heels of the movement to stop Echo park Dam; legislation was proposed by the Wilderness Society in 1956, but drew sustained opposition from the commodity production industries, from western states, from the Forest Service and Interior -nt, and even from outdoor recreation groups seeking development of more intensive recreational access and use. The Wilderness Act was finally passed in 1964, directing the Secretary both to designate currently-classified wilderness areas immediately and within 10 years to review all other . primitive and madless areas for potential wilderness designation. However, at the insistence of western legislators it left the existing miningentry laws in force in these areas through 1983, as well as the opp~rtunity to patent permanently claims developed uduring that period--virtually inviting accelerated prospcctrng on the very lands that were designated for preservation during this twodecade window of opportunity. Timber advocates too used the ten-year review period to propose roads through some key arcas, thereby disqualmng them for designation (Sundquist, 1968:336-40,358-61; 78 Stat. 890-96). a8 As one noted political scientist pointed out, in an article in the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1958, foresters were technically competent to identrfy resource problems and to propose an array of solutions, but lacked training that enabled them to choose between uses such as lumber and scenery: expertise in one aspect did not confer competence in all (Grant McConnell, quoted in Steen, 1976:306). Note that prior to the 1970s, the Forest Service also asserted a more expansive view of this administrative discretion than did many other federal agencies, arguing that its land management was “proprietary” rather than sovereign- that is, that it was simply managing the government’s property, like a post ofice or government ofice building-and therefore not subject to the same degree of public participation and scrutiny as other agencies.

Railroads, for instance, opened up affluent suburbs for the rich, such as Philadelphia’s Main Line, Chicago’s Lake Forest and New York’s Westchester County; trolleys and balloon-frame construction made possible the construction of larger areas of affordable housing on cheaper land for people of modest means. Autos opened up the large peripheral areas between the radial corridors of public transit lines (Jackson, 1985).

introduced by Oregon in 1919 and adopted by virtually every state by 1929 to finance road-building; a

‘

19761251-52,285).

A federal aid program for highway construction was begun in 1916, and gasoline taxes were

AnaZ.aus &@ Chapter 8 - 7/10/95 - Do not cite or quote 36 v 44

feral gasoiine tax, earmarked solely for highway construction. was instituted in 1956 to finance the Interstate Highway System (Jackson, 1985:163-68, 172-77,24840). -

Previous mortgages had been limited to one-half to two-thirds the value of the property, requiring far h&r down payments and at substantially higher interest rates than those that became available once the _ - federal government guaranteed the loans; only in 1933, indeed. had the concept of long-term, self- amortizing mortgages with uniform monthly payments even been introduced, by Roosevelt’s Home Owners Loan Corporation (Jackson, 1985:195-97,203-05). 32 Loans for repair of existing buildings, for instance. were small and of short duration, and loans for rental housing involved more burdensome controls than for ownersccupied houses; during the 1950s FHA-insured single-family housing starts consequently exceeded multi-family starts by a ration of seven to one. FHA appraisal standards also placed heavy weight on the neighborhood’s “relative economic stability“ and “protection from adverse influences.” both of which strongly favored affiuent and uniformly white suburbs over minority or even integrated urban neighborhoods, and prohibited any facilities that would allow dwellings to be used as stores, offices, or rental units. (Jackson, 1985:206-08ff.). 33 Ostensibly to promote dispersion of industries so that large cities could not be as e&ciently targeted by Russian missiles, and to speed evacuation of cities in the event of nuclear attack.

