A Study Of American Environment Policy Since 1980s

The environment protection policy in the U.S.A. has been on a new development stage since 1980s, but suffered repeated setbacks. On the contrary, the influence of conservatism on the environment policy has increased. This thesis tries to study the development of environment protection policy in America from 1980s, analyze various causes that made American environment policy stagnated and to review its transformation, as well as its gains and loses objectively.In the first part, the author summarizes American history of environment protection before 1980s, the public's sense of environment protection grew out of nothing, the Federal Government went from shouldering no responsibility to playing more and more active part in the environment protection, even its policy brought many deficiencies. Remarkably, the Command-and-Control pattern that the Federal government adopted not only led to a low ratio between cost and effect of the environmental protection management system, but also interfered the management of enterprises, making them carry huge budget for that, and Reagan's, Bush' and Clinton' administrations reform the environmental protection policy inevitably.In the second part, the author studies the environment policies of Reagan's, Bush's and Clinton' administrations respectively. The common feature of their environmental protection policies is that they didn't adopt the laisser-faire policy that the Federal Government adopted in 19th Century, and still played an active part in environment protection, while they faced the anti-Environmental protection group. But, the environmental protection movements faced more and more resistances. The expansion of the divergence between the environmentalists and the environment pollution enterprises make it hard for them to reach compromise. At the same time, Reagan's administration began to adopt conservative policy. After that, Bush's and Clinton's administrations adopted more and more conservatism policy. With interest groups as the basic categories in analyzing the environmental protection policies of their administrations, the author takes the mutual effects, the negotiation and compromise between different benefit groups as a new train of thought of interpreting environmental politics in America. I study how the different interest groups influenced and changed the environmental protection policy since 1980s by analyzing the change and development of the 3 main groups in contemporary America: the anti-environmentalist group, the environmentalist group and the conservative environmentalist group.As to the anti-environment protection group, with the development of environmental protection movements, more and more industrial trades were included in them. Especially since 1980s, the anti-environmentalist groups have organized a series of social movements legally or illegally, which effects the environmental protection greatly. The author takes Wise-Use-Movement as a case. It is not only supported by the industrial trade financially, but also appeals to the traditional American values. In the background of 1980s when the ideological trend in America turned right, it effected the environment protection outstandingly.As to the environmentalist group, they motivated the majority of Americans tosupport environment protection movements by upgrading Americans' sense ofenvironmental protection. But, different ideologies and different interests broughtinner contradicts. This group lacked the ability to unify the environmentalorganizations. When they faced the challenge of Environmental Justice, itsoptimistic effect on American environmental protection movements was weakened.Facing the anti-environmentalist group and the environmentalist group, theconservative environmentalist group tried to carry out a new policy that could beaccepted by the above-mentioned two groups. This new environment policy based onthe market and improved the low ratio between cost and effect of the traditionalenvironmental management pattern. But, the third way didn't work out...