Search

The rising public awareness of environmental problems around 1970 brought the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and targeting of the obvious environmental polluters. This has helped the clean‐up, but there are now new challenges. Toxics are much more subtle, more widespread, and there effects more unknown than sewage or smoke. The public will have to decide the trade‐offs of toxic risk and material goods. Focus is turning to habitat protection and healthy ecosystems, not just human health. Now that big industry is better controlled, the more difficult widely dispersed environmental problems must be tackled. Solutions will require costs and lifestyle changes for us all. For this to happen, the public must understand the problems and accept that they are part of them. The role of the environmental professional will be to assess the problem and possible solutions and present them to the public for their decisions when weighed against the cost of the solutions and prevailing values. We must open up the process of environmental decision making to those who bear the costs, and then accept their judgment. Roles of government will change to, more local control using federal assistance, standards, research, regulations and advice. Local actions and industry may include more projects, seeking help from government agencies. Attitudes and behaviour of everyone must change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looks at how the political process affects environmental decisionmaking. Argument that the current process gives too little weight to the interests of society as a whole and too much to the narrower interests of particular groups within in.