Let’s start with a little vocabulary lesson. “Regulatory capture” is when a regulated industry finds ways to influence the agency that regulates it, so as to give it preferential treatment and protect the industry’s own profits. In the past, this has been a relatively subtle and complicated process involving the sort of cloak and dagger efforts that avoid detection and funding-web-connections that can make critics sound a little tin foil-y.
Not any more. These days, the EPA is openly welcoming regulatory capture, and admitting publicly that it’s giving polluters a louder voice at the expense of independent experts and stakeholders.
How do we know this? Well, they said it on the record. After coverage in PoliticoPro and E&E of the EPA’s recent decision to relieve a raft of scientific advisors from their position on a review board, an EPA spokesman told the New York Times that “the administrator believes we should have people on this board who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community.” In other words, the EPA is getting rid of people who speak on behalf polluted communities and intend to bring in more of the perspective of the people causing it. (And it’s not just the EPA: the Interior is suspending over 200 advisory panels while Zinke reviews them.)
So at the EPA (and probably also at Interior), experts and representatives from civil society are being kicked off the expert panels and being replaced with industry voices. A member of a similar EPA scientific advisory panel described this process using a very technical term, so excuse the jargon: “It’s a lot of bullshit.”
In order to sift through this pile of...administrative paperwork, Senator Tom Carper sent a letter to the EPA Tuesday requesting the communications involved in this decision. Whether or not Pruitt complies with the oversight remains to be seen (also, Carper should be sure to ask for Pruitt’s private emails, just in case…) Given the newfound mission of the agency to protect regulated industries from regulations and Pruitt’s preference for polluters over public health, some are wondering if EPA should change its name altogether (we particularly like Enrich Pruitt’s Allies and the Exxon Protection Agency).
Though we shouldn’t be surprised. Pruitt was, after all, picked for this job years after the New York Times exposed his unprecedented, secretive alliance with the fossil fuel industry.
Which is why the EPA spox can admit that they’re prioritizing the needs of polluters. At this point, Pruitt knows he doesn’t even need to be secretive about any unprecedented alliances.
After all, he works for Trump.
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