The Biden Administration’s Shocking Scientific Abuses at EPA

The Biden administration and its Environmental Protection Agency continue to attack sound science and undermine faith in the regulatory process.

The Trump administration created the EPA in December 2020. decidedTo maintain the existing air quality standards fine particulate matter. This decision was partly based on the advice of Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.

At the time, EPA explained, “The U.S. has some of the lowest fine particulate matter levels in the world – approximately five times below the global average, six times below Chinese levels, and 20 percent lower than France, Germany, and Great Britain.”

Average fine particulate matter concentrations between 2000 and 2020 decreased4.1%

Now the story gets ugly.

President Joe Biden was inaugurated on his first day in office, January 20, 2021. issued an “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis” that directed agencies to review past agency actions.  

In a fact sheet accompanying the executive order, one of the actions to be reviewed was the EPA’s decision just one month earlier to retain the existing fine particulate matter standards.

UnderThe Clean Air Act states that every five years the EPA must review and, if necessary, revise the air quality standards governing fine particulate matter.

The Biden administration however wants to intervene immediately to make these standards even stricter.

In March 2021, EPA Administrator Michael Regan dismissedAll the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee advisors, as well as any other legally required panel, Science Advisory Board.

This shocking move, made before the EPA’s decision in June 2021 to reconsider the fine particulate matter standards, gives the impression that the administrator only wants to only hear from those who will support Biden’s agenda.

John Graham, who had led the EPA’s Science Advisory Board before it was disbanded, stated after this purge, “Now, for the first time in the agency’s 50-year history, we have an administrator interested in scientific advice only from those scientists he has personally appointed.”

In a surprising development, the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee was formed last week. recommendedThe EPA has made the fine particulate standards stricter.

Regan will now decide whether to make the standards stricter. This seems to be a foregone conclusion.

The actions taken by the EPA and Biden administration, from revising the fine particulate matter standards to purging Clean Air Science Advisory Committee have shown a total disregard for science and the scientific process used to determine these actions.

These actions are instead a reflection of a belief in science and regulatory process that science and regulation are only worth respecting if they produce the desired ideological and political outcomes.

President Barack Obama issued the following statement in 2009 memorandumbased on scientific integrity, arguing the public must have the ability to trust science and the scientific process used in agencies.

He was absolutely correct. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s actions have given the public every reason to not trust the science or the scientific process used in protecting the nation’s environment.

Legislators shouldn’t just watch as this abuse takes place. They should interdict the EPA from revising the fine particulate matter standards at the moment and take additional steps. ensureThe EPA’s use of sound science. 

Note: The author submitted the following information. commentTo the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee, arguing that it was inappropriate that the EPA be revisiting the particulate material standards at this point.

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