The Divided States of America by Donald F. Kettl

Author:Donald F. Kettl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-12-18T16:00:00+00:00

There are significant differences among the states in environmental performance, but there have also been big shifts among the states over time. Since 2000, some states, led by New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts, California, and New York, have made major improvements (as measured in the 2014 ACE index). Other states not only have lagged behind but have also actually lost ground, with Rhode Island and Alaska falling the most, followed by Arizona, Missouri, and Colorado. In fact, the average change over this fifteen-year period was a four-point improvement—but there’s a fifty-point spread between the state with the greatest improvement (New Jersey) and the state with the greatest loss (Rhode Island), as figure 7.2 shows.

These shifts have led to a major debate. As the role of the states has increased in environmental policy, some states have raced either to the top (with tougher environmental enforcement to produce a cleaner environment) or toward the bottom (with more attention to relaxing environmental standards to promote industrial development). Many states have enthusiastically embraced the development of renewable energy, which could help fuel substantial environmental progress.25 But since the rise of federal delegation of environmental management to the states, others have forgone environmental concerns in favor of increased property values and reduced tax rates. Responsibility for environmental management has offered these states an opportunity, as an article from the Brookings Institution put it, to “race to the bottom line.”26

The debate about whether federal reliance on the states has increased environmental inequality remains unresolved. In part, there is no way to know what environmental improvements would have emerged had the federal government maintained all enforcement power. Just as has been the case on virtually every major domestic policy issue, it has been a politically easier case for the federal government to define policy but share administrative responsibility with the states. But perhaps more important, the bigger issue is that federal reliance on the states has led to greater disparity among the states on environmental performance.

FIGURE 7.2. There have been big changes in environmental performance over time. Source: Frost and Fiorino, “The State Air, Climate, and Energy (ACE) Index.”

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