By Steven Cohen, Ph.D., Director of the M.S. in Sustainability Management program, School of Professional Studies
The Clean Air Act was enacted overwhelmingly in 1970 by a U.S. Congress trying to turn the page from a divisive war in Vietnam to achieving a consensus goal supported by nearly every American. Smog in California, orange skies in Pittsburgh, and declining air quality everywhere convinced our federal government to set national standards for clean air. The senators and staff that drafted the bill knew that new technologies would result in new forms of pollution, and they required the brand-new Environmental Protection Agency to regulate new threats that science found endangered public health. The Clean Air Act remains widely supported by Americans as does the importance of preventing air pollution. Despite that support, it is likely that the Trump administration will do everything it can to weaken its rules and federal enforcement of air quality regulation.
During the administration of George W. Bush, the EPA was forced by the Supreme Court to regulate greenhouse gases, which were found to endanger human health. As predicted by the authors of the Clean Air Act, new threats to human health emerged as the volume of greenhouse gas pollutants dramatically increased. Last week, Karen Zraick and Lisa Friedman reported in the New York Times that:
“The endangerment finding was born out of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. E.P.A. that stated that the Clean Air Act obligated the agency to address pollutants that harm public health indirectly by warming the planet. The ruling forced the agency to weigh in on whether six greenhouse gases harmed public health, which the agency did, in the affirmative, in 2009. That assessment set off a legal mandate to regulate those emissions. To do so, the agency developed more than 200 pages of findings that outlined the science and detailed how increasingly severe heat waves, storms, floods and droughts were expected to contribute to higher rates of death and disease.”
While EPA has some discretion over the type of regulations they issue to reduce greenhouse gases, an effort to end the requirement that they issue regulations would require a revision of the Clean Air Act or a complete reinterpretation of its provisions by a radical Supreme Court. While the Court has some insolation from politics, Congress does not. For the past half-century, Congress has shown no appetite for overturning or significantly weakening this landmark piece of legislation. While it is possible that the radical conservative Supreme Court could overturn their own 2007 ruling, anti-regulatory ideologues may well focus their efforts on weakening rules and enforcement designed to reduce greenhouse gases instead of trying to demonstrate that climate change has no impact on human well-being. That strategy has already worked since the Supreme Court rejected the Clean Power Plan, an effort to regulate greenhouse gases at the state level, and told EPA that their greenhouse gas regulations required a source-specific approach. The court told EPA they could regulate each emitter of greenhouse gases but could not regulate emissions at the state-wide level.
Americans don’t like governments telling them what to do, but they have come to understand the devastating impact of extreme weather events that are accelerated by our warming planet. They also understand their need for and dependence on fossil fuels. Governmental efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels by limiting access to those fuels are likely to be opposed. The regulatory strategy of encouraging the development of renewable energy technologies by reducing access to fossil fuels will be dismantled by the Trump Administration. That is a foregone conclusion. The strategy that remains feasible is to incentivize the use of renewable energy and electric vehicles. While President Trump opposes that as well, such policies are popular with the public and can be encouraged at the state and local levels. It can also be utilized by foreign governments less engaged in fact-free culture war-based climate denial. While China continues to use massive amounts of fossil fuels, they are also pushing renewable energy and electric vehicles. I’m sure they are delighted to see the new Administration attempt to discourage wind power and electric vehicles. It opens the market outside the United States to Chinese technology and electric vehicles.
Government’s role in the transition to a renewable resource-based economy is important, but the transition will happen with or without the Trump administration. At the moment, his effort to project strong man-like power is directed toward immigration and tariffs, and he seems less engaged in environmental issues. The pushback from U.S. businesses requiring immigrant workers and harmed by paying the cost of tariffs will eventually result in high-profile opposition to those policies. If tariffs reignite inflation and are eventually seen as a back-door national sales tax, the impact of a tax rise on the President’s popularity may moderate his use of that unilateral exercise of presidential power. Spinning immigrants as murderers rather than neighbors and tariffs as taxes on “external” parties rather than on Americans who pay for imports will eventually bump up against the facts. A targeted tariff to protect a new industry can be justified. A blanket tariff to throw your weight around and provide leverage for “the art of the deal” is likely to do far more harm than good. Tariffs are a form of tax, and the reality of higher prices will be obvious and observable. Air pollution and global warming are also obvious and observable. Polluted air can’t be imagined away, nor can the homes washed away or burned down by climate-accelerated extreme weather. Facts are facts.
The Clean Air Act may well be one of the most successful pieces of legislation ever enacted by our federal government. While America’s population and economy have grown, our air has gotten cleaner. The two major sources of air pollution, motor vehicles and power plants, emit far less air pollution today than they did half a century ago. We have seen a long and gradual process of balancing our economic and environmental goals. The move to renewable energy and electric vehicles will continue this record of success. The specific methods used to continue progress are open to debate. Governmental efforts to influence the market are often bathed in left-wing ideological imperatives. This is unfortunate and often counterproductive. We need to search for consensus rather than focus on our differences.
EPA’s new administrator, Lee Zeldin, is a Trump loyalist, but he is also an experienced public official who is used to dealing with conflicting and competing points of view. As a native of Long Island, he understands the need to protect the aquifers that provide his home with drinking water and the coasts that are central to the lifestyle and economy that Long Islanders benefit from. He remembers Hurricane Sandy and understands the impact of extreme weather events. The challenge of balancing interests is now in his hands. Trying to manage EPA’s expert and dedicated scientific staff and the demands of the ideologues in the White House won’t be fun, but at least he has the political skills needed to thread that needle. Nevertheless, the danger posed by the anti-environmentalism of the President and his team is real.
Environmental issues, like health issues, are grounded in scientific fact and, given the level of scientific illiteracy in this country, are often subject to misinformation and disinformation. Still, polluted air and water can be perceived by human senses. Similarly, illness and death are objective and observable facts. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has clearly demonstrated, the causes of these facts can be subjected to fact-free conspiracy theories, and climate denial shares this tendency to disregard reality. But in both health and environment, sound science eventually dominates. That is why I believe the Clean Air Act will continue as a national policy and will continue to help improve American air quality. The immediate danger to our environment is real, but so, too, is the public support for breathing clean air.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Management program offered by the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School provides students cutting-edge policy and management tools they can use to help public and private organizations and governments address environmental impacts and risks, pollution control, and remediation to achieve sustainability. The program is customized for working professionals and is offered as both a full- and part-time course of study.