The American Road Builders Association was formed in 1943 under the leadership of General Motors; it included automobile manufactufers and dealers, truckers, the oil, rubber, asphalt and construction industries, their labor unions, state highway administrators, and others who stood to benefit ecoonomically fiom i n d road wnstruction and highway travel. Other benefits claimed for the interstate system included nductions in t r a c congestion, in safety hazards, and in business transportation costs. There appears to have beem no serious discussion of its negative effects: about the destruction of neighborhoods as well as ecosystems and parks in the paths of the highways, about their incentive effect on s u b h a n sprawl and CoILCurrent decline of central cities and public transportation alternatives, nor even about the implications of earmarking such major tax revenues solely for highways rather than for other public needs or even for other transportation needs (Jackson, 1985:248-50). ” Another new policy issue with the creation of the interstate highways was the long and continuing battle for federal legislation to protect their own beauty against the visual blight of uncontrolled commercial signs and billboards, as had already occurred along many existing roads. A 1958 law offered a bonus to states tbat controlled billboards on interstate highways, but by 1965 only 194 miles (10/0) had been protected: only a federal mandate for state action, evidently, could outweigh the influence of the Outdoor Advtrtising Council on state legislators who received their contributions as well as their advertising services during election campaigns. and on primary US federally aided roads as well as interstates, and remove existing ones as well as prevent new ones. and remove exemptions from 1958 law. President Lyndon Johnson sponsored a White House Conference on Natural Beauty in 1965, and proposed new legislation to withhold 10% of federal highway funds from states that did not exclude off-premises billboards from noncommercial areas of federal highways, remove non-complying signs by 1970, and remove or screen junkyards except in industrial areas. The most controversial issue was removal, especially by small businesses: the law required compensation for removal of signs that were legal when erected, and left determination of “commercial areas” to the states, both of which opened unending pressure for rezoning of additional business areas and for costly compensation and in the process even weakened some state laws,

~

His statement was made in the course of vetoing federal spending for municipal wastewater treatment facilities. 37 Examples include New Jersey, Pennsylvania and later New York on the Delaware River, the nine states of the Ohio River Basin, and the Great Lakes states, all in the 1920s (Tan et af., 1980:71). The emphasis on municipal sources elsewhere was due in part to a greater concem for bacteriological than chemical hazards, and in part to the fact that industrial controls required more politically controversial regulatory programs.

Only three federal regulatory powers over water quality existed during this period. The earliest was the so-called 1899 Refuse Act (30 Stat. 1152), which required a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers for

Anab.ews &ajft Chapter 8 - 7/10/95 - Do not cite or quote 45 3hL<

discharge of any “refuse” into navigable rivers and harbors, but this applied at the time only to solid matter that might Ire hazardous to navigation, and specifically exempted liquid wastes such as sewage; it was reinterpreted by a court decision in the 1960s to cover municipal and industrial chemical pollution as well. The second was Public Health Service standards for drinking water on interstate camers (such as ships and trains), which were established in 1914 and revised in 1925 and 1946; the third was the Oil Pollution Control Act of 1924, which authorized the Secretary of the Army to regulate oil discharges from ships to protect public health and shipping, but this was difficult to enforce and applied only to coastal waters. (Armstrong et uf., 1976:417-18; Dworsky, 1971:ll-21,27, 83, 88-90, 143-51). 39 WPA workers also sealed over 4,000 mines to stop seepage of acids into streams (Dworsky, 1971:20).

Key provisions of the 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act, for instance, actually were proposed as early as 1936.

Although no h d s for the loan program were ever appropriated (Sundquist, 1968:324). Opposition centered on two points: there was no guarantee that the states would actually use the

proposed revenue source to build wastewater treatment facilities (a tau on telephone use), and poorer states received greater amounts in grants than they would from the telephone tax in any case (Sundquist, 1968:326-28). 43 Muskie was a former govemor of Maine, who had championed water quality improvement at the state level to protect the lobster indusuy (Sundquist, 1968:349).

