EPA chief says clean drinking water is bigger threat
Washington – Unsafe drinking water, not climate change, is the world’s most immediate public health issue, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler contended Wednesday.
Environmental groups responded by saying the Trump administration was neglecting – or worsening – both health threats.
Wheeler made his case for a shift in public focus in a CBS News interview that aired Wednesday, and in a speech later in the day in Washington on global water issues.
Wheeler told CBS News that climate change is “an important issue” but that most of the threats it poses are “50 to 75 years out.”
He said it was “unreasonable” for 2020 Democratic candidates to pay so much attention to it.
The Natural Resource Defense Council responded by citing the damage and deaths from hurricanes Harvey and Maria in 2017, and from back-to-back years of record wildfires in California.
“Wheeler’s claim is off by about 50 to 75 years,” NRDC spokesman Jake Thompson said in an email. “Climate change and its impacts are here today, and getting worse soon.”
Wheeler’s low-key assessment of any immediate danger from climate change is in line with that of the Trump administration overall, which is working to open more public lands for oil and gas development and to prop up the flagging domestic coal industry.
President Donald Trump at times belittles the warnings on climate change coming from scientists in and out of his government.
“Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!” Trump tweeted during a cold snap in January.
The federal government’s own climate assessment last year concluded climate change caused by oil, gas and coal emissions already is hitting the United States.
Weather extremes such as flooding, hurricanes and drought “have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration,” the report, compiled by scientists at EPA and other federal agencies, said.
Climate scientists say the world needs to act quickly and sweepingly to curb emissions and stave off the worst extremes of climate change.