HLS Environmental Experts Criticize Trump’s ‘Illegal’ Environmental Protection Agency Rollbacks

Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program Executive Director Carrie Jenks and HLS Professor Richard Lazarus discussed the “chaos” of President Trump’s recent Environmental Protection Agency rollbacks at a Salata Institute forum on Tuesday.

“I would say that Trump 2.0 in the first 71 days has been more akin to a nuclear explosion with a bullseye on programs related to climate change,” Lazarus said.

The event, moderated by Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability Jim Stock, was the most recent installment of the Salata Institute’s “Harvard Voices on Climate Change” virtual series.

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has issued an onslaught of executive orders targeting environmental regulation, including a March 12 Environmental Protection Agency press release that outlined the agency’s plans for deregulation.

“They framed March 12 as the biggest deregulatory day in history,” Jenks said of the presidential administration. “There was no deregulatory action. There was a press release that they intended to do something.”

As a result of the executive orders, the EPA is projected to reconsider auto-tailpipe emissions, and regulations on power plants. The agency is also set to review the 2009 Endangerment Finding that underpins EPA’s Clean Air Act greenhouse gas regulations for “the power sector, oil and gas sector, transportation, and landfills.”

“What’s striking is that I don’t think these industries — power, oil and gas, auto manufacturers — want this outcome,” Jenks said. “They may want changes to the rules, but they want the rules in place for legal as well as economic reasons,”

“Not to mention that many companies have commitments to mitigate climate change risk,” she added. “They need to remain competitive internationally, and their investment plans prior to now were part of their business strategy.”

Trump’s rollbacks point to a continued Republican commitment to erasing policies from the Biden administration, including the Inflation Reduction Act. The policy originally instructed the EPA to impose a tax on entities emitting more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

“It’s our first sort of carbon tax of any kind, and one that people will really celebrate as internalizing the cost and giving people a huge incentive, without regulation, a tax,” Lazarus said of the IRA’s tax.

But Lazarus added that since Congress successfully targeted the tax rule using the Congressional Review Act, the EPA is “powerless” to enforce a similar tax.

In addition to attacking the EPA, the Trump administration has attempted to freeze millions of dollars of funding authorized by Congress for many climate initiatives, including the United States Agency for International Development.

“The easy part is: it’s illegal,” Lazarus said. “The president has no inherent constitutional authority to impound or refuse to spend funds already appropriated by Congress for particular purposes, full stop.”

“The hard part is the Trump administration does not mind doing illegal things. They don’t mind forcing the courts to act,” Lazarus added.

But beyond the funding cuts, Lazarus said the biggest problem facing environmental protections is the removal of career lawyers, scientists, and economists from the EPA.

“If they successfully destroy that deep level of expertise, we come back in four years, we can’t get our work done because the career people make policy decisions,” Lazarus said. “They’re threatening to eliminate offices like the offices of scientific research in the EPA, get rid of all the employees — about 1500 — and they’re doing this, regardless of the illegalities.”

“We know climate change is an issue where time is not fungible,” he added. “To lose, not just the regulations, potentially lose that career expertise and the funding of the IRA, is potentially devastating.”

—Staff writer Ava H. Rem can be reached at ava.rem@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @avar3m.

—Staff writer Iris J. Xue can be reached at iris.xue@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @iris_j_xue.