In [this podcast episode](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-deregulation-make-america-healthy-again/id1735379217?i=1000698716971), EWG President and co-Founder Ken Cook talks with Peter Galvin about the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda, and its implications for public health.
Galvin is one of the founders, and current director of programs, of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. He and Cook discuss environmental and health policy, strategies for the next four years of the administration, and how their organizations will rise to the occasion to ensure all Americans have a cleaner, safer, non-toxic future.
_**Disclaimer:** This transcript was compiled using software and may include typographical errors._
Peter: I don't think this is what people signed up for, but now we're in the phase where we're just a peanut gallery for the moment. The discontent is gonna grow as people realize they were promised a bill of goods and that bill of goods is not being delivered. And one of the key ways it's not being delivered is that the quality of life of Americans is gonna suffer because cancer rates are likely to, to continue to rise from toxicity and environmental contamination.
Climate pollution is not going to be cleaned up during his term. Wetlands are going to continue to be destroyed. So the quality of life, the things, the open spaces that people go to, the areas people like to fish and recreate in, these are all being, going to be degraded under his watch. And the best we can do is speak truth to power, try to protect human communities and nature the best we can so that when this pirate collapses, We are able to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together.
Ken: Hey folks, it's Ken Cook here. I'm having another episode. It might not look or sound like the previous episodes because we're doing a little renovation here in my home studio and the finished result will be amazing. But the result right now is makeshift. I hope you'll bear with me. I'm very excited about this episode, not just because of the guest, Peter Galvin from the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the organizations and one of the people I most admire in the environmental movement, but also because of the context that's now clear to all of us that we're in that Peter and I talk about, which is, you know, we now know from an environmental and public health standpoint, a lot more than we knew just weeks ago about The Trump administration.
We know, uh, that there are plans for mass layoffs in the federal bureaucracy. We suspected that, but now we really know it. And in the case of EPA, there's actually a number that's been thrown out, a 65 percent reduction in EPA's budget, both affecting their staff and a big part of EPA's budget, which is grants to States to do things.
So we're looking at. a very clear attack on the environment. Now that puts me in a way, and my guest, Peter Galvin, in a little bit of an awkward situation. We're both people and organizations who've spent our careers critiquing and often fighting the powers that be in the federal government, right? We've, we've gone up against EPA, we've gone up against the Forest Service, the Department of Interior, HHS.
We have petitioned them to do things that we think they should do that they haven't been doing. We've sued them. In fact, the Center for Biological Diversity has actually represented, its attorneys have represented EWG in court going after some of these agencies. I've always thought that environmentalism done right is about challenging authority, but it puts us in a pretty interesting situation now because after all, isn't what Trump is doing and his Team is doing.
Isn't it challenging authority? Isn't it really making the case that government's not working? It's full of waste. It's full of corruption as the OMB office of management and budget official said just last week in a memo that he sent out to the entire government, you're corrupt. And inefficient and wasteful.
These are issues, stagnancy, failures, government inaction, uh, corporate capture. These are all things that do need to be addressed. So the question is, is, is that going to happen under Trump or is something else happening that's different than that? Or will have a different effect than we might all want, who want to have Improved, efficient government enforcement that protects the environment and protects human health.
Now, that's maybe a difference between the authority that I think we're challenging and how we're going about it at EWG, and how I see the Trump administration adopting an approach of just burn it all down. And we have yet to see what will be in its place. For us, we're now looking at actions, not just words, and they're beginning to unfold.
It's an unraveling of law and regulation, and not necessarily just focused on issues. It's really something much more fundamental. We're seeing a plan to starve the government of resources. To get rid of staff that might make reasonable decisions or might continue to do things we don't like, either way, they won't be there.
No one will be there. The staff will be gone. The resources will be gone. What about what's replacing it now in the Trump administration? And what does that mean for the environment and human health? And to me, it's pretty clear that it's much worse than we've. focused on before. It's much less than my shortcomings.
It's getting rid of the ability to govern in the areas of environment and public health. And once we lose that, what replaces it? And that's the question. Let me give you an example from something that EWG has been working on since the summer of 2000. Regulating forever chemicals, these so called PFAS chemicals, the chemicals in Teflon, the chemicals in Scotchgard, and many other applications.
