News Archive
Professor McCabe: Biden Administration Will Mean a Quick About-Face on Environment
11/13/2020
In a new piece for The Conversation, IU McKinney Professor of Practice Janet McCabe, director of IU’s Environmental Resilience Institute, says that the Biden administration will quickly signal to the nation that applying the nation’s environmental laws matters to everyone.
Biden’s biggest challenge may be what to prioritize after the past four years of bad policies, according to Professor McCabe.
“The Trump administration has waged what I and many other legal experts view as an all-out assault on the nation's environmental laws for the past four years. Decisions at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department and other agencies have weakened the guardrails that protect our nation's air, water and public lands, and have sided with industry rather than advocating for public health and the environment,” she wrote.
Many of these actions can be done quickly through new executive orders or policy changes, but regulatory changes will take longer, Professor McCabe noted.
Professor McCabe served as Deputy Assistant Administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) from 2009 to 2013, and as Acting Assistant Administrator for OAR from 2013-2017.
