“All the environmental indicators under President Trump improved. Our air today is seven percent cleaner than it was when President Trump took office. Our water quality is the highest it’s ever been. On the Superfund side, we got more sites cleaned up in a generation,” Andrew Wheeler, who directed the agency, announced at CPAC 21 in Florida.
“A lot of people wrote us off saying that we didn’t believe in the environment, but we actually collected twice as much in criminal and civil penalties as the Obama administration did during their first four years—twice as much. So we were certainly out there enforcing the laws, making sure that all the environmental indicators improved. And at the same time, we put forward cost-effective regulations, so that wouldn’t cost American jobs. So we had an incredible track record. I’m very proud of it,” Wheeler continued.
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Many studies have shown an improvement in the environment throughout the Trump administration. For example, a report issued in 2019 showed emissions declined between 2016 and 2018. And greenhouse gas emissions lowered again from 2018 to 2019, according to the EPA.
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Greenhouse gases catch the heat and are said to make the planet hotter; most emissions come from human activities, such as burning coal.
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On the other hand, Trump's critics insisted his rollback of regulations have or would damage the environment. The Rhodium Group, a research provider, announced last year that Trump’s significant rollbacks, like cutting controls on hydrofluorocarbons, a type of greenhouse gas, could add 1.8 gigatons of CO2-equivalent to the atmosphere by 2035.
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Wheeler explained that regulations and rollbacks the Trump administration put out were commonsense suggestions like a replacement for the Obama administration’s clean power plan, which was struck down by the Supreme Court.
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“We put forth four commonsense regulations to address climate change and reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gases,” he announced.
Wheeler went on to explain that critics don’t want to give the Trump administration credit that it deserves for what it achieved on the environment, “because they don’t want to see a Republican having a good environmental record, and we had an incredible environmental record under President Trump’s watch.”
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Biden stated that moving the United States back into the Paris Agreement will help fight what he called "the climate crisis".
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Wheeler disagreed.
“At best, it’s unnecessary, and at worst, it could hurt American jobs and innovation and American taxpayers. Most of the other first world countries were not following the Paris climate accord targets that they set for themselves. Both Germany and France have fallen behind their targets. We were reducing our CO2 levels, and more so than just about any of our trading partners,” he said.
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