Politic

Environmental issues soared to a prominent place on the political agenda in the United States and other industrial nations. The politics of the environment revolves in many respects, around judgment, evidence, and uncertain. Additionally, in keeping with the positivity theme mention, we will note the successes of environmental policy as well as problems. The major policy on the environmental area is security, in this case refers to safety, “the prevention of future needs”. Future needs often have a political potency far greater than actual needs. Equally as contentious is the conflict between the goal of security and the goal of efficiency, particularly concerning economic and energy policy. To the extreme that industry is regulated and certain economic activities are restricted or prohibited, extra cost are incurred and the production of goods and services is limited. This is the heart of battles over opening the Arctic National Wildfire Refuge or the continental shelf off the west coast of Florida to drilling. If burning fossil fuels leads to a warming of the atmosphere, then nonfossil fuels should be used. Efficiency as a goal, also relates to the kinds of regulatory strategy used and the security-efficiency trade off works itself into the environmental area in another way.
Environmental protection is expensive involving, administration of public programs at all levels of government and compliance costs within the private sector. What is needed is environmental protection that is efficient and cost-effective. Environmental regulations whether coastal zoning, wetlands, or clean air, require that some person or entity undertake some action or be restricted from taking actions, environmental policy inherently intrudes upon that person’s or entity’s liberty. The final policy goal is equity. An argument to be made that poor people and minorities are disproportionately the subjects of environmental insults, including the locations of facilities designed to clean the