In this podcast episode, EWG President and co-Founder Ken Cook’s guest is former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Bill Reilly. They discuss how the Trump EPA is reversing the agency’s decades-long work to protect public health and the environment.
Reilly served as administrator from 1989 to 1993 under former President Bill Clinton. He also held various roles in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush and Barack Obama. His achievements include championing the 1990 amendments to the landmark Clean Air Act. He also played a key role in responding to major environmental disasters, including the Exxon Valdez and BP Deepwater Horizon oil spills.
The Trump administration claims to be defunding the EPA for economic reasons and to boost industrial growth. But Cook and Reilly highlight how environmental regulations have historically driven economic growth rather than hindered it, as the agency’s critics claim.
Disclaimer: This transcript was compiled using software and may include typographical errors.
Ken: They say you're not supposed to meet your heroes, but no one ever said anything about not meeting my heroes, and you're gonna meet one today. I'm having another episode. This is one I've really been looking forward to because I get to sit down with a, a very dear friend of mine, former boss, mentor, and truly.
A hero, not just to me, but to the environmental movement. Bill Riley's one of those people who's really inspired me from his many, many accomplishments professionally to how he carries himself as a leader. Few people have a career as accomplished as Bill Riley when it comes to protecting our environment.
He served under four presidents Nixon when he was at the Council on Environmental Quality. George Herbert Walker Bush. Bush won when he was the seventh administrator of EPA and they also served under Clinton and Obama in various roles. He's served our country many ways. He led the charge to pass the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1991 of the United States, first and most influential modern environmental laws when it was updated with Bush.
Offering a bill that, uh, really did change the course of environmental policy. Bill was at the center of the federal response to two of the biggest oil spills this country's ever experienced. The Exxon Valdez Alaska Oil spill of 1989 when he was at EPA. The BP Deep Water Horizon Oil spill in 2010 when he co-chaired the commission that looked into the causes and implications of it.
He's also worked extensively in the nonprofit world, namely at the Conservation Foundation of the World Wildlife Fund, and he retired from the Army as a captain. So, uh, recently I've been reading. No Country for Old Men by Cormack McCarthy, and it's really resonated with me in these times. If you aren't familiar, the plot follows an older sheriff.
Generations of sheriffs and his family who's facing an outlaw, who is operating at a level of depravity and lawlessness that the sheriff has never encountered before. So I think of this episode as No Country for Old Men, the Environmental Edition. Bill and I discussed what is probably really the toughest environmental challenge we've faced at the federal level in this country with the Trump administration with potential repercussions that are global in scope and could impact generations into the future.
I start my interview with Bill by asking him to turn back the clock and reflect on the story of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. Perhaps more importantly, going back to a time. When a Republican president introduced a major environmental law and had Congress come together in a bipartisan fashion to protect the environment and the health of all Americans, how about that?
Pretty unthinkable today, to say the least, and I asked Bill to reflect on that time. In comparison to today.
Bill Reilly: Well, you know, I really appreciate that introduction, Ken, and I know it came from the heart and I'm really touched by it and honored to have you say those things and believe those things We have done a lot together and always had fun doing it.
Yeah. Because both of us enjoyed each other. Yeah. And, and you've always had this terrific sense of humor to, uh, get us through the hard times. You would've been with me at EPA if hadn't. Gone to Missouri on behalf of, uh, governor Du in that election. Cus oh my God,
Ken: I was hoping that that dark history would not come up.
But, uh, there it is.
Bill Reilly: I brought in several Democrats. Dan Estee was one notable one, but, uh, but your, your record was a little, a little too, too extreme there, too much,
Ken: too much time on camera trashing candidate Bush. I I thought he'd get over it, but I guess not.
Bill Reilly: The, uh, you know, there are two emblems I think that are very appropriate to your question.
