We Need an Environmental Dr. Fauci
During the coronavirus crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci has become the voice of reason. Much of the public turns to him for critical information about public health while even President Trump finds it necessary to listen. In the Trump era, no one plays that role in the environmental arena. The result is a mindless campaign of deregulation that imperils public health and safety.
We can't clone Dr. Fauci or duplicate the unique circumstances that have made his voice so powerful. However, we can do several things that would make it harder for administrations to ignore science:
- Congress needs to greatly strengthen laws protecting whistleblowers, which currently are much weaker than most people realize.
- Congress also needs to codify into law the existing rules protecting scientific integrity within administrative agencies. Currently there are merely internal regulations that agencies can ignore.
- Either Congress or the courts need to block another proposed EPA initiative. That initiative uses "scientific transparency" as an excuse for telling EPA to ignore important research on public health.
- We need to have evaluations of the public health effects of environmental regulation from a source that the public trusts. The best way to …
UPDATE (4/29/20): CPR's Deregulation on Demand paper was recently cited and discussed in an amicus brief filed by Sens. Whitehouse, Merkley, Gillibrand, Schatz, and Markey supporting a case against the ACE rule (American Lung Association v. EPA). You can read the brief here.
Who does the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) work for? The answer would seem to be us, the American public, given that the statutes it is charged with implementing are focused first and foremost on protecting our health and the natural environment we all depend upon. The Trump administration, however, has transformed this critical protector agency into a powerful of tool of corporate polluters, one dedicated to fattening these industries’ already healthy bottom lines at the expense of the broader public interest.
The evidence of this brazen degree of corporate capture at the Trump EPA abounds. The upper echelons of the agency’s …
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