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What You Should Know About Biden’s EPA

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Photo: Gage Skidmore

 

“A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear.” President Biden made clear in his Inaugural Address that addressing environmental degradation would be a high priority for his administration. Repairing an EPA weakened by the Trump administration will be key to making that happen, but just what kind of EPA is Biden inheriting from the Trump administration before him?

 

How did Trump change the EPA?

In a word: rollbacks. During his term as President, Trump completed 98 rollbacks of environmental policy. Most of these involved the EPA.

EPA rollbacks under Trump left critical wetland habitats unprotected and weakened limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and vehicles. Rules on the disposal of coal ash and other air pollutants were eroded. Rollbacks allowed facilities that pollute the environment to emit more hazardous materials without fearing that the EPA would find them in violation of rules.

The Trump EPA reduced inspections of polluting facilities, and even gave facilities advance warning of inspections, lessening their effectiveness.

Trump’s limitations on inspecting facilities that pollute and weaker rules to enforce added up. The number of EPA cases against polluters plummeted under the Trump administration.

Trump also made it more difficult for the EPA to make new rules with an arbitrary “one in, two out” executive order requiring the EPA to rescind two rules for every new one implemented. 

We are already seeing the consequences of Trump’s EPA. Deaths due to air pollution in the US have increased, at least in part because of weakened enforcement on air pollution. 

And none of this includes how Trump set the nation back in addressing the global climate crisis!

 

What has Biden’s EPA done so far?

The rollbacks are being rolled back, and progress is being  made- but slowly.

Biden issued an executive order directing agencies to “hold polluters accountable”, signaling that the EPA may get its enforcement groove back. 

He has also revoked some Trump-era executive orders that hindered the regulatory role of the EPA, including the “one in, two out” rule.

The Senate confirmed the appointment of Michael Regan, former head of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, as EPA Administrator. In his former role, Regan focused on environmental justice and increasing inspection capacity — areas that were not a priority for the Trump administration.

Immediately upon taking office, Biden established a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council within the EPA. This demonstrates a renewed effort to address the  disproportionate harms that environmental hazards pose to marginalized communities in the US.

 

What does Biden want to accomplish for the environment?

Biden has centered his environmental agenda around job creation. The American Jobs Plan, announced on March 31, but not yet put before Congress, reflects this.

The American Jobs Plan  focuses on improving physical infrastructure. Environmental health will improve as infrastructure improves, at least in theory.

Under this plan, transportation policy would get an overhaul. Federal funding for public transportation would double, so transit systems could hire more employees, serve more riders, and keep cars off the road, reducing emissions. 

The government would make massive investments in electric vehicle production, making American transportation more compatible with sources of renewable energy in the long term. 

The plan also includes investments in developing resilience against climate-driven disasters like hurricanes.

Provisions for improved utilities aim to put the nation on track for carbon-free electricity by 2035. Buildings all over the US, especially those used for public housing, are slated to be retrofitted for energy efficiency.

The plan also calls for the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps to get more Americans working in climate resilience and conservation efforts while bolstering labor unions.

The fate of this $2.2 trillion plan rests with Congress. The Biden administration is meeting with leaders on Capitol Hill to drum up bipartisan support. Biden hopes to have the plan passed by this summer.

 

What if the plan doesn’t pass through Congress?

Luckily for the Biden administration, some of what is included in the American Jobs Plan can be accomplished by executive order.

Some of what is not possible through executive order is possible through corporate action, according to John Kerry, Biden’s Special Envoy for Climate. For example, the transition from gas and diesel to electricity-powered vehicles looks inevitable, and companies are planning for the electric future accordingly. The biggest companies in America are moving towards a greener marketplace, and “no politician in the future is going to undo this.”

 

What does the American Jobs Plan have to do with the EPA?

If passed as proposed, the American Jobs Plan would give the EPA the funding necessary to accomplish long-held environmental goals. 

The American Jobs Plan includes $45 billion to replace all of America’s lead water service lines. This would mean that no community in the US ever suffers water-borne lead poisoning again. 

Other water infrastructure is up for an overhaul, too. $56 billion will be offered to states, tribes, and communities in grants and low-cost loans to revamp waste, storm, and drinking water systems.

Funding these projects is good for environmental and economic health, as evidenced by the 300,000 jobs created over the last two years by EPA water infrastructure programs. 

The plan also includes $5 billion to clean up contaminated Superfund and Brownfields sites, and to develop the workforce necessary for cleanup. 

Surprisingly, school buses are another target of the EPA under the American Jobs Plan. The plan provides for 20% of yellow school buses in the US to run on electricity instead of diesel. This would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve student and driver health.

 

Between reversing  Trump-era environmental rollbacks and implementing the measures of the American Jobs Plan if it passes, the EPA under Biden has a lot of work to do. As American lives are lost due to environmental dangers and the climate crisis looms, getting the job done is more important than ever before.

