How the Government Got in Your Backyard

by Jeff Gillman

  Even when conflicting data isn’t an issue, science often takes a long time to come up with good answers. Scientific results do not necessarily appear when they would be most useful to policymakers, or in response to social crises when the political demand for solutions is highest. Scientific projections into the future are often based on events of the past. If an event hasn’t occurred yet, then projections into the future could be wildly inaccurate. But politicians are interested in understanding the effects of a policy before the policy goes into effect. Science does not operate on the same timetable as politics, which is centered around elections, crises, and those rare “windows of opportunity” when public opinion, interest group allies, and the politicians in power are all in alignment on an issue.

  The Clean Air Act of 1970 is one of the best examples of how our government’s enthusiasm to please its citizens can outstrip the ability of science to provide definitive answers. The 1960s were a time of environmental realization in the United States. Acid rain was beginning to be studied, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was published, and J. I. Rodale’s magazine Organic Gardening was hitting its stride. People were recognizing that what we do can profoundly affect the environment in which we live. In response, Congress passed, and President Richard Nixon signed into law, the Clean Air Act of 1970, which was really a revision of the 1967 Air Quality Act, which had failed to have the desired impact. The Clean Air Act was like a sledgehammer. It required a 90 percent reduction in automobile emissions over a period of only a few years. A wonderful idea, but the lawmakers didn’t take into account the technology of the time and how rapidly it could be adapted to automobiles. By 1974, it became obvious that the technology couldn’t handle this law, so the timeline and standards were changed. It wasn’t until 1981 that cars met the guidelines set forth by the amended Clean Air Act.

  The standards that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set for airborne particulates after the passage of the Clean Air Act were based on the best available science of the 1970s, but twenty-five years after this act was passed, the EPA concluded that the original standards were based on insufficient data. Sometimes, even when it seems that all of the research points to a clear answer, there’s still more work to be done.

  As with the Clean Air Act’s projections of what could be done to curb automobile emissions, scientific projections can be simply wrong, or, as is more often the case, they can be widely divergent. In these situations, science can quickly become a political weapon, with both sides brandishing studies to support preexisting positions and discredit their opponents. When this happens, we would all hope that the sides would agree that more or different information was necessary. Unfortunately, that’s usually the exception rather than the rule. More frequently, scientific disagreements reinforce political conflict.

  Scientific questions in public policy are never simply about science—they are about economics, too. Within the United States there are a number of groups who would welcome the banning of pesticides from our yards based on the perception that they cause chronic diseases, such as cancer. But the science behind the claims that these poisons cause cancer is fuzzy at best. While it’s true that certain studies have shown that 2,4-D (the most frequently used herbicide on turf in the United States, which targets weeds such as dandelion and ground ivy) may be related to cancer in dogs and even humans, other studies have not supported these findings. So why should we do away with this valuable chemical that keeps our yards weed free for mere pennies a square foot? It’s much cheaper than hiring someone to pull the weeds.

  Likewise, the ability of carbon dioxide to cause global warming is in dispute. Though research seems to strongly support its role in global warming, there is no doubt that the earth cycles through climatic changes, and it is within the realm of possibility that the current warming in various places on the earth has something to do with these natural variations rather than with carbon dioxide levels. Because of the size and complexity of the earth, it is impossible to build another one—never mind ten or twelve—to test these various theories to see which one is correct. So why should we limit the industries and cars that expel carbon dioxide when we don’t even know with certainty that this gas is causing the problem?

  While these scientific disagreements are certainly significant, the most important limitation of science is that it can’t set priorities or address trade-offs. Priorities and trade-offs are value judgments. Science’s goal is accuracy. At best, science can determine what is likely to happen if certain policy changes are made. It cannot determine whether the policy is good or bad, or whether the costs of the policy are worth it. It can’t determine whether resources would be better spent doing something else, or whether implementing and enforcing a policy is even feasible. But these factors are at least as important as scientific accuracy in determining whether anything can get done politically.

  The Political Abuse of Scientific Information

  The limitations of scientific information make it easy for political activists to misuse or distort it. Political advocates try to win—by passing a particular policy, electing a particular candidate—and information is a means to an end. Advocates for a particular position are tempted to cherry-pick evidence that supports their goals, regardless of its quality. This leads to the hyping of results from poorly conducted or inappropriate studies. Some people call this bad science, and some people call it smart politics.

