The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the “Triumph of Myth over Truth”
Here’s an article from ThinkProgress.Org outlining why Elizabeth Southerland, 30-year EPA vet, most recently Director of the Office of Science and Technology for the agency’s Water Office, has resigned from her post. The reason shouldn’t come as a shock: the Trump administration’s anti-environment and anti-regulatory agenda.
This is her farewell letter. The principal issues are regulatory rollbacks, in the context of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s approach of shifting the responsibility for environmental enforcement to the states and local government agencies.
To understand exactly how utterly asinine and totally destructive all this is, let’s look at the new EPA requirement that for every new regulation, two regulations must be repealed. Regarding this, Southerland writes: Should EPA repeal two existing rules protecting infants from neurotoxins in order to promulgate a new rule protecting adults from a newly discovered liver toxin? Faced with such painful choices, the best possible outcome for the American people would be regulatory paralysis where no new rules are released so that existing protections remain in place.
Under the organization’s Administrator Scott Pruitt, the EPA has begun repealing 30 existing environmental regulations, like the Clean Power Plan, the Clean Water Rule, and a rule requiring stricter emissions monitoring for oil and gas operations on federal lands.
“Today the environmental field is suffering from the temporary triumph of myth over truth,” she wrote. “The truth is there is NO war on coal, there is NO economic crisis caused by environmental protection, and climate change IS caused by man’s activities.”
I suppose that somewhere there are people stupid enough to believe that there is merit to dismantling environmental regulations at the federal level and pushing them down to the state and local level. To the totally credulous, these smaller entities might seem able to ram through huge, immediate tax hikes, and throw together make-shift mechanisms that have existed at the EPA for half a century, just in time to prevent our skies and waterways from becoming complete cesspools.
The rest of us know the truth: tearing apart the EPA is a death sentence for the environment, to be inflicted solely for the financial benefit of big polluters.
Craig,
ThinkProgress and Natasha Geiling, are hardly unbiased or objective in their reporting of the new administration.
The 2 for 1 rule is only a guideline, Scott Pruitt’s directive allows for exceptions and variations.
Over the years, especially during the Obama administration, the EPA became a “sheltered workshop” for leftist academics and bureaucrats. It’ss budgets (both declared and covert) grew enormously, while it’s bureaucracy increased exponentially.
The Federal EPA’s regulatory regime grew so pervasive and complex, other government agencies, Federal, State, local had to increase in size to accommodate the EPA’s requirements. The EPA used this method to further enhance and expand it’s power and financing.
The cost to business, local communities, and individuals
also dramatically increased, to the point where some project doubled or even trebled in cost and were abandoned. Often these US projects were replaced by cheap imports, adding to the national debt, and decreasing US employment and economic competitiveness.
State and Local authorities were forced to seek approvals for even the most trivial matters from obscure federal bureaucrats with no knowledge, or interest, of local conditions.
Taxpayers, employers, local communities, industry, everyone suffered from this bloated federal agency, which operated without any supervision, or scrutiny.
Mostly, the EPA operated without legislative legitimacy, using Presidential ‘decree’ or their own “presumed powers” to by-pass submitting to the authority of Congressional, State or local elected officials.
In recent years the EPA has become home to many ideologues, who believe they have a mission, not simply public servants impartially carrying out the policies decided by legislation.
Elizabeth Southerland, should resign ! She has obviously forgotten what it means to be a public servant. If she feels so strongly, the correct place for her to utilize her knowledge and beliefs is to stand for public office and submit herself, and her idea’s, to the voters for approval.
Scott Pruitt is downsizing a bloated Federal government agency, while submitting many of it’s “directives’ and ‘regulations’ back to the legislature to either be approved, or rejected, by duly elected representatives of the American people.
What’s so wrong with allowing the American people to decide ? Why shouldn’t the American people through their elected representatives authorize policy instead of a collection of faceless Washington bureaucrats ?
There are so many horrific elements to today’s EPA that it’s hard to know where to start. But if I had to pick a place, it would be directive to get rid of two regulations for every one new one (whether there are exceptions for not). It shows how prima facie stupid and childish the administration’s approach is. It’s a little kid’s threatening to hold his breath to get his way.