Science Friday - Degrees Of Change: Regulatory Rollbacks. May 22, 2020, Part 1

Episode Date: May 22, 2020

The Trump administration is in the process of reversing nearly 100 environmental rules and regulations—threatening air, water, and public health. For example, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has relaxed enforcement for air pollution violations, allowing emissions to continue unchecked during the spread of a respiratory illness. “We’ve never seen anything like the systematic rollback of all things environmental the way we have in this administration,” says David Uhlmann, director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program and the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. A History Of Environmental Policy Uhlmann looks back to years leading up to the push in pollution regulation in the U.S. and the establishment of the EPA in the 1970s. Some of the most catastrophic pollution events in U.S. history inspired the environmental protection efforts, from the historic Cuyahoga River fires in Ohio to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. “I look at this decade, at both the challenges we face and the opportunities before us, and I’m reminded of the 1970s,” Uhlmann says. “I think we can, indeed we must, come together again around environmental issues, recognize the fact that there is no planet B. There’s no where else for us to go.” The Public Health Challenge Of Our Time Air pollution is extremely harmful to human health, especially for children. Not only do these emissions exacerbate respiratory problems, they’re linked to asthma, ADHD, depression, and low birth weight in children. Gina McCarthy, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council and former EPA administrator, calls climate change “the biggest public health challenge of our time.” But climate change does not impact everyone equally. Low-income communities are especially vulnerable to this kind of pollution, risks that are expected to get worse as climate change continues. “It’s very important to be aware of how much more affected children, everyone in low income communities, and communities of color have been,” says Frederica Perera, founding director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. “They have suffered disproportionate exposure to air pollution and they’ve more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as well.” In this chapter of Degrees of Change, Uhlmann discusses the history of environmental regulations, and how we got here. Then later in the segment, McCarthy and Perera talk about the link between EPA rollbacks, climate change, and public health. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. Just a quick note before we get started, as we have switched to recording our show, we miss you. Yeah, you. We miss talking to you, and we want you to say hello. Talk to us on Science Friday Voxpop app on Twitter, or you can even email us, SciFri at ScienceFri.com. And now, all over the country, states that shut down to slow coronavirus transmission are now reopening. And in many states, the number of cases of COVID-19 continues to rise. But for everyone holding their breath for a coronavirus vaccine, one company working on a candidate reported good news this week. Antibodies. Yes, a small number of human participants

in a phase one clinical trial produced antibodies when injected with the vaccine. Here to tell us the latest in the quest for a COVID vaccine and other short subjects in science is Amerifan, reporter for Vox, based in Washington, D.C. Welcome back. Thanks for having me. Okay, can we start with this vaccine candidate? Exactly, what can we celebrate and may it be too soon to celebrate? It may be a little too soon to celebrate, but it is still good news.

This is from a company called Moderna, and what they've developed is a vaccine that uses mRNA. In this case, it uses a small chunk of genetic. material and that uses the cell's internal machinery to produce a fragment of the virus. And then the immune system can then use that for target practice as a sort of a warm up to dealing with the real virus if it does ever infect. And this company reported this week that in a clinical trial that it has underway, they reported that eight patients who were treated with this vaccine generated antibodies at the same level as people who were naturally infected and recovered from the virus. So it showed that they could generate a pretty strong response with this vaccine. Now, let's talk about

the not so good news, which maybe it's not quite ready for prime time yet. Yeah, that's right. And this was out of a trial of about 45 patients. They haven't quite tested everyone else yet. And yeah, it's still very early. Now, scientists say that the pace of progress has been unprecedented. Remember, this is a virus that we've just basically got the information from in January and they're already testing a vaccine to it. But it still needs a lot more testing. MRNA vaccines, we haven't used one yet. There hasn't been one that has been approved for human use. And so it requires a lot more safety and efficacy testing before it's ready for prime time. All that said, some animal model tests show that it has been able to generate antibodies in those models. And so scientists are

optimistic, but the results have to be demonstrated before it can actually be used. And we don't know yet, quite yet, if the antibodies are going to actually protect us from the coronavirus. That's right. We don't really have a good sense of that right now. There is an expectation that it will, based on our experience with other coronaviruses that, you know, antibodies and having recovered from the virus can protect you against future infection. But that's not a guarantee right now, and that requires further testing to validate. You talked about it being an MRNA vaccine, but that's different from like the normal flu vaccine, right? Yeah, that's right. Most vaccines typically use either a weakened form of the virus or a fragment of the virus. And with

