Evaluating the impact of past environmental policy while considering and anticipating its lasting implications for the future is a difficult task given a constantly changing political landscape. Editors Vig and Kraft, with their distinguished team of contributors, continue to rise to the challenge, helping students make sense of the underlying trends, institutional shortcomings, and policy dilemmas that shape the contentious world of environmental politics.

In this new sixth edition, all chapters have been thoroughly updated and revised, taking into account policy actions of the Bush administration and other significant developments in recent U.S. and international environmental policy. Loyal users will be happy to see new case studies, new scholarship, incorporation of new polls, reviews of recent court rulings and agency decisions, and coverage of Congressional, presidential and state actions.

Among other prominent policy actions, revised chapters cover:

• recent controversies over the use of science in agency decision making;
• new analysis of experiments in industrial greening, with special attention given to the success of voluntary corporate initiatives;
• controversies over the New Source Review provisions of the Clean Air Act;
• the Bush administration’s Clear Skies initiative;
• proposals for more extensive use of “cap and trade” systems for carbon dioxide and mercury emissions;
• actions by OMB in oversight of agency regulation;
• controversies over natural resource policy decisions, including provisions for drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, national forest policies and proposed new rules for roadless areas, the use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, and proposals to revise the Endangered Species Act;
• major developments in international environmental policy and global actions on sustainable development.

Part I. Environmental Policy and Politics in Transition
1. Environmental Policy from the 1970s to the Twenty-First Century, Michael E. Kraft and Norman J. Vig
2. Power to the States: The Promise and Pitfalls of Decentralization, Barry G. Rabe
3. Environmental Sustainability and Urban Life in America, Robert Paehlke
4. Maintaining Presence: Environmental Advocacy and the Permanent Campaign, Christopher J. Bosso and Deborah Lynn Guber

Part II. Federal Institutions and Policy Change
5. Presidential Leadership and the Environment, Norman J. Vig
6. Environmental Policy in Congress: From Consensus to Gridlock, Michael E. Kraft
7. Environmental Policy in the Courts, Rosemary O’Leary
8. Improving Environmental Regulation at the EPA: The Challenge in Balancing Politics, Policy, and Science, Walter A. Rosenbaum

Part III. Public Policy Dilemmas
9. Economics, Incentives, and Environmental Policy, A. Myrick Freeman III
10. Risk-Based Decision Making, Richard N. L. Andrews
11. Environmental Justice: Normative Concerns, Empirical Evidence, and Government Action, Evan J. Ringquist
12. The Greening of Industry: Combining Government Regulation and Voluntary Strategies, Daniel Press and Daniel A. Mazmanian

Part IV. Global and Domestic Issues and Controversies
13. Climate Policy on the Installment Plan, Lamont C. Hempel
14. A Return to Traditional Priorities in Natural Resource Policies, William R. Lowry
15. Environment, Population, and the Developing World, Richard J. Tobin
16. International Trade and Environmental Regulation, David Vogel

Part V. Conclusion
17. Toward Sustainable Development?, Norman J. Vig and Michael E. Kraft

EACH CHAPTER INCLUDES A LIST OF KEY WEBSITES

“Vig and Kraft’s book is among the most important texts in environmental policy today. It is comprehensive, clear, up-to date, and highly readable. My undergraduate and graduate students like it very much, and with every new edition I learn something new. I highly recommend this volume.”

“Norman Vig and Michael Kraft have compiled a wonderful array of expert scholars in their latest edition of Environmental Policy. Notably, contributors provide students with straightforward, accessible, yet thorough analysis of the dilemmas facing environmental policy in the 21st century.”

“This up-to-date anthology continues to be a winner; Environmental Policy is an outstanding text for undergraduate environmental courses. The authors of the chapters know their stuff. They combine description, analysis, and evaluation, and present their materials with rigor, clarity, and balance. Collectively, the chapters take the reader on a stimulating, insightful, and comprehensive journey through the realm of environmental politics, policymaking, and policy. Historical, comparative, and international perspectives enhance its value.”

Norman J. Vig is Winifred and Atherton Bean Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Emeritus at Carleton College, where he taught political science and environmental studies for 37 years. He has written extensively on environmental policy, science and technology policy, and comparative politics and is coeditor with Regina S. Axelrod and David Leonard Downie of The Global Environment: Institutions, Law and Policy, Second Edition (2004) and of Green Giants? Environmental Policies of the United States and the European Union (2004) with Michael G. Faure.

Michael E. Kraft is professor of political science and public affairs and Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. He is the author of, among other works, Environmental Policy and Politics, Third Edition (2003) and Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives (2004) with Scott Furlong, and coeditor of Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy (1999) with Daniel A. Mazmanian.