The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded in 1970 under President Richard Nixon following growing concern for the environment in the 1960s. Frequent oil spills offshore and worsening air pollution in cities sparked Americans’ desire for change (The Origins of EPA). The EPA’s creation followed the first hints of climate change. As the United States became increasingly contaminated with pollutants we decided as a nation that action had to be taken to prevent the deterioration of our environment. President Nixon appointed William Ruckelshaus as the first administrator of the EPA, whose job would be to work side by side with Americans and industries to lessen their impact on the environment. Fast forward nearly 50 years to the election of President Trump and his naming of Andrew Wheeler as the administrator of the EPA. President Trump and the EPA are currently working together to remove EPA policies implemented under the Obama administration with a heavy focus on the coal industry; specifically, the Clean Power Plan and Clean Water Rule (“Wrong Way at EPA: Three Ways the Agency is Failing Us”). The Trump administration debates that the Obama era restrictions on the coal industry were an overreach and unnecessary. These EPA acts were designed to limit the amount of pollution power plants are allowed to emit and what the plants can dispose of in water sources after their use in the plants. The Trump administration and the EPA are working together to unravel these acts intended to prevent climate change to grow the economy and avoid the unemployment of thousands of Americans working in the coal industry. It is evident that Trump and Wheeler are more focused on the prosperity of our nation than the consequences of our carbon emissions, and the EPA’s revisions of former policies directly contradict what they stand for.
Trump and the EPA worked together to kill the Clean Power Plan and issue the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, which aims to give states the power to loosely regulate their coal plant carbon emissions, reviving the coal industry that was slowly dying under the Obama administration. Obama’s Clean Power Plan was a major step towards replacing coal with cleaner energy sources, crucial to reducing the carbon emissions of the United States. The EPA’s decision to overturn Obama’s plan hurts the environment far more than it helps:
Even if coal plants are run more efficiently, the lack of any requirement to adopt the most recent environmental controls means plants are likely to put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than they would if the country’s grid simply replaced coal with cleaner fuels like wind and solar. (Puko)
Under the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, coal plants will be run to maximize efficiency, which will prevent the shrinking of the industry and increase the emission of harmful pollutants, protecting the economy instead of the environment. As Greta Thunberg said in her recent article, “Research shows that pollution from burning fossil fuels is the world’s most significant threat to children’s health” (Thunberg et al). This new EPA rule puts the health of our Earth and its entire population at risk, as the United States is one of the leading nations of carbon emissions. Unfortunately, the new EPA deregulations don’t stop with air pollutants.
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