514 ChaPter^10
ness interests. The country now witnessed a flood of federal laws to protect
air, water, drinking water, and manage pollution and toxic chemical waste.
During Nixon’s “environmental decade,” industrial and municipal emissions
dropped, water and air became cleaner, automobile emissions lowered, prob-
lematic waste dumps shut down and were replaced with better facilities, and
for the first time waste management and recycling became professional busi-
nesses, as anyone familiar with Tony Soprano would know. It should be noted,
however, that these accomplishments were not completely successful because
they did not provide systematic solutions to chronic and increasing environ-
mental problems. For example, emissions per vehicle dropped but the number
of cars on the streets and miles people drove increased. Industrial pollution
dropped, but the combined pollution of more and more smaller sources rose.
Pollution of streams did not improve because the EPA did not strictly enforce
regulations aimed at big farms letting fertilizers and other chemicals soak into
sources of drinking water. What is more, Congress implemented statutes
designed not to control agricultural pollutants. “With few exceptions—leaded
gasoline, PCPs, and a very few pesticides—none of these policies were
designed to systematically reduce the actual production and use of serious
pollutants,” as the environmental scholar Richard N.L. Andrews explained.
Then, things got worse. A backlash against limited gains were made in the
1970s were completely destroyed by a conservative backlash against environ-
mental policy in the 1980s during the neoconservative reign of Ronald
Reagan. Reagan and his industrial allies were fundamentally opposed to all
federal regulation. Giving in to the demands of the polluters, Reagan radi-
cally dismantled federal environmental regulation. Rather than implement a
moderately conservative reform agenda, the Reagan administration dismissed
environmental protection as an obstacle to Capitalism. Backed by a massive
lobbying campaign against government “overregulation,” his administration
vowed to stop the “regulatory burden” of the state and to facilitate freedom
of enterprise and limitless opportunities for so-called “cowboy capitalists” to
profit from the abuse and manipulation of the environment. Reagan’s pro-
business, anti-government budget director David Stockman issued a “mani-
festo” that predicted a “Republican economic Dunkirk” unless Reagan
removed environmental regulations imposed on industry. Stockman listed
over a dozen EPA programs that would “sweep through the industrial econ-
omy with gale force.” Stockman loved to exaggerate. The regulations, por-