Valuing clean air : the EPA and the economics of environmental protection Introduction : save EPA The costs of pollution The doer : power in implementation A balancing act : regulatory review Putting the profit motive to work : regulatory reform Are you tough enough : deregulation Markets for bads : cap and trade and the new environmentalism Epilogue : the EPA and a changing climate. The passage of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 marked a sweeping transformation in American politics. In a few short years the environmental movement pushed Republican and Democratic elected officials to articulate a right to clean air as part of a bevy of new federal guarantees. Charged with delivering on those promises the EPA represented a bold assertion that the federal government had a responsibility to protect the environment the authority to command private business to reduce their pollution and the capacity to dictate how they did so. But revolutions are always contested and the starburst of environmental concern that propelled the Clean Air Act and the EPA coincided with economic convulsions that shook the liberal state to its core. As powerful businesses pressed to roll back regulations elected officials from both parties questioned whether the nation could keep its environmental promises. Pushing on the EPA adopted a monetized approach to environmental value that sat at odds with environmentalist notions of natural rights but provided a critical shied for the agencys rulemaking as environmental protection came to serve as a key battleground in larger debates over markets government and public welfare. The EPAs success and the potential limits of its monetary approach are evident in the very air we breathe today far cleaner and healthier as a result of the EPAs actions but holding new threats in a rapidly changing climate