Toxic Loopholes: Failures and Future Prospects for Environmental Law [Paperback]

Investigates US environmental laws and the EPA to explain why they have failed to clean up the country's land, air and water.Toxic Loopholes investigates U.S. environmental laws and the EPA, which was charged with their enforcement, to explain why they have failed to arrest the nations rising environmental crime wave and clean up countrys land, air, and water. It illustrates how weak laws, legal loopholes, and regulatory negligence harm everyday people struggling to clean up their communities.Toxic Loopholes investigates U.S. environmental laws and the EPA, which was charged with their enforcement, to explain why they have failed to arrest the nations rising environmental crime wave and clean up countrys land, air, and water. It illustrates how weak laws, legal loopholes, and regulatory negligence harm everyday people struggling to clean up their communities.The EPA was established to enforce the environmental laws Congress enacted during the 1970s. Yet today lethal toxins still permeate our environment, causing widespread illness and even death. Toxic Loopholes investigates these laws, and the agency charged with their enforcement, to explain why they have failed to arrest the nations rising environmental crime wave and clean up the countrys land, air, and water. This book illustrates how weak laws, legal loopholes, and regulatory negligence harm everyday people struggling to clean up their communities. It demonstrates that our current system of environmental protection pacifies the public with a false sense of security, dampens environmental activism, and erects legal barricades and bureaucratic barriers to shield powerful polluters from the wrath of their victims. After examining the corrosive economic and political forces undermining environmental law making and enforcement, the final chapters assess the potential for real improvement and the possibility of building cooperative international agreements to confront the rising tide of ecological perilsl£E