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

Criticism of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hardly virgin terrain for US public policy analysts. Established by Richard Nixon in response to public anxiety over air pollution and its possible relationship to an increased incidence of cancer, the agency's jurisdiction has broadened far beyond its original mission to a seemingly inexhaustible list, including the regulation of noise pollution and food safety.

George Washington Carver (ca. 1864-1943) is at once one of the most familiar and misunderstood figures in American history. In My Work Is That of Conservation, Mark D. Hersey reveals the life and work of this fascinating man who is widely--and reductively--known as the African American scientist who developed a wide variety of uses for the peanut. Carver had a truly prolific career dedicated to studying the ways in which people ought to interact with the natural world, yet much of his work has been largely forgotten. Hersey rectifies this by tracing the evolution of Carver's agricultural and environmental thought starting with his childhood in Missouri and Kansas and his education at the Iowa Agricultural College. Carver's environmental vision came into focus when he moved to the Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, where his sensibilities and training collided with the denuded agrosystems, deep poverty, and institutional racism of the Black Belt. It was there that Carver realized his most profound agricultural thinking, as his efforts to improve the lot of the area's poorest farmers forced him to adjust his conception of scientific agriculture. Hersey shows that in the hands of pioneers like Carver, Progressive Era agronomy was actually considerably "greener" than is often thought today. My Work Is That of Conservation uses Carver's life story to explore aspects of southern environmental history and to place this important scientist within the early conservation movement.

The battle against climate change is no longer just an environmental or social issue. As shareholders demand corporations protect assets against climate change and the economic impact of environmental disasters suck billions of dollars out of the economy, capitalism itself has become an ally. The economic impact of climate change is rattling the foundation of our economy at its very core. It’s blowing up centuries-old industries from automobiles to oil and gas, creating new opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs. It’s costing Americans billions of dollars each and every year. And most importantly, it’s forcing politicians to pass long-overdue policies that will transform our businesses, our lives and our future like never before. The good news about this economic earthquake is that it just might be the thing that saves our planet. This is the first book to lay out how climate change has become an economic issue above all and how that has changed everything from the business to politics to the outlook for the future. Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a national, nonpartisan organization dedicated to providing business perspectives on environmental issues, shows readers how this new reality will impact their industries, businesses, jobs, and communities and transform our country’s economy. Climatenomics will be essential reading for anyone who cares about business, politics, or the future of our planet.

Human health depends on the health of the planet. Earth’s natural systems—the air, the water, the biodiversity, the climate—are our life support systems. Yet climate change, biodiversity loss, scarcity of land and freshwater, pollution and other threats are degrading these systems. The emerging field of planetary health aims to understand how these changes threaten our health and how to protect ourselves and the rest of the biosphere. Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves provides a readable introduction to this new paradigm. With an interdisciplinary approach, the book addresses a wide range of health impacts felt in the Anthropocene, including food and nutrition, infectious disease, non-communicable disease, dislocation and conflict, and mental health. It also presents strategies to combat environmental changes and its ill-effects, such as controlling toxic exposures, investing in clean energy, improving urban design, and more. Chapters are authored by widely recognized experts. The result is a comprehensive and optimistic overview of a growing field that is being adopted by researchers and universities around the world. Students of public health will gain a solid grounding in the new challenges their profession must confront, while those in the environmental sciences, agriculture, the design professions, and other fields will become familiar with the human consequences of planetary changes. Understanding how our changing environment affects our health is increasingly critical to a variety of disciplines and professions. Planetary Health is the definitive guide to this vital field.

More than 50 years ago, Franklin Kury drafted and championed an Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution, which was enacted on Earth Day 1970 and ratified by Pennsylvania's voters a year later. In the half century since then, climate change has become the overriding threat to the environment of the planet. In this book, Franklin Kury expands upon the story of Article I, Section 27, to demonstrate how its principles can be the basis for addressing climate change in the rest of the world. The story concludes with a call for the federal government's leadership to seek a national environmental rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a treaty to expand its reach to the international community.

For more than twenty years, Environmental Policy and Politics has kept instructors and students abreast of the challenges presented by contemporary environmental, energy, and natural resource problems in the United States. Now in its eighth edition, Michael E. Kraft has updated his definitive text to capture the changing nature of environmental problems as well as policy proposals made through 2020. Drawing from work within environmental science, policy analysis, and political science, this text continues to help readers think critically about how best to address problems through a variety of public policy tools and strategies at all levels of government. Important updates to this new edition include: • The latest information about environmental challenges and governmental responses to them, with extensive citation of key sources and websites. • Key political and policy decisions through late 2020, including presidential appointments, budgetary decisions, major legislative initiatives, and congressional actions. • New learning objectives to facilitate student understanding of key concepts and their applications, arguments advanced over environmental challenges and policies, and the goals and methods of environmental policy analysis. • Coverage of new topics that have emerged during the Trump presidency, including the Clean Power Plan repeal and reduction of environmental regulation, climate change, land conservation, changes in natural resources policies, and a comparison of the Republican and Democratic positions on climate change in 2020. • Updated summaries of scientific studies, government reports, and policy analyses. • Revised discussion questions and new suggested readings. Environmental Policy and Politics is an essential resource for upper level undergraduate and graduate students in political science and environmental studies looking for an accessible, well-researched, and up-to-date text, written with style and flair.