Q&A with professor Pete Andrews on environmental policy under Trump

Pete Andrews is a professor of public policy and faculty fellow at the Carolina Institute for the Environment. The Daily Tar Heel staff writer Nic Rardin discussed the future of environmental policy with Andrews. 

The Daily Tar Heel: Where do you think the future of environmental policy is heading?

Pete Andrews: Some of the claims made during the campaign are being modified and tweaked ... A number of the things that people talk about just sort of getting rid of overnight tend to be interconnected with the things you don’t just want to mess up.

I think on the (Environmental Protection Agency) question, we are likely to see a tip to reduce the number of regulations, at least towards climate change ... The fuel economy standard is an interesting one as well. It’s a little more complicated than the press is saying, because fuel economy is a good thing, but the rule as it’s now written has some interesting cross-over problems with the state rules, so I’m not sure what they’ll do with that one.

I’ll be surprised if they get away with a sweeping dismantling of the EPA or something like that. I mean, it could happen. I was wrong on the election; I could be wrong on this as well.

DTH: Several Fortune 500 companies just sent a statement to the president-elect, asking him not to pull out of the Paris Agreement as they had business interests in cutting carbon-emissions. What are your thoughts on that?

PA: There are a lot of businesses that are really on board with this. The Reagan administration tried a whole-sale rollback when they came into power in 1981. After they did seriously damage the EPA and cut its budget by 25 percent or so, they realized that it’s the industry that really needs corporate professionals to work with and they sort of screwed themselves or damaged their own interests by sort of a whole-scale whacking at it. There are people around who still remember that.

DTH: What do you think the U.S. pulling out of the Paris Agreement could mean for the environment?

PA: I think it would simply give the U.S. an enormous black eye. There are a lot of other countries that are very committed to that and just simply pulling out of that takes the U.S. out of its leadership role and leaves it open for China to be more influential.

DTH: As a professional, what kind of environmental policy do you think needs to be passed?

PA: Well I mean, keeping some leadership on the climate issue is a big one. Another thing that could, and I want to emphasize could, be a positive, is water. We’ve got serious water shortages developing around several parts of the country and a lot of really ancient infrastructure for drinking water. So there’s a lot that needs to be done that could be done through Trump’s promises about infrastructure spending if he can get that through his own party. There’s a big anti-federal spending wing of the Republican party that he’s now going to have to get any of his stuff through.

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