One goes way back to 1970. I learned, uh, long after I was out of office. I was in the Nixon White House. I was the fourth hire at the Council on Environmental Quality and of course, the signatory of the National Environmental Policy Act. Who declared that the seventies would be the decade of the environment was Richard Nixon and then somewhat improbable person given his foreign policy interest and expertise, and is not having had a interest when he was in Congress.
A notable interest in environment. But I learned that he sat down in 1968 as he contemplated his election with his yellow pad, famous yellow pad, and he wrote down 12 or 13 issues in which he wanted the campaign to be out front on. There were four that he had underlined, and he said, on these four issues, I want to be involved in everything that moves.
I don't know what those things were, but I'm sure China would've been one. He said On the rest of them, I want us to be forward leaning. Don't involve me unless only I can affect something or I'm needed to do it. I mean, we, we got huge margins in favor of the Clean Air Act, which he happily signed the Clean Water Act, which he first vetoed because of expense, and it was adjusted and, and he signed that safe drinking water, endangered species, astonishingly progressive legislation.
And I, I've thought back on it and I've wondered whether we all were naive or. The aspirations we had were plausible and and predictable because in fact, what those statutes achieved of the following 55 years yeah, is simply astonishing and it's a model for all the rest of the world in the Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990.
We had a similar experience. The vote in the Senate was something like 89 to 11.
Ken: Yeah.
Bill Reilly: In favor of that bill. Bipartisan. It's the last significant bipartisan measure I think that we've seen on anything, on any social policy. Certainly the environment. So what happened? I, I've been working to write things down and I was writing about the tremendous effort and all the thought that went in and planning to the building of the apparatus of environmental protection in America, which is extraordinary, complex, and very sophisticated and very effective.
We happen to know it's effective because there's so many measures. We know we've gotten rid of 98% of Airborne lead. We know we've gotten rid of 77% of sulfur dioxides. I mean it. All of those measures are indisputable, and yet now we're seeing an administration turn on it and do so for stated at least economic reasons.
Well, we've had a threefold increase in GDP. We've had a manyfold increase in the hundreds of thousands of automobiles. And, and even, even though we have three times more cars, they are a fraction of the polluting aggregate. There, there's almost no area that you can cite economic or environmental on which this has not been a marvelous success.
As, as Greg Easterbrook has said, the writer environment is one of the two great success stories of post-World War II social policy. The other one is social security. I think that's perfectly fair. The administrator, Lee Elden announced that the most momentous day in the history of PPA was the day that.
He declared his intentions to get rid of 35 statutes or regulations, including abandoning the interpretation of the so-called endangerment finding. That is the conclusion that carbon dioxide essentially hits not just the environment and nature and ecology, but also people's health. Well, I don't think that the science, and it'll have to be science that will make that determination possible.
I don't think that it's there. I think that it, the endangered finding will survive. But in some ways, the perverse genius of this administration is they take these measures they fully understand are not likely to survive court judicial scrutiny, but by the time that's determined. The thousands scientists that they've indicated they're getting rid of at EPA will be gone.
They'll be dispersed. There'll be no possibility of reconstituting those people in those particular offices, which require such expertise. So there's a great deal that, uh, is very difficult to understand. This is one of our major Indisputed success stories, and nevertheless, it's being dismantled. I don't think we're gonna come out of this very rapidly.
Because there's so much destruction, it's, uh, the calculated destruction of, of the agency. I will tell you, I had a conversation a couple of months ago with Elon Musk and I reminded him that with respect to climate, he is about the only person in the president's entourage who knows science and who is on record as declared the importance of climate change.
And I said, you know, a lot of people are hoping that you'll bring your expertise on that issue to bear. To good effect. And he said, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the administration. And he said, I wouldn't worry about renewables. He said, the momentum behind renewables is now unstoppable. Well, you know, I certainly hope so and he's in a better position than I to have an insight into that.
But there's almost no good news that, um, is associated with.
Ken: In his case in particular, I think carpenters like to, um, measure twice and cut once. He seems to be cutting multiple times with no measurement and um, it's very discouraging for someone who has that acumen, that training, that experience and what he's built to be operating like that inside government.
