Nelson founded “Earth Day” on April 22, 1970, the centenary of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s birthday

Earth Day, the EPA and Regulatory Tyranny

By Mark Alexander


Liberty and Free Enterprise in the Balance


Three decades ago, our nation was emerging from the previous deep Democrat-induced recession. After his election in 1980, Ronald Reagan set about to implement free-enterprise economic policies to restart the world’s most powerful economic engine. In addition to those policies, President Reagan endeavored to unshackle the economy from “unjust, oppressive and impolitic” regulations, and the net result was the longest and strongest sustained period of economic growth in U.S. history.

One of the regulatory behemoths the Reagan administration reined in was the Environmental Protection Agency. Reagan was not an opponent of sound policies to encourage environmental conservation and preservation. In fact, he was an outdoorsman at heart and declared, “Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it’s common sense.” But he was a staunch foe of regulatory abuse as outlined in his Economic Bill of Rights.

The EPA, which began as a seemingly well-intentioned 1970 regulatory proposal by Richard Nixon, has morphed into the most invasive regulatory agency ever created. Indeed, the road to hell is paved with good intentions).

Within a few years of its formation, the EPA’s first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, outlined the agency’s mandate declaring it had “a broad responsibility for research, standard-setting, monitoring and enforcement with regard to five environmental hazards; air and water pollution, solid waste disposal, radiation, and pesticides.”

The key words were “broad responsibility,” and the EPA’s mandate rapidly exceeded anything ever envisioned or authorized. Of course, that expansion is the “unintended consequence” of every agency established by Congress.

In the same year Nixon proposed the EPA, Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) initiated the first “Earth Day” as an annual “teach-in,” ostensibly about environmental conservation, but with the underlying motive of building support for EPA regulations to constrain the economy. (Nelson’s Earth Day co-founder, Ira Einhorn, does not get mentioned much anymore after he murdered his ex-girlfriend and composted her remains in his closet.)

For the record, “conservation” is not a bad word; it shares the same root word as “conservative.” And my family makes every effort to wisely utilize energy and resources because the principle of “waste not, want not” is good practice.

However, the Left’s “Earth Day” political charade and the EPA’s regulatory tyranny prove far more insidious than just “conservation.” They leverage environmental concerns to conceal their real agenda — the constriction of free enterprise. Their objective is to incrementally implement centralized economic control through regulatory requirements justified by ever-expanding “mandates.”

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