ABSTRACT

The Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act transformed environmental policy in the United States and continue to influence the design and implementation of today's environmental policies. These acts initially enhanced the federal involvement in environmental policy and established a system of command and control regulation of industry. However, by the late 1980s, this emphasis on command and control regulation diminished as policymakers started to emphasize concepts of decreased federal involvement that could help control environmental pollution. Among these concepts were notions of cooperative frameworks between industry and government as well as the concept of organizations implementing environmental management systems to improve economic efficiency through better environmental performance. As the federal government in the United States increasingly becomes deadlocked on how to solve twenty-first century environmental problems related to climate change and sustainability, these decentralized, cooperative arrangements have increased in importance. By briefly analyzing the historical development of three significant federal environmental policies, this changing pattern of environmental policy becomes clarified.