But I wanted to go back to 1990, the Clean Air Act Amendment. See, I think of. The Clean Air Act is the, the queen of environmental laws, right? It's the one that's consistently, successfully updated in the regulatory realm. We are now using it, as you point out, unless the challenge is successful, it's, it's the basis for regulating climate gases, CO2, that took 10 years to establish that.
Of course, as you well know, after all the court fights to, to your point. Delay can be extremely damaging, even if in the end, environmentalism so-called prevails. But I've thought for quite a while that the success of the Clean Air Act, and in my imagination, I see the Koch brothers seeing the famous photograph.
Of President Bush signing the law you on one side and applauding Dan Quail actually applauding on the other side.
Bill Reilly: Dan Quail, having said in his memoir that he had recommended veto.
Ken: Yes, yes. Right. But when the camera's on and Bush being pleased, he made him pleased. But I, I felt like that was a turning point.
I, I imagine the Koch brothers thinking, you know. I think this should be the last Republican president who willingly and excitedly and enthusiastically signs a major federal environmental law because not long after that where President Bush lost to Clinton, and then Clinton suffered those disastrous midterm returns that brought the house around to Newt Gingrich, and that's when.
The business community, their immune system kicked in. I think with respect to regulation, many more investments in campaign contributions, harder and harder for Republicans in the House and Senate to express support for the environment. And I, I really do think that this success that you were the architect of, I think success kind of started to do us in there because as you point out also.
You have sustained economic growth over this whole period of regulation. That's really bad news. If you're making the case for deregulation that it's stifling the economy, I think a successful program is your worst enemy if you're trying to do in government programs. Did you pick up that change? Do you, did you hear anything at the time about, you know.
Business leaders saying never again.
Bill Reilly: No, I didn't. Largely, I think because the country had come together, the statute was popular, supported in the Congress and the Koch brothers, and the, that brand of ideological opposition to things in environmental was not dominant. In fact, I look back at the period when the Reagan administration tried their hand at serious deregulation.
You may remember they got their head handed to you and they lasted two years and somebody went to jail and the administrator, EPA got fired, forced out, and um, the business community uttered a sigh of relief when Bill Ruckelshaus came back in to run the agency.
Ken: Yeah, I remember that.
Bill Reilly: So that was a lesson, I think, and there was a.
At the same time, Bob Teeter, who was the principal pollster for George HW Bush mm-hmm. Told his campaign as getting ready in the late eighties. The environment has entered the DNA of the American people. When you get votes, like, uh, polls, like 85% support the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, some substantial portion of them support strengthening it.
That changed in my view in the mid nineties. And the Nicholas Institute of Duke University conducted a mm-hmm. A poll. And the, one of the questions I really had was, farmers understood more about climate change, its immediate impact than anybody else. And yet they were supporting all sorts of deregulation and, and raising problems with climate legislation.
And what that poll concluded was the ordinary Joe. Thought that the environment was pretty well undertaken, was pretty well in hat, and that regulation, in fact, did tend to cost more and did tend to rag down the economy. In other words, there was a sense of satisfaction but not any friendliness to going further and with respect to the farm community, what Bonnie concluded to was deep polling.
That is you stay with the people you interview and you keep asking them questions. They fully get climate change. They hesitate publicly. You acknowledge it because they think it will result in there being more regulated. That they're quite possible. Yeah. So the country just is, has moved on. It's no longer patient with environmental initiatives and particularly with climate.
There was a very successful, uh, hatchet job done on climate, and frankly, environmentalists I think, made a mistake. I remember when we began to talk about what would be necessary to manage the climate. We overdid the complexity and the challenge and talked too much about the transformation of lifestyles.
Ken: That, that, yeah,
Bill Reilly: that, that proved a not very smart move. Yeah. And also, also not a true move. If you look at renewables, wind, solar, electric vehicles, they're not life transforming. They're improved technologies and devices. We would've done better to advertise that. Reality rather than how hard it was gonna be.
