After its first session, the 95th Congress can take credit for completing work on long-standing controversies in several major fields of environmental protection.The new amendments to the air and water pollution control laws represent a partial retreat from the strict statutory standards they replaced, but this retrenchment may be a result of both the pressures of economic uncertainty and a widespread inability to comply with past ambitious antipollution restrictions. Even the new strip mining law, considered a victory by environmental advocates who had pushed for such legislation for a decade, is less protective of the environment than was a similar measure vetoed by President Ford. In other areas, notably energy, there was much congressional activity in the form of hearings and debates, but the end result was a failure to put new laws on the books because of disagreement with Carter Administration proposals or an inability to iron out differences in committees.

Overall, the environmental record in the first half of the 95th Congress is positive, considering that the objectives of environmental protection and other national priorities are still perceived on Capitol Hill, as well as in some parts of the nation, as being mutually exclusive. The bad news is that Congress chose to defer resolution of many important environmental issues until 1978, an election year in which political considerations and the pressures to spend time campaigning may make enactment of needed environmental legislation even more difficult.