The Energy and Commerce Committee today released a staff report on the Trump Administration’s four-year assault on environmental and public health protections. The report examines some of the Trump Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) most egregious and dangerous rollbacks in five key areas - climate change, scientific integrity, environmental justice, clean air and clean water - and highlights the impacts these rollbacks could have on public health. Finally, the report underscores some of the Committee’s efforts to hold the Trump Administration accountable for these actions.
“For four years, the Trump Administration has launched a relentless assault on environmental and public health protections, rolling back progress on everything from safe drinking water to carbon pollution. These retreats have direct, dire consequences for Americans’ health - particularly now in the midst of a global pandemic - and this report shines a bright light on exactly how dangerous they are," said Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chair Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee Chairman Paul Tonko (D-NY). “The fact that President Trump continues to ignore the existential threat of climate change shows just how unabashedly unfit he is for this moment, a fact this report aims to highlight for all those who care about our environment and Americans’ health."
The report’s five sections detail dangerous actions the Trump EPA has taken in key issue areas:
* Ignoring climate change: Through repealing the popular Clean Power Plan, dismantling fuel efficiency standards, rolling back common-sense methane requirements and more, the report outlines the Trump Administration’s parade of climate-denying policies and the ways they will directly harm public health.
* Sidelining science: The Trump EPA has repeatedly dismissed sound science through restricting the use of scientific research that demonstrates harmful health impacts, using fuzzy math to rig analyses in favor of polluters and undermining scientists themselves.
* Disregarding environmental justice: The report details the myriad ways in which the Trump Administration has recklessly neglected communities of color and environmental justice communities, despite these communities being disproportionately impacted by pollution.
* Worsening toxic air: The Trump EPA has systematically dismantled protections against air pollution through undermining critical mercury rules, failing to protect communities from ethylene oxide, and other actions that have been condemned by health and environmental experts.
* Threatening clean, safe water: Through weakening restrictions on toxic coal ash pollution, refusing to seriously address lead in drinking water, failing to enact protections against PFAS “forever" chemicals and more, the Trump EPA has abandoned its responsibility to ensure Americans’ water is clean and safe to drink.
