Presentation at the 2009 American Sociological Association Annual meeting.

1. Political and Economic Theories of Environmental Impact An empirical test of the causes of Air Pollution in the U.S.

15. Political Hypotheses Air Pollution Environmental Movement Environmental Policy Political Opportunities These relationships will hold (but possibly decrease) when controlling for economic factors

16. Descriptive Statistics Table 1. Descriptive statistics for all variables (n = 50). Variable Mean S.D. Skewness Kurtosis Air Pollution: Standardized Index of Sulfur Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide and Volatile Organic Compounds 0.00 0.97 0.215 0.010 Nitrogen Oxides 0.00 1 0.112 0.000 Particulate matter smaller than 10 µm 0.00 1 0.908 0.000 Real Gross Domestic Product per 1000 people (billions) 0.021 0.006 0.347 0.006 Strength of the Environmental Movement Environmental Social Movement Organizations per 1000 people 0.008 0.003 0.182 0.001 Sierra Club membership per 1000 people 0.896 0.837 0.083 0.001

17. Descriptive Statistics Table 1 continued. Descriptive statistics for all variables (n = 50). Variable Mean S.D. Skewness Kurtosis Political Opportunity % Northern Democrats in Congress 38.98 5.74 0.045 0.814 Democratic President 0.440 0.501 0.441 . Congressional Hearings on the Environment (Logged) 3.70 0.93 0.308 0.004 Divided Government 0.60 0.49 0.201 0.000 New York Times mentions of Energy or the Environment (Logged) 2.99 0.71 0.264 0.808 Environmental Policy (Logged) 1.92 0.85 0.108 0.905 % Energy Imports (Trillion BTUs) 17.741 8.361 0.660 0.000