Environmental protection stayed bipartisan across presidents of both parties through the 1980s.

Evidence

This largely nonpartisan spirit dominated during the remainder of the 1970s and for much of the 1980s. The executive branch waxed and waned on environmental matters, regardless of the political affiliation of the president. President Gerald Ford signed significant legislation, including the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, while vetoing federal surface mining control legislation. President Jimmy Carter promoted energy conservation but also promoted fast track permitting for accelerated domestic energy resource development that environmentalists strongly opposed. President Ronald Reagan began to reorient the Republican Party in opposition to what he perceived to be the excesses of environmental protection law, but then politics ultimately compelled Reagan, too, to return to those moderates in his party who embraced the basic premises of the federal statutes, such as Bill Ruckelshaus, twice the EPA’s administrator. And, as Nixon had done in his bid for reelection, George H. W. Bush sought to capture the environmentalist mantel in his successful run for the presidency in 1988. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 671

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the Legal Systems course thread on how lawmaking institutions and partisanship shaped environmental law, and echoes ch7’s bipartisan-competition claim. — connects to: Moderate Republican committee chairs blocked Reagan’s environmental rollbacks in the 1980s. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 672; Party voting on environmental bills moved together in the 1970s but not the 1990s. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 680

Broader Connections

• Party voting on environmental bills moved together in the 1970s but not the 1990s. #qualifies (0.85) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 680