Inroduction: Have you ever stopped to take a look at your surrounding environment and see lots of grass and open space? Or maybe you live in an industrial city and see smog and lots of factories and buildings being built. Do you ever stop and consider the pollution in your environment and how you could be contributing to it. Today people seem to be much more concerned about their natural environment and have taken various steps to try and reduce their carbon footprints. Examples of this are that many of us choose to buy a more fuel efficient vehicle to drive back and forth to work every day or that more people today take the time to separate recyclables from actual trash. Even the government who usually only seems to want our money has …show more content…
cared enough about the safety of the public and the environment over the last few decades to create this wonderful federal administrative agency called the Environmental Protection Agency. Purpose and Act: In the year 1970 President Richard Nixon and Congress signed various environmental acts in an attempt to stop the amount of pollutants being released into our natural environment. Pollutants from cars, factories, and pesticides were being released into the air and dumped into local waterways quite often. However at the very beginning of that year Nixon signed another act that would become very important to our society. “But by January 1, 1970, Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which promised to institute a federal role in environmental protection (HOWSTUFFWORKS).” With the creation of NEPA the EPA was also born later that year. “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or sometimes USEPA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by congress (WASHINGTON TIMES CITATION).”” With the creation of this agency most other acts that were created to protect the environment were placed under the watchful jurisdiction of the EPA such as the clean air act, the clean water act, the RCRA and CERCLA (FOOTNOTE 1). History: The historical perspective surrounding the formation of the EPA is quite interesting when you realize just how far the agency came in only its first few decades. The success of the agency largely depended on who was appointed as administrator of the EPA. Just after the EPA was initially created it was also in charge of various other acts regarding the environment and began to make many new rules and accomplishments such as reformations of the Clean Air Act. In its first twenty years the EPA was able to reduce air pollution to half of what was originally being released into the environment. From catalytic converters being installed in vehicles to banning the use of DDT pesticide on crops and much more, the EPA made a significant impact on the environment and the health of humanity at the very start of the agency. Functions: The EPA serves various functions in order to protect our health and environment.
The most basic overall function of the EPA is of course to prevent and reduce pollution in the environment. Another function of the EPA is to make new technology and perform research to better protect the environment. The EPA also has to enforce their rules and regulations passed by congress. They come up with the ideas of new laws and pass them through congress; if the law is passed by congress then it’s the EPA that has to enforce the new rule. One final function of the EPA that is very important to the protection of the environment is educating the public. Today’s children will be the ones who decide the fate of our health and environment. The general public is aware of what can be done to help and over the years there have been various accomplishments with regard to protecting the environment, such as planting trees, recycling, and other ways of going green. These are some of the basic functions the EPA carries out to ensure that other generations will have a safe …show more content…
environment. Organizational Chart: “The administrator of the EPA is appointed by the president of the United States and approved by the U.S.
Senate. Also appointed by the president and approved by the Senate are a deputy administrator, nine assistant administrators, an inspector general, and a general counsel( REF FOR BUS).” The administrator is the highest position within the EPA and they are the person who enforces all of the acts within the jurisdiction of the EPA. Accomplishments: Over the years, the EPA has made many significant accomplishments in its ultimate quest of environmental protection. Some of the EPA’s best accomplishments are reducing acid rain, banning DDT, superfund, and reducing air pollution. Power plants were a great cause of acid rain but the EPA had an effective way to fix it. “The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act gave EPA the authority to regulate sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, the pollutants causing acid rain, from power plants (GRIST.ORG).” As mentioned earlier the EPA was also responsible for the banning of DDT which was a pesticide used on crops but was harming lots of wildlife due to the chemicals it contained. DDT is what almost caused our beloved bald eagle to become extinct! Also previously mentioned the EPA has had a significant impact on the reduction of air pollution in the United States. One final accomplishment of the EPA is the superfund program, which was used to clean up various polluted sites in its early years; it’s basically
the cleaning program of the EPA. Criticisms: One of the most common criticisms of the EPA is that its kills jobs. Some people think that the more regulations the EPA imposes, the more jobs it cost the economy. However there is little proof that the EPA’s regulations cost the U.S. jobs. Recently the EPA has also received some criticism for expanding power it did not actually have. While trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA went a bit too far while trying to exercise power it never had. “While EPA itself and the Justice Department basically claimed afterward that they had won this sharply contested case, EPA itself did not escape some of the sharpest judicial language that a court can use to rebuke an agency for stretching its authority too far(SCOTUSBLOG>COM).”
The EPA and our Airport are going to work diligently together, it is important to not just work with them but to listen and act on what they say. Im very high on the EPA and find it difficult to see what is happening to our environment, my goal is to make our airport as green as
chain. The use of lead in gasoline was phased out in '73 which caused lead
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates air pollution through various policies passed through the Supreme Court. The scope of this paper is to investigate the Clean Air Act of 1970, and to analyze the impact it has on businesses and society. It provides a rationale for the policy, and contains a brief overview of governmental involvement in regulating air pollution. Further investigation identifies key stakeholders in business, government, and society, and assesses the pros and cons of regulating air pollution. Finally, the paper concludes with limitations of this analysis and recommendations for future action.
