December 2 – Happy Birthday, EPA!

nPostednon December 2, 2016

nInnthe United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has done anreally good job of helping to protect human health and thenenvironment by setting priorities, writing laws, and enforcing laws.

nThisnorganization has literally changed the world – for the better.

ThenEPA has worked on pesticides, air pollution, water pollution,ngreenhouse gases and climate change, ozone depletion, trash/waste,nand much more.

nWithnmore than 15,000 full-time employees, including many engineers andnscientists, the EPA is on the front lines standing against short-termnthinking and greed, standing up for a more global and long-term viewnof human activity.

nThenEPA was proposed by President Richard Nixon, and he signed annexecutive order bringing the agency into existence. It begannoperations on this date in 1970.

Thisnis important: even though the Environmental Protection Agency was thenbrainstorm of a Republican President, and even though it has beennwidely viewed as effective and important, the current Republicannplatform, the Republican president-elect, and the Republican-lednCongress all seem to want to abolish the EPA as we know it! Thenplatform urges the government to forbid the EPA to regulate carbonndioxide – which is crazy, since that is one of the most importantngreenhouse gases. It also calls for shifting responsibility fornenvironmental regulation to the states, ending the federalngovernment’s ability to study the effects of pollution and tonestablish policies and laws that safeguard our air, water, and land.nInstead of thinking long-term, big-picture, as the Republican Partynhas in the past, the current version of the party seems to want toncrawl into a short-term, small-view that will be morenself-destructive than helpful to anyone and everyone!

nLet’sncelebrate the EPA today, on its birthday! And let’s make sure itnstays the hard-working, effective agency it always has been.

One EPA success story that touches my life is the air quality in
Southern California. When I was growing up, there was so so so so
so so much smog, and so many days we were not allowed to play
outside because of smog alerts. Now there are even more people
and even more cars in the Los Angeles area,
but the air is much much much much cleaner and clearer!

My husband grew up in one of the biggest environmental disaster zones in the country, the Love’s Canal area of Niagara Falls, NY. The first time he tried to show me what his old stomping grounds looked like, when we were adults, it looked like the fenced off area above. The last time we went there, it ALMOST looked like parkland, below. The old, unused houses had been removed, but there were still some old, unused roads. It was pretty but also pretty weird…The EPA is key to preventing new disasters and also healing old ones.