The idea of comprehensive, basin-wide water quality planning was a long-standing ideal, which produced fifteen detailed river-basin reports and some sixty sub-basin plans by the early 1950s. As in the case of water resource development, however, basin-wide planning was ultimately preempted by earlier and greater support for project-by-project funding: construction grants for wastewater treatment plants were given out to municipalities as they received political support, while reg~onal planning h d s were those most often cut when budgets were tightened, leaving the basin-wide plans as after-the-fact paper exercises (Dworsky, 1971:364). 45 Widely publicized oil spills in the late 1960s, particularly the Torrey Canyon spill off the English coast and another from an oildrilling rig in California’s Santa Barbara Channel, also led to enactment of the Water QuaIily Improvement Act of 1970 which required owners and operators of ships and oBhore oil facilities to pay for cleanup of all spills; the 1970 law also prohibited sewage dumping from boats, restricted thermal pollution from power plants, and addressed acid mine drainage and pollution effects of pesticides (Armstrong et uf., 1976:419). * Before 1948 water pollution activities were one responsibility of the Division of Sanitary Engineering under the Public Health Service’s Bureau of State Services (BSS); in 1948 a separate Division of Water Pollution Control was created to administer the growing responsibilities created by the new Water Pollution Control Act. In 1953, however, the Eisenhower administration demoted it once again to branch status under BSS and secured Congressional approval for deep cuts in its budget, reflecting hts philosophical opposition to the growing federal role in water pollution control. These reverses galvanized Congressional opposition, however, which in 1965 finally succeeded in upgrading the water pollution agency’s status and removing it from the Public Health Service entirely (Dworsky, 1971:279-84,364). 47 In 1961, the editor of the leading journal of public health called for a “new look at the environment” and expressed a need to “rescue the public health profession from its present state of indecision” on this issue (Editorial, American Journal of Public Health, 51:1593 [1961]).

Interior had numerous missions that were natural complements to FWQA, such as river basin planning, water resource development, fish and wildlife conservation, outdoor recreation, and water resources research. 49 In addition to environmental health program coordination and priorities generally, a more specific concern is the problem of “cross-media” pollution transfers that can be caused by single-medium pollution control programs. Since waste discharges to any medium represent unwanted materials, attempts to clean up any one medmm by itself, such as water pollution, may simply transfer the problem to other media: . both wastewater treatment and air pollution control technologes increase solid wastes, both sludge and other solid wastes increase air pollution if incinerated, and both air pollution fallout and landfill leachate cause water pollution. At least one commentator has argued that this reorganization was a fundamental

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mistake, and that the Public Health Service itself should simply have been given broader legal authority and adequate budget resources for a more effective environmental health program (Eisenbud, 1978:352- 53). so District heating systems could perhaps have provided earlier and more efficient centralized solutions to these problems, analogous to sewers and central wastewater treatment plants. but these systems never wen as widely adopted in the U.S. as in Europe, perhaps because of the lower densities of suburban settlement that were already occurring by the 1920s (Tarr, 1985524). " only a very few of these local ordinances, in turn. went so far as to require permits for air pollution emissions (e.g. Los Angeles, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and New York City). Most were limited to responding to complaints (only seven maintained enforcement bureaus); their response was also limited to visual standards for smoke (e.g. visual grading by Ringelmann chart) and did not address other pollutants such as dust, fumes, or sulphur dioxide (Stern, 1951:35-37; Tarr, 1985528). '* Air quality research was done under the Public Health Service' Industrial Hygiene Division; it was limited primarily to studies of pulmonary health effects of occupational exposures in mining, garment- making, and the socalled "dusty trades" (Dworsky, 197154546,567-70). 53 Initial standards under this law called for si@cant reductions in tailpipe emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide, and 100% control of crankcase emissions, beginning with the 1968 model year; they did not deal with other important motor vehicle emissions, such as nitrogen oxides and lead, nor did they address diesel emissions @orsky, 1971:64748). 54 The 1965 amendments also provided federal grants for solid waste disposal facilities, to replace the traditional open-burning dumps which were themselves major sources of urban air pollution (Sundquist, 1968:368). " Some industries were also better off under a uniform federal approach and nation-wide set of minimum s t d a d s than under a multiplicity of state regimes, if they could not avert regulation entirely. A good example is the auto industry, which must sell its products in all 50 states and would therefore prefer standardization to 50 mering sets of requirements (Sundquist, 1968:370-71).

