Bob Sheak, April 1, 2025
The Environmental Protection Agency (epa.gov) ) website includes a short history of the agency. Here’s some of what you can find there (https://epa.gov/history/origins-epa).
“The American conversation about protecting the environment began in the 1960s. Rachel Carson had published her attack on the indiscriminate use of pesticides, Silent Spring, in 1962. Concern about air and water pollution had spread in the wake of disasters. An offshore oil rig in California fouled beaches with millions of gallons of spilled oil. Near Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga River, choking with chemical contaminants, had spontaneously burst into flames. Astronauts had begun photographing the Earth from space, heightening awareness that the Earth’s resources are finite.
“In early 1970, as a result of heightened public concerns about deteriorating city air, natural areas littered with debris, and urban water supplies contaminated with dangerous impurities, President Richard Nixon presented the House and Senate a groundbreaking 37-point message on the environment. These points included:
• requesting four billion dollars for the improvement of water treatment facilities;
• asking for national air quality standards and stringent guidelines to lower motor vehicle emissions;
• launching federally-funded research to reduce automobile pollution;
• ordering a clean-up of federal facilities that had fouled air and water;
• seeking legislation to end the dumping of wastes into the Great Lakes;
• proposing a tax on lead additives in gasoline;
• forwarding to Congress a plan to tighten safeguards on the seaborne transportation of oil; and
• approving a National Contingency Plan for the treatment of oil spills.
“Around the same time, President Nixon also created a council in part to consider how to organize federal government programs designed to reduce pollution, so that those programs could efficiently address the goals laid out in his message on the environment.
“Following the council’s recommendations, the president sent to Congress a plan to consolidate many environmental responsibilities of the federal government under one agency, a new Environmental Protection Agency.”
A short history of the EPA can be found at (https://epa.gov/history/origins-epa). Here are a few excerpts.
“From regulating auto emissions to banning the use of DDT; from cleaning up toxic waste to protecting the ozone layer; from increasing recycling to revitalizing inner-city brownfields, EPA’s achievements have resulted in cleaner air, purer water, and better protected land.”
The EPA’ accomplishments are extraordinary. Though, for all the efforts of the agency, the major problem has been a lack of resources and insufficient government support for regulation, especially when Republicans have had power.
One main obstacle has always been whether or how much environmental regulation negatively affected the economy. Of course, we know that Trump puts the economy first and is a climate change or climate crisis denier. As a result, the evidence on global warming and other environmental harms have continued more than they had to and the dangers have become existential in scope. Indeed, Elon Musk and his young team called DOGE want to further reduce the EPA’s resources, if not eliminate them.
The evidence on global warming is terrifying
Eloise Goldsmith reports for Common Dreams on March 19, 2025 on the World Meteorological Organization’s global temperature records
(https://truthout.org/articles/world-meteorological-organization-last-10-years-have-been-the-hottest-on-record).
“A report released by the World Meteorological Organization on Tuesday [March 18, 2025] found that not only was 2024 the warmest year in a 175-year observational period, reaching a global surface temperature of roughly 1.55°C above the preindustrial average for the first time, but each of the past 10 years were also individually the 10 warmest on record.
“That’s never happened before,” Chris Hewitt, the director of the WMO’s climate services division, of the clustering of the 10 warmest years all in the most recent decade, told The New York Times.
“All told, the agency’s State of the Global Climate 2024 adds new details to the public’s understanding of a planet that is getting steadily warmer thanks to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
Goldsmith continues.
“The report from the WMO, a United Nations agency, includes ‘the latest science-based update’ on key climate indicators, such as atmospheric carbon dioxide, ocean heat content, and glacier mass balance. Many of these sections report grim milestones.
“The trajectory is just incredible,” the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Friday.
“In 2023, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide reached the highest levels in the last 800 000 years, for example, and in 2024, ocean heat content reached the highest level recording in the over half-century observational period, topping the previous heat record that was set in 2023.
“As of 2023, two other greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, also reached levels unseen in the last 800,000 years.
“‘Over the course of 2024, our oceans continued to warm, sea levels continued to rise, and acidification increased. The frozen parts of Earth’s surface, known as the cryosphere, are melting at an alarming rate: glaciers continue to retreat, and Antarctic sea ice reached the second-lowest extent ever recorded. Meanwhile, extreme weather continues to have devastating consequences around the world,’ wrote WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo in the introduction to the report, which drew its findings from data drawn from dozens of institutions around the world.”
Don’t give up, Goldsmith implores
“As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Another sign of the unfolding climate crisis is that major glaciers around the globe are melting and won’t survive this century, according to scientists and as reported by Jessica Corbett on March 21, 2025 (https://commondreams.org/news/melting-of-glaciers).
Corbett writes, “Scientists on Friday spent the United Nations’ World Water Day and first-ever World Day for Glaciers warning about how fossil fuel-driven global warming melts ice across the planet, endangering freshwater resources and causing seas to rise, with implications for ecosystems, economies, and billions of people.
