Chapter 3 - The Assault on Environmental Enforcement
Attacking the law by undermining its enforcement
Nationwide, industry lobbyists and ideological opponents of
regulation have been making strides in their quest to weaken
environmental enforcement. In recent years, they have quietly
shifted the strategy of their attacks, abandoning efforts to
repeal popular laws outright and instead concentrating on undermining
enforcement, focusing on low-profile, technical, regulatory changes
and behind-the-scenes lobbying to affect their ambitious agenda.
This shift has enabled opponents of environmental regulation
to escape the charge that they’re “against the environment”,
while at the same time aggressively working to dismantle the
critical, regulatory-enforcement framework. With this strategy
industry opponents are able to publicly laud the underlying law
to clean the air or save the redwoods, while being quietly confident
they have weakened its enforcement.
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