  In the upcoming chapters we will discuss policies that are arguably based on bad science. Regardless of your feelings regarding the banning of marijuana, for example, it is hard to substantiate things that were said during congressional hearings on the subject in 1937, when Harry J. Anslinger, called the father of the drug war, claimed, “You smoke a joint and you are likely to kill your brother.” Such statements reverberated with the public because of the lack of familiarity with this drug at that time. Marijuana was outlawed out of fear that it was, according to Anslinger, “the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind,” rather than because of any true scientific knowledge that it caused violence.

  Drugs are far from the only things that our government controls without the benefit of rock-solid science. Science does not support the concept that allowing your yard to become a meadow causes it to become a significant fire hazard, to raise another topic we’ll discuss later. Nonetheless, that is what was argued by the city of New Berlin, Wisconsin, when they attempted to force one of their residents to comply with a law requiring a tidy lawn.

  One of the greatest misuses of science within the political arena comes from something called the “sound science” movement. This movement started with the tobacco companies, who argued that links between smoking tobacco and lung cancer (and other health maladies) were not sufficiently proven. Their strategy was to avoid government regulation by using a public relations campaign to magnify the public’s and policymakers’ uncertainty about the scientific links between tobacco use and health. Other business interests have subsequently picked up on the strategy to delay or avoid government regulation. Because science can never provide complete certainty, those who demand it are establishing unattainable standards for government regulation.

  Scientists who play by the rules of the scientific method and the norms of professionalism within their fields can feel a great deal of frustration when they believe their opponents are not similarly constrained, but instead distort scientific results for their own selfish ends. Scientists who become involved in policy debates face the temptation to fight fire with fire, or at least to allow the political concerns of developing the right public relations message to become the priority. Emails hacked from Great Britain’s University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit in 2009 gave political ammunition to global warming critics. The emails contained suggestions that the scientists were bolstering their claims of climate change by cherry-picking the evidence that they were releasing to the public. Although scientific supporters of climate change argued that the emails were about the public
relations aspects of science and did not call into question the underlying science or evidence of climate change (a perspective supported by subsequent investigations into the scientists’ actions), the incident highlights the ease with which the credibility of science can be damaged in the public’s eye.

  Who Is Providing the Information?

  The number of sources of information available to political participants today makes it very easy to find the information one wants—and to ignore anything that is inconvenient. Popular sources of information for the Washington elite are think tanks (also known as policy institutes) composed of groups of like-minded people who collect information to support or refute certain policies. These organizations, usually based in Washington, D.C., do things such as write policy analyses that are timely and accessible to policymakers. While it’s true that many of them attempt to do high-quality, scientific work, other think tanks are derisively called Beltway bandits because they attempt to provide the veneer of scientific credibility to research that promotes particular ideological perspectives or preordained policy objectives. Politicians who are looking for facts to support their preexisting conclusions will often use information from these Beltway bandits to explain their actions (or lack of action) to constituents back home who can’t easily evaluate the quality of the analysis or the credibility of the source.

  If scientific information is to be available to policymakers, then someone has to produce it. Usually this requires financial resources to run a lab and pay the lab workers. This raises concerns in terms of the ability an industry has to produce its own analyses to verify the safety of its products or to fund researchers who use methods or have track records of producing results that are favorable to the industry’s perspective. Politicians can play this game too by funding (or blocking funding) for research they think will promote the policy outcomes they want (or don’t want). Political scientist Christopher Bosso, for example, documented that rural lawmakers on the House Committee on Agriculture blocked funding for research on the effects of pesticides on wildlife for many years during the 1950s and 1960s. Similarly, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration withheld information from Congress and the public on the safety risks of using communications technologies like cell phones in cars from 2003 to 2009 because they feared that Congress would react negatively. Strategically controlling scientific information may help advocates win, but it doesn’t ensure that effective policy is being made.

  Politicians also frequently obtain expert policy information from lobbyists. Lobbyists are people whose profession it is to gather information on their client’s public policy interests, gain access to government officials, and explain why proposed policies would be good or bad (based on their client’s interests). Some lobbyists work for a corporation (such as Dow Chemical) or an interest group (such as the Sierra Club) and are experts on the issue on which they are lobbying. Other lobbyists work for law and lobbying firms and have clients on many different issues. Many have formerly worked for the government and they have influential contacts within Congress and agencies with whom outside individuals and groups will pay to communicate. The lobbyist’s job is to promote the policies desired by their clients.

  The lobbyist’s main value to public officials is the ability to provide information that will help the officials solve policy problems and simultaneously keep their constituents happy. If an official doesn’t trust the information or the credibility of the lobbyist, the lobbyist is not going to be influential. The hardest part of the lobbyist’s job is gaining access—getting to meet with public officials or getting their phone calls returned—and politicians won’t waste their time on those they don’t think are credible. Lobbying is not a one-shot event; it is about building relationships over time so that public officials will use your information when your issues are being debated. So there is substantial incentive to tell the truth. Unfortunately, lobbyists, like everyone else, perceive and retain information selectively, and when scientific results differ to begin with, lobbyists are going to highlight the facts that support their client’s interests.

