By fighting for the Clean Air Act of 1970, Maine Sen. Ed Muskie (D) raised our national environmental consciousness to a new level.
Muskie created modern environmentalism when he pushed through the Clean Air Act of 1970. The law ties human health to the health of the air, water and land, the first law to make that connection. No environmental law is as ambitious, powerful or fundamental to our society and the way we view stewardship.
Muskie was a hunter and fisherman and loved the outdoors, but his interest in protecting the environment came when he realized that Maine’s rivers were too polluted to carry the wastes created by new businesses.
Muskie had served as a state legislator and Governor before coming to the U.S. Senate in 1959. He was the chief sponsor of the Water Quality Act, 1963 and a key player in passage of Clean Air Act, 1963, and its amendments in 1967 and 1970.
Prior to the Clean Air Act, U.S. law protected places and things. Stewardship was seen only in conservationist terms. But Muskie made modern environmentalism national policy. After the Clean Air Act of 1970, law would protect human health by protecting the air, water and land.
Under his direction, the nation’s environmental laws became a fabric with legal continuity, definition, and purpose.
The Clean Air Act of 1970 was the first law to set national statutory environmental goals. It required air quality to protect the health of people—not just healthy people, but people sensitive to air pollution-related illness. The bill established a requirement that emissions from new cars be reduced by 90 percent within 5 years. As important, it required that every car meet those reductions and that the auto companies warrant emission performance to new car buyers. And the bill included a wide variety of public participation, scientific information enforcement and regulatory tools.
Muskie died in 1996 at the age of 82.
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