Trump's environment agency seems to be at war with the environment, say ex-officials
Donald Trump’s environment agency “actually seems to have a war on the environment”, has been “utterly untenable”, and has brought about “deeply, deeply troubling times”, according to three administrators appointed under past presidents.
Reflecting on Trump’s dozens of attacks on core environmental protections, a fourth put it another way: “[I’m] really god damned pissed off – and that’s being kind.”
The former environment administrators, two Republicans and two Democrats, shared their frustrations on a Joe Biden campaign call and in a separate conversation with reporters within the last several weeks. They are: Bill Reilly, from the George HW Bush administration; Christine Todd Whitman, from the Bill Clinton administration; Carol Browner, from the George W Bush administration, and Gina McCarthy, from the Barack Obama administration.
They have more than enough evidence to cite – Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reversed rules meant to clean up the air, defend waterways from industrial pollution and fight climate change.
Trump has brought the agency to an all-time low, his critics argue. According to a report from the Environmental Protection Network of more than 500 former agency officials, the rollbacks have had “serious and measurable consequences, especially for already overburdened low-income communities and communities of color”.
The impacts will include “more respiratory illness and heart disease” that shortens lives; “decreased water quality” for drinking water, fisheries and recreation; “reduced Superfund cleanups,”; and “devastating consequences” from unchecked climate change, the group said.
But EPA’s problems started long before Trump was elected in 2016.
Fifty years after its creation under the Nixon administration, the EPA has found itself outgunned by industry. The agency’s budget and staffing have withered over the past generation – while industry has tightened its grip on the political system and entrenched new sectors with minimal oversight.
Amid a scientific revolution in understanding human and environmental responses to pollution, regulators have been unable to translate many of those findings into stronger safeguards. More
