page_title: Presidency of Donald Trump
section_title: Environment
hierarchical_section_title: Presidency of Donald Trump / Domestic policy / Environment
caption_attribution_description: English: Donald Trump rally in Harrisburg
context_page_description: The presidency of Donald Trump began at noon EST on January 20, 2017, when he was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, succeeding Barack Obama. A Republican, Trump was a businessman and reality television personality from New York City at the time of his 2016 presidential election victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. While Trump lost the popular vote, he won the Electoral College vote, 304 to 227, in a presidential contest that American intelligence agencies concluded was targeted by a Russian interference campaign. Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. The statements have been documented by fact-checkers, with political scientists and historians widely describing the phenomenon as unprecedented in modern American politics. Trump's approval rating has been stable, hovering at high-30 to mid-40 percent throughout his presidency.
  Trump rolled back numerous environmental protections, as well as reducing enforcement of existing regulations.
context_section_description: By August 2020, the administration had overturned 68 environmental regulations and was in process of reversing an additional 32, for a total of 100 rollbacks of environmental rules. A 2018 American Journal of Public Health study found that in the first six months of the administration, the EPA adopted a pro-business attitude unlike that of any previous administration, as it "moved away from the public interest and explicitly favored the interests of the regulated industries". The Washington Post summarized Pruitt's leadership of the EPA in 2017 as follows, "he has moved to shrink the agency's reach, alter its focus, and pause or reverse numerous environmental rules. The effect has been to steer the EPA in the direction sought by those being regulated. Along the way, Pruitt has begun to dismantle former president Barack Obama's environmental legacy, halting the agency's efforts to combat climate change and to shift the nation away from its reliance on fossil fuels." Analyses of EPA enforcement data showed that the Trump administration brought fewer cases against polluters, sought a lower total of civil penalties and made fewer requests of companies to retrofit facilities to curb pollution than the Obama and Bush administrations. According to the New York Times, "confidential internal E.P.A. documents show that the enforcement slowdown coincides with major policy changes ordered by Mr. Pruitt's team after pleas from oil and gas industry executives." In 2018, the administration referred the lowest number of pollution cases for criminal prosecution in 30 years. Two years into Trump's presidency, The New York Times wrote he had "unleashed a regulatory rollback, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, with little parallel in the past half-century". In June 2018, David Cutler and Francesca Dominici of Harvard University estimated conservatively that the Trump administration's modifications to environmental rules could result in more than 80,000 additional U.S. deaths and widespread respiratory ailments. In August 2018, the administration's own analysis showed that the loosening of coal plant rules could cause up to 1,400 premature deaths and 15,000 new cases of respiratory problems. From 2016 to 2018, air pollution increased by 5.5%, reversing a seven-year trend where air pollution had declined by 25%.
  The new administration removed all references to climate change on the White House website, with the sole exception of mentioning Trump's intention to eliminate the Obama administration's climate change policies. The EPA removed climate change material on its website, including detailed climate data. In June 2017, Trump announced U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, a 2015 climate change accord reached by 200 nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, defying broad global backing for the plan. In December 2017, Trump—who had repeatedly called scientific consensus on climate a "hoax" before becoming president—for the first time as president disputed climate change by falsely implying cold weather meant climate change was not occurring. Through executive order, Trump reversed multiple Obama administration policies meant to tackle climate change, such as a moratorium on federal coal leasing, the Presidential Climate Action Plan, and guidance for federal agencies on taking climate change into account during National Environmental Policy Act action reviews. Trump also ordered reviews and possibly modifications to several directives, such as the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the estimate for the "social cost of carbon" emissions, carbon dioxide emission standards for new coal plants, methane emissions standards from oil and natural gas extraction, as well as any regulations inhibiting domestic energy production. The administration rolled back regulations requiring the federal government to account for climate change and sea-level rise when building infrastructure. The EPA disbanded a 20-expert panel on pollution which advised the EPA on the appropriate threshold levels to set for air quality standards.
  The new administration instituted a 
caption: 2017 Trump rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Trump holds a placard that reads "TRUMP DIGS COAL".
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