WUWT: The Trump White House wants significant reductions at the Environmental Protection Agency: two dozen or more programs, including a dozen dealing with President Obama’s climate initiatives; a 20% downsizing in EPA’s 15,000-person workforce; and a one-fourth reduction in its $8.1 billion budget.
The plan requires congressional approval, and thus is hardly a “done deal.” Not surprisingly, it is generating howls of outrage. Former U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says the proposal would be “crippling,” and “devastating for the agency’s ability to protect public health.”
One employee resigned because the cuts would prevent him from serving “environmental justice” and “vulnerable communities.” A congressman claimed EPA is “already operating at 1989 staffing levels,” and the reductions could mean “cutting the meat and muscle with the fat.”
A deep breath and objective assessment are in order.
1) Since EPA was created in December 1970, America’s environmental progress has been amazing. Our cars now emit less than 2% of the pollutants that came out of tailpipes 47 years ago. Coal-fired power plant particulate, mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions are 10-20 % of their 1970 levels. The white plumes above factory and power plant “smoke stacks” are 90% steam (water vapor) and plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide (which Obama EPA officials disingenuously called “carbon pollution”).
Our lakes, rivers, streams and coastal areas are infinitely cleaner and far safer to drink from or swim in. The notorious lead contamination in Flint, Michigan water occurred under Gina McCarthy’s watch, because her agency didn’t do its job. It was her EPA officials who also triggered the infamous Gold King Mine blowout that contaminated hundreds of miles of river water with arsenic and other toxic metals.
So much for “protecting public health,” ensuring “environmental justice,” and safeguarding our most “vulnerable communities.” It’s as if we’ve come full circle, and now need to be protected from EPA. In truth, that goes all the way back to the agency’s first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, who ignored his own scientists, banned DDT, and sentenced tens of millions of Africans and Asians to death from malaria.
Dump the EPA it’s a bunch of self righteous liberals
Yea well that’s different. Somebody should have prosecuted for that bull shit. Mean while I’m thankful they never zeroed in on my Slow Burn Three Bean Chilli.
He’s doing to the POS EPA what the democRATS have been doing to the Military! I would cut them even deeper!
The EPA is a necessary evil, and you know, without it, companies like General electric would be dumping PCB’s and other toxic chemical waste into our rivers and lakes.
@Dr Evil – No, they wouldn’t be doing that if there weren’t crony legislated prohibitions on pollution liability lawsuits. All it would take are competent attorneys and judges.
You mean like the EPA is doing now to our rivers and lakes?
So, we don’t get to tar and feather the lot of them?
yeah, yeah, yeah … we all know that ‘EVIL CORPORATIONS’ want to kill their clients
… makes sense to me!
Plus the EPA was/is known for claiming control of frigging rain runoff. Yeah, that’s the kind of crap that needs to be cut. They have way too much power when they can make up their own set of what are essentially laws, but are described as regulations, and levy multi-thousand dollar a day fines for someone digging a stock pond on their property.
@JMV March 12, 2017 at 11:43 pm
Did you miss the tax bills? There is no “their property” in The United States of America. Just regime renters.
Anybody that hasn’t been around DDT doesn’t really understand
how nasty that shit was. Imagine areas on farms where nothing
grew and where even insects would not traverse. Two of my
uncles died from leukemia and brain tumors, both were farmers
young in life. Another uncle died due to Agent Orange in the ‘Nam.
The EPA has a viable use, it just needs to be controlled.
I’ll applaud what the EPA has done in this county. Anyone who has traveled abroad knows that the EPA cleaned up the water and the air in this country… decades ago. The job is largely complete, it just needs to be maintained. Over the years the EPA became an over-bloated agency and was “fundamentally transformed” into a political weapon. It needs to be massively downsized!
I think all Fed. employees need a 25% wage cut across the board. The private sector has to struugle, so should gov’t. Instead of perpetual raises and bennies.
There is NO Constitutional authority for the FedGov to “protect” the “environment” – PERIOD. I challenge ANY-fuckin-ONE to find the word “environment” in the Constitution – expressed or implied. This un-Constitutional socialist scam has gone on long enough and needs to end. The EPA is nothing more than an extortion racket – and EVERYBODY (in gov’t) knows it, but nobody has the balls to talk about it – mostly because too many politicians and lawyers are making money off of it.
izlamo delenda est …
Essentially Progressive Assholes.
reboot,
We used to ride our bikes behind the mosquito trucks back in the old days when they sprayed with DDT. I ain’t dead, yet.
Just because the Sun sets after you eat dinner, doesn’t mean that your eating dinner makes the Sun set. Sorry about your uncles, but they may have had a genetic pre-disposition to tumors and/or leukemia.
The EPA, if not a gov’t entity, would have been charged long ago under RICO statutes and most of its employees imprisoned.
izlamo delenda est …