The EPA operates from a number of laws and regulations designed to function as its foundation for protecting the environment and the health of the public. Congress allows the EPA to write regulations in order to support the ideas for implementing these regulations. For that reason they are known as a regulatory agency. These regulations fall under two categories: Laws and Executive Orders (EOs) that influence environmental protection and Laws and EOs that Influence the Regulatory Process.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website is impressive with its cornucopia of data for maps that are area specific for information on energy, health-related issues, community activism, land (commercial or private property), water (private or public) and air quality. Although I knew the agency existed, until now I had had no reason to visit.
Greepeace’s mission is to stop oil drilling in the ocean, halt the killing of all species (mostly endangered ones), nuclear testing, pollution, and other threatening things to the environment. In other words, their purpose is to create and GREEN and PEACEful environment.
Our Congress created the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1969 in order to establish an environmental foundation for mankind. This policy endorses harmony between humans and the vast ecosystems surrounding them. To obtain this goal and provide our future with resources as well, NEPA is separated into two titles. The first title declares the policy in detail while the second title focuses on the Council on Environmental Quality. The CEQ oversees the effectiveness of current methods, the reactions of the environment to those methods, and implements revisions as necessary.
Public policy is defined by Webster’s as the “The basic policy or set of policies forming the foundation of public laws, especially such policy not yet formally enunciated.” The United States Government has many policies in the area of the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 to help identify environmental problems in our nation, and to set policy on how to deal with those problems. Yet, with so much money spent by the government to deal with problems with the environment, it must be noted that problems still exist, even within the bureaucracy that was meant to help in the first place.
First I am focusing on EIA. EIA is determined is a preventive and proactive measure to deal with the environmental problems and threats. EIA is important in order to create
The protection of the environment however has just recently become the major issue that it is in today’s society. People worldwide have slowly begun to realize and become aware of the blatant destruction and deterioration of the environment and ozone. As well as the consequences and side affects, that we, as a society have created. The majority of people are just becoming aware of the frightening reality of the situation. As society becomes more informed on the issue of the environment, they too become more impatient, and feel that in the snap of fingers, the damage can be reversed and future damage can be stopped instantaneously.
...tion and regular control programs for different types of waste-water discharge. The EPA supports all acts that could help save our reefs or to find the causes on why our reefs are disappearing.
We all belong to the same world and all of us have the same responsibilities towards the world and its environment. This fact might be hard to digest, but if we continue to pollute the Earth at the current rate, all of the world’s ocean waters will become one-hundred-thirty percent acidic. This means that the ocean will be unable to sustain most of its marine life and only a few creatures will be able to survive in the water. A big population of people think that they do not or have few responsibilities towards the environment. People think that the governor of a country should take steps to help the environment. They leave it to scientists since they have the technology to prevent pollution, or that is what most people think. There are more responsibilities to the world each individual has than most of realize. The amount of negligence and ignorance of humans towards the Earth is taking a heavy toll.
Efforts to improve the standard of living for humans--through the control of nature and the development of new products--have also resulted in the pollution, or contamination, of the environment. Much of the world's air, water, and land is now partially poisoned by chemical wastes. Some places have become uninhabitable. This pollution exposes people all around the globe to new risks from disease. Many species of plants and animals have become endangered or are now extinct. As a result of these developments, governments have passed laws to limit or reverse the threat of environmental pollution.
Our planet is suffering from severe pollution, which ranges from contaminated air, water and soil as well. Humans are doing nothing to reduce the amount of pollution that is harming our earth. To understand how pollution works first you must understand that there are different types of pollution. The most common types of pollution and the ones that I will be focusing on which are the ones doing the most harm to our planet are air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and littering. In order to help out and reduce pollution in our planet people need to be more aware of what these problems are and about the severe damages that they are causing our planet. Before industrialization really jumped into place and had an effect on large cities, nature had its own way of cleaning up its own air and itself. Wind scattered gases, rain washed many substances and the rest dissolved into the ground; while plants absorbed carbon dioxide and made it into oxygen. With big cities growing more every time and with more towns that were becoming more industrialized a lot of more waste began to be released into the environment and the atmosphere and soon this was more than enough for nature to handle. In order to stop and reduce pollution people need to understand the damage that it is causing our environment and our planet as well. People need to be more aware of how they can help out and do their part in reducing these problems that are causing our planet to die slowly with people not even noticing it.
Nowadays environmental pollution plays a very important role in the biggest questions in our everyday life. It is easy to find there is so much trash around us even in our beautiful campus. For example, these days I usually see some cans, wine bottles, and some paper trash like packaging bags in my way to class. I wake up every day with a smiling face, but at the time I see them, I can not smile anymore. I think no one can stand the green trees, the red flowers growing in the sea of the trash.