Ken: I think that's absolutely right. These last two years, we have solar panels on our rooftop. We have a, an electric Kia in our driveway, not a Tesla.
Bill Reilly: That's good. You'll you'll avoid the terrorism.
Ken: Uh, yeah, that's exactly right. Uh, avoid having to set it on fire myself, which another plus and, you know, thrilled as we are that we've. Made these adjustments and found a way to afford it. We're lucky enough to be able to, you're right, we're still driving. We're still heating our home and cooling our home and lining it up. I think there was a, a sense that we had to adopt a campaign mentality to change culture and society when in the past we've made great progress environmentally without having.
Had to do that. I think it's the power of invention. Mm-hmm. It's definitely the ability to unexpectedly leapfrog over problems. Don't solve the one right in front of you 'cause that'll cost a fortune, but suddenly you solve the one beyond that, move entirely out of gas vehicles or fired power plants into solar or wind, what have you.
And the world looks very different.
Bill Reilly: Very true. You know, I, I was researching some history not too long ago, and we all know that the Cuyahoga River caught fire famously in the late sixties, and it galvanized the country. The public really was disgusted by the discovery that that could happen, right. Listen, I, I discovered that.
The Cuyahoga River had caught fire 13 times before in the previous a hundred years. Yes. It, it had been a cesspool of chemicals Yeah. And, and gasoline for years, but only then, only in the late sixties when the culture was, was ready for it. Did it matter? Yeah. And the culture that, where it was then, how it got there, how unified the country was in, in supporting change.
Uh, and how disgusted they were with air that you could see. And that was making you sick two, two days outta three in LA and Houston Air that you could eat. Yeah. And, and we had more than three quarters of our rivers and waters and lakes were, uh, not fishable or swimmable. Now it's the reverse of one more measure of terrific success and, uh, and one that was purchased at a very high cost with a lot of wastewater treatment plants in the billions of dollars with respect to climate change.
The idea that most of the voters could vote for somebody who didn't even believe in it, uh, suggests a lot that the environmental community, others, the scientific community, have just failed to get across these serious and near term consequences of not addressing climate change. I remember early in my term, I think I was, uh.
In my sixth week, I wanted to veto a major water project in the West that I thought was was bad.
Ken: Oh, I remember that.
Bill Reilly: I talked to Senator Chaffee, the Republican ranking minority member on the Environment Public Works Committee, and I said if I legendary environmentalist, yes he was. If I were to make aggressive use of the Clean Water Act.
When I put the act, the statute in danger, or that particular portion of it that deals with my power to veto projects, he said, no. He said, you're riding high up here right now, and the president is. But I just give you a piece of advice. You don't need to tell me what you're planning, but whatever it is, do it when we're out of town.
So, so, so on Good on good. Friday morning. In, in, in 1989, I, um, vetoed. The two Forks Dam.
Ken: Yeah.
Bill Reilly: And I remember saying to Libby then that, that evening I said, well, I'll find out tonight how much he wants to be the environmental president because, uh, the lid blew off in Colorado and Republican circles. But to the astonishment, I think of a lot of people, the White House, that letters were running seven or nine to one in my favor, and there turned out there are a lot of fishermen.
In the country and EDF had talked about it as the St. Peter's of trout fishing. And not too long after it, I was, uh, standing in a group with the defense secretary, the interior secretary, the agriculture secretary, and the commerce secretary at the commerce secretary's house, Bob Mu fucker's house, where upon the defense secretary said that decision in Colorado will forever transform water projects in the west.
He said, when I was in Congress. I voted so many projects, you know, holding my nose and looking the other way. Yeah, that will no longer be necessary. That was Dick Cheney who said that. So there it was possible for people to get behind it, and I later heard from the Denver Water Board that it caused a transformation in their board's attitude toward the kind of thing they could get away with.
