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Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: The Rise Of The EPA

976 Words4 Pages

Imagine never being able to go swimming in a lake or ocean again because there is too much garbage and waste in it. Imagine never being able to eat seafood again because all sea animals are dead because of chemicals in the water. 45 years ago that was the outlook for the United States of America if laws did not change. America would be going down hill quickly. On December 2, 1970 the Environmental Protection Agency was created. Before then there was no major corporation or any policies that protected the environment. It was when things were getting to their worse, the government decided to fix things. The EPA has certainly had a major impact on the US environment; in particular by addressing the issues in the country, adding guidelines and …show more content…

President Nixon created the idea of the EPA in 1970. The EPA was the first act of the whole century. Fifteen federal companies were brought together into one big independent US agency (The World Book Encyclopedia), but later many more were added. Ideas for this agency started around 1962 when pollution was getting bad. One book that had a strong impact on the starts of this movement was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. This book caused a revolution throughout the public because of “the exhaustively researches, carefully reasoned, and beautifully written attack on the indiscriminate use of pesticides” (EPA). Silent Spring made scientist lawyers and many other hardworking Americans start fighting for environmental protection. In 1969 Russell E. Train, Secretary of the Interior, said “If environmental deterioration is permitted to continue and increase at present rates, [man] wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell [of surviving]”. He basically said that if things were not changed soon, humanity has no chance of surviving in the long run. When the EPA first started they had three initial ideas for the purpose of the agency; efforts to prevent damage to the environment, create national programs to bring humanity and the environment together, and to create more groups to enhance humanity’s understanding of the

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This source presents research and case studies to acknowledge that this debate of job creation vs environmental regulation is complex and need to be analyzed and interpreted from many different angles to realize the various effects created by these two opposing viewpoints. One study shows how the Clean Air Act caused a job loss of 600,000, but at the same time, reduced the infant mortality rate and increased housing prices, thus creating a wealth effect for the real estate market. It is mentioned that one data point (such as job loss, improved health, etc..) should not

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The EPA’s environmental statutes did not have an internal regulation of the administration that describe the long-term goals of the CAA. Meaning that the EPA needed to establish several strategic plan that will emphasiz the goals of the CAA, such as trying to accommodating progress in reducing air pollution with economic growth. In addition, goals that mention on figuring out which plants are designed to maintain clean air. Since the EPA’s manual did not “give fuller effect to the foregoing,” it gives the impression that modifying regulations is not an easy task (Dimock,1980). The EPA decisions on how to use their carbon dioxide emissions did not satisfied the states and the industries and this implies that their use of rules on carbon dioxide emissions needs improvements for the future of the public

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Before this policy came into effects there was a meeting held by the United States Environmental Protection Agency which is abbreviated as (U.S. EPA) on January 26, 1989, to recommended a need for a change relating to the guidelines of pollution policy to deal with prevention rather than control. The past policy was enforced by EPA during the last 18 years in which the environmental quality was ample during the phasing process of the programs implemented , but at the same time there was a limit of how improvement can be done under the jurisdiction of each programs (Bishop, 2004) & (Higgins, 1995). During this time the EPA came up with a conclusion for this problem

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