With an MRNA vaccine, you're using a piece of genetic material. And what the advantage of doing that is that you can program that genetic material to produce whatever it is you want, so you can iterate much faster. And because rather than injecting a piece of the virus, you're just injecting a piece of genetic material, the idea is it could potentially be safer too. Because with the trick with the vaccine is you want to be able to trigger an immune response strong enough that the body will provide protection against a future infection, but you don't want the body to overreact either. And so threading that needle is a little bit difficult. And with an

mRNA vaccine, the idea is because you're using the body's own machinery to produce a chunk of the virus, it'll be less likely to overreact, but more likely to actually generate a strong response. Let's talk about another issue in this pandemic. We have spent a lot of time talking about some of the unforeseen consequences. And one of them is an organ shortage. I would never have expected that. What's going on here? Yeah, it turns out that a lot of people under these lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are traveling a lot less, and a consequence of that is that people are getting into fewer accidents. In the United States, it turns out that traffic accidents account for about 33% of organ donations, those single largest source, and with much less traffic on the road,

there are much fewer organs being available for donation. The United Network for Organ Sharing reported that between March and April, deaths from traffic accidents were down 23% compared to the year before. But accidents in general are down too. Looking at deaths from all other accidents, they're also down 21%. Another consequence of stay-at-home orders and some of the restrictions we're seeing at hospitals is that patients are staying home for illnesses rather than going to get treatment. And so patients that would otherwise die at a hospital are now dying at home. And that means that the organs they have don't get harvested or they're not viable by the time

they are, you know, treated or by the time they are actually taken in by the health care system. And so that means overall there are fewer organs coming in. Well, is there any way to make up for this shortage? I mean, the simple ways to increase the pool of donors that are available. And so that just means more people opting into organ donation systems. But other than that, I mean, like, you can't really hope for accidents. I think there's really just no other way around it that this is the main way we get organs and there's really no easy way to solve this shortage.

One of the stories that felt like good news out of this pandemic, there has been a steep drop in pollution and carbon dioxide emissions as people stay home. But you've got some bad news for us about this. Yeah, it turns out the dividend for air pollution hasn't been as large as we thought and it could rebound in a pretty bad way. NPR reported this week that they did an analysis looking at different cities where these state home orders went into effect. And while traffic in some areas fell by about 40% ground level ozone, which is an important pollutant that can lead to heart and lung difficulties, declined by only about 15% in some of those areas, which shows that you didn't see as steep a drop in pollution as you would have expected. And part of that is because while people are driving less, there's still a lot of commercial traffic. Trucking and shipping is still going on in a lot of these industrial areas. There are still facilities like refineries and petroleum facilities that are still generating a lot of areas.

pollution that are still going ahead. And it just shows how difficult it is to reduce air pollution. And then there was another study that came out this week that looked at China in areas where lockdowns were lifted. And they found that pollution rebounded not only back to where it was from before the lockdowns were implemented, but actually even higher. And that just shows just how difficult it is to ratchet down pollution. Part of the reason for that in China was that the government started relaxing some of its

environmental controls to try to get the economy restarted again. And you can see just that, you know, these gains that we've seen in terms of air quality can be quite fleeting. On the other side of the world, the climate seems to be driving a locust problem. Yeah, this is a huge swarm of locusts, likes that these countries have not seen in decades. This is mainly in East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. These are insects that form swarms of up to billions of insects per square kilometer, and they can completely devour crops, they land. And because they're mobile, they fly in the air, they can cover 100 miles in a day.