And very different philosophy of, of ecological protection. So you had stuff to work with then? Oh, by the way, within 15 minutes of my signing, the two Forks Veto, my chief of staff came in with a very long face and you, you know he can do that. Gordon Bender.
Ken: Yes. I've been on the receiving end of that long face more than once, I'll just tell you.
Bill Reilly: And he said to me, there has been an oil spill in Alaska. It looks like it was a big one. And that was the Exxon Valdez. So that's how I learned about it. And then I went to lunch and the television cameras were crowding, trying to get into the restaurant. And I, I, I said to them, you know, I'll stay outside.
I'll talk to you when I come out. But Russ Train was my luncheon partner. And so Russ is looking, Russ is looking enviously at the television cameras and he says, you know, I used to love oil spills. Nothing better than an oil spill. He said the Congress asked if you want more money, the President invites you to come over and talk about how serious it is.
That's vintage must train. And you can hear him. You can hear him saying it. Can I say, of
Ken: Can I say, of course I can hear him saying that.
Bill Reilly: He gave me some of the best advice I've I've ever had before I went to EPA. He said, uh, you're going into a group of people. Who will resent you, who have nothing in common with you and uh, will not be your friends.
He said, first of all, they'll look at you and wonder, how did you get this big job? You weren't active in the campaign. You're not a party figure. And, um, you'll have two advantages. One advantage you'll have is the press. He said, you take them seriously, spend a lot of time with them, communicate with them what you're doing and why.
After a year has gone by, you will have the White House exactly where you want them, and that is fearing you. Second advantage you'll have. He said, and I know him very well, you're George Bush's kind of guy. And I remember Lee Atwater told me the same thing. He said, he's not so high on politics, he's really high on policy.
Yeah. And that proved true. And you know, he invited us to five state dinners and I would be told where to stand that, uh, dancing and. Cut in on Barbara, and that was so he could dance with Libby. Can't fault him for that. And we went to the theater with them and had private lunches and dinners. They could not have been more supportive.
Yeah. And when later, Michael Levitt, who became administrator for EPA, he said to me, it is said over here that you paid no attention to the White House when you were administrator. And I said, that's not really true at all, except in the sense that I distinguished between the White House and the president.
Every measure of communication I had from the president was positive, even enthusiastic. I was told how much he was, he li liked watching me on the Today Show where the chief of staff was telling me to stay off it. But Russ was very savvy and, uh, missed nothing. And that advice was very practical.
Ken: Yeah.
You know, now I have, I don't know, a hundred people working at. EWG Now, amazingly talented young folks and, um, most of them have never seen a major federal environmental law enacted. Mm-hmm. I mean, you had, as you mentioned, the Clean Air Act Amendments 1990. Then we had the fifth Reform and Safe Drinking Water Act amendments in 96.
Then nothing happened in terms of environmental protection until 2016. That was the TOSCA reform law, toxic Substances Control Act for those who aren't as nerdy as we are, and that regulated new chemicals coming into commerce. Not pesticides, but all the other industrial substances. But that was a bill that originated in industry, not really with the environmental community.
We gave it a a crack, but it didn't go anywhere. People don't have this experience Bill as working environmentalists, and it translates also on Capitol Hill. You don't have staff who've developed muscles like they did in the seventies when you'd go to Capitol Hill. And if you gathered around a group of eight to 10 environmentalists at a cafeteria, you might have people working on two or three different laws that would pass in that session.
I remember as a young lobbyist thinking, well, this is just the normal course of business and now fast forward to 2025, it's unthinkable that the environmental community would say, Hey, why don't we renew the Clean Water Act because we think we'd lose ground or the Clean Air Act even. We wouldn't wanna risk it.
Right?
Bill Reilly: That issue actually arose after the Clean Air Act. I asked Chaffee, I said. Suppose I brought up a proposal to reauthorize the Clean Water Act and deal with some of its imperfections. He said You'd lose the authority you have. Yeah. Don't even touch it.
