Congress chose national uniformity against uniform-economics criticism to defeat the race to the bottom.

Evidence

The federal environmental laws were, however, directly responsive to “race to the bottom” concerns. The Clean Air Act imposed nationally uniform air quality standards on all states, overriding the objections of economists that such national uniformity made little economic sense. Why, those economists asked, should air quality standards be uniform when neither the benefits of those standards nor the costs of their achievement were similarly uniform? — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 424

Categorization

• XREF: Useful friction for LGST’s economics-of-law discussion and for why uniform standards persist.