Abstract

"Voluntary Environmentalism: Legacy Issues in Oil and Gas"

Tyler Priest, University of Iowa (tyler-priest@uiowa.edu)

This paper draws a comparison between U.S. oil and gas development in the 1920s and 2010s. Both periods witnessed the greatest surge in petroleum drilling and production since the birth of the industry 160 years ago. The rise of oil in the 1920s and its rebirth in the 21st century involved dramatic technological innovations and wealth creation, but also major problems. There are two arenas where the problems of today exhibit a troubling similarity to those the 1920s. The first concerns efforts by American oil firms to lower the bar on environmental standards as far as possible, to a point where the industry’s commitment to environmental safeguards is mainly a voluntary act. Second, and relatedly, is the industry’s active role in compromising and incapacitating public institutions.

This essay builds on the work of Joseph Pratt, who characterizes industry’s approach to dealing with pollution issues after World War I as a case of “letting the grandchildren do it.” It also updates the work of Hugh Gorman, who details how the environmental performance of the industry improved dramatically over time through what he calls an “efficiency minded ethic,” which doubled as a “pollution control ethic.” This paper investigates how this ethic endured in some ways, but in other ways has been eroded through legal exemptions and exclusions for oil and gas activities. Over time, beginning in the 1980s, these came from amendments to key federal environmental laws (Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Superfund, National Environmental Policy Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act).

In recent years, the political arm of the industry moved beyond simply weakening environmental laws, to rolling back public environmental protections and reducing oil industry accountability, turning back the clock to 1920s voluntary environmentalism.