By Steven Cohen, Ph.D., Director of the M.S. in Sustainability Management program, School of Professional Studies
It is an article of faith among right-wing idealogues, the Trump base, and some business leaders that environmental regulation stifles economic growth. There are certainly examples of poorly designed rules and over-zealous environmental advocacy. There is on occasion, regulatory enforcement that prevents specific businesses from engaging in profit-making activities. But overall, environmental rules contribute to economic growth. Each dollar we spend complying with air regulations brings fifteen dollars of benefits in greater productivity and reduced costs of health care. Here in New York City, sewage treatment regulation and sewage plant construction grants have transformed our rivers from floating cesspools to attractive waterways and opened our waterfront to residential development. If toxic waste is unregulated and not securely stored, it can destroy groundwater and seep into the basements of family homes.
The false environment-growth trade-off was identified in Michael Bloomberg’s pathbreaking PLANYC 2030, where his team explicitly considered a clean environment a prerequisite for New York’s economic development. Cities are in a global competition for residents, tourists, and businesses. If a city is dirty, polluted, and without adequate open spaces and effective transit, it loses in that global competition. Moreover, if growth is expected, the city must invest in infrastructure to provide water, energy, and waste management for the growing population.
Some business leaders and a growing number of tech bros in Silicon Valley don’t like regulation because they want to be free to create whatever they want. One of America’s great strengths is the freedom to innovate and create, and so regulation must be carefully constructed to ensure that the freedom to create remains in place. But an absence of rules is also dangerous, can lead to negative health and environmental impacts, and must be avoided. American regulation is generally careful and well-constructed, but there are examples of excess. Typically, the regulatory enforcement process provides lengthy time periods for companies to come into compliance. Since most environmental regulation has been delegated to state governments, those local enforcers are sensitive to the demands of local business interests.
In some cases, they are too sensitive to these demands and the result is the toxic-spewing petrochemical plants that we see in Louisiana’s cancer alley. Petrochemicals are the long-term future of the fossil fuel industry, but they will need to figure out a way to run those plants without poisoning their neighbors. It’s clear that state regulation is inadequate, but the federal government—even during Democratic presidencies—has done little to regulate these businesses. Anticipating Trump’s election on this past November 4th, I observed that:
“While we have learned to protect the environment without the federal government, we do need national rules and standards. This requires cutting-edge scientific analysis to understand the causes and effects of environmental degradation. It also requires an efficient and thoughtful regulatory process that carefully and pragmatically weighs costs and benefits and works with business to reduce the negative impacts of pollution from old and new technologies. Doing without national policy makes it difficult to manage pollution that crosses jurisdictions and leaves poorer states vulnerable because of inadequate state and local environmental protection. The sewage pollution that has backed up into people’s homes in Jackson, Mississippi, is a case study of inadequate state and local environmental capacity and the critical role of federal regulation and organizational capacity.”
The Musk-Trump imposed cutbacks throughout the federal government have been mindless hatchet-wielding reductions, designed more for drama than cost-effectiveness. Last week, Trump, due to his superficial understanding of the federal government, confused a 65% cut in EPA’s budget with a 65% reduction in EPA’s staff. The staff being fired are those with the least amount of civil service protection with no thought devoted to their talent or the work they were doing. In any case, EPA’s personnel budget is quite small because the agency is smaller than many federal agencies. The number of staff in the federal government has not grown for about half a century, with most growth taking place in work contracted out to private companies. Most of EPA’s budget is in grants to states, local governments, and nonprofit organizations and in contracts with private companies. EPA is a very small agency, and the national office is quite a bit smaller than the total number of staff in its ten regional offices. EPA has regional labs, program labs, and laboratories in its national Office of Research and Development that concentrate and develop America’s technical expertise in environmental science. What is being impaired by eliminating staff is the national-level scientific and engineering expertise needed to measure and reduce pollution, as well as manage emergency clean-ups such as the toxic residues of the Los Angeles fires and the toxic train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio. In addition to the mindless cuts in EPA’s science capacity, the reductions in the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration will impair our capacity to predict extreme weather events and warn people to escape from pathways of destruction. The sheer idiocy and self-destructiveness of cuts to these science-based operations is beyond belief. Of course, these are the same folks firing the experts who manage our nuclear warheads, so why should anyone be surprised?
Sadly, in addition to its anti-regulatory ideology, the Trump administration is engaged in a war on expertise and science. The experience and institutional knowledge of government workers are being discarded at the same time labs in universities are being starved of resources. America’s world-leading scientific expertise, long the basis of its economic power, is under threat. This is happening in EPA and in environmental research labs throughout America. It is also happening in medical science, including science on the health impacts of toxic substances and other forms of pollution.
The underlying assumption of the Musk-DOGE-Trump mindset is that much of what the federal government does is not needed and the work that is needed is performed poorly and inefficiently. This is mythology and pure nonsense. While every organization has inefficiencies and government operations are probably over-regulated, all of the work undertaken by the federal government is authorized by law, and efforts to end those organizations or their work without legislation are likely illegal. By targeting federal disbursement systems and freezing funding and firing probationary workers, the national level work of environmental protection is being significantly impaired. Morale is being destroyed and 21st-century human resource policies are being discarded by a series of brutal and probably illegal terminations, threats, and performative “five bullet” weekly reporting requirements.
The idea that this mindless nonsense will free the “animal spirits” of American entrepreneurship and create a booming economy fails to account for the turmoil, fright, and insecurity descending on the federal government. Since most federal employees work outside of Washington D.C., this insecurity is touching nearly every American community. Despite DOGE ideology, the federal government performs essential functions in America’s economy and culture. After this onslaught, few talented young people will be applying for any federal jobs. Brilliant and dedicated federal workers will leave the government as soon as they can, leaving behind those without the marketable skills to get out. In federal environmental agencies, this will mean the brain drain of the first Trump term will resume, but this time on steroids. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will rapidly lose the ability to fulfill EPA’s statutory requirements. While Trump’s policies opposing legally authorized climate and environmental justice programs will be the first to be discarded, next we will see the erosion of policies to protect our air, land, and water and critical grant programs that fund water and sewage treatment infrastructure. This will leave state and local governments on their own. Some will be able to protect their people from harm, others will not.
None of this will be good for the economy. A deteriorating environment will result in an acceleration of the Not in My Backyard Syndrome (NIMBY). Expect increased local resistance to development and all sorts of facility siting. In states with weak environmental agencies, we will see more environmental emergencies but without federal capacity in EPA or FEMA to provide expert response assistance. Cleaning up toxic disasters is always more expensive than preventing them, and either those clean-ups take place or the costs will shift onto the healthcare system as people get sick.
Economic growth is not an alternative to environmental quality, it depends on the presence of environmental quality. Our wealth and lifestyle depend on our biosphere. Food, water and air are provided by the earth and by productive technologies that depend on functioning ecosystems. Technologies have not yet been developed to substitute for the natural environment. Musk may think that our species must escape the earth to survive, but the earth will need to survive quite a bit longer since we don’t have the technological base to escape it. It is easier to destroy organizational capacity than to build it, and the destruction of EPA and research labs in American universities will degrade our natural environment and become a significant drag on America’s economy. I hope this destruction will be halted, but I see few signs that the other two branches of government are willing and able to halt this assault on essential federal agencies.
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.
