In 1970, Republican President Richard Nixon signed an executive order creating the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It was a time when pollution made many of our nation’s rivers and streams unsafe for fishing or swimming. Back then, New York City’s air pollution was so thick that you often couldn’t see the city’s iconic bridges. Forty-seven years later, there is serious talk of dismantling the agency, or at least slashing its size by two-thirds.
On Monday, Senior White House Advisor Don Benton sent an email to all EPA employees regarding public scrutiny of the EPA transition. Benton, a retired Republican state senator from Vancouver, Washington, was chosen by the Donald Trump Administration to lead the EPA transition team on Jan. 23.
In the summer of 2015 a tropical storm slammed into the mountains of Myanmar and triggered one of the largest landslides not caused by an earthquake in a decade. We know this because of pictures—stunning in their devastation—taken with a satellite run by NASA. We know this because of government science.
Today the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced additional vehicle emissions testing in response to Volkswagen cheating at the tests since 2008, though many questions remain about which cars, and how many, will ultimately be subjected to them.