So that makes them a big threat to food security. Now, the climate factor behind it is that in 2019, we saw a phenomenon called the Indian Ocean dipole at its largest strength that we've seen pretty much on record. In 2019, it was very warm on the western side near Africa and very cool on the eastern side. In places where it's cool, there's less evaporation and less moisture. And so that actually led to drought in Australia, which helped fuel the massive fires we saw earlier this year. But then in the western part in Africa and in around the Arabian Peninsula, there was torrential rainfall. And that helped mobilize more locust because it created more vegetation that the young grasshoppers could eat. And then as they aggregated, they had a

population explosion. Every generation of these locusts can grow 20-fold. And suddenly they undergo this swarming transition and start, you know, devouring crowsion. and posing this huge threat. So it's not just a simple remedy to just throw some pesticide at the locust. Yeah, that's right. I mean, a key factor in controlling these locusts is trying to anticipate them. And scientists are now using climate variables to try to get ahead of where they can expect these locusts to emerge.

They're using satellite data to identify potential green zones where vegetation is emerging and blooming in high volumes. And they're also trying to identify, you know, where these locusts are first in their larval stage or in their nymph stage where they're not as mobile where they haven't matured before they start flying. And that's where they're trying to target pesticides. All right. And let's move on to hurricane season. It's starting for the year and just in time for new data attributing climate change to more intense hurricanes, right? This has been a prediction of climate change models. Right. And the timing couldn't be better. We just had

tropical storm earth or just fizzle out in the Atlantic and cyclone amphan. And then. is making landfall in India and Bangladesh. But, yeah, that's one of the interesting findings of this study published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They found that there is actually a statistically significant trend between warming and the intensity of storms. Since looking at data going back to 1979, particularly satellite images, they said that the likelihood of a hurricane developing into category three or higher, basically with sustained

winds of 110 miles an hour or more, has increased by about 8% percent. every decade since the 1979 threshold. So this kind of comports with what they were projecting, but now they actually have the numbers to back up that projection. Give me some fun good news. I hear there's something good about humpback whales. Right. Kristen Thompson, a marine ecologist at the University of Exeter,

wrote this interesting article on Time magazine this week, just pointing out that humpback whales have made a huge recovery in their populations. Now, humpback whales, they're a very remarkable animal. They're very large, but they're also some of the longest, distance migrating mammals in the world. And so they're an important part of different ecosystems along different coastlines all over the world. And because of protections that were put in place, basically the ban on commercial whaling

in 1986, their populations have rebounded basically back to where they were before whaling. And that's great news because, well, one, it's good for the ecology, for the environment there because they're an important part of the ecosystem. But it also turns out whales themselves are important reservoirs of carbon. They, they're biomass because they're such large animals. They, each whale can store up to 33 metric tons of carbon dioxide. And Thompson estimated that just one population of humpback whales, the ones that breed off the coast of Brazil, among them, they store about 800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

And so that's on par with a small country's annual emissions. And so it's kind of remarkable that how, yeah, how much of an environmental impact that these whales could potentially have. And there's our message for the weekend to take home. home with us. Well, does carbon things. Thank you, Omer. Thanks for having me, I'm here. That was a great story. Omer Afon, a reporter for Vox based in Washington, D.C. After the break, because the climate is still in crisis, we bring you another chapter in our ongoing degrees of change series, looking at how the Trump administration is rolling back wide-ranging environmental

protections while all eyes are on COVID-19. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, we'll talk about the environmental policy rollbacks happening under the Trump administration, reversing almost 100 environmental rules that protect our air, our water, and our bodies. But first, to understand how we got here, we need to take a look back and here to help us understand the history of environmental regulations in the U.S. is David U.S. Director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program at the University of Michigan Law School and Ann Arbor. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks, Ira. I'm delighted to be here. Nice to have you. Set the scene for us. What was going on in the U.S. when the first environmental regulations were put in place? Well, the first environmental laws were enacted by Congress in the 1970s. At a time when the United States had gone through a lot of

societal upheaval. The Vietnam War, civil rights movement, equal rights for women, all created a lot of angst in the United States. And in fact, it was a turbulent time and a time in many ways that has some similarity to what we're going through today. But from an environmental protection standpoint, we didn't have any rules. And the consequences of not having any rules were readily apparent in communities across America. Our rivers and streams were open sewers. Cuyahoga River caught on fire in 1969, and it wasn't the only river in America that was on fire.

