Trump Administration Policies Hinder EPA

Once a powerful tool to protect the environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is quickly becoming a useless regulatory agency under the Trump White House.

The EPA is a data collection and legislation organization that has been tasked with protecting the health and environment of America’s lands and people since 1970. It conducts research around the country about the environment, publishes studies and findings, writes and enforces regulations for governments and corporations, and works to educate about environmental health.
The EPA is often associated with cleanup and regulation of chemical waste, but it also collects environmental data that can be applied to human health regulation, including the risks of lead exposure and pollution levels around the country.

In recent years, the EPA has become most known for its involvement in the global climate change discussion. As an agency that collects environmental data and publishes it publicly, it has become a resource to climate scientists to monitor the effects of climate change. However, climate change, sometimes incorrectly known as ‘global warming,’ is a decidedly partisan issue, as debate rages on as to the causes and dangers of global climate change.

Under the Trump administration, whose withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords shows a stunning lack of regard for ecological protection, the EPA is now finding its regulatory power extremely limited. After campaigning on an anti-EPA platform, Trump is following up on his promise to hack the EPA to pieces, starting with a 20 percent cut in staff, roughly 3,200 employees. Far from having to fire anyone, the crushing weight of Republican interests has already pushed hundreds of staff to leave on their own accord, including over 200 scientists and nine department heads as of December 2017.

The plan to reduce the size and regulatory power of the EPA is a multi-directional attack. In addition to cutting employees, the Republican-controlled Congress is and has been working to drastically cut the EPA’s budget, using financial control to limit the scope of its scientific research and power to enforce its own regulations. Even under the Obama administration, Republicans were successful in cutting the EPA’s budget by more than 20 percent, totaling $60 million.

In addition, the Trump administration is already planning to repeal or otherwise gut existing laws and regulations, claiming that these changes are to encourage economic growth and development. In practice, this will allow corporations to disregard ecological health while pursuing their own needs.

Perhaps more insidious and under-handed than all of the above, the Trump administration is working to destroy the EPA from within. On Feb. 17, 2017, the U.S. Congress confirmed Scott Pruitt as the 14th administrator of the EPA. With just over a year under his belt, Pruitt’s actions both in the EPA and in his private life have illustrated his willingness to play foot-soldier to Trump’s anti-science agenda.

As administrator, he has limited EPA oversight committees to bar scientists who have received EPA grants and allow those who have received energy industry funding, enforced ‘talking points’ for EPA scientists asserting that climate change is not caused by human activity, and proposed restrictions on data used for drafting regulation that would prevent the use of decades of valuable climate change data.

On April 24, Pruitt claimed that burning wood- a chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide -is carbon neutral. He also supports Trump’s proposed budget, which would cut $2.5 billion from the EPA.

Ideally, scientific research done by the EPA should not be a partisan issue. So long as it is treated as such by politicians trying to enforce their own policies, science and scientific understanding of the health and wellness of our environment will suffer irreversible consequences.

The editorial staff of The Current believes that funding for the EPA should not be cut, as this hurts its ability to release credible research received from third-party organizations. The staff also believes that partisan management of scientific institutions neuters their ability to contribute to a public dialogue.