I'm not saying it can't be done better or more efficiently. But Science and research seem like a pretty important part of environmental protection. https://www.washingtonpost.com/clim...8/epa-office-research-development-eliminated/
Imagine thinking that this administration cared the slightest bit about the (non-wealthy) people of our country.
The movement from “elites” is not, in a vacuum, the craziest idea. The solution to move to absolute boot slop is.
16,155 employees? That's nuts. If I were to guess before reading that I would have thought they might have 400 people working at the EPA... Yeah, cut that number of employees by 90%... or more.
Open borders did more to harm our environment than anything else. rivergator and every liberal poster at Too Hot are the true enemies of the environment.
Who exactly is the one orchestrating this shit, because you know it’s not Trump, who is not ideologically tied to anything other than holding on to his own power. Is he just outsourcing Project 2025 to someone to keep the rich folks and mouth breathers happy?
EPA isn’t just an office building in DC I don’t know if 16,000 is too much, but your 400 estimate is even more wildly off, but it tells us why y’all feel the way you do when your expectations are so off from reality..
Russ Vougt and likely tech companies like Palantir in the background mapping this all out. There is a level of sophistication that entirely too methodical for a group of humans. Humans would leak their involvement to appear important. It is machine like.
Glass half-full view… RIF of the EPA is not necessarily unreasonable. It might be that people will be replace with technology and become more efficient. The EPA had roughly 16,000 employees. Approximately 3,700 were culled already. Eliminating the research arm, and RIF, and moving people around could force more objective leadership and operations in the EPA. The EPA can allocate dollars to independent labs or other contractors. The research may not be lost if done for example by a university or through grants. The EPA had about 13,000 employees in 1980. Let’s say it gets down to less than 10,000. If the annual budget “savings” of $1b in compensation savings gets redeployed to technology, grants to university research, and perhaps less costly, younger researchers. Glass half-empty view is that the EPA leadership is stacked with industry insiders and lawyers. This is inherently a conflict of interest from the EPA’s remit. The question is whether they can brain drain the EPA in 3 years that will erode confidence of the American people with the EPA. If that is the goal, they already won. The next Dem in office will be lost trying to rebuild the trust of the EPA that has already been lost. The more important thing in my mind is the EPA goals and measurement of those goals is transparent and accountability doesn’t get lost in the ether.
I don’t see any glass have full view from the Trump administration when it comes to the EPA, and them sincerely looking to make it more efficient. The spirit of the EPA goes against big business interests.
What info do you have that tells us that that few people can protect the drinking water, air quality, pesticide levels in foods, hazardous waste, and chemical contamination for 340m people covering 3.8 million square miles? Rick, I literally know a guy who is responsible for making sure used mattresses aren't being sold at retail unless they are certified and that hotels are inspected for proper certifications on the mattress that you sleep on. Why do we need him? Because without that division of the EPA, bedbugs would be an epidemic. With the number of thrift and second hand stores these days, He only covers a few counties. There are a lot of guys doing just his job. Now corelate that with the loss of research and future sources of pestilence epidemics will go unfound or undetermined. You know the EPA makes sure your mattress is chemical free and fireproof at that hotel you stay in right? We literally can't fathom how deep the EPA goes in protecting us from things we would never think about...until we gut it "by 90%"
One of the lasting impacts of this administration will be a series of incidents that make people say "how could this possibly happen in the US in this day and age?" to which the answer will be that we used to have people/controls to prevent it until they were gutted by the Trump admin.
And imagine what it will take to start putting it back together again. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported in March that the administration was planning to do this. When EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was asked about that, he denied it. In March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin denied NY Times reporting that the agency would eliminate its research arm. On Friday, the EPA did just that.
That might be true. My suspicion is the admin is trying to reduce EPA remit and regulations to allow big business to lean into domestic manufacturing. If so, they want to reset the equilibrium point from “zero harm” to “some acceptable harm.” OT: The question (in my mind) is how far will they push? The line seems to be about getting the US life expectancy back down to lower 70’s so they can also curtail SS and med costs. If they can shave 10 years of life expectancy, it’s a win for MAGA economists.
Bald eagles are scary. We don’t need them. As for people, in the immortal words of Joni Ernst, “we are all going to die.” So what’s the big deal?