And we had hazardous waste sites throughout the country. We had air literally choking people, making it impossible to breathe, breathe in large American cities. So we had a desperate need to do something, about the environment. And remarkably, the environment was an issue that brought people together at a time, as I've said, where people were pretty badly divided. Pretty much everybody was in favor of cleaner air, fresher water, and communities freed of hazardous waste sites.

You know, that really was interesting, the point you make about bringing everybody together because I remember that back in the day. But I thought something that probably led, at least in my mind and in the mind of people around then that led to this environmental consciousness was Rachel Carson's Silent Springbook. Did you agree with that stoking environmental awareness? It's a great question, Ira. You're taking us back further, and I do agree. You know, I think before we came together around the environmental movement in the 1970,

Rachel Carson, and I'd also mention Aldo Leopold. Aldo Leopold wrote before Rachel Carson, he's often called the father of the conservation movement in the United States. And his idea, his idea that we needed to be more conscious about how we affect the world around us, sort of set the table for Rachel Carson, who then wrote in the 1960s about the harmful effects of chemicals and pesticides, especially DDT. And together, I'd say, Leopold. and Carson provided the intellectual foundation for the environmental movement. But in America, we

often need a good tragedy to get us to motivate us to act. So if, if Leopold and Carson raised our consciousness, I think it was the Cuyahoga River on fire, the Santa Barbara oil spill off the coast of California, also in 1969. Oh, yeah, I remember that, yeah. Yeah, those events really, really drove legislative action. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, where Leopold and Carson really had set things in motion. It's interesting point you bring up because, if I recall correctly, that the bipartisanship was evident because it was Richard Nixon, a Republican president who ushered in the Environmental Protection Agency, did he not?

Richard Nixon was president when the Environmental Protection Agency was created, and when the Clean Air Act, the first of the major environmental laws was enacted, it's fair to ask whether he was a true environmentalist. There's at least a lot of thought that Nixon was motivated more than anything by trying to ride the wave of the environmental movement to his re-election in 1972. So he may not have been as hardcore an environmentalist as his records leading the creation of EPA and signing into law, the Queen Eric would suggest. but the bipartisan support in Congress was remarkable.

The votes in the House of Representatives were margins like 400 to 24. And in the Senate, 88 to 10. I mean, the kind of margins that you might not even get today for naming a new federal office building. It was a really remarkable time. And the degree to which people came together around the need to do a better job protecting the environment and in the process protecting public health was remarkable. So that's the puzzling point to me, and I've asked other environmentalists what they think the reason for this breakdown in bipartisanship. When did this rift occur, do you think?

Well, that's also a great question, Ira, because it's not clear why we'd be so divided around environmental issues. You know, a deteriorating environment, a climate that is in peril, you know, none of these challenges are Republican or Democratic issues. The environment doesn't care all that much where we live, whether we're rich and poor, who we love. It affects all of us. And I don't know that it affects all of us equally in the sense that I think poor people and people have color often seem to suffer the worst effects, which is something we could explore. But environment is an issue that everybody should care about. And I think in terms of understanding what happened, part of what happened is Ronald Reagan and a shift in the Republican Party that began with him

that involved pushing hard on an anti-regulatory agenda, almost as a reaction to the 1970s. And part of what happened is we just became so much more partisan and so much more polarized about every other issue. And the environment just became another issue that we've become partisan about and polarized about. I was talking earlier about the rollbacks of the Trump administration. Have we ever seen anything close to it in former administrations? Well, I mentioned Ronald Reagan because he really sort of started the ball rolling in the wrong

direction, trying to pull back at EPA and the Department of the Interior. But frankly, his administrations were child's play compared to what followed. And I think the closest we could come to an administration with an environmental record as bad as this administration would be the presidency of George W. Bush, which, you know, we forget, was pretty disastrous in many respects, particularly from an environmental standpoint. But even George W. Bush's administration, as challenging as that was from an environmental standpoint, as negative an actor as Dick Cheney was,

really pushing the energy industry and pushing environmental rollbacks in a major way, the Trump administration has outdone them all. We've never seen anything like the systematic rollback of all things environmental the way we have in this administration. And it goes beyond even what industry is seeking in many respects. And it completely disregards science and it disregards the law. And it's something that has to stop.

