tories and power plants continued to emit pollutants
such as sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) and nitrogen oxides.
Automobile-induced smog contained nitrogen ox-
ides as well as ozone and heavy metals.
Continuing and New Air-Pollution Issues Several
air-quality issues remained unresolved during the
1980’s. Acid rain generated by SO 2 and nitrogen ox-
ide emissions from electric power plants remained
an issue throughout the decade. The issue gradually
captured public interest, as the damage acid rain was
causing became apparent. In addition, automobile
emissions continued to degrade air quality. In some
areas, such as Los Angeles, air quality showed little
improvement during the decade, although catalytic
converters had some impact on automobile emis-
sions. Increasing traffic volume combined with local
topography in Los Angeles and elsewhere to make
improving air quality a difficult task to accomplish.
During the 1980’s, two additional aspects of air
pollution started to become more noticeable. The
harmful impact of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) on
the ozone layer in Earth’s stratosphere first became
evident in the 1970’s. By 1985, a hole in the ozone
layer over the Antarctic was noted. The ozone layer
intercepts ultraviolet solar radiation, which would
otherwise harm many living creatures—including
humans—when it reached the surface of the planet.
In 1987, the United States and other nations signed
the Montreal Protocol, which banned CFCs.
Some scientists also noted the impact of the emis-
sion of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) arising from burning
fossil fuels in causing global warming. CO 2 is often
not classified as a pollutant, so global warming is
technically not a species of air pollution. Without
CO 2 in the atmosphere, there would be no life on
Earth. Plants would be unable to survive, because
they depend on CO 2 as a component of photosyn-
thesis, and animals would run out of oxygen, be-
cause there would be no plants to replenish its sup-
ply in the atmosphere. Earth, moreover, would
probably be too cold to be inhabited. However, the
increased amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere helped
create a blanket effect known as the “greenhouse ef-
fect” that led to a potentially dangerous increase in
global temperatures. During the 1980’s, scientists
were only beginning to raise the question of global
warming, but it would become an increasingly im-
portant environmental issue in the years ahead. The
decade’s two Republican administrations both de-
nied the existence of global warming, so no govern-
mental action was taken concerning this issue dur-
ing the 1980’s.Republican Initiatives Members of the Ronald Rea-
gan administration sought to roll back environmen-
tal regulations they saw as harmful to competition or
that concentrated too much power in the hands of
the federal government. James G. Watt, the secre-
tary of the interior, and Anne M. Gorsuch (later
Burford), the head of the EPA, were critical of en-
vironmental laws and regulations and worked to
weaken their impact. Reagan himself tried to appear
more neutral than his appointees, a wise approach
given that most Americans continued to be support-
ive of measures to improve air quality. The Reagan
administration applied strict cost-benefit standards
to environmental regulations, including those gov-
erning air quality. For example, regulations de-
signed to reduce SO 2 emissions from coal-fired elec-
tric power plants were evaluated in terms of the
potential costs to a company of implementing the
regulations, including potential job losses that
might result from higher operating costs.
The cost-benefit analyses did not take into account
environmental costs, such as the damage caused by
SO 2 when it mixed with water vapor in the atmo-
sphere to produce acid rain. Nor did it take into ac-
count long-term costs to American business resulting
from environmental damage or the potential of envi-
ronmentally friendly policies to create new jobs and
new business opportunities—an idea that was un-
heard-of in the 1980’s, when environmentalism was
widely seen as simply opposed to corporate success.
Its narrow definition of costs and benefits led the Rea-
gan administration to oppose all forms of command-
and-control environmental regulation.
Instead of command-and-control environmental
regulation, Reagan appointees to the EPA advocated
market-based incentives to improve the environ-
ment. Using this approach, a company that de-
creased the emissions of regulated substances such
as SO 2 was eligible for tax abatements. This incen-
tive approach was seen as more cost effective than
was command and control. The effectiveness of an
incentive-based approach to air pollution continues
to be debated, but it did produce some successes.
Overall, however, the Reagan administration’s ap-
proach to air pollution was to ignore the problem as
unimportant.46 Air pollution The Eighties in America