Trump Is Ordering Federal Agencies To Get Rid Of Environmental Protections

In a little-noticed move last week, Donald Trump issued an executive order informing government agencies that they had to “sunset” environmental protections for industries and initiatives put in place decades ago. These environmental protections pertain to things like mining, offshore drilling, and even endangered species. These moves will get people killed but will save corporations a little bit of money, so your health doesn’t matter. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Donald Trump recently delivered actually really great news to people who do not like clean water, clean air, a clean environment who love oil spills and hate animals. Because Donald Trump, in a very little noticed executive order almost two weeks ago, ordered federal agencies to sunset all a LL, all environmental regulations, every one of them at certain agencies. Let me read you this From the Hill, he ordered agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, energy Department, nuclear Regulatory Commission, because yeah, we want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deregulate nuclear stuff, nuclear materials, nuclear power plants, that sounds safe. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and Fish and Wildlife Surface to amend regulations so that they expire by October of 2026. The order applies to all regulations issued under laws governing things like energy appliance, standards, mining, offshore drilling, as well as regulations issued under the Endangered Species Act.

Now, this order did not specifically mention anything covered under the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, or the Safe Drinking Water Act. But at this point it probably includes that too. Just 'cause it didn't specifically mention it doesn't mean he's not going to go after it. But let me put this in perspective, as somebody that lives along the Gulf Coast, so 15 years ago, God, it doesn't seem like it's been that long. We went through the BP oil spill and every day I was doing, you know, contract work for environmental websites at the time, writing about the web website, uh, writing about the oil spill every day, going out there every day and taking new photographs of the tar balls and the tar mats and the actual oil itself on top of the water. It went on for weeks and weeks and weeks without end destroyed an entire ecosystem.

And now Trump comes along and says, you know what? Let's deregulate offshore drilling. You know, what's the worst that could happen? Appliance standards, energy efficient appliance standards, which means your refrigerator will still get just as cold as it currently gets. It's just it'll use more electricity to do so because now companies that make refrigerators won't have to go through those extra steps of making it energy efficient. The cost won't come down, no. If anything, the costs are still gonna go up because of the tariffs by a lot. So you're gonna pay more for a refrigerator that is

Now, now going to cost you even more in electricity. He's also attacking fuel economy standards with this executive order. So you know what that means, right? The car you buy is gonna get worse gas mileage, the car's not gonna be cheaper because it's less energy efficient. No, once again, thanks to the 25% tariffs on all imports, uh, your car is gonna be more expensive than ever and it's gonna get worse gas mileage. So you're gonna spend more money on gasoline for it. So a more expensive car and more money on gas, just like more expensive appliances and more money on electricity, you lose money on this for no reason. Energy efficiency standards, fuel efficiency standards have been in place for years and years and years and years. People seek out more energy efficient appliances because the cost of electricity continues to go up, and now he's just getting rid of it for, for no reason. There is no reason for this to happen. This isn't just stupid, it's insane. It's literally him saying, let me screw over people for the sake of screwing people over.