And if it doesn't stop because we have a new president in 2021, it's frightening to think where we're going to end up. I wonder if there's any way to tell if this will change, whether we'll get back to looking at it, the same way. Do you have any thoughts on that? I do. I think we're in an extraordinary moment in our history. We were in a challenging time even before we turned the calendar on 2020. The challenges to our democracy are enormous, and the 2020 election is a real watershed election for us. We've now added the horrible suffering, both from the public health standpoint and from an economic

standpoint of a global pandemic. And right down the road, as a just overwhelming challenge for all of us, is the threat of climate disruption and the catastrophe it will be if we fail to act over the next 10 years. So, you know, I look at this decade and both the challenges we face, but also the opportunities before us. And I'm reminded of the 1970s. I mean, I think we can Indeed, we must come together again around environmental issues, recognize the fact that there is no planet B. There's nowhere else for us to go. And we have to do a better job protecting the environment. We have to address the existential threat that is climate change.

And we have the opportunity to do so. Well, we'll have to wait and see what happens. In the meantime, David, I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today. It's my pleasure, Ira. Thank you. Stay well, David Olman, Director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. Rapid Environmental Rollbacks have been a priority of the Trump administration, and they're happening as our attention is diverted to the pandemic.

So what does that mean for climate change and human health? Joining me to talk about it are Gina McCarthy, President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council based in Boston, Massachusetts. Gina is also the former EPA administrator under President Obama. Also with us is Dr. Federica Pereira, founding director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Columbia University Malman School of Public Health

in New York City. Dr. Pereira is on the board of the NRDC. Thank you both for coming on Science Friday. Thank you very much. Thanks for having us, Ira. Let me begin with you, Gina. what kind of protections are getting rolled back by the Trump administration right now? Well, first of all, Iver, thank you for letting me be here.

I would have to answer all kinds and anything they can think of because this administration from the beginning we knew would not agree with everything that the Obama administration enacted for rules and regulations. I just think nobody could have anticipated the broad sweep of rollbacks that this administration has been proposing and doing their best to defend in court. It's everything from, you know, they did what we call it, Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy, which basically tells industry that if you're inconvenienced by this pandemic,

then don't worry about maintaining your standards for emitting of pollution so that you cannot have to monitor that or report on it so that individuals that live in the shadow of these big, industrial facilities like refineries have no idea what pollution they're being exposed to right now. They have rollback car standards that are designed to make our air cleaner, especially for people that live along highways. They've attacked our science and said that good scientists can't be on all of the panels that help advise on these types of rules. They've rollback toxic emission standards from our power plants. They've decided it's okay to sell dirty wood stoves at a time

when we know that puts more people at risk. So right now he said, okay, do more, make anything you've done permanent before, as if he's not constrained by Congress and the laws that were put in place after our first Earth Day that has protected our air and water and make our lives better. So as you can tell, I'm a little infuriated by it, but more I'm just frightened by it, because it is a lack of understanding about what we need to do to build a healthy life and, frankly, to address climate change, which is the biggest public health challenge of our time. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We got a question from a listener, Karen from Grants Pass, Oregon.

Are the rollbacks benefiting people and organizations that support Trump or that supporters have financial holdings in? Well, I think you'd have to answer absolutely to both of those questions. Yes. Basically, when Trump came into office, he was very clear that his job was to bring back coal. It was very clear that he wanted us to be the dominant country in terms. of production of oil.

