Congressman Mat Gaetz from Florida recently introduced bill HR 861 to terminate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The bill would defund and remove from existence the Environmental Protection Agency. Even though details have not been released, the idea for the bill is to have states and local communities regulate their own environmental pollution.
Gaetz’s claims he wants the EPA to be handled on the state and local community level because: "The American people are drowning in rules and regulations promulgated by unelected bureaucrats." But in reality, EPA regulations have already been severely weakened by unelected lobbyists and legislators who are in their pockets.
The notion that the environment no longer needs protected is an extreme one even today and goes far beyond what most Americans now believe: that climate change is real and that work needs to be done to protect it.
The economic impact on states and communities of taking care of their own environmental regulations would simply break our local economies that are already struggling from the loss of revenue due to big tax breaks to corporations.
The move to create local EPAs doesn’t make any scientific or practical sense either. Pollution does not have boundaries based on states or cities. And it could mean that states that are down wind to anti-environmental lawmakers would be forced to pay more to keep their air and water clean, even if they were being environmentally responsible.
Besides wanting our communities and our children to be safe, environmental regulations MUST be done more broadly and without politics involved.