EPA Under Attack: Legacies of Deregulation by Reagan, Bush, and Trump

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Photo: US Environmental Protection Agency

 

Donald Trump prevented the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from protecting the environment effectively, but he wasn’t the first US President to do so. In a 2018 paper in the American Journal of Public Health, Leif Fredrickson and colleagues examine the impacts that Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump have had on the EPA.

Why care about this history lesson?

Looking at how these former Presidents used staffing, deregulation, and science to take the EPA apart in the past offers key insights into how President Biden can put the agency back together again today and how to fend off attacks on the EPA in the future.

Let’s look at EPA staffing.

Reagan was the first to hinder the EPA’s mission through staffing. Reagan’s EPA turned down experts with experience in federal government in favor of anti-regulation legislators and industry veterans from fossil fuel companies like Exxon to fill leadership positions. Reagan’s EPA Administrator, Anne Gorsuch, slashed staff by 21% in her two years heading the agency. 

Trump’s EPA took after Reagan when it comes to staffing. The advice of energy executives was prioritized over those of career employees. Trump-proposed staff cuts matched the numbers of the Reagan years, though the Trump proposals did not pass. 

The EPA was sidelined by the anti-regulation priorities of all three presidencies Fredrickson studied.

Under Reagan, deregulation was the name of the EPA’s game. The agency’s Office of Enforcement was dissolved, giving industry less reason to take environmental rules seriously. Reagan’s EPA listened when industry figures complained about regulations such as those phasing out the use of leaded gasoline. It was only after public outcry that the phaseout continued unimpeded.

Bush’s EPA was anti-regulation in subtler ways. Instead of rejecting regulatory action, the EPA avoided having to take action at all by strategically delaying until the chance to act had passed. This was true of chances to strengthen the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. 

Trump took after Reagan with his deregulatory approach to the EPA, but he added his own flair. In an executive order,  Trump required repealing two rules for every new rule enacted, hindering the EPA’s rulemaking ability. Trump’s EPA also repealed the Clean Power Plan, a policy which promised to save lives by reducing particulate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

These administrations manipulated environmental science to suit their political goals without hesitation.

Bush was, frankly, a nightmare for environmental science in the EPA. Under Bush, industry actors gained the right to challenge scientific analyses, slowing the regulatory process. Bush’s EPA gummed up the works of climate science by playing up scientific uncertainty around climate change and prohibiting agency employees from even mentioning the phenomenon.

Trump combined approaches to science from the Reagan and Bush administrations. Like Bush, Trump obscured climate science in EPA resources and discussions. Trump’s EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, planned debates to hash out questions about climate science that have long been settled. Like Reagan, Trump contested the regulation of hazardous materials despite evidence of their dangers. Pruitt overturned a ban on a pesticide that is dangerous to pregnant people and children when ingested in any amount.

Trump seemed like a unique threat to the EPA during his term. In hindsight, he just adapted the worst of Reagan and Bush strategies for his own bombastic brand of governance.

What does all of this tell us about what’s next for the EPA under President Joe Biden?

Just as staffing, regulation, and science can be used to weaken the EPA, restoring their roles at the EPA can strengthen the agency. Biden is already using executive orders to address climate change and return enforcement capabilities to the EPA. How he will “build back better,” as was his mantra on the campaign trail, remains to be seen.

In the long run, no single executive order is going to make environmental health invulnerable to political whims. Nothing is preventing another Trump, Bush, or Reagan from winning the presidency, mismanaging the EPA, and putting our health and our planet’s health in danger. The best we can do is inform ourselves and others on the environmental legacies of our Presidents (as Fredrickson and his colleagues have with this paper) and fight for political candidates who will use the EPA for environmental protection, as it is intended.

A Matter of Life and Death: the Role and Record of the United States Environmental Protection Agency

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Photo: US Fish & Wildlife Service

 

If you live in the United States, you can thank the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for extending your life. Americans in some places would lose on average more than 100 days of life to environmental hazards if not for regulations like the Clean Air Act. Just as a well-managed EPA can extend and improve Americans’ lives, a mismanaged one can jeopardize our health.

Now is an especially important time to understand the EPA. The agency endured more than 100 rollbacks to regulations under the Trump presidency. These will cause thousands of asthma attacks and premature deaths in the years to come and will accelerate global climate change. Now that the EPA is beginning to reflect the priorities of the Biden administration, lives can be saved. It remains to be seen whether the EPA under Biden will be able to halt and reverse the damage of the last four years.

In the political whiplash the EPA experienced as power cycled between the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, one thing has become clear: while legislators play politics with the agency, the stakes are life and death. With lives on the line and our planet in climatic crisis, the time to read, write, think, and act about the US EPA is now.