What Is The Trump Administration Doing to the Environment
“All this rhetoric about how it’s jobs versus the environment is wrong.”
Last night President Donald Trump touted his rapid-pace deregulation schedule within the many departments of government.
Perhaps at the top of that list is the Environmental Protection Agency led by department head Scott Pruitt.
Pruitt is the former attorney general of Oklahoma where he fought environmental regulations and sued the EPA in favor of oil companies.
Pruitt has demonstrated little interest in science or climate change or the very thing his department protects the environment. So what will this segment of our government look like after its erosion under Pruitt and Trump and what will the long term impact be on our environment?
Nick Schroeck, Director of the Transnational Environmental Law Clinic, and Assistant Clinical Professor at Wayne State University Law School, says the EPA was created in 1970 for common-sense reasons.
“You should have an Environmental Protection Agency that’s there to protect the environment,” he says. “There’s a reason we have the [EPA] and I think we’ve had a targeted assault on that agency.”
Schroeck says there is a clear move away from investment in renewable energy (such as wind a solar) under the Trump Administration and toward natural gas projects popping up all over the country. He says the move toward natural gas also means a decline in coal projects.
“We’re seeing a continuing decline in coal because it doesn’t make great economic sense… the question is are we going to invest in wind and solar and renewable energy, or natural gas?”
Schroeck says since the creation of the EPA, the economy has been able to grow while our country also focused on cleaning the environment.
“All this rhetoric about how it’s jobs versus the environment is wrong.”
To hear more from Schroeck and environmental law attorney Nick Leonard on Detroit Today, click on the audio player above.
