Federal Environmental Policy: Progress and Prospects

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Andrews, Richard N.L.
- Other Affiliation: Associate Professor and Chairman, Resource Policy and Management Program, School of Natural Resources, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Abstract

Ten years ago, U.S. Senator Henry Jackson of Washington introduced a bill to establish a "national environmental policy" for the American nation. An amended version of that bill was eventually passed, with almost unanimous support, and signed into law by the President on New Year's Day of 1970--New Year's Day of what the President chose to call the "environmental decade" of the 1970s--New Year's Day of the decade in which, the President said, it was "literally now or never" to clean up the damage caused to the human environment by industrial civilization. The law was the National Environmental Policy Act: best known, perhaps, for its creation of "environmental impact statements," but also a broad and forceful declaration of congressional policy to maintain and enhance the quality of humans' natural environment. We stand now, in 1979, in the final year of that decade. It seems worth taking stock, therefore, of what progress has been made in that decade and what priorities seem appropriate for the future.

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