University of Virginia Library

A Better Use Of The Carrot

Environmentalists, who have of late been
waging a losing battle against the nation's
encroaching pollution in the face of the
current uproar over the energy-fuel shortage,
received some reinforcement last week from
the Supreme Court and the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA).

By a four-to-four tie vote, the High Court
upheld the U.S. Court of Appeals decision, in
effect decreeing that air throughout the
country must remain at least as pure as it is
now, regardless of what any present or future
standards set at the federal level require.

The legal controversy arose over the Clean
Air Act of 1970, which orders all states to
submit to EPA for approval plans for
achieving air quality standards established by
that agency. The Court of Appeals had sided
with environmental groups in Washington
who demanded that the state's plan for
meeting federal air quality standards not be
approved until the plan insured that
deterioration in the present air quality would
not be permitted anywhere.

Critics of the court's decision claimed that
it would saddle the og-bound cities and
industrial areas with the level of pollution
they now suffer, because it would keep
industries from moving to other less polluted
areas. They said, too, that it would prevent
relieving the congested urban areas, because
planned cities such as Columbia, Md., would
no longer be permitted, since they would raise
the level of pollution in previously
unpopulated regions.

The High Court, however, ruled that
Congress had passed the Clean Air Act with
the intention of preventing any deterioration
in the present quality of the air anywhere.

EPA struck a further blow for clean air on
last Friday by reviewing the state's plans for
cleaning up the air in the cities, proposing
such rather dramatic measures as prohibiting
auto traffic in Los Angeles and reducing
driving by 60 per cent in New Jersey by 1977.
The agency approved New York's clean air
plan which would ban taxi-cruising and charge
tolls at various bridges in the city. Limits on
gasoline sales were also requested to help
achieve EPA's goal, which it ambitiously
declares is to drive a wedge between the
inseparable combo of the American and his
automobile.

The agency's campaign against cars almost
immediately drew scorn and criticism from
mayors of several of the country's largest
cities. Their criticism was not unfounded,
either, because it emphasizes that Washington
is not truly committed to taking effective
measures to meet the air quality standards
that are set by its own agency, EPA.

While raising air quality standards until
most automobiles cannot possibly meet them,
thus requiring the elimination of auto traffic
in certain areas as EPA proposed last week,
the government has allowed auto
manufacturers to postpone their own deadline
for complying with federal standards.

At the same time Congressional funding
for the only possible substitute for auto
traffic, mass transit, remains tied up in
committee where lobbyists for more highways
are seeking to prevent the use of Congress'
highway trust fund to finance construction of
in-city mass transit systems.

As is so often the case, the government's
approach to the environment resembles the
carrot-and-stick, with a somewhat over-liberal
use of the stick in the form of harsh
restrictions on automobile use, and an
inadequate use of the carrot–incentives– to
offer the cities reasons to restrict automobile
transportation so drastically in the interest of
clean air. With any further highway
construction severely scrutinized and funding
made readily available to cities for building
mass transit systems, the previously
outrageous proposals of EPA would become
realistic goals to achieve, rather than further
injury to already beleaguered cities.