Why Trump's Environmental Rollbacks Won't Boost the Economy
It was Ronald Reagan who popularized attacks on regulations when he was on the campaign trail in 1980, and since then, the tactic has been an inescapable feature of our political landscape. The false claims about environmental regulations, job creation, and the economy have been repeated so frequently and for so long that many Americans don't even question them. Yet no matter how many times a fallacy like this is repeated, it remains untrue.
President Trump and his administration have repeatedly promised to add momentum to the U.S. economy by throwing out environmental safeguards, especially those from the Obama era. At the signing of the March 28 executive order against federal action on climate change, Trump said that it will "start a new era of production and job creation." But is that claim based on facts and evidence? Is it even realistic?
The Saturday before Trump signed the order, Vice President Mike Pence told a crowd in West Virginia that the non-existent "war on coal" is "over" and that the president's forthcoming policy moves and those of agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Interior (Interior) were somehow going to …
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