And those are the very interests that have supported his campaign, that have aligned with him. And I think many of us understand that this administration has not been protecting people. It has been protecting polluters. And it's just a total denial of what we need to do and what government is supposed to do to deliver on people's right to clean air and clean water and healthy places to live and have their children grow up. But it also is a total denial of climate science and the need for us to build the brighter future. And that's part of both the challenge of climate and the

opportunity we have to get out of this economy in a way that grows a clean energy economy, which is actually the jobs of the future. Dr. Pereira, you study how environmental factors impact human health, especially for children. What do we know about how air pollution hurts us and children? Well, as an environmental and public health scientist, I agree with Gina McCarthy very strongly. These rollbacks of policies, regulations on air pollution and climate change are a terrible idea. That's because these emissions from industry, transportation power plants, other sources powered by fossil fuel, are really the major culprits for both air pollution and climate change. And reducing those emissions from coal, oil, gas, diesel, etc., benefits public health in enormous ways, especially for children.

Mostly people think about the deaths caused by air pollution over 4 million every year in the world, 100,000 of those right here in the U.S., but also more children are born preterm and low birth weight, more children have asthma, and more children have cognitive behavioral problems that interfere with their ability to learn as a result of air pollution. It's a major contributor. and our work at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health, along with many other studies, have linked these bad outcomes to exposure to the fine particles, the hydrocarbons, the nitrogen and sulfur dioxide, ozone, and mercury from fossil fuel. And one of the striking bad outcomes is interference with normal brain development. And children bear the brunt of these threats, of these, exposures because they're rapidly developing through very complex, highly choreographed processes during fetal development, infancy, early childhood, and they have immature defense mechanisms.

They operate okay in us, for the most part, to detoxify chemicals and deal with other stressors, but they're not working effectively in the very young. We have to take a short break, and then we'll be back. with Gina McCarthy, President and CEO of the NRDC, and Dr. Federica Pereira, founding director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this short break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We're continuing our conversation about how the Trump administration is rolling back wide-ranging environmental protections while all eyes are on COVID-19. This is part of our ongoing Degrees of Change series. More info on how you can get involved in our coverage and sign up for our

climate newsletter is at ScienceFriety.com slash degrees of change. Our guests are Gina McCarthy, President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council based in Boston. Gina is also the former EPA chief under President Obama and Dr. Frederica Pereira, founding director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. Dr. Perreira, do you expect the health effects you study to get worse with climate change? Yes, I have outlined some of the effects of climate change and before that air pollution. But in fact, they collaborate such that there are interactions between them. We see more ozone. This is a respiratory irritant formed at much more.

quickly in conditions of high heat. Take another example of an interaction, a child whose early brain development has been adversely affected by toxic air pollution exposure, will be more vulnerable to the trauma and the increased pollution from forest fires that result from climate change. And there are many such examples of that kind of collaboration between these two. I call them the twin evils of fossil fuel. But also, it's very important to be aware of how much more affected children and everyone in low-income communities, communities of color have been because they have suffered disproportionate exposure to air pollution, and they're more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as well. As a public health expert, are there specific rollbacks that concern you

the most? I think they concern me all about the same way, very, very deeply. The pullback of regulations, clean air, particularly because, you know, there is evidence that the Clean Air Act amendments that were instituted in 1990, that they have produced an annual monetized health benefit on the order of $2 trillion annually, and that would be for this year. Now, that's in terms of health benefits. So, you know, it is a terrible mistake to be relaxing regulations on care quality for all the reasons that I've mentioned for the health and the future of children. And also to miss this tremendous economic gain, this opportunity to do well by doing good. And those benefits are estimated to exceed costs by about 30 to one. So that's good news. And in the same way,

the California Climate Initiative, which was launched in, I think it was in 2006, has expected benefits of $8 billion in a few years in pollution-related health costs. And those are not even including those benefits to children, which are enormously valuable, avoided cases of asthma or cognitive impairment or autism or ADHD. tremendously, those costs avoided would be enormous. Hey, can I jump in for a second? Sure. And bounce off that? You know, I just wanted to point out that, you know, the key point that one of the key points that Ricky made