'

See e.g. Mumford (19xx) and Jacobs (19xx). Fluoridation consists in the addition of fluoride-about 1 part fluoride per million parts of water-to n

public water supplies during its treatment. sa Despite the fact that many communities' water supplies already contained equal or higher M~UA concentrations of fluoride. '' Editorial, American Journal of Public Health, 42: 1304 (1952). The issue first arose in 1953, when physicists in Troy, New York identified sharply elevated levels of

environmental "background" radiation during and after a rainstorm, and traced these pollutants to fallout of nuclear materials from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons half a nation away; it received its first publicity in 1954 when the crew of a Japanese fishing boat in the Paclfic, the Lucky Dragon, was atnicted with severe radiation sickness from the fallout of nuclear tests in the South Pacific. and increasing attention thereafter culminating in a 1963 treaty banning above-ground testing of nuclear weapons by the U.S. and USSR (Commoner, 1971:50-60).

F'ublic health professionals too, who in 1950 had praised the Atomic Energy Commission for its leadership in setting standards and assuring radiation protection, by 1956 noted more soberly the possible biological effects of even low-level exposure, and in 1959 called for a far more conservative approach, arguing that "anyhng less ... may jeopardize life on this small planet." Editorials, American Journal of PUblicHealth, 40:1441 (1950). 46:1147 (1956), and49:804 (1959).

Another minor but beneficial result was a major increase in federal support for ecological research by the Atomic Energy Commission, prompted by the issue of nuclear fallout but furthered by the fact that radiation provided an easily-monitored tracer for the flows of materials and energy through ecosystems (Commoner, 1 97 1 : 5 5 -56; Eisenbud, 1 978 : 5 5 -57). a Only one animal study had been done, showing thyroid cancers in some rats that had been fed high doses Over two years; most Americans, in contrast, ate cranberries only once or twice a year in small quantities, at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

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In 1971 EPA banned 3-AT from use on food crops, though still without strong evidence of any serious 64

risk to human health (Wildavsky, 1995:18-19). 65 Editorial, American Journal of Public Health, 36:657 (1946). From the standpoint of acute toxicity. DDT was in fact far less toxic than other insecticides already in use, such as nicotine and arsenical compounds, and than others which were later substituted for it, such as the organophosphates. None of these, however, carried the ecological risks of persistent toxicity through bioaccumulation. Editorial, American Journal of Public Health, 36:657 (1946).

67 Affected species included brown pelicans, grebes, hawks, eagles, robins, and others. 68 U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. ReDort of the Secretarv’s Commission on Pesticides and Their Relationship to Environmental Health. Washington. D. C., 1969.

target species often evolved rapidly into pesticide-resistant strains. ’O The thalidomide tragedy, the discovery that a drug prescribed in Europe for pregnant women caused severe birth defects, also was a leading news story at the time Silent Soring was published.

An editorial in the leading public health journal, reviewing Silent Suring, acknowledged that Carson had “called attention to a problem that cannot be dismissed” and that “some of the results have been devastating,” but nonetheless referred to her findings only as an “alleged” threat to nature, based on hypothetical examples and on “the most obvious and extreme cases;” it reminded the reader that pesticides were “essential“ to food production and that ‘“an will continue to intervene and will continue to upset ecological balances,’’ and urged that action be taken only after more research rather than on the basis of “emotions and conjecture.’’ Editorial, American Joumal of Public Health, 52:2111 (1962).