Massive multi billion dollar industry that has polluted the entire planet, starting with each and every one of us while we're still in the womb. Right? This stuff is in our babies when they come into the world, and it's in all of us now, and it's multiple toxic signatures. Endocrine disruption, cancer, neurological problems, all manner of health endpoints that we worry about.
So, this February, One of the first things that Lee Zeldin did as the new administrator of EPA is he had EPA withdraw the rule that would limit how much of this PFAS stuff certain companies could discharge directly into the environment, into the air and into the water. He just said, we're, we're dropping that draft rule.
Now, what will it be replaced with? We don't know, but it was on schedule to be implemented and it took decades to get there. And now it's. And our guess is, based on the people who are being brought into the government, that it won't be replaced with something stronger. Quite the opposite. As my colleague from EWG's independent news initiative, the new lead, Shannon Kelleher, wrote, there are still no federal limits on how much PFAS industries can release into the water.
So this is a setback towards putting those limits in place, and I think people are worried that it sends a message that polluters can keep on polluting. It's particularly bad timing for the EPA, just as they've revealed that a commonly used type of sewage based agricultural fertilizer made from sludge Um, sewage treatment plants is contaminated with these forever chemicals.
So when it's placed on farmland as a fertilizer, it actually causes sort of a toxic waste site immediately created on these farmer's properties. Or let's take a look at another release from EPA. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to unleash American greatness as head of EPA. Now, I'm all about greatness, but this is particularly worrisome.
First of all, the EPA homepage features, uh, an article written by Breitbart. That's where he did the exclusive interview to explain what American greatness would be. And American greatness, in Zeldin's view, is rooted in mass deregulation and downsizing of EPA. Now, I'm not sure how much unleashed American greatness public health and the environment can take, but that's Zeldin's goal.
And How about this headline from the New York Times that indicates who's going to be doing this on his team? Quote, she lobbied for a carcinogen and now she's at the EPA approving new chemicals. Rin Dekleva is just one of many former Industry lobbyists now at EPA, she worked to abolish the program, which EPA assessed risks of new chemicals under, and she's going to run this program now.
I don't know if a lobbyist working to weaken regulation on carcinogens is the best candidate to make America healthy again. My guess is no. But I just want to put out there that we've challenged EPA's authority. He's challenged EPA's authority. Which source of challenge do you want to go with? To me, it's pretty clear.
We want the government to do a better job, not no job. And that's the difference between, I think, a progressive approach to challenging authority and the approach we're seeing from the Trump administration. Peter Galvin, um, my guest today is really One of my heroes in the environmental movement, the public health movement, he's a giant in that world.
Peter is the co founder of the Center for Biological Diversity. His other co founders, Kieran Suckling, Dr. Robin Silver, Todd Schultke, are likewise heroes of mine. They founded the Center in 1989, just a few years before we founded EWG. And we love working with them. We really see eye to eye on a lot of issues, both because of the commitment to the environment and also their style, which is fearless, challenging whatever authority, criticism of people on both sides of the aisle.
We don't spare Democrats and we don't spare Republicans when we think they're doing the wrong thing. The Center for Biological Diversity is one of the premier environmental public interest law firms. And public interest law means you, mostly you sue the government. Occasionally you sue. Sue individual companies, but mostly you're suing the government for not doing its job.
It's a very formal, specific way of challenging authority. And no one does it better, really, than the Center for Biological Diversity. Their team of lawyers have made sure that agencies like the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and EPA, you name it, when it comes to federal authority, do things they're supposed to do under the law as Congress intended.
We've had no stronger, better partner than the Center for Biological Diversity. And everyone I've met on their staff, it's like 160 people, so it's a, it's a significant organization. Uh, I either want to work with them or steal them. Peter and I are at similar stages of our careers. He doesn't want to spend the next four years, and I don't want to spend the next four years like I think I'm going to be spending them.
Which is challenging the authority of the Trump administration. The weight of evidence, the balance of what's happening now is clearly dramatically anti environmental and against public health. I opened up my conversation with Peter, asking him, here in 2025, How are you feeling, dude?
