"The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective"
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Barry Commoner, a biologist and leading voice of the early environmental movement, watched the birth of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the 1970 Clean Air Act with hope and skepticism. The first wave of air rules delivered real, measurable gains: smoke stacks got scrubbers, car exhausts got catalytic converters, lead was removed from gasoline, and visible smog and soot declined in many cities. Those early victories targeted the most blatant emissions and the most easily controlled sources. They proved that regulation could work.
Yet Commoner argued that such success would ebb because the regulatory toolkit leaned on end-of-pipe fixes and narrow standards rather than redesigning the industrial system generating the pollution. Command-and-control rules often treated symptoms, not causes. They could push one pollutant down while pushing another into water or solid waste. They also ran into diminishing returns as the easiest reductions were exhausted, leaving harder, costlier, and more diffuse sources such as millions of vehicles, small emitters, and sprawling suburbs.
Economic growth and technological change outpaced those methods. The petrochemical boom introduced new compounds faster than regulators could assess and restrict them. Loopholes and grandfathering let old coal plants run for decades without modern controls, while compliance became a chess game of permits, offsets, and technicalities. The result was a pattern Commoner distrusted: cleaner smokestacks on paper, but persistent smog precursors, fine particulates, and, later, greenhouse gases that the early framework was not built to handle.
His critique points to a systemic alternative. Instead of relying chiefly on add-on controls, remake the production processes themselves: safer chemistry rather than post hoc filtration, renewable energy rather than ever-tighter tailpipe standards, urban design that reduces car dependence. Commoner’s ecological maxim that everything is connected warns that piecemeal controls eventually hit a wall. Durable progress, he insisted, comes from changing what and how we produce, not only from cleaning up after the fact.
Yet Commoner argued that such success would ebb because the regulatory toolkit leaned on end-of-pipe fixes and narrow standards rather than redesigning the industrial system generating the pollution. Command-and-control rules often treated symptoms, not causes. They could push one pollutant down while pushing another into water or solid waste. They also ran into diminishing returns as the easiest reductions were exhausted, leaving harder, costlier, and more diffuse sources such as millions of vehicles, small emitters, and sprawling suburbs.
Economic growth and technological change outpaced those methods. The petrochemical boom introduced new compounds faster than regulators could assess and restrict them. Loopholes and grandfathering let old coal plants run for decades without modern controls, while compliance became a chess game of permits, offsets, and technicalities. The result was a pattern Commoner distrusted: cleaner smokestacks on paper, but persistent smog precursors, fine particulates, and, later, greenhouse gases that the early framework was not built to handle.
His critique points to a systemic alternative. Instead of relying chiefly on add-on controls, remake the production processes themselves: safer chemistry rather than post hoc filtration, renewable energy rather than ever-tighter tailpipe standards, urban design that reduces car dependence. Commoner’s ecological maxim that everything is connected warns that piecemeal controls eventually hit a wall. Durable progress, he insisted, comes from changing what and how we produce, not only from cleaning up after the fact.
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| Topic | Nature |
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