Ken: So we're dealing with a lot of bedrock, but aging law and um, we've seen the stress that's caused trying to deal.
We got the endangerment finding. So under the Clean Air Act, you can take on CO2 and other climate gases. But it's a stretch. Couldn't get a reauthorization through. So we have the Inflation Reduction Act called a great feat of Environmental Yes. Legislation. We supported it. It is a great feat, but it's a spending bill.
Yep. We weren't able to pass a regulatory
Bill Reilly: version. It's so illuminating. It's so instructive that the two great success stories with respect to climate demanded nothing essentially. Of us, the Paris Agreement Yeah. Didn't require that countries do X, y, or Z specifically. All Copenhagen, all the others had.
And so people learned from that and I supported that learning. I remember I was on the board of a foundation that was spending $500 million on climate, and, uh, the family principles looked at me and said, you know, this is, uh, pretty expensive money. There are a lot of alternative things we could do with it.
Copenhagen was a failure. Yeah. And I remember thinking, we desperately need a success, and Paris was that success and it. Using the contributors to help. There was a really lovely woman associated with the Jack Daniels family who used to come visit me, and she would ask me, who in the Kentucky delegation is causing you grief?
And I would say, well, I think Mr. McConnell could, uh, be a little more helpful than is
Ken: just a
Bill Reilly: smidge. He said, you tell me exactly what you want him to do. I'm on my way there right now and. And there are those people. Yeah, there are those people and some of them really care about the environment.
Ken: Yeah.
Bill Reilly: I think the environmental community would do well to mobilize them more, uh, specifically and more aggressively than they do.
Ken: I think that's unquestionably right. And I also think it's, um, a lot harder. For a Republican to stand up in the House or the Senate without risking. Yeah. A primary challenge almost. Yeah. This point,
Bill Reilly: without a crisis of some sort, I'm afraid That's true.
Ken: What do you say to people now, bill? I mean, we're both well into our careers, to put it mildly, and you know, I find myself.
Saying, look, in some ways it's, there's never been a better time to be an environmentalist. We know we can solve problems without having to go through the whole process of introducing and passing and implementing a federal law. We, we have a strong foundation. We can do a lot with it. The private sector in many places is perfectly well aligned with the mission of a cleaner, healthier environment.
They hope to make money. Speeding. Everyone else into that corner. Well said. But what do you tell people now faced with, I mean, Mr. Zelin, I read his statement that you referenced and I just thought, you know, he didn't say anything remotely like that In his confirmation hearing, nothing in the confirmation hearing would've led you to think he was going to be boastful about basically deconstructing the ability of EPA to do its job with money and staff.
Rollbacks of regulatory matters. You've been around the these bases many times before. What advice do you give people to get through these next few years?
Bill Reilly: People I, I'm most concerned about are. People who work at EBA and they have come up to me, young people when I've been talking around the country or going to universities and they've asked me, what do you think we ought to do?
They, this was true during the first Trump administration. Yeah. We didn't exactly, we didn't sign up for this. We didn't. We think this was what we were gonna happen and I have been very confident that they should stay. They should stay because I look back at the eight years of the Reagan administration, there were not a lot of initiatives with this important exception of the Montreal protocol to protect the upper atmosphere ozone layer.
And there are were people that you knew who were planning on a new day, and the people who were running the air staff were designing a lot of the research material. The epidemiological research, the economic analysis, cost data of various measures of a clean air act. Well, there was no chance in, in, in all at all that a new clean Air Act would be proposed during those years.
But when I took office, they were ready for me. Yeah. And one of the reasons that we were able to get the strong statute outta the administration we did was the same guy who had been running. That program who is now doing something else. I made him assistant administrator for waste. He said, you'll never have a more appropriate opportunity, better opportunity to get things done than right now, because assistant secretaries have not been named.
