Earlier this month, the US Environmental Protection Agency turned 40. Some of us are old enough to remember a time before it existed, and some have spent our entire lives, or at least careers, under the framework set by the EPA.
A number of grassroots movements helped lead the way to the creation of a federal agency. Rachel Carson’s immensely influential Silent Spring, about the use of pesticides like DDT, was published in the early 1960s. There was also public outrage at truly spectacular environmental problems, such as the polluted Cuyahoga River catching on fire in 1969.
It was a big change in perspective from the early history of the US, when land seemed plentiful and “the wilderness” something to be fought and conquered. Attitudes about the relation of humans to their surroundings slowly changed; nature became something to be conserved and protected. Many diverse concerns—disappearing wildlife, water pollution, smog, litter, shrinking supplies of natural resources, urban sprawl—coalesced into an overarching environmental movement. The National Environmental Policy Act was passed in January of 1970, followed 11 months later by the creation of the EPA.
Today, many other countries have comprehensive environmental policy, and others are just getting started. Do you have experience with environmental regulation—or the lack of it—in other countries? How do your experiences working there compare with those in the US? Do you think countries that are now undergoing rapid industrialization can benefit, or perhaps take “lessons learned” in how not to proceed, from the example of the US EPA?