Book Review of “The Politics of Air Pollution” By George Gonzalez
The Politics of Air Pollution by George Gonzalez
Introduction
Background
George Gonzalez is a renowned assistant professor based in the Department of Political Science at the University of Miami. He has been an avid advocate of the inner political workings of the environmental policy in the United States. The book entitled the politics of air pollution delves into the establishment of policies that govern emission standards with a specialization on California as a key study. The book generally describes California as one the leading states in the promotion of automobile emission standards.
As such, the book focuses on highlighting the manner with which influential stakeholders, alter policies on the management of carbon emissions in order to ensure that policies that support their independent economic gains are implemented. As such, the paper’s main aim is similarly themed with the objective of finding out whether the political and economic elites of the automotive industry are grossly manipulating the public policy making on the management of carbon emissions to their independent interests and objectives.
Summary of key arguments
The book beings with a description of California’s rise to the pole position in the promotion of environmental conservation activities. It describes how it was the first state to implement automobile emission standards as early as 1967, and that remain the most dependable to date in the whole of North America. The majority of the stringent policies have been noted to be enacted in 1998. In addition to that, the author describes how the early 90’s saw the revision of emission standards, in collaboration with other states, which rippled all the way to congress. The federal government was put to the task of tightening the automobile emission standards, which saw the introduction of the Clean Air Act.
The book sheds light on the entities that have determined the direction that was taken during the creation of emission standards. Chief to his research was the elaboration of policy analysts from the states. It also delves into how they developed these policies through the focus on the part played by stakeholders such as policy makers, public officials, interest groups, and even scientists.
The research done by the author presents insight on how automobile emission policies in the state are sourced from the public’s political preferences to road transport and the preservation of air. He presents a picture that depicts how a community is struggling to satisfy two contradicting ambitions, between the reduction of pollution and the technological controls of the automobile industry.
Critical to the steps being made in the regulation of automobile emission in this state are elite businessmen who have independent economic ambitions that focus on increasing the value of their property and securing a bigger portion of the consumer base found within the nation. They have been loosely dubbed at the “growth coalition.”
The political force behind the revision of air preservation entity comes from the growth coalition. However, it bears a huge concentration on the Los Angeles basin. The process that dictates the automotive emission policies can be elaborated as a negotiation procedure between nation economic powers and locally based economic elites that are encompassed with within the care industry. The attendees of the meeting range from manufacturers of the cars to the producers of oil and tires. It is a negotiation process that is hosted by organizations that specialize in policy planning.
It provides a manner through which their corporate influencers of policies to create proposals, consensus, and entities that bend public policy to their will. It comes at somewhat of a surprise as policy specialists, and scientists are ancillary to these groups as well as the economic superpowers that supersede their recommendations. The involvement of such type of experts and scientists are included in this policy planning measures only if their views and goals are the same as of those belonging to the growth coalition.
Not only the aspect highlighted, the organizations that are in charge of planning policies, collaborate with the economic superpowers to come up with a consensus of a political nature that enables the debate on air emission controls to be carried out in social clubs and private boardrooms. The author adds on that the process that manages the formulation of policies works in tandem with the way that the economic elites dictate the public opinion on the matter.
The book begins with the content and contours that are encompassed in the policies that manage automobile emissions in California. The author bases the elaboration of these policies in a politically motivated economic perspective. It is an approach that enables him to understand how the automobile emission regulatory leadership influences the associate groups at both an economic and political level.
The groups that are of interest to the author are inclusive of oil industries, automobile industries, the public, and the infamous economic elite. The second segment of the book is based on the process that elaborates the making of policies in California. It is inclusive of the cradle of the process during the 1940sto its sudden stalemate in the 1960s. the relevance of the formulation of the automobile emission era in California at an early age shoe the origins of the trajectory and contours that laid way to the means the present day regime governs these policies.
Evaluation/analysis
The book is centered on the ambition to enable the society understand the coercive nature of the 1% in the development of the nation as a whole. It is something that happens in all major industries, and perhaps the specialization in the automobile industry’s attempt to reduce global warming goes to show the relentlessness of these ulterior motivated groups. These groups have selfish interests centered on progressing their financial and property gain and have no limit to the type of avenue to exploit. The book elaborates the local concerns with respect to the economy by the suburban, and urban residents of California are different.
On one hand are the local economic interests that perceive growth by increasing the value of land for those who own large portions. A group includes large landowners, bankers, and real estate attorney or agents as well as land developers. An increase in the consumer base to this effect is considered a significant objective of the leadership of regionally bound media utilities and outlets.
On the opposite corner are the middle class, suburban residents, poor urban citizens and the working class, who bear the lump sum of the cost of the development of land policies that is encompassed in increased rent, traffic and neighborhood crowding, growing taxes. It is inclusive of the most relevant cost to this review, and that is environmental degradation, which is experienced but this latter group through the growing increase of toxic, water and air pollution.
The much more well off upper-class segment other societies have the capacity to deal with these detriments in their isolated and exclusive neighborhoods in which they reside in. The analysis of the manner in which benefits and costs have been distributed in the growth of the local economy, the author presents evidence of how the significant benefits fall to the locally oriented economic elites, with the cost of this development being incurred by the lower classes of the middle, working and poor members of metropolitan regions.
It is a distribution of benefits and costs that enable the influential elite groups to mislead the rest of their respective communities. The aspect is displayed in their campaigns to underline that the developments aim to establish a greater good for the masses. Additionally, they strive to ensure that the latter remain quiescent in the event detrimental consequences of their influence.