Peter: Boy, it's tough. It's, this is a tough time right now, I have to say.
You know, all of our worst fears are being confirmed. Trump is, uh, is bad news for people who care about the environment and a lot of other issues. I know Environmental Working Group has found over the years, as the center has, that even when you have the government is attempting to help protect the environment, there are an awful lot of pressures on that the government from industry.
To keep business as usual. I mean, let's, let's not kid ourselves. The invisible hand of capitalism has its hand firmly around the neck of the Democrats as well. And so let's not kid ourselves here.
Ken: A hundred percent
Peter: right? But here, what you have is this sort of naked, bald. Kowtowing to the worst polluters.
And what's, what's interesting about it to me is I don't mean to get to any silver linings before we've had a chance to. Talk about just how bad it all is, Ken. Yeah, please, please don't cheer anybody up yet. Yeah, right, let's not cheer them up yet. But one of the things that the regulatory system and state One of the reasons it exists is for public confidence, for people to feel confident in whatever it is, whether it's that your, your airline ticket is going to be honored, whether your, your medical appointment is going to be, your insurance is going to pay, or the water is going to be clean when you turn on the tap.
Ken: Yeah, for sure.
Peter: You know, you can't take the time to know all these things yourself, right? I mean, you're relying on other people that are experts in the field to assist you. In these things, and to make sure that, you know, the fire department can come, the doctor is ready, your kid is going to be safe when they eat the fruit pouch, these kind of things, and what I think people are going to wake up to is actually that thin veneer of oversight.
Is actually now pretty much gone, which is alarming because it's understandable how mistrust in the government and agencies has developed. And then you see the misinformation coming out of industry groups that is just flooding the zone with information, you know, environmental health is just one of the most important issues in America.
And as people lose confidence in the institutions around them. They begin to wonder, well, who can I trust to get me information about how to protect my family? There were always reasons why you should be skeptical of really any authority figures. Of course. On their side, or our side, or anybody, really.
But now what we see is these folks are in a race to the bottom. And if you don't comply, you'll be fired or, or, uh, transferred the environment division of the, of the Department of justice is basically been. gutted, they already were very reluctant to bring cases against polluters. They're the people who defend the government when we sue them.
So, I mean, on the one hand, they've just fired all their best lawyers. On the other hand, they were in some cases defending the government's actions, which we disagreed with. So if they're replaced by lesser lawyers, good. Yeah. They've just cut off all the grants. So now any university program looking at toxins, for example.
Right? Here's an answer to stopping bad information from coming out about your products or the pollution you're causing is simply stop all the data gathering or research related to it. This is the beginnings of something we've never seen. You know, the only comparison we have, I have in my lifetime, is Ronald Reagan was, uh, very, uh, hostile to all environmental regulations.
Yeah. And had essentially launched an anti environmental crusade. I think the difference between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump is. Ronald Reagan had a better, uh, a more compassionate communication style. Trump doesn't even have a thin veneer of public relations to his edicts.
Ken: Part of his appeal to his
Peter: I think so. I think, I think it is. I think it is. It's really a tough situation because we were already fighting a very uphill battle, but you look at, you know, cancer rates, you look at water quality, contamination, you look at all of these kind of crises, you know, the small progress that the EPA had been able to make on the PFAS issue, uh, the small progress they had made on the sewage sludge issue, they had made some significant progress on the pesticide field.
We have an environmental health program at the center run by a brilliant team. Attorney Lorianne Burr. Yes. I worship her. Oh, she's the best, right? Amazing. And, and, uh, the progress that, that has been made through her and her team and other folks, including Environmental Working Group and other groups, uh, you know, the EPA had finally turned a corner and weren't just total lackeys and stooges of the pesticide industry.
And, uh, we were starting to see some real reform there. A couple of pesticides got canceled, chlorophyphos, and they were looking at, uh, dicamba. Which has caused people to basically lose their minds. It's actually a, like a neurotoxin to the point where it'll drive people insane that are exposed to it. Um, it has in many circumstances, it appears we're just in a world of hurt can, and the only silver lining to it is that the truth has a way of persisting.
