Epa's Responsibility To Protect The Environment

During and since World War II the United States has produced millions of tons of toxic wastes during the manufacturing and processing of products. These hazards were often left abandoned and no one really paid attention to their effect on our environment. In the 1980s Congress established a Superfund Program. It was left for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to administer the superfund program, to find these hazardous sites, investigate and determine the worst ones, and then clean up those sites across the United States. Over 15,000 sites were identified and 1,400 were named to the National Priorities List (NPL). One of the towns was Picher Oklahoma named in the Tar Creek Superfund Site.

The citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act is an important tool to protect and improve rivers, creeks, streams, and wetlands especially as state agencies may not have the resources to conduct regular water quality monitoring on every water body. Citizen involvement in monitoring and reporting pollution problems is key to watershed protection; hereby helping the government enforce the laws.

W: What are some of the methods that the leaders of different countries could adopt so that the people serve one another and prevent crimes and other problems against mankind?

The environmental protection agency has been stepping up its mandate of ensuring safer and better environment for not only the business operators, buts also the society as a whole. In order to achieve this goal of environmental protection, there has been the creation of environmental protection agency that has ensured that all the businesses, irrespective of their size and type, strive to ensure that the environment is protected for the benefit of current and future generations.

We want to transform our society so that each each person can be their own agent of change around what they feel important, and shift away from the idea that somehow a voting box every four years will solve our problems

The Republican Party believes that preserving of the environment is a conservative value so long as it does not interfere with economics. Any environmental policy must in return, promise to increase economic growth, and not infringe on private property rights for it to be deemed practical.

With the looming threat of global warming, overpopulation, and world war III we do not often find ourselves in a position to change the world around us. But what do we do when the situation presents itself? What is our response to injustice? Sometimes nothing. In first world countries it is easy to discuss an issue without taking action because people often feel too minimal to make an impact. However, history shows some of the largest social and political movements were sparked by the actions of a single individual with the audacity to stand up. The truth is power in the hands of an individual has the magnitude to create equal amounts of good as it does bad, but the power for change does not only lie in the hands of powerful, it can be found in the hearts of any individual, no matter their status or origin.

The environment and the health of the surrounding population go hand in hand. The Environmental Protection Agency takes on this ever so important mission of protecting them both. The mission statement of the EPA states, “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Small Business Programs is to support the protection of human health and the environment by advocating and advancing the business, regulatory, and environmental compliance concerns of small and socio-economically disadvantaged businesses, and minority academic institutions (US Enviromental Protection Agency, 2010).” The impact of its mission can be defined clearly as it examines the impact of contamination in the air, the water, and the land on human health.

1. I do not believe that the EPA could be justified on moral grounds because lives should not be valued at different dollar amounts. A life is a life, no matter how close to death a person is.

Confronting an injustice in this world requires every individual to take responsibility for his actions. If an individual is aware of their fight and devotes himself to it, he must work to cause whatever small change he can. However, there is strength in numbers, and nobody should attempt to fight a larger fight on their own, lest they become discouraged at their failures.

In 1970 President Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency because of the public’s concern over pollution and contamination of the environment. The EPA was established to regulate many toxic or possibly toxic substances that have entered the environment. Under the federal “Safe Drinking Water Act” of 1974 the EPA had the ability to regulate activities that have an impact on sources of public drinking water. Due to the injection of potential of toxic substances entering the ground through fracking, the possible effect of the chemicals on drinking water gave the EPA the ability to regulate the rigs that had the potential to effect the water supply through the Underground Injection Control Program (UICP). In 1997 the 11th United States

Living in a highly industrialized world that is ruled by capitalism, the concern for the environment often takes a back seat. Individuals or companies nowadays prioritize achieving optimal profit without putting into mind what their respective actions or productions may have an effect on the environment. They do not realize how important the role of our environment plays in the quality of human life. We can say that a good environment leads to a better quality life, while a bad environment could lead to a harmful and unproductive life. Now, it becomes unfair and unjust when the risks and costs of a company affect a certain group of people and on the opposite side of the spectrum another group of individuals enjoy the benefits without costs. The individuals that are affected badly are usually from Third World Countries where the distribution of risk and costs are not even (Low and Gleeson 1999). This is where Environmental Justice comes in. Environmental Justice mainly concerns the welfare of human beings (Low and Gleeson 1999). Talking about cities where capitalism surges from, it has been argued that these cities are ‘unfairly structured’ (Low and Gleeson 1999). Basically, what this is saying is that the wealthier you are, the better or cleaner the environment. On the other hand, if you are poor, then the environment around you will have more health risks. This kind of injustice or disparity is what adds fuel to the fire of environmental justice. In

in an effort to solve problems, which can be seen with the Clean Water Act.

Ethics is the study of what is right and wrong in human conduct. Environmental ethics studies the effects of human’s moral relationships on the environment and everything within it (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008). The ethical principles that govern those relations determine human duties, obligations, and responsibilities with regard to the Earth’s natural environment and all of the animals and plants that inhabit it (Taylor, 1989). The purpose of this paper is to reveal environmental issues that are threatening the existence of life on Earth, and discus our social obligations to refrain from further damaging our environment, health and life for future generations. I will discus the need for appropriate actions and the ethical

that we not be lead blindly. It is time that we hold people accountable for