You were named with the cabinet right from the beginning at the first three weeks. Take advantage of it. Excellent advice. And I did. But lesson to that story is the moment did come. I remember Vicki Patton, a very outstanding general counsel, the Environmental Defense Fund, said in response to a question of a student that she, we taught a class together at American University, and a student said, what's the most important thing you learned in your career?
And what she said really echoed to me down through the years, she said, when I went to work at EPA, I think it was 1989 or 1990, I was given the job. Figuring out how to implement the Clean Air Act, and I went to work every day dealing with very basic materials, regulations and investments and hiring and all the rest, and I thought, well, this is fun.
This is normal life. But she said, I have to say that never again in the rest of my career, which has been very active in most ways, very successful. That moment never came again.
Ken: Yeah,
Bill Reilly: that was a truly splendid one of a kind moment. So when your moment comes, enjoy it. Remind yourself, yeah. That it may not come again.
And I think about that and I don't know now what to say to a staffer at ep. I have a very distinguished friend with four children who are also very distinguished and they're, they're in their late twenties, early thirties. And he said to me recently, he said, you know. You came out in a different generation as that.
I did. Public service was something that we aspired to my kids who are very good citizens and you know, patriots, they would not think of going into public life, not even think about it.
Ken: Yeah.
Bill Reilly: And I thought that's a tragedy that is really unfortunate. And yet, what can I say about the pleasures of public service in an administration?
If you're interested in the environment where the administrator. Doesn't mention the word environment or pollution control or health or ecological protection. It's not mentioned even though the statutes are full of it.
Ken: Yeah.
Bill Reilly: Hard to have predicted to have foreseen this. Yeah. And yet, I want to say to the, to the young people stay the course.
Well, of course that's being made impossible too, because the president has advertised it's gonna be 65% reduction in either staffing or budget or both. That makes it hard to answer your question honestly. Yeah. But my instinct is all if good people are occupying these jobs, they should hang around. Their moment may come, but it's easier for me to say than, than them to do.
Ken: Yeah, no question. You know, I was at a gathering of, um, nonprofit leaders, mostly environmentalists this last week, about 40 or 50 people, and everyone got up for a few minutes and talked about what they were doing. We were all kind of dragging coming into the conference, right? The news from Zelin, the news coming out of OMB, calling the government to workers, um, you know, all kinds of names, frauds and abrupt.
But as everyone got up and described their place on the barricades. Endangered Species Act, clean air, act enforcement, whatever it might be, whatever function. I found myself thinking something that hadn't occurred to me, and that is that I'm not alone. That there are people standing up who have incredible skill and fortitude, no intention of giving into this administration in it.
It aligns with what you just said. It's not an easy time to tell someone to just keep your head down and keep moving ahead, especially if your organization's facing financial problems as many are their grants being canceled and what have you. Employees at EPA, even high ranking employees wondering, well, do you know if I've got X years left in my career?
Do I wanna spend them here? But again, knowing that. We're part of a long tradition, a family, as it were, that believes in the mission of these agencies. I almost got sappy about it. I, I felt so, um, so lifted up. The most hopeful thing to me about environmentalism now is that there are so many things that we can point to that we're for.
Mm-hmm. Whereas a lot of our careers, bill, you know, we. Straight through the nineties, we had to be a against bad stuff. We had to, had to figure out a way to stop it. Um, you were
Bill Reilly: really good at confronting bad stuff.
Ken: I'm trying to do my best, but now, you know, there are things to be for that I think are in some ways just as threatening to regulated industries as, uh, as any regulatory regime.
Lose your market for, uh, a coal fired plant to a solar farm. Lose your, uh. Polluting car to an electric vehicle. Yeah. Personal care products, pesticide products, on and on where there are options more and more all the time. We always find a way to talk about how much better it's got and how much easier it's gotten to get quality food that doesn't have as much contamination.
I talk to people about that and say. What we're for now is as important as what we're against.
Bill Reilly: I think that's very well said. I think that the roles that, uh, have been played by people like Forest Rangers, park Rangers that are being let off, I.