People love the environment. They love nature. They love, uh, life, uh, and they want to keep their family safe, and turns out that people who pollute you, people who toxify you, people who give you cancer, and then deny it and lie about it, aren't good people, and people are eventually going to wake up to that and see it.
But a whole lot of pain is going to be caused in the meantime, and a whole lot of wildlife is going to suffer even more, and species are going to go extinct, and, and, and we've got to be prepared to pick up the pieces from the ashes. Because we are, uh, we're just headed downhill here real fast.
Ken: I couldn't agree more.
I want to go back to the whole question of the environmental community and complexity of our relationship with authority. But I didn't want to gloss over asking you about the founding of the Center for Biological Diversity. Can you say a little bit about that genesis? What was going on then?
Peter: I have been involved in direct action environmentalism through the ancient forest protection movement.
I've gone to college in Oregon, going to Lewis and Clark college in Portland, Oregon had gotten real involved with the college outdoors program there. And through that had gone into the national forests and seen unbelievable devastation of clear cutting, tens of thousands of acres, thousands at one fell swoop.
Almost all publicly, unfortunately. You know, growing up in, I grew up in Massachusetts and, and always was, had a reverence for the West, uh, you know, and always, uh, had, had, had wanted to get out West. And looking at the map and seeing those big open spaces and saw this national forest and, and I guess I, I really, I had thought these lands were, you know, as an 18 year old kid, I, I just thought these lands were, were preserved and boy, was I, uh, mistaken to find out that these lands were not preserved.
In fact, they were being liquidated with these thousand year old trees. You know, a lot of things in the world are, are a little ambiguous, or it's hard to figure out what the right thing to do is, or, or what can I do? But here I saw something that clearly was something that was just so wrong, and was something that this is, these were on public lands.
I'm the public, so I have a voice here, and I should Do something about this. And what year are
Ken: we talking about when you're in college?
Peter: 1983 was when I started, and 1984 and 5 was when I started to get involved in the forest activism. At this time, there was some forest activism going on in Oregon around ancient forests.
A group called the Cathedral Forest Action Group out of Salem, Oregon. I had gotten involved with them, eventually the Earth First movement swept the west coast. I got involved with, with Earth First. Which was a very gratifying period of my life. I met a lot of wonderful people headed by Dave Foreman at the time.
Ken: Yes, met Dave Foreman many times many times.
Peter: He was very his speeches were very influential Yep, went to a number of encampments where people were had created these sort of ad hoc communities to protect the forest Protest communities, really. Protest communities, yeah. One on a place called Bald Mountain in southwest Oregon. A guy named Lou Gold, he had been a professor in Chicago, had become an ancient forest activist, and he lived there seasonally, but every year, you know, when it was too snowy, he would go on the road and tell people about ancient forests.
Went to his encampment several times. My resolve was even deepened meeting someone who was making such a commitment himself. It
Ken: matters so much early on, right? To see someone that embodies Yeah. A vision and a commitment. I felt the same way. That's kind of how I got my start with, with figures like that.
Peter: Yeah. And so, uh, I, uh, eventually, um, dropped out of Lewis and Clark College, became a full time direct action activist. But then a few years later, I went back to finish my undergraduate work at a place called Prescott College in Arizona. Through that, I met Kieron through a mutual friend. And in the Southwest, we had our own spotted owl, the Mexican spotted owl, which is a cousin of the Northern spotted owl.
And we have ancient forests in the Southwest, national forests that were liquidation logging ancient forests. They're not, the trees aren't quite as big and old, but they're still giant and hundreds of years old. And they're ours. They're public. Yeah. And they're, they're public and just absolutely beautiful.
Like at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where the Kaibab National Forest meets the Gila National Forest. Um, and these are just tremendous yellow pines, you know, these ponderosa pines that smell like vanilla or Kahlua when you get to the bark and, and, and just the, just the beauty of these centuries old trees.
And so we realized that we could do what was done in the Pacific Northwest with the ancient forest protection movement, that we could do that in the Southwest. And we said, alright, this is what they did there, and this is how that worked, let's do that here. And that's what we set out to do. So the initial impetus was really the preservation of ancient forests on public lands in the southwest.
