Trump’s EPA Found a Sneaky New Way to Make Our Air More Polluted

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has long been a bulwark against environmental degradation, its mission to protect public health and welfare from pollution. Under Administrator Lee Zeldin’s leadership, however, the agency has taken a sharp turn towards facilitating pollution rather than preventing it.

A key example of this trend is the EPA’s decision to discount or ignore entirely the health benefits of reducing air pollutants. This approach is pernicious: by refusing to quantify the life-saving benefits of cleaner air, the EPA gives polluters a free pass to spew toxic emissions into our atmosphere without consequence. The administration claims that its decision is necessary due to “uncertainty” about the health impacts of pollution, but this assertion is laughable given decades of peer-reviewed science demonstrating the dangers of air pollution.

The EPA’s selective application of its new approach is particularly insidious. On one hand, the agency quantifies and considers the compliance costs for affected industries – costs subject to uncertainty just like health benefits. But when it comes to the benefits side of the ledger, the agency becomes paralyzingly uncertain about even estimating the number of lives saved or diseases averted. This is not policy-making; it’s polluter-friendly mathematics.

A Pattern of Deregulation

The Trump administration’s EPA has been on a tear to dismantle environmental regulations for years, often using dubious legal arguments and cherry-picked science to justify its actions. The latest move takes the cake: it represents a fundamentally anti-regulatory bias that undermines the agency’s purpose.

This decision is part of a broader pattern of deregulation under Trump, which threatens not just environmental protection but public health and safety more broadly. Rolling back climate policies or weakening clean-air standards has met with fierce resistance from scientists, activists, and lawmakers.

The Stakes Are High

The consequences of the EPA’s actions are already being felt on the ground – in cities choked by smog, in communities ravaged by asthma and other respiratory diseases. As air quality alerts become a regular occurrence, it’s clear that something is terribly wrong with our regulatory framework. Despite mounting evidence of harm caused by pollution, the EPA seems more interested in coddling polluters than protecting public health.

The implications are far-reaching, extending beyond environmental protection to issues of social justice and equity. Low-income communities will bear the brunt of this decision, while corporate interests continue to reap profits from unchecked emissions, further entrenching their influence over policy-making.

The Next Battleground

Opponents must navigate a complex web of regulatory proceedings and court challenges to push back against the EPA’s polluter-friendly calculations. But the stakes are too high, the consequences too dire, for anything less than all-out resistance. As we move forward into an era of increasingly severe climate disruptions and air pollution crises, the EPA’s actions will be remembered as a pivotal moment in our nation’s history – a turning point that marked the moment when our government chose profits over people.