Overview
Congress empowered the Environmental Protection Agency on the theory that only a national agency that is insulated from accountability to voters could produce the scientifically grounded pollution rules needed to save a careless public from its own filth. In this provocative book, David Schoenbrod explains how his experience as an environmental advocate brought him to this startling realization: letting EPA dictate to the nation is a mistake.
Through a series of gripping and illuminating anecdotes from his own career, the author reveals the EPA to be an agency that, under Democrats and Republicans alike, delays good rules, imposes bad ones, and is so big, muscle-bound, and remote that it does unnecessary damage to our society. EPA stays in power, he says, because it enables elected legislators to evade responsibility by hiding behind appointed bureaucrats. The best environmental rules—those that have done the most good—have come when Congress had to take responsibility or from states and localities rather than the EPA.
With the passion of an authentic environmentalist, Schoenbrod makes a sensible plea for “bottom-up” environmental protection now. The responsibility for pollution control belongs not in agencies but in legislatures, and usually not at the federal level but rather closer to home.
Editorials
New York Post
"A powerful and far-reaching indictment of the nation''s efforts at environmental regulation and the protection of the environment. What makes this book so significant and separates it from many critiques of the environmental movement is that author David Schoenbrod is an insider''s insider. . . . Simply put, the nation would be better served if every journalist on the environmental beat and every TV talking head were required to read this book before turning the next environmental press release into another breathless scare story about the latest environmental or public health crisis. . . . It also happens to be accessible for anyone interested in the subject."—R.J. Smith, New York Post— R.J. Smith
New York Sun
“A scorching brief against the EPA and Congress’s capitulation to it.”—Nicholas Thompson, New York Sun— Nicholas Thompson