The environment: the end of the EPA as we know it.

• Author: Roberts, David
• Position: WHAT IF HE LOSES? - Environmental Protection Agency

On stage at the Republican primary debate in Rochester, Michigan, on November 9th, Rick Perry's thick brows bunched together amid beads of sweat as he struggled to remember the final federal agency he planned to eliminate. "What's the third one there? Let's see. Commerce, Education, and the, uh, ummm ..."

Mitt Romney, to Perry's left, offered, "EPA?"

No one blinked. After all, Perry had called the Environmental Protection Agency a "cemetery for jobs." Michele Bachmann proposed renaming it "the job-killing organization of America" and promised that if she's elected it will "have doors locked and lights turned off." Newt Gingrich would replace it with an ill-defined "Environmental Solutions Agency." Herman Cain would have eliminated the EPA and "start[ed] all over." Romney, being Romney, says that he supports it in "much of its mission, yes; but in some of its mission, no." In today's Republican Party, it looks like that is the moderate position.

Conservatives have inveighed against federal regulations since time immemorial, but the antipathy they harbor toward the EPA is unique in its intensity, particularly under the Obama administration. To appreciate the threat the agency faces if the GOP sweeps the 2012 elections, it helps to understand the roots of that animosity.

The core laws that shape the EPA's mission--the Clean Air and Water Acts, passed in the early 1970s--are among the most dynamic and aspirational ever to issue from the U.S. Congress. It's not that the standards in the original bills were all that strict, but that they were designed to evolve. The laws mandate that the EPA regularly revisit its standards and update them based on the latest science.

Take the Clean Air Act, the main target of recent GOP attacks. It not only establishes specific rules for an enumerated class of pollutants, it also instructs the EPA to set standards for "any air pollutant" that "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare," and to review and update those standards every five years. That makes the law a living, breathing thing. Congress or the president must intervene to prevent stronger and stronger clean air protections.

Environmental law, in other words, is one of the few federal domains where political gridlock can work in favor of science-based policy. All elected officials have to do is stay out of the way. Scholars David Sousa and Christopher McGrory Klyza call this fitful but persistent advance of the law "green...