This isn’t about pollution or even the EPA. This is about making it more difficult for people to live in remote areas.
Their vision is everyone living in small apartments in cities, except the leaders and entertainers of course. The only people living in remote areas are govt workers and ‘corporate’ workers living in a commune while they run the farm robots.
The Chung Kuo series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Kuo_%28novel_series%29):
Chung Kuo is primarily set 200 years in the future in mile-high, continent-spanning cities made of a super-plastic called 'ice'. Housing a global population of 40 billion, the cities are divided into 300 levels and success and prestige is measured by how far above the ground one lives. Some – in the Above – live in great comfort. Others – in the Lowers – live in squalor, whilst at the bottom of the pile is 'Below the Net', a place where the criminal element is exiled and left to rot. Beneath the cities lie the ruins of old Earth – the Clay – a lightless, stygian hell in which, astonishingly, humans still exist. These divisions are known as 'the world of levels'.
In addition to the world of levels, there are the great meat-animal pens and sprawling, vast plantations to feed the population. There is also activity beyond Earth. The ruling classes – who base their rule on the customs and fashions of imperial China – maintain traditional palaces and courts both on Earth and in geostationary orbit. There are also Martian research bases and the outer colonies, with their mining planets.