Climate Action
Let’s Not Go Backwards on Clean Air
September 16, 2024
The 55th anniversary of Earth Day is seven months away on April 22, 2025, so it seems like a good moment to examine one of the key laws that was extensively strengthened after that first Earth Day, which inspired a staggering 20 million American citizens to march back in 1970. It was an event that brought real change to environmentalism in the United States: in the form of the Clean Air Act.
If you traveled back to the 1950s and ’60s, one thing that might strike you immediately is how the air often had a distinct, lingering smell. Unregulated pollution from cars and major industry resulted in terrible air quality all over the United States. Thick yellow smog blacked out the skies in major metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. Some cities exceeded 1,000 micrograms of pollutive particles per cubic meter, which translates to an estimated inhalation of 2 cigarettes per hour of exposure. In New York alone, a week-long smog pushed the death rate up by 24 daily mortalities. The serious respiratory cases and hundreds of premature deaths that followed these “killer smog” events were traced to tailpipe emissions, burning coal, and factory pollution as the primary culprits.
The Clean Air Act (CAA), which was originally enacted in the United States in 1963, was designed to address these serious health concerns and received significant amendments in 1970, 1977 and 1990 that boosted the enforcement powers of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the government agency created by then President Nixon, as a direct result of the very first Earth Day. The Agency was tasked with environmental protection, research and regulatory execution, and constructed stringent standards on pollutants. It was the beginning of the modern day environmental movement and Earth Day was at the heart of it.
Between 1970 and 2023 in the US, the United States saw massive growth on every level: the gross domestic product increased 321 percent, vehicle miles driven increased 194 percent, energy consumption increased 42 percent, and the U.S. population exploded by 63 percent. However, during this same time period, the Clean Air Act produced a 73% decrease in the combined emissions of the six common pollutants: carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particle pollution, and ozone.
It is easy to take these dramatic results for granted over time, and the Act has lost some of its initial impact, becoming a point of contention and debate in Congress. Here’s what happened and why.
The Logic of Lawmakers
The legislative branch is the lawmaking body of the United States and consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives.. It was designed to represent and respond to the evolving needs of the American people. The Clean Air Act is a key example of Congressional power, with elected politicians designing environmental law to protect the nation.
Its core aims were to set national air quality standards. However, many of the initial programs were failures, as Congressional leaders grappled with respecting state sovereignty while favoring state-based implementation plans and lacking key federal enforcement tactics.
For example, in the Clean Air Act of 1963, states were required to utilize air quality regions, which were areas with designated restrictions, plans, and performance reviews based on air pollution. Seven years later, no state had a comprehensive plan and less than three dozen air quality regions out of a potential hundred were created.
The amendments to the CAA made in 1970, 1977, and 1990 sought to address the shortcomings of the original Clean Air Act by incorporating updated knowledge, stricter standards, and new deadlines for controlling hazardous pollutants. Issues like acid rain and smog transcended party lines, garnering bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats.
The primary amendments in 1970, which required a 90% reduction in automotive emission by 1975, were established under President Richard Nixon, a prominent Republican president, and a Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress.
Later in 1990, President H.W. Bush made the Clean Air Act stricter, granting the EPA greater authority. Elevated penalties such as sanctions, misdemeanors and felonies were added for those who knowingly delay or fail to comply with federal air quality standards. The new amendments even allowed for awards to people who supply information on entities committing violations up to $10,000.
But, that was then and this is now.
The Age of Unreason
Fast forward to 2024 and policymakers are more divided than ever on environmental regulation policies. Most recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new proposed rule under the Clean Air Act that aimed to tighten air quality standards on fine particulate matter, which are tiny chemical micro-pollutants that are emitted from construction sites, fires, automobiles and industries.
The proposal was met with firm opposition from 32 Republican Senators, highlighted by a letter addressed to the EPA Administrator from Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Referencing the stringent standards this new rule sets, GOP politicians were concerned that increasing soot standards would increase compliance costs, block U.S. economic development, and push American manufacturing companies abroad. According to the letter, a study from the National Association of Manufacturers claims this new standard could cost 850,000 jobs and $160 billion.
But, do environmental regulations actually reduce productivity in the economy?
A review from the Chicago Journal answers this question. By analyzing data from various studies, the journal confirms that by diverting resources away from production and shifting that investment towards environmental infrastructure, companies will see effects on their total factor productivity (TFP), which accounts for trade, employment, and capital costs. For example, the review found that in its primary amendments, the Clean Air Act of 1970 caused a 4.8% decline in TPF for polluting plants. But, the effects only lasted for the first year.
This study, among several others, suggests that negative regulatory effects on productivity are centered around a small subsection of industries with high pollution and energy-intensive practices, such as plastic or petroleum sectors, and are in effect for only a short time.
In another example, a study found that in a particular period of heightened environmental regulation from 1979 to 1992, Los Angeles, California, actually experienced an increase in productivity in comparison to other U.S. petroleum refineries. Ambient air quality improved significantly and employment rates increased, with 11,770 jobs gained and only 3,570 lost in a ten year period.
In practice, there is growing evidence that increasing green investment carries a net-positive effect for public health and environmental preservation, and contrary to counter claims does not show a significant negative effect on economic development. The pollution industry responds to regulatory policies, but with years of no new major environmental legislation and opposing views on environmental investment, it seems EPA regulations are the way to go to get rid of dirty technology and focus on future clean development.
In the long term it would be nice to think that we might be able to return to a period of positive discourse, where political leaders come together to find common ground.
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