The book highlights a manner through which public opinion is manipulated is by addressing the negative influences of the economic developments at margins of high-level regulations and legislation while at the same time ensuring that those responsible for these negative effects are not held accountable. As such, the air pollution regulations and policies of California do not provide the issue of land distributions and growth of the population. They are focused on managing emissions from new and existing sources of air degradation.
The fuel and automobile standards from California have marginally influenced the oil and automobile industries.it is because the regulatory regime of this state has not replaced the automobile as a dependable means of transport in the region nor gasoline as the main fuel of auto motives. The regime governing the state’s air pollution does not reduce the number of vehicles sold nor the ones allowed into the state. It also does not reduce the distance traveled by motorists not does it micromanage the type of fuel that is allowed in the state.
In addition to the tenet, the federal and state governments are still subsidizing and encouraging vehicle and fuel consumption through the maintenance and expansion of sophisticated road and highway systems. The influence of the political elite is even seen in the manner with which automotive related conglomerates have sabotaged policies that would have enabled the development of the railway system in the state. It is because of the means by which it would reduce the grip the automobile industry has on transportation.
The planned, and existing railway systems are, instead, acting as complementariness of the automobile industry without the intention to supplant its application. In addition, General Motors, Firestone Tire, and Rubber, as well as Standard Oil, were among the firms that were convicted in front of a federal grand jury in conspiring to damage rail transportation infrastructure in several major cities, inclusive of Los Angeles in 1949.
The economically and politically elite ensure that the policies enacted are based on emission abatement technologies instead of reducing the use of vehicles, which is a much more effective means of reducing air pollution emission. The public incurs the majority of the monetary investment allocated to the technological solutions provided. In addition to that, the benefits concerning the reduction of emissions are counteracted by the wholesome rise in the number of vehicles on roads as well as the total of miles covered by a motorist, which is on the rise.
Further evidence of the gross politics involved in the management of air pollution emissions is shown in the manner with which the author describes the basis of the fuel emission policies in California. He dubs it-reformulated gasoline. An approach is politically motivated and developed by the oil and automobile industries. A specific formula ensures that reformulated gas that is sold in the state is 92 to 96 percent gasoline with the rest being an additive, which in most cases is methyl tertiary butyl ether.
In addition, the California Air Resources Board, which acts at the agency run by the state in charge of elaborating fuel and automobile emission standards, were involved in mandating 2 percent of sale of cars to be electronically powered in 1998, with a gradual increase as the years elapse.
The plan was enacted in 1990 that also include 5 percent and 10 percent sale target in 2001 and 2003 respectively. The body has long abandoned these two targets. It was at a time when policies on air emission control were the talk of the state, and this was a plan designed to mislead the public that the relevant authorities were putting in place action to address the environmental issue. It comes as no surprise that the target was event reduced to 2 percent by the time 2003 commenced. A decade later, the public had already moved on from the issues, leaving the responsibility of contributing to policy formulation to the minority ruling 1 percent.
Other incidences of how the economic and political elite continue to be seen in the attempt to preserve the earth with respect to air pollution to date. Steps to ensure legally that the automobile industry mass produces and markets different sources of fuel, as well as alternative vehicles, have been continuously watered down by automobile and oil industries, working in tandem with other invested industrial elements. They ensured that the Environmental Protection Agency representative and environmentalist alike failed to mandate the sale and production of these alternative fuel vehicles all through the decade in the 90’s.
Conclusion
The politics of air pollution provides a critical revelation of how the modern industrial age truly works. It is an issue that is not isolated to the preservation of the environment alone but key industries in different states and nations as well. The revelation of the way air pollution preservation entities has been blocked by the ruling political and economic elite, shows the fragility of the political entities that govern the world.
The book provides dependable evidence that shows, how the automobile and oil industries have been going out of their way to ensure that the regulations that they ought to abide to are debated and implemented in the manner that suits they best. It is an issue that has been faced over the last two decades, with these ulterior motivated parties tightening their grasp on the throat of freedom and fairness of political rule and democracy. For one, the issues at hand have been displayed as mere efforts to curtail development.
However, there is some limitation when it comes to the information of political policy manipulation in the present day. Perhaps it is due to the date it was published that determined the information included. Another limitation is the lack of solutions to these problems. The author goes out of his way to blow the whistle on the manipulative tendencies of the 1 percent by using the policies of the management of air pollution in California but does not propose the means through which the public can intervene in the process.
Overall, I am in agreement with the author’s sentiments. Fellow human beings paradoxically oppose the success of air pollution. However, the benefits and / or effects are felt across the board. The existence of a sizeable profit margin by a few individuals does not necessarily give rise to an indication of a better environment. Albeit the greed displayed, the families of the proponents cannot escape the fate constructed by their kin at the expense of profit.
The lack of support on the issues portrayed has, for some time, being dismissed on the grounds of hearsay. However, the long fabled effects of pollution are being felt across the board. It may not be too late to change, and a step in the right direction is pertinent to the survival of species across the globe.
References
Barrow, C. (1998). state theory and the dependency principle; An institutionalist critique of climate business concept. Journal of Economic Issues, 107-144.
Dryzek, M. (1996). Political inclusion and the dynamics of democratization. American Political Science Review, 475-487.
Gonzalez, G. (2005). The politics of Air pollution: Urban Growth, Ecological modernization, and Symbolic Inclusion. Albany: University of New York Press.