“In a Friday statement, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo pointed to a publication that the U.N. agency released earlier this week: ‘WMO’s State of the Global Climate 2024 report confirmed that from 2022-224, we saw the largest three-year loss of glaciers on record.’”
“The WMO report was followed by the Friday launch of a 174-page document from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that stresses how ‘billions of people depend on the fresh water that flows from increasingly fragile mountain environments.’”
“The document, The United Nations World Water Development Report 2025—Mountains and glaciers: Water towers, notes that ‘major cities that have been critically dependent on mountain waters include Addis Ababa, Barcelona, Bogotá, Jakarta, Kathmandu, La Paz, Lima, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Mexico City, New Delhi, New York, Quito, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo.’”
“‘Globally, up to two-thirds of irrigated agriculture may depend on mountain waters,’ the report states, ‘while the number of people in lowlands that strongly depend on water from mountains increased worldwide from around 0.6 billion in the 1960s to some 1.8 billion in the 2000s. An additional 1 billion people in the lowlands benefit from supportive mountain runoff contributions.’”
“‘Most of the world’s glaciers, including those in mountains, are melting at an accelerated rate worldwide,’ the publication adds. ‘Combined with accelerating permafrost thaw, declining snow cover, and more erratic snowfall patterns… this will have significant and irreversible impacts on local, regional, and global hydrology, including water availability.’”
Corbett cites Michael Zemp, a professor at Switzerland’s University of Zurich and director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service, pointed to that finding and others on Friday, noting that from 2000-23, glacier melt caused global seas to rise 18 mm or about 0.7 inches. He said, “This might not sound much, but it has a big impact: Every millimeter [of] sea-level rise exposes an additional 200,000 to 300,000 people to annual flooding.”
Earth’s Land Masses Are Drying Out Fast, Scientists Warn
Bob Berwyn delves into this issue for Inside Climate News, March 27, 2025
(https://insideclimatenews.org/27032025/earth-land-masses-drying-out-fast).
Berwyn makes an astounding point. “Earth has lost enough soil moisture in the last 40 years to change the planet’s spin and shift the location of the North Pole, according to a new study published today in Science that tracks how human activities have disrupted the global water cycle.
“The persistent loss of water from land to oceans has dried out huge portions of every continent and may be irreversible, scientists describing the new research said this week.
“‘Large regions in East and Central Asia, Central Africa, and North and South America show pronounced depletion,’ between 2003 and 2007, the authors wrote.
“When they extended the timeframe to 2021, the depletion of soil moisture grew large enough to cover those areas and also included Europe and the Eastern U.S.
“This study provides robust evidence of an irreversible shift in terrestrial water sources under the present changes in climate,” said Luis Samaniego, a hydrology researcher at the UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany.
“The continents are drying out over time,” said Samaniego, who was not involved in the new study but wrote a related Perspective article in Science.”
“The findings suggest that this decline is primarily driven by shifts in precipitation patterns and increasing evaporative demand due to rising temperatures. As of 2021, soil moisture had made no recovery, the authors noted, adding that they saw little likelihood of recovery under current climate conditions.”
Clean Water? Not If Musk and Trump Get Their Way
Mary Grant considers how Trump and Musk are espousing policies that will compound the water access problem for a growing number of people
(https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2025/03/21/world-water-day-trump-musk).
Grant identifies five ways that Trump and Musk are “making our water less safe and less accessible.” They have (1) “unconstitutionally canceled clear water projects; (2) Illegally eliminating core functions of the EPA; (3) allowed lead poison in our water; (4) cancelled protections against PFAS in our water; and (5) eviscerating protections that keep water safe from corporate pollution.”
Appointing a pro-Trump, anti-Environmentalist to eviscerate the agency.
Lisa Friedman reports on how Lee Zeldin, Trump’s appointee to head the EPA, is cutting support for the agency (https://nytimes.com/2025/03/29/climate/lee-zeldin-epa.html).
“Over the past nine weeks, Mr. Zeldin has withheld billions of dollars in climate funds approved by Congress, tried to fire hundreds of employees, recommended the elimination of thousands more E.P.A. scientists, and started trying to repeal dozens of environmental regulations that limit toxic pollution. He has filled the leadership ranks at the agency with lobbyists and lawyers from industries that have fought environmental regulations.”
Anti-environmental actions by Zeldin
“Mr. Zeldin’s other priorities at the E.P.A. have little to do with the agency’s half-century mission of protecting public health and the environment. They include increasing fossil fuel use, fast-tracking permits for energy projects, increasing jobs in the auto industry and advancing artificial intelligence.”
“The E.P.A. is one of the most disliked federal agencies among conservatives, according to a Pew Research Center poll, with only 32 percent of Republicans having a favorable view of the agency.
“So far, Mr. Zeldin appears to be adhering to Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a government overhaul that was published by the Heritage Foundation. It recommends deep cuts at the E.P.A. and an end to the agency’s legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other gases that are heating the planet. It also calls for weakening the agency’s independent science office.
