On Environmental Protection, Biden’s Election Will Mean a 180-degree Turn From Trump Policies
Read Time:1 Minute, 29 Second
by Janet McCabe, for The Conversation.
The Trump administration has waged what I and many other legal experts view as an all-out assault on the nation’s environmental laws for the past four years. Decisions at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and other agencies have weakened the guardrails that protect our nation’s air, water, and public lands, and have sided with industry rather than advocating for public health and the environment.
Senior officials such as EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler assert that the Trump administration has balanced environmental regulation with economic growth and made the regulatory process less bureaucratic. But former EPA leaders from both Democratic and Republican administrations have called this administration’s actions disastrous for the environment.
Rolling back laws and hollowing out agencies
The Trump administration has used many tools to weaken environmental protection. For example, Trump issued an executive order in June 2020 to waive environmental review for infrastructure projects like pipelines and highways.
The EPA has revised regulations that implement the Clean Water Act to drastically scale back protections for wetlands, streams, and marshes. And the administration has revoked California’s authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own standards for air pollution emissions from cars, although California is pressing ahead.
The Trump administration has also changed agency procedures to limit the use of science and upended a longstanding approach to valuing the costs and benefits of environmental rules. It has cut funding for key agency functions such as research and overseen an exodus of experienced career staff.
Read more at The Conversation.
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And he’s not done yet. The most important thing is to make sure he goes straight to jail on Jan 21.
Nothing would serve Trump better than for him to see each of his administrative decisions rescinded one by one and each time a public ceremony highlighting the action publicly telling the country about his failure.
I agree with you. The damage that monster has done to this country is incalculable.