Environmental Policy of The United States - Impact

Impact

Since the major environmental legislation of the 1970s was enacted, great progress has been made in some areas, but the environmental protection has come at a high price. Between 1970 and 1996, air pollutants dropped 32% while the population grew by 29%. Other pollutants have been more difficult to track, especially water pollutants. While air and water standards have been slowly improving, in 1996 70 million people still lived in counties that didn't meet EPA ozone standards. 36% of rivers and 39% of lakes didn't meet minimum standards for all uses (swimming, fishing, drinking, supporting aquatic life). In the same period, the size of the National Park Service grew from 26,000,000 acres (110,000 km2) to 83,000,000 acres (340,000 km2), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expanded by over three times to manage over 92,000,000 acres (370,000 km2). In 1995, 41% of the 960 endangered species were stable or improving.

Critics of environmental legislation argue that the gains made in environmental protection come at too great a cost. The overall cost of environmental regulation in the United States is estimated to be about 2% of the gross domestic product-similar to many other countries, but calculating the cost is challenging both conceptually (deciding what costs are included) and practically (with data from a broad range of sources). In 1994, almost $122 billion was spent on pollution abatement and control. $35 billion of that has been in direct government spending, $65 billion was spent by business, and $22 billion was spent by individuals.