Mike Ludwig reports on former EPA employees warning about how reductions of personnel will heighten environmental devastation and human harm in an article for Truthout, March 21, 2025 (https://truthout.org/articles/former-epa-employees-warn-of-polluted-skies-ahead-under-trump).
“Experts and former employees say the Trump administration’s moves to fire key scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and dismantle clean air and water protections will make the United States a ‘sicker and poorer place’ to live while demoralizing the next generation of environmental investigators and public health researchers.
“The rollbacks could lead to a significant increase in hospitalizations and premature deaths from illnesses linked to air and water pollution, public health experts warn. For example, new analysis by former agency researchers at the nonprofit Environmental Protection Network (EPN) estimates that 16 major air pollution rules updated by the Biden administration between 2021 and 2024 would save at least 200,000 lives by 2050.
“Air pollution rules also reduce the pollution driving climate change, which is now widely recognized as a major public health threat.
“However,” Ludwig continues, “last week EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the clean air rules are among 31 environmental protections that will be weakened or eliminated by the Trump administration. According to documents reviewed by House Democrats and reported on by the New York Times, Zeldin also plans to eliminate the EPA’s scientific research office, “firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists” who investigate environmental health threats at federal labs across multiple states.
The public supports tougher environmental rules
A nationwide poll of 1,000 voters taken by EPN shortly after the November elections that found the vast majority of voters — including 76 percent of Trump voters — want the EPA to be strengthened or remain the same. Only 14 percent of all voters agreed the EPA should be weakened. However, environmental groups say Trump’s rollback of EPA regulations alone threatens to reverse more than a decade of progress toward reducing highly toxic pollutants.
Trump acts to worsen environmental harms
Ludwig points out, “President Donald Trump does not appear to be concerned about the consequences of unleashing toxic pollution, including political blowback — or even willing to acknowledge the reality of the environmental issues the EPA is tasked with handling.
On his Truth Social platform earlier this week, Trump claimed he is opening “hundreds” of power plants that will produce energy by burning “BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL” (emphasis is Trump’s). However, Trump does not own any power plants or have the authority to compel companies to burn coal. The term “clean coal” is an oxymoron pulled from a defunct greenwashing campaign largely abandoned by the industry years ago.
Ludwig cites “Patrick Drupp, the director of climate policy and advocacy at the Sierra Club, a group that has pushed for years to retire the dirtiest coal plants, said Trump’s statement is “completely delusional” in 2024.
“There is no such thing as clean coal,” Drupp said in a statement. “There is only coal that pollutes our air and water so severely that nearly half a million Americans have died prematurely from coal in the last two decades.”
Ludwig continues: “Scientists know that coal pollution is linked to asthma and respiratory illnesses, heart attacks, cancer and premature death, but the Trump EPA is still poised to roll back regulations known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that require power plants to limit dangerous air pollution for burning coal.
“Thanks to these rules, mercury emissions from power plants dropped by more than 81 percent from 2011 through 2017, according to analysis by the Center for American Progress. The EPA estimates the regulations prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks each year.
“Technology for removing from smokestacks the mercury and particulate matter that lodges in human lungs and leads to asthma and premature death has existed for years, but some utilities complain that installing and operating these “scrubbers” is too expensive. Last year, 23 GOP-led states sued the EPA over the Biden administration’s air standards, and last week Zeldin announced the EPA would consider granting power plants a two-year exemption while the agency reconsiders the rules, which could lead to an immediate increase in toxic air pollution.”
“Drupp said Trump’s ‘clean coal’ comments are baseless but reveal that he does not care about the ‘health or economic well-being’ of his constituents. While Trump and Zeldin claim onerous regulations are holding the U.S. back economically, EPN estimates that EPA’s air pollution regulations deliver over $250 billion in net benefits to the public annually, with savings on health care and climate spending exceeding regulatory costs by a six to one ratio.
“‘He is only concerned with helping out his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry,’ Drupp said. ‘In exchange for their loyalty and political dollars, he will lie to the American people and sacrifice their lives.’”
Concluding thoughts
There is a groundswell of opposition to much of what Trump and Musk are doing generally and to the environment and most other policies they are supporting. Some federal courts have ruled against their actions; however, Trump and his allies have almost unlimited funds to use in trying to sway the courts. If they are ultimately successful, people around the globe and in the U.S. will be the victims of more and more devastating environmental disasters, economic calamities, and the loss of constitutional rights. Children will be most affected (https://www.unicefusa.org/media-hub/reports/UNICEF-Air-Pollution).
Trump, a climate-crisis denier, will as president exacerbate the problem and give open-ended support to fossil fuel production and consumption and the industries that benefit from them. Rising emissions and the rising temperatures they produce represent an existential realty that will likely threaten to generate massive dislocations of people and threaten the survival of millions, if not billions, of people in America and around the globe. Trump apparently could care less.
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 