Donald Trump and his cronies should be so proud of themselves.
There certainly were prior administrations that intentionally or ignorantly advanced policies that caused massive harm to both public and ecological health. In a forthcoming book on the history of U.S. law and the environment, Brigham Daniels and I identify a long history of damaging actions by presidents, often with the support of Congress and acceptance by the judiciary — including the destruction of once plentiful species and even entire ecosystems.
This was the case in what we identify as the Allocation era (1781-1890) and Modernization era (1920-1960) of U.S. environmental law. Following each of these periods — first in the Progressive era and then in the Environmental era — democratic institutions adopted a cascade of local, state and federal laws, developed to eliminate or at least reduce the harms caused or facilitated by law.
Though far from sufficient, these laws helped promote the preservation, conservation and sustained use of natural resources and the protection of human health caused by harmful products or pollution from development or the production of goods. These laws remain the backbone of environmental protection today. With the bipartisan trillion-dollar congressional investments from the 2021 infrastructure bill and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a long overdue but nonetheless unparallelled energy transition was underway.
In just a few months, however, the second Trump administration has been trying its best to launch the most audacious assault on environmental protection law in the history of our nation. The habitually unlawful actions are far too many to list, but a few are worth mentioning.
The Trump administration has:
• announced a preposterous “national energy emergency” that combines ill-fated and expensive attempts to resurrect dirty coal as a leading energy source, as well as massively increase liquified natural gas exports (increasing U.S. pollution and energy costs), and set forth an unparalleled barrage of vindictive and illogical assaults on renewable energy sources;
• officially bragged about EPA’s “Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History,” including 31 actions designed or universally understood to increase pollution;
• sought to eviscerate transparency and participation in environmental decisions, including repealing long-established regulations interpreting the National Environmental Policy Act and introducing “alternative NEPA procedures” that reduce timelines over consequential decisions to as little as two weeks;
• attacked science and scientific integrity by massively slashing federal research funding, and defunding, de-staffing and eliminating agency offices and branches dedicated to advancing science, like EPA’s Office of Research and Development;
• ceased or significantly cut enforcement of essential environmental protections (or allowed industry to email the president to fast-track exemptions); and
• gutted public health and food safety programs, such as those dedicated to addressing bird flu and milk quality testing.
All this, in fewer than 200 days since this devastating presidential term began.
Last month, however, the Trump administration took perhaps its most destructive and regressive step yet: proposing to overturn the EPA’s 16-year-old finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases cause or contribute to human and environmental harm. This finding, supported by overwhelming scientific evidence at the time and even more so today, is the basis for EPA regulation of pollution that causes climate change.
This action is willful and even boastful of its ignorance about climate science. It attempts to distort established law, including 2022 congressional approval of greenhouse gas regulation and U.S. Supreme Court precedent. It adds to the already harmful instability of U.S. energy markets caused by the president’s disastrous tariff policies. And, of course, it threatens to undo the progress profoundly needed for human and ecological health in the U.S. and around the world to reduce the extent of global climate change.
Given the incomparably advanced state of scientific knowledge today, the global scale of potential harm and the clear opportunities readily available and increasingly demonstrated to both promote environmental protection while advancing economic development — not to mention the willful denial and “legal” assault on each of these elements — anyone would be hard pressed to not identify the second Trump administration as the worst in its choices and actions.
In time, we will see how much harm the courts will allow, or whether (this or a new) Congress will step up to stop these reckless actions. But it certainly looks like this president, cheered on by his dirty energy collaborators, has won the shameful title of “Worst President for the Environment in US History” in record time.
Alejandro E. Camacho is Chancellor’s Professor of Law at University of California, Irvine, and a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform.
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