Environmental Protection

The negative effects of human activity on the environment are certainly there for all to see. Air pollution, deforestation, plastic pollution, warming oceans, rising sea levels, species extinction, intensifying storms, contaminated drinking water, and resource depletion are just some of the byproducts of living in an industrialized society. And even if you live in an area that is not industrialized, you still must deal with the environmental hazards that others have caused. But as bad of shape as the environment is in – and it is bad – it would be far worse without the statutes, rules, and regulations that form the basis of environmental protection in the United States and around the world. Rivers catching fire, dense smog hanging over cities, and sludge-filled lakes and ponds are just some examples of the state of the environment before the enactment of sweeping environmental protection laws.

The field of environmental protection is closely related to environmental conservation and environmental law. All three aim to conserve natural resources, preserve the existing natural environment, repair damage, and reverse negative environmental trends.[1] Each of these, however, has its own particular practices, specialties, and career paths, and they approach these goals from different viewpoints. Conservationists are great at bringing environmental issues to the forefront and lobbying the government to enact laws that will protect the environment. Environmental lawyers excel at interpreting those environmental laws for clients that can range from the federal government to private industry. But in the United States, it is the individuals in the field of environmental protection – primarily working in federal and state environmental protection agencies – that formulate the regulations that conservationists have pushed for and environmental lawyers interpret. 

Environmental Protection Agency

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the federal government agency responsible for protecting human health and the environment. The EPA creates and enforces environmental laws, inspects the environment, and provides technical support to minimize threats and support recovery planning. The EPA, among other things:

• Conducts research on important pollutants and on the impact of these pollutants on the total environment.
• Monitors the condition of the environment.
• Establishes quantitative environmental baselines, which are critical for efforts to measure adequately the success or failure of pollution abatement efforts.
• Sets and enforces standards for air and water quality and for individual pollutants.[2]

The EPA is the reason why, at a certain point, builders stopped using asbestos, manufacturers stopped producing lead paint, car companies stopped building cars with engines that could only run on leaded gasoline, and trash haulers stopped dumping hazardous waste in rivers and streams. In recent years, the EPA has turned its attention and considerable authority to address the related issues of climate change and global warming.

Environmental Laws

As stated above, the EPA is in charge of creating and enforcing environmental laws. The EPA is called a regulatory agency because Congress authorizes the EPA to write regulations that explain the technical, operational, and legal details necessary to implement laws. Regulations are mandatory requirements that can apply to individuals, businesses, state or local governments, non-profit institutions, or others.[3]

The key environmental laws in the United States include:

• The Clean Air Act (1070)
• The Clean Water Act (1977)
• The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (1980)
• The Emergency Planning & Community Right-to-Know Act (1986)
• The Endangered Species Act (1973)
• Federal Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act (1972)
• The National Environmental Policy Act (1969)
• The Pollution Prevention Act (1990)
• The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (1976)
• The Safe Drinking Water Act (1974)
• The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (1986)
• The Toxic Substances Control Act (1976)

When these Acts are passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, they have broad sweeping provisions but lack the specifics of how those provisions will be implemented. In general, acts and statutes delegate responsibility to fill in the gaps to government agencies that then enact regulations to address the fine points and ambiguities. In the case of environmental laws, it is the EPA that drafts and issues the regulations that actually allow these laws to be implemented and ultimately enforced. In addition to these federal laws, each state issues its own environmental protection laws and regulations and has its own state environmental protection agency to enforce them.

Science, Law, or Protection

Given the wide range of potential career options available in the field of environmental protection, it is hard to recommend one path over another. Obviously, it depends on what you want to pursue. But even if you chose law or policy instead of a pure scientific role (such as chemist, biologist, ecologist, etc.), you should still have a strong science background. This snapshot focuses on specific environmental protection resources, but you should also make use of the available environmental science, environmental law, and environmental justice resources, so you get a more complete picture. When it comes to “protection,” one might say that any organization that is concerned about the environment – whether restoring coral reefs or cleaning up plastic pollution – is protecting it. But for purposes of this snapshot, protection means the regulatory and legal protection that can only be put into place by a federal or state government agency.

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Citations

1. Environmental Protection, The Law Dictionary.
2. The Origins of the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency.
3. Regulations, Environmental Protection Agency.