was the intersect between climate and these health challenges that we have been facing with fossil fuels. And the good news, really, out of all that is that if you think about it, The solutions to climate provide immediate health benefits. There's no tussle between what you want to do to address climate change and what you want to do to make people's lives better today and to boost the economy and grow jobs today. So I don't want people to think that this is a hopeless situation, even with the steps that this administration has taken to try to deny the challenge of climate change and to roll back health protections. Because there's a couple of things going on that, at least for me, give me great hope, even though many of the rules that are being, you know, sort of chopped up,

ones that I work very hard to put in place. And if I can stay positive, then the rest of you got to buck it up here. So here's the good news. One is that when you don't follow science and you don't follow the law, you tend to lose when you do rulemakings. And one of the reasons that I'm excited to be at NRDC as their president and CEO is because for 50 years, they've been winning lawsuits that relate to degradation of public health and our environment and natural resources. And like their history, today is repeating itself.

We have basically sued this administration a hundred and twelve times for various rollbacks. and we have won 90% of the time. And that's with 70 cases already been decided. So we are winning because they're bad at what they do. We follow the science. You're required to follow the law. And as much as this administration wants to do just the opposite, the courts are following their mission and their mandate

to make sure that the laws that Congress put in place are actually implemented by the federal agencies. And so I'm encouraged by that. I'm also encouraged by the fact that clean energy now is taking off no matter what this administration tries to do to bring back coal and make sure that we continue our dependence on fossil fuels. We have 3.4 million people that are in the clean energy business now. That is way beyond the folks that are in the fossil fuel industry. And that's not to suggest that we don't want to work with the workers that are left behind in that industry, but it does tell us that our future is all about a climate future that recognizes that fossil fuels is not where we need to be. And it's already an opportunity to grow

jobs in solar, in energy efficiency, in wind. These are competing effectively already against fossil fuels. So as much as we are, at least I am, ticked off about the rollbacks and the lack of interest in this administration on pursuing sound science, we're kicking their butts in the court and in the marketplace itself, the things we want to have happen to protect us and our children in the future are already taking hold. And so we are not fighting against the economic future to protect our kids' health and well-being or to deliver healthy places in people today. All that, what you're saying,

brings up a really interesting point that one of our listeners talked to us on our Science Friday Box Pop app. I want to play that listener's question from Ham and Silverdale, Washington. What is the point of the EPA, if not to protect Americans' health? Are these people living on a different planet?

I mean, we're breathing the same air, drinking the same water and eating the same food. What purpose does it serve to allow industrial farms, coal mines, and oil companies to pollute at their leisure? Why did this become such a political football? If everybody knows, and like our listener says, that clean air, clean water is to our benefit, where did it get politicized? You know, I ask myself that every day, Ira, and I scratch my head because it's worse now than it's

ever been. It's almost like science is a belief system instead of just simply facts. And so I think one of the things that I look back on is the error of Ronald Reagan, you know, where he basically said that the government is the enemy. And I think many of people have sort of thought that the government was somehow interfering with their rights instead of protecting their rights. And so, I think it's been a long, drawn-out litany of the fossil fuel industry, you know, basically doing exactly what they did with cigarettes, which is denying that pollution hurts people, just like they denied that cigarette smoke hurt people. And then they started questioning the various rules and regulations and whether or not

they were really good for people and do they do the job and is there a solution. And so the disinformation campaign has been pretty extreme. But I think all in all, one of the challenges we face is that, you know, the first Earth Day occurred because people could see, feel, and taste the pollution. And the better we got at eliminating some of the pollution, the more that the misinformation could take hold, the more that people felt comfortable who weren't living in the areas that were highly polluted, saying, that's not my problem. I don't need to worry about it. Look it. I've got fish in my rivers. And they neglected to see the deterioration or the lack of progress that was absolutely essential,