Ken: Yeah.
Bill Reilly: And the kind of functions they have performed. Who's dealing with the waste? Anybody?
Ken: Yeah.
Bill Reilly: Who's gonna do the crowd control? I mean, who's gonna keep the trails free and when the fires start, are the foresters gonna pitch in the ones who got fired and may now be, uh, auto mechanics in South Carolina? Yeah, I dunno. So my point on that is there are very essential services which are being recklessly, dissolved and discontinued.
But I think there are going to be some very serious consequences of that, and I think the country's gonna notice, especially when they start visiting the parks. That'll be a, a direct encounter with the consequences. Yeah. But I have a friend who's a pollster and talked to him the other evening, gave me the one or more hopeful reports, said very extensive polling that he had overseen, resulted in the discovery that the.
It's not in favor of mass deportations. They're in favor of taking control of the border, but they certainly don't want the farmers, the babysitters, the daycare people, the chefs, the cooks, the dairy workers. They don't want them sent somewhere else. With the consequence that all of a sudden it's tough to fill the job.
And particularly the, the contractors, the builders, last time, 300,000 deportees were senate by, uh, one of the presidents, I think it was actually Obama. It turned out it led to a, a shortage, a delay in housing construction, and an increase in cost. Those kinds of things are gonna be the consequences of some of these policy maneuvers.
But the other thing that the country, according to this pollster said, was that they are not in favor of eliminating foreign assistance. They're typically in favor of having it not be more than 10 or 15%. Well, historically it's only been 1% of the federal budget.
Ken: Yeah.
Bill Reilly: So these are hopeful things and things that one has to want to use, I guess, a little bit too.
Reassure us when people ask the question about the voters who voted for somebody who says climate change is a hoax, is that really the country? Is that, do they really think that? Yeah. Well, they probably didn't make that connection because climate is not front and center in their immediate political aspirations.
But you know, if they lived through the Los Angeles fires and make the connections, it will be. So I think there are changes that are the consequence of realities in our system that the administration has misinterpreted, has assumed, sort of exaggerated, uh, yeah, the regulatory desire. I don't think that's there.
I think people are made their peace with, as I said before, they're not necessarily in favor of new initiatives on the environment and a lot of other areas. But they're certainly not in favor of burning Rivers. Yeah. That's what you're gonna get if you leave the country without any environmental enforcement, which is look looking like what's gonna happen.
Ken: Yeah, it certainly does. And it's scary. Would that We didn't have to wait for the reckoning to happen after so much recklessness. Yes. But that might be what it comes down to. Bill Riley, thank you so much my friend. I'm so grateful. 'cause you're still. You're still in there swinging away.
Bill Reilly: One hopes that op-eds, uh, have some reverberations and, uh, you do what you can do.
Ken: Well, I'll tell you the 40 or 50 environmental leaders I was with last week, any number of them who know that we know each other came up to me and said, thank goodness Bill Riley's fighting away and speaking truth to power. It matters coming from him and it, it always has. Bill.
Bill Reilly: Thank you, Ken. Thank you and you, you have certainly had an impact, are having an impact too, as Moynihan recognized culture is more important than politics.
Ken: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Bill Riley, thank you for joining us and thank you out there for listening. If you'd like to learn more. Be sure to check out our show notes for additional links for a deeper dive into today's discussion. Make sure to follow our show on Instagram at Ken Cooks podcast.
And if you're interested in learning more about ewg, head over to ewg.org or check out the ewg Instagram account at Environmental Working Group. Now. If you like this episode, send it to a friend who you think might like it too. Environmentalism is all about meeting people where they're at. And if you're listening to this, you probably know someone who might be interested in today's episode.
They just don't know it yet. My ask is that you send it to that person or as many people as you see fit. Today's episode was produced by the extraordinary Beth Row and Mary Kelly. Our show's theme music. Thank you. Moby is by Moby. And thank you again for listening.
