The Green Regulatory State

Over the years, the environmental lobby has advanced a considerable number of laws—leading to the passage of hundreds of environmental statutes. But the legacy does not end there; a great many of these laws require federal agencies to issue regulations on an ongoing basis. The following analysis employs several tools to assess the scope and growth of the environmental regulatory state. It shows that environmental regulations comprise a considerable size of the total federal regulatory agenda, and the impact expands annually in the absence of congressional activity.

First, it shows that environmental regulations comprise nearly 30 percent of all economically significant regulations submitted for regulatory review—making it the largest area of regulation by this measure. In addition, during the years in which environmental activists complained that Congress was doing little on the environment, environmental regulations continued to grow substantially.