“Whither We Are Tending”: Interrogating the Retrenchment Narrative in U.S. Environmental Policy

Abstract

IN PREVIOUS WORK, WE ARGUED that much of modern environmental policymaking has been characterized by “green drift,” a “slow and even halting general movement in policy directions favored by environmentalists.”1 The logic of the argument is that the legislative gridlock that has held on most environmental issues since the late 1980s has locked into place the raft of pro-environment, “golden-era” laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s. On many issues, despite growing opposition from business interests and repeated conservative assaults over the past 35 years, environmentalists have held the high ground defined by the most recent layer of statutes outlining the contours of the modern green state. We did not fully develop the green drift argument, leaving it as an important implication of our work and a counterpoint to the then-prominent “death of environmentalism” thesis advanced by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus.2 Judith Layzer’s Open for Business offers a critical perspective on the green drift hypothesis, developing the strongest version of what we call the “retrenchment narrative” in environmental policy.3 This narrative is quite common among environmental groups and in the media. For instance, the Natural Resources Defense Council stated that “[o]ver the course of the first term, [the George W. Bush] administration led the most thorough and destructive campaign against America’s environmental safeguards in the past 40 years.” As Bush prepared to leave office, Sierra Club spokesperson Josh Dorner commented that Bush “has undone decades if not a century of progress on the environment.”4