Hi r/environment, this is Jake from The Guardian. We wanted to share this story that we published today taking a look at Trump’s environmental record one year into his second term.
When [Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) took power, it was widely anticipated the EPA would loosen pollution rules from sources such as cars, trucks and power plants, as part of a longstanding back and forth between administrations over how strict such standards should be.
But in recent weeks, critics say the EPA has gone far further by in effect seeking to jettison its raison d’etre, forged since its foundation in 1970, as an environmental regulator. The EPA is poised to remove its own ability to act on the [climate crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-crisis) and has, separately, unveiled a new monetary worth assigned to human lives when setting air pollution regulations. The current new value? Zero.
“The EPA was designed to protect public health and the environment and did a remarkably effective job of that,” said William Reilly, who was EPA administrator under a previous Republican president, George HW Bush.
“That record is now at risk and we will see the degradation of air quality in major cities. The administration seems to conceive the purpose of the agency as solely promoting business, which has never been the agency’s mission. That’s revolutionary – it’s not been seen before.”
A vivid illustration of this, Reilly said, was when the EPA [asked businesses last year](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/27/epa-trump-email-fossil-fuel-exemptions) to simply email a request to be exempt from air pollution rules. “The notion you could be excused from a black letter law just by asking for it was startling to me,” he said. “I thought it was a spoof. But it did happen.”
After returning to the White House, Trump vowed to “unleash” oil and gas drilling and the burgeoning AI industry by sweeping away environmental regulations that the president says only serve a “globalist climate agenda” and a “scam” clean energy sector.
The EPA under its current administrator, Lee Zeldin, has zealously followed this lead – initiating 66 environmental rollbacks in the first year, according to a tally compiled by green group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
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Hi r/environment, this is Jake from The Guardian. We wanted to share this story that we published today taking a look at Trump’s environmental record one year into his second term.
*From our story:*
After a tumultuous year under the [Trump administration](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has adopted a new, almost unrecognizable guise – one that tears up environmental rules and cheerleads for coal, gas-guzzling cars and [artificial intelligence](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/artificialintelligenceai).
When [Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) took power, it was widely anticipated the EPA would loosen pollution rules from sources such as cars, trucks and power plants, as part of a longstanding back and forth between administrations over how strict such standards should be.
But in recent weeks, critics say the EPA has gone far further by in effect seeking to jettison its raison d’etre, forged since its foundation in 1970, as an environmental regulator. The EPA is poised to remove its own ability to act on the [climate crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-crisis) and has, separately, unveiled a new monetary worth assigned to human lives when setting air pollution regulations. The current new value? Zero.
“The EPA was designed to protect public health and the environment and did a remarkably effective job of that,” said William Reilly, who was EPA administrator under a previous Republican president, George HW Bush.
“That record is now at risk and we will see the degradation of air quality in major cities. The administration seems to conceive the purpose of the agency as solely promoting business, which has never been the agency’s mission. That’s revolutionary – it’s not been seen before.”
A vivid illustration of this, Reilly said, was when the EPA [asked businesses last year](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/27/epa-trump-email-fossil-fuel-exemptions) to simply email a request to be exempt from air pollution rules. “The notion you could be excused from a black letter law just by asking for it was startling to me,” he said. “I thought it was a spoof. But it did happen.”
After returning to the White House, Trump vowed to “unleash” oil and gas drilling and the burgeoning AI industry by sweeping away environmental regulations that the president says only serve a “globalist climate agenda” and a “scam” clean energy sector.
The EPA under its current administrator, Lee Zeldin, has zealously followed this lead – initiating 66 environmental rollbacks in the first year, according to a tally compiled by green group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
[*You can read the full story for free at this link.*](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/28/trump-epa-environmental-rollbacks?referring_host=Reddit&utm_campaign=guardianacct)