  Policymakers know that the information from lobbyists is biased, so you might think that they would view it rather skeptically. In actuality, however, this bias actually makes it more useful to policymakers. One reason that lobbyists are effective, and, indeed, why they are hired, is that they can provide both substantive information (how a policy will work) and political information (how constituents who are members of an organization will react) to politicians in a single source. Lobbyists can tell politicians which constituents are affected, how they are affected, and how much they care. This information indicates to politicians whether it is worth their time and effort to do something with that information to please their constituents or other potential supporters, such as campaign volunteers or donors.

  Lobbyists can also provide information—including information based on scientific research—to public officials in a way that is much more user friendly than scientists can. Lobbyists will translate information into tiny, easily digested bites that make it readable for busy officials, emphasizing substance and policy implications more than painful research briefs. Whenever possible, lobbyists will break the information down to the level of states or congressional districts so that representatives can understand the direct implications for their constituents who will be casting votes in upcoming elections. Lobbyists are good at following up and making themselves readily available to discuss and answer questions about the material.

  While lobbyists have an incentive to preserve their reputations and their access to public officials, the public relations campaigns run by interest groups are not as tightly constrained. To get the public’s attention, they are more likely to cherry-pick, exaggerate, and sensationalize evidence in their advertising. Such advertising commonly arrives to attack a candidate during an election campaign (and the courts have mostly shielded campaign advertising from slander or libel penalties to preserve robust free speech and the accountability of elected officials) and politicians often feel compelled to act based on information that they know is distorted, misleading, or just plain wrong.

  Where’s the Public?

  Though we’ve emphasized the role of lobbyists in providing information to public officials, normal citizens can provide expertise too. Whatever our occupation, we know what we do better than a lobbyist, and therefore have credibility with public officials in discussing how policies will affect us. Politicians obviously have an incentive to listen respectfully to policy information provided by people who will decide whether or not to vote for them. Knowing this, lobbyists often bring constituents to Washington to talk to representatives on behalf of an organization. The advantage that lobbyists usually have over citizen experts is that they are consistently monitoring what government is doing, so they can time their actions for maximum effect.

  Intensity—not just information—matters a lot in politics. Remember the observation at the beginning of this chapter that politics is “a combination of intellectual argument and emotional hell-raising.” Those who feel intensely about environmental issues have a reason to join (or form) groups, seek evidence to promote their intellectual arguments in scientific journals or at conferences (or fund research for someone to conduct a study), and pay lobbyists to put scientific information in front of policymakers. As a consequence, some viewpoints are more advantaged than others in the policy process.

  For better or worse, most of the public does not feel very intensely about the environment. Sure, there’s a “passive consensus” among the public for environmentalism. Everybody’s for the environment, but few are committed to doing something about it. We want to protect the environment, but we want to do lots of other things as well. The environment ends up losing because it can’t compete with our concern about our jobs, education, and homeland security. Rarely do environmental issues rank high on the public’s list of top concerns: Gallup polls find only about 2 percent of the public ranking the environ
ment as “the most important issue” facing the country. And rarely does political action of any sort rank high on many people’s to-do list, even on behalf of their most cherished causes. While people who join environmental interest groups are likely to pay close attention to the issues that these groups support, the average citizen tends to be pretty passive until there’s an environmental crisis that grabs media attention. The Love Canal, Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez, extremely hot summers, E. coli or Salmonella outbreaks, and high gas prices are all environmental events that mobilize the public. BP’s 2010 Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico captured public attention but failed to generate public support for energy legislation because the public blamed BP’s errors for the disaster. And long-term trends, like global climate change over the past hundred years, are much less likely to capture people’s attention.

  In contrast, businesses have some practical political advantages over a largely unorganized public. They are already organized and can use their existing internal communications structures to mobilize management, employees, and shareholders (and potentially, suppliers and customers) for political action. Their talent, expertise, and money are used daily to achieve financial goals, and can easily be turned to communication with politicians when politics might affect business. They can use their existing resources to hire outside lobbyists, lawyers, public relations professionals, or others who can help them communicate their point of view to public officials and to the public. Politicians are likely to make themselves accessible when high-status employers in their district say they have information relevant to policy debates. Citizen’s groups, by contrast, first have to organize, attract sources of financial support, and hire staff before they can regularly gain access to policymakers.