Harvard University Tracks Environmental Deregulatory Decisions by Trump Administration
Harvard Environmental Law Program Blog
This fall, the Environmental Policy Initiative launched a deregulatory tracker to keep tabs on environmental rollbacks of the Trump administration.
The idea for this project came from two high-level environmental law summits we hosted at HLS in the first six months after the 2016 presidential election. At those summits, we assembled leaders from the federal government, the states, academia, and the non-profit sector to discuss the threat to public health and environmental protection posed by the intended agenda of the new administration.
First as president-elect, then as president, Mr. Trump signaled his interest in withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord and in rescinding or weakening the Clean Power Plan, rules to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, and the Clean Water Rule – as well as in opening an unprecedented amount of public lands to resource extraction – and much more.
Since it was clear from early on that the sheer pace and scale of the anticipated rollbacks would make them difficult to monitor, we decided to create a website where people could go to track developments and read an explanation of what’s at stake for each listed rule — so that the public would be better equipped to exercise their rights to comment on proposed changes to rules.
Our tracker was recently featured as a source for a New York Times story “52 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump.” We hope it will continue to be useful to journalists, as well as the public and policymakers.
We will be adding new entries to the tracker and will keep the posts current. If you would like to be on the email list for tracker updates you can sign up here.
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