We were actually working for the Forest Service at this time, seasonally. We had seasonal jobs on the owl research crew, looking for owls, goshawks, and eagles. That sounds like a good way to spend a day. Oh, what a wonderful, I actually spend the night in many cases because the owls are active at night. It was a very strange job, very strange job, which involved a lot of coffee and staying awake all night and wandering through the woods.
And it's funny because I was never, never afraid of people. Of course, there aren't many people out there really. You don't really run into people. Elk, getting stampeded by a group of elk was really the main, the main risk.
Ken: I'm surprised Trump hasn't brought that up yet as another big environmental problem that, uh, along with windmills.
Peter: sure, I'm sure he will. I'm sure he will soon after, after he listens to your podcast. That's right. I think he tunes in all the time. That's right. That's right. So we had some really good supervisors at the Forest Service. I remember my boss, the wildlife biologist was like, Oh, they don't listen to me.
You know, this is just. You know, they're, they're making us go out and do the surveys, but they'll just put this in a drawer. They're just going to go ahead and do it. So, we had found these owls, and they're supposed to draw a territory around each spotted owl to make sure it's protected as part of the Forest Service policy.
And then we saw that they were going to log this immediate area, and we called our boss, who was the winner, and so we were, we're seasonal employees, we call him up at home and say, hey, what's, he was a year round. What's going on? Uh, and he said, Oh, I told you they're not, they don't listen to us. Where the wildlife division is, is just window dressing, man.
They just don't care. So we appealed that timber sale, uh, through the administrative appeal process that the forest service and other agencies have. And lo and behold, we won the appeal. The, the regional office in Albuquerque said, yeah, that's right. There's an owl territory there. This timber sale shouldn't have been authorized.
They need to redraw this or eliminate it. And we were like, wow. And of course our boss, the, not our immediate boss, he was excited, but his boss was very upset. He's like, wait, you know, you can't appeal the timber sales, you know, cause you work for us. And I'm like, no, actually we, we can't, there's no, nothing says we can't.
And so we had done that for a few years. Eventually they were trying to get rid of us, but they didn't have many qualified people. And it was very political. You know, we saw how political wildlife management can be. The first order was go find as many spotted owls as possible, because we don't think they're endangered.
We think there's a lot of, so we, you know, we're working overtime to find spotted owls. And then all of a sudden an edict comes down, don't find any more spotted, because they're going to get listed as endangered. So we don't want to know where any spotted owls are. So don't, we're like, wait a minute. This isn't, this can't be a lawful policy, right?
I mean, this. It just can't be sure enough. It wasn't. So through that process, met Dr. Silver, who was a active environmentalist and emergency room physician in Phoenix in the eighties and a wildlife photographer, he became our original patron. He was our original funder because he made a fair amount of money as an emergency room doctor.
So he devoted all of this to the environment and was really, I've never met anybody more, but and still does to this day. And so he really gave us the resources needed. To begin to, you know, be able to focus on, on things like organization building and getting some, you know, additional staff and, and then Todd Schuelke, uh, was, uh, one of the owl crew and came along with us and helped start the organ is still with us in, in Silver City, New Mexico, in the Gila National Forest.
So, all, all the founders are still with the group. The group is now up to actually 175 staff, 80 attorneys. Uh, 30 scientists.
Ken: I just, I would love your perspective on this. I mean, I have friends at NRDC, I have friends that are justice, uh, you know, storied, uh, environmental litigators, and at first blush, uh, when the center came along, I thought, well, how are they going to make their way?
I didn't have that question very long because I saw what you were doing. First of all, you were very focused, but also, and I think you got some criticism or, uh, questions raised by other environmental groups at the time that maybe you were being too aggressive. Is that, uh, am I remembering correctly?
Peter: Yeah absolutely.
Absolutely. There was a, uh, you know, I mean, in any, in any field when you have a disruptor. In the field, you've got the, uh, incumbents, shall we say that are not necessarily pleased or they feel threatened or, or a new modality is coming in and it's alarming to them. So, yeah, we, we did receive a fair amount of.
