Who Is Andrew Wheeler?
Who Is?
iHeartRadio + NowThis
4.1 • 803 Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2020
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Andrew Wheeler, the current Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the most important member of the Trump Administration that you’ve never heard of. Extremely effective, Wheeler has systematically rolled back landmark federal regulation designed to address the climate crisis, and meticulously dismantled longstanding rules that protect our air, water, and environment. On this episode of "Who Is?," Sean Morrow dives deep into Wheeler’s roots in West Virginia, a state which makes plain the complicated realities of environmental regulation, and which presents a challenge only a strong federal bureaucracy can meet: charting a path toward a carbon neutral future that includes those who have already intimately experienced the consequences of heavy industry.
- Coral Davenport, a reporter who covers energy and environmental policy, with a focus on climate change, at the New York Times
- Gina McCarthy, President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. McCarthy previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, from 2013-2017
- Ken Ward Jr., a reporter who covers West Virginia for ProPublica. Ward is a co-founder of Mountain State Spotlight, a new nonprofit news organization that focuses on West Virginia
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The world is ending. |
| 0:02.4 | The left side of America is on fire. |
| 0:05.3 | We ran out of hurricane names because there were too many hurricanes. |
| 0:10.2 | We are living through a climate crisis that will only get worse. |
| 0:14.6 | And us, humans, whose fault this is, only have a few more years to fix it. |
| 0:20.6 | So surely, America's gotta have someone good on that, right? |
| 0:24.8 | Scientific community has said that climate change is one of the great crises facing our planet. |
| 0:31.9 | And if there is not unprecedented action to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to sustainable energy |
| 0:40.7 | and energy efficiency, there will be irreparable damage in the United States and virtually every |
| 0:47.0 | country on Earth. Do you agree with the scientific community? |
| 0:51.0 | I would not call it the greatest crisis, no, sir. I consider it a huge issue that has to be |
| 0:56.6 | addressed globally. You just heard Senator Bernie Sanders grilling Andrew Wheeler at confirmation |
| 1:03.0 | hearings following Wheeler's official nomination to lead the Environmental Protection Agency in 2019. |
| 1:09.6 | Wheeler had been serving as acting administrator of the agency since 2018. |
| 1:13.6 | Andrew Wheeler is the current administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. |
| 1:19.6 | He was a coal lobbyist, and I think he continues to be a spokesperson for the fossil fuel industry. |
| 1:26.6 | Wheeler does not draw the attention of a cabinet member like Mike Pompeo or Attorney General |
| 1:34.3 | Barr, to be sure. But the actual policy legacy of essentially making it impossible for the |
| 1:43.6 | U.S. government to do anything about climate change. |
| 1:46.0 | Wheeler's the one who has very methodically executed that. |
| 1:49.6 | The people trotting us towards apocalypse aren't necessarily supervillains, |
| 1:54.1 | laughing maniacally as they detonate the world's volcanoes. |
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