which is why we need scientists like Ricky that actually provide you on the ground information that make you realize that even issues like climate change are relevant to you. We can take action on them just like the first Earth Day. But we have to act collectively and we have to be firm. and our convictions. We have to show that our solutions work for people everywhere, and that we are not challenging the strong economy and work that people need. We get that. That's essential. Energy is essential. But you can just deliver that in different ways that meet everyone's goals. And we have to act like the United States of America has always

acted, not by denying our problems, but by collectively recognizing them and addressing them. And we should not be afraid to recognize that we're facing a planetary problem that in the end, people can fix. Well, that's my next question. And I'll ask this to both of you. Do you have faith in this next generation of youngsters? Because they look like they're really willing to take on the fight. I'm thinking of Greta Thornburg, other people like her, teenagers, some people in their 20s and 30s. Gina, do you have faith that the next generation is going to be there to really fight climate change? I sure do. And if other people don't, then those young people will be nipping on your heels. You know, the only thing they're asking us to do is to give them a healthy future.

That's all they're asking. And don't let it to continue to deteriorate and pay attention to the facts. And, you know, Ira, right now I think people are particularly sensitive to the public health challenges that are happening today. And one of the things we're seeing is that people are getting a newfound respect for the science. They're getting a newfound respect for experts and wanting to hear from the experts, not the politicians about what's going on. And I think people now know that the world can be tips on its head in a moment's notice. And all of a sudden, we can change our behavior to address our individual health and our collective future. And so I don't think that people today can say that we cannot fix climate change.

They have to say that we have to fix it. We can fix it. And that it is about young people and their future. So we should be listening to them and delivering for them. Everybody in office better pay attention because these young people are not just going to demand change, they're going to vote for it. And I'm counting on that. I'm Ira Plato and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Frederica, are you as confident?

I do have confidence in the young. I also have confidence in people that when they understand the harm and the very serious damage to children's health, their children, often their grandchildren, other people's children as well, if they really get that point, they will become engaged and care more and fight more for cleaner environment, cleaner air, and against climate change. And at our center, you know, we have been following children since before they were born, a very large cohort or group who were enrolled from Northern Manhattan, Harlem, Washington Heights, the South Bronx, and we've followed them. They've stuck with us all these years.

The oldest ones are now 21, 22. And we see a great interest in those young adults in learning more about the environment, becoming involved. We have some teen groups that are going on and expanding. And we've worked with an environmental organization, environmental justice group called We Act, West Harlem Environmental Action, on some of the training of teenagers, they're eager to learn and to become involved. And in the same cohorts, we have been following them, their mothers enrolled during pregnancy and them,

and I have some good news to end with, which is that in our study, we've monitored, personally monitored the air, that women are breathing in pregnancy. We've monitored the environmental exposures over the child's life from the time they're born and their health and development. And we did show the impacts of air pollution exposure

and exposure to other stressors, including those due to poverty and disadvantage. But now we're showing some good news in that over time, the policies that were enacted here in New York City, even during the Bloomberg years, have been paying off in terms of cleaner air. We see that in the levels of air pollution that were monitored in women who were successively,

enrolled into our different cohorts or groups of pregnant mothers and their children. So we have some good news on the ground right here in this country in New York that policies work. They make a difference. And coming back to children, they are our hope. But I think as they're caretakers. We must recognize our responsibility to care for them and make sure that they have a healthy, sustainable life and future ahead of them.

Very hopeful note to end on. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with us today, Dr. Federica Pereira, former director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, and Dr. Gina McCarthy, president and CEO of the NRDC, and she is also the former EPA administrator under President Obama. Once again, thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thank you very much. Thanks for having us, Ira. Charles Berkwist is our director.

Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, and Kathleen Davis. BJ Leiderman composed our theme music. And of course, if you missed any part of the program where you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speakers to play Science Friday. And also, pay attention to this on our Science Friday Vox Pop app. We want to hear how children are being affected by the pandemic, specifically teenagers. Please go to our Science Friday Voxpop app and record your questions or have your team tell us how they are feeling through the pandemic. You want to know how teenagers are being affected by the pandemic.

That's on the Science Friday Voxpop app wherever you get your apps. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato.