Clean Air For California

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.

Editor Michael Burger brings together a comprehensive assessment of how one statutory provision – Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, “International Air Pollution” – provides the executive branch of the U.S. government with the authority, procedures, and mechanisms to work with the states and private sector to take national climate action.

America's air quality is better today than ever before in modern history and continues to steadily improve. How did this remarkable turnaround come about? Basing his conclusions on a painstaking compilation of long-term empirical data on air quality and emissions data extending from the pre- federalization era to the present (some dating back a century), Goklany challenges the orthodoxy that credits federal regulation for improving air quality. He shows that the air had been getting cleaner prior to—and probably would have continued to improve regardless of—federalization. States and localities, after all, have always been engaged in a race to improve the quality of life, which means different things at different stages of economic development. Goklany’s empirical data refute once and for all the race-to-the-bottom rationale for centralized federal regulation. Moreover, technological advances and consumer preferences continue to play important roles in improving air quality. Goklany accordingly offers a regulatory reform agenda that would improve upon the economic efficiency and environmental sensitivity of air quality regulation.