The Declining Effectiveness of Environmental Politics since the 1970s

Over the last several decades a large percentage of the American public has realized that our world faces unprecedented environ- mental problems, and is working to fix these problems. The growing public concern led to monumental pieces of environmental legislation being passed in the 1970s to fix environmental problems but, since then, nothing to that magnitude has been done at a political level. I have done an analysis of the effectiveness of environmental legislation and environmental regulations that have been passed since 1969, and the level of public concern around environmental issues in order to determine if there has been a decline in effectiveness of environmental politics and if so, what the reasons for it are. My research has shown that even in the face of growing public concern and strong activism, there has been a decline in effectiveness of environmental work at a political level. I also found that there are a variety of reasons for the decline including; the corporate backlash against environmentalism, deregulation of industry, and a shift from a “stick” approach to regulation to a “carrot” approach. By uncovering the reasons for the decreasing effectiveness in environmental politics, we can better understand how to improve the effectiveness of environmental politics in the future.