Ronald Trump's Viewpoints On The Environment

Since Donald Trump has taken the office of Presidency this past February, there have been many policy changes within our federal government. One of the more notable change of policy has been that of the environment, specifically focusing on the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). President Trump’s viewpoints on the environment are often compared to those of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan believed in a free market ideology with little to no influence from the government. This led to him deregulating many environmental policies in order to put business before the safety of the environment. President Trump has a very similar viewpoint on the environment and since taking office he has rolled back an alarmingly high number of environmental
One of ways he set out to accomplish this task was by appointing Anne Gorsuch Burford to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Burford was a loyalist to Reagan and followed many if not all of his orders . Burford believed that the EPA was too big, too wasteful, and too restrictive of business . Her solution to this was cutting the EPA’s budget by twenty two percent shortly after being appointed to her position. Another major policy change that Burford made to the EPA was reducing many of the clean water regulations that the EPA had . On top of that, during her time as head of the EPA there was a steep decline in the number of cases filed against polluters, the clean air act was relaxed so that restricted pesticides could be sprayed, and she attempted to set aside a thirty by forty mile area of land to burn toxic waste . Most of these actions were encouraged by President Reagan to allow big industry to thrive and do as they pleased without the EPA getting in their way. Burford was forced to resign after twenty two months in her position for being cited for contempt of congress . This gave Reagan’s presidency a bad look so he dropped Burford, even though she was directly following his orders all
Four months into this position, Pruitt has undone, delayed, or blocked more than thirty environmental rules making it the largest rollback ever on environmental policy . It is clear from these actions that Trump and Pruitt have very similar viewpoints on environmental policy. Pruitt has also worked hard to undo as much of Obama’s climate change regulations as possible . Trump values stimulating the economy in whatever ways possible. This includes disregarding the protection of the environment to allow big businesses to operate as unregulated as possible so they can generate more