E.g. Selvlick 1949 (TVA); Maass, 1951 (the A m y Corps of Engineers); Foss. 1960 (the Bureau of Land Management); Morgan, 1965 (the Soil Conservation Service): and McConnell, 1965 (the Forest Service and BLM). l3 Theodore Lowi, for instance, argued in 1969 that interest-group liberalism cannot plan, cannot achieve justice, and weakens democratic institutions by substituting informal bargaining for formal procedures: his “juridical democracy” proposed to invalidate all delegations of administrative discretion that were not accompanied by clear legislative standards for implementation (Lowi, 1969).

The “Green Book” of the Federal Interagency River Basin Committee (1 950), the Budget Bureau’s Budget Circular A 4 7 (19521, Senate Document 87-97 (1962), and U. S. Water Resource Council, PrinciDles and Standards for Planning Water and Related Land Resources (1965). All cited in Andrews, Environmental Dolicv and Administrative Change, chapter 4, notes 22-25.

It is somewhat ironic that environmental advocacy groups by and large were hostile not only to the agencies’ self-interested distortions of benefitcost analysis but to its use in principle, sinGe it was itself an important administrative reform initiative aimed at challenging many of the same proposals which were politically motivated but economically as well as environmentally dubious. One probable explanation was the importance of other issues in which the two goals were not congruent: for instance, federal highway projects whch were required by economic criteria to be built on the leasttost corridor and alignment, which typically meant proposing them through parks and low-income neighborhoods. Several of the early NEPA lawsuits involved just such cases: cf. the Overton Park case in Memphs.

Administrative Conference of the United States, A Guide to Federal Arrencv Rulemaking, Washington, DC, 2nd. edition, 199 1.

Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1934, amended 1946 and 1958 (16 U.S.C. 661). Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552).

l9 United Church of Christ v. Federal Communications Commission, [citation].. The Environmental Defense Fund, for instance, was formed as an alliance of scientists with a lawyer in

a Long Island challenge to pesticide spraying, and in subsquent similar cases in Michigan and Wisconsin: they did not win the cases in court, but the accompanying publicity led to cancellation of the spray programs anyway (Graham, 1970:251-59).

Editorial, American Journal ofPublic Health, 38:709 (1948).

New pests could rapidly expand into the ecological niches vacated by the ones destroyed, and even the 69

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The Wilderness Act, for example. took 8 years to pass and even then included undercutting 81

amendments demanded by House Interior Committee chairman Wayne Aspinall @-Colorado) to allow continued mining (Sundquist, 1968:518-20).

Similar patterns continued in the 1970s: in the 1971-72 Congress. 8 1% of the urban representatives voted for proenvironmentalist positions, while representatives from rural areas of the south, midwest and Great Plaindintexmountain west most consistently resisted them (Martis. 1976:328-33). 83 In 197% for hstance, the long-time power broker of the public lands. Rep. Wayne Aspinall @-CO), was suddenly upset by a young environmentalist lawyer from Denver who had lived in his district for less than a year. [cite sourc e....]

Eisenhower proposed for instance to “give away” a variety of federal lands and functions to state and local gwements , and in some cases to private businesses, and even to consider dismantling some major federal New Deal initiatives such as TVA and agricultural production controls; his Kestnbaum Commission and second Hoover Commission were charged to idenm as many federal functions as possible that could be tumed back to the states. By 1955, however, his commitment to serious reform had been wom down: “In his 8 years Eisenhower learned that farmers did not want to face a free market, Tennessee Valley consumers of electricity did not prefer free enterprise to socialism, and no group currently subsidized welcomed a return to the jungles of competition.” He also was not philosophically consistent in his commitment: his record also included major expansions of public works programs for highways, forest road-building, and water projects, of nuclear power development, and the largest peacetime deficit in history up to that time (Graham, 1976:119-23).

Caldwell went on to assist Senator Henry Jackson 0-WA) and others in crafting the National as

Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which sought to spell out both the principles and the implementing procedures for such a national environmental policy.

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Sub total: 41.91

Tax: 2.51

Total: $44.42

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ENVR 153 - P2 InfoHouse

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