The Biden Administration’s ambitious goals to combat climate change have hit snag after snag, thanks to the GOP’s unwillingness to devote the resources to fighting humanity’s arguably biggest threat. As the Washington Post reports, it’s lean times for the Environmental Protection Agency, where air quality monitoring projects have been slashed due to lack of funding and fewer civil cases against polluters have been opened—not because companies are somehow committing fewer violations but because enforcement is nearly impossible to carry out with such few gains in funding.
The EPA had its largest fiscal year enacted budget in 2010 at more than $10.2 billion. It even had a larger workforce back then, with 17,278 employees. The EPA’s enacted budget for fiscal year 2022 is just above $9.5 billion, and the agency spans just 14,581 employees. Republicans have proven over and over again that they don’t want an EPA whose budget keeps pace with inflation. Also hindering matters is the fact that lawmakers have yet to confirm David Uhlmann as the EPA’s assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance. Uhlmann, a professor at the University of Michigan considered an expert on environmental law, faced considerable resistance from Republicans more concerned with the EPA blocking fossil fuel companies from doing as they please than with sufficiently staffing the agency.
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Funding issues and reluctance to act on a climate crisis the U.S. has only hastened precedes the Biden administration—by decades, according to experts—and was even worse during the Trump administration. For those who were in Trump’s orbit, that’s exactly the point. Former Trump environmental advisor Myron Ebell, who assisted the administration’s EPA transition, was simply glowing when approached by the Washington Post about the EPA’s still-meager budget. “I’m happy to see the EPA budget shrink in real terms. I hope that if the Republicans are in the majority in the 118th Congress, they will pass much bigger cuts,” Ebell told the paper. The multi-millionaire now works at a conservative think tank where he can continue accruing money and pretending climate change isn’t real because he’ll probably die before his home of Washington, D.C., becomes uninhabitable.
Even just one term of one administration has led to consequences beyond the EPA itself, however. According to the latest Environmental Performance Index (EPI) obtained by the New York Times ahead of its Wednesday release, the U.S. is worse off thanks to the Trump administration when it comes to reaching net zero. The EPI tracks environmental goals for 180 countries and releases its findings every two years; it’s a joint project between the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network Earth Institute.
As the New York Times notes, the U.S.’s rankings took a considerable tumble, with the country coming in 43rd overall in 2022 compared with its 24th-place ranking in 2020. Its ranking on climate metrics dropped the U.S. to 101st in 2022 compared with its 15th-place ranking in 2020, bringing it well below a majority of wealthy, developed countries. Much more can and should be done if the U.S. wants to join the only two countries—Denmark and Great Britain—meeting net-zero goals. That includes not only bolstering the EPA’s budget and moving forward with the Build Back Better Act, but also calling climate change what it is: a national emergency.