Blowback 1 of the initial ideas behind environmental law was that. You'd have a precedential case, the precedential case would then set the tone for similar circumstances. Moving forward, and so, in theory, at the outset, perhaps it wasn't envisioned that a full court press kind of situation would be necessary that, you know, forest service would propose a massive timber liquidation sale, or the government would propose a polluting facility, a lawsuit would elucidate an important principle that principle would then be incorporated into case law.
And so perhaps if the system function properly. It would be almost homeopathic where you would have an action, and then the system would reform as a result of the action, but that's not what happened. What happened was the industries that that stand to profit from the pollution or environmental degradation.
They don't just give up. They don't just go away. They have lobbyists. They have political arms. They have campaigns. They have politicians in their pocket. And so they would essentially ignore the precedent and just keep doing whatever it was that was ruled illegal over here. Well, that was ruled illegal in western Washington, but it wasn't ruled illegal here in northern New Mexico, so there's no reason for you to do anything.
Well, well, wait a minute. This is, you know, similar habitat. Yeah. There's every reason to think that the sedimentation, that it would affect that salmon, would affect this trout. You know, they're different, so they have different, different needs, but, so, uh, that isn't how it worked out, and also, there were huge areas of the country that were being ignored.
The Southwest really had very little, there was one or two staffers for some national environmental groups in the Southwest. Arizona and New Mexico had no environmental coverage. And the reality is, where agencies have been able to get away with bloody murder, For decades, they're still doing it,
Ken: they continue,
Peter: they continue. And so, you know, reform, getting people to do things better is a process that it never ends. And it turns out that whole areas of the country, you know, don't receive the same environmental protection as other areas. And a lot of it has to do with the institutional culture of those areas. You know, it's just different.
Massachusetts is different than Texas. And the regulate and how people interact with those, and it's not necessarily all good, all bad, just that it's very different.
Ken: I think of my friends at the Southern Environmental Law Center in the same way, that issues in the South were not getting the attention that they deserved.
Yes. You know, environmentalism, done right, is always about challenging authority and pushing it to take into consideration. Matters that, uh, commerce and the normal operation of government neglects to the detriment of nature and human health and the global environment. It's a tricky time now, right?
Because here we have Trump coming in and challenging authority. He's basically saying you can't trust the government. Sometimes we find ourselves saying you can't trust the government. But civil rights is the same and immigrant rights is the same. There's a challenge to authority there. And if you erode authority to the point where none of it is trusted, obviously that can lead you in kind of the direction we're going in now with Trump with don't trust anybody, I alone can fix it.
None of us had that in mind, and I'm not suggesting we did the wrong thing by challenging authority, but it is It's a tricky problem to solve. How do you push back against authority and say, you know what, that pesticide limit may be legal, but it's not safe. We're going to challenge it. That, uh, logging plan may have an environmental impact statement or assessment behind it, but this statement or the assessment is flawed.
It's not looking at endangered species or it's not looking at runoff or whatever it might be. So, there is that, there is that tension. The part of it that I find encouraging is that even with the most ardent Trump supporters, as long as they're willing to challenge authority and come to their own conclusions, that process itself, I, I respect that.
I like that attitude that you're not going to accept it. But there comes a point where the common good suffers. If there's no authority or the authority vests and whoever happens to have power or money or what have you, how do you think about that?
Peter: Well, yeah, you know, I think that's good points and something I've been thinking a lot about.
And, you know, I like people who think for themselves. I always have. The thing is, though, is that many of us looked at, you know, kind of Orwell's 1984 and Looking at the government, you know, in that they revise information and they, you know, chocolate rations are higher than they were before, even though they're demonstrably not, you know, but they just have these edicts that that assert these things.
But I don't think we realize that flooding the zone with information, desensitizing people with information would have a similar effect as as censorship. It would actually even be more effective in some ways because. You would not feel as if you were being censored, you're just lost in a rabbit hole of whatever it is, whatever rabbit hole you've gone down.
So I think it's, it's extremely alarming in that way. Because people are smart enough to know when they're being lied to, but not necessarily able to get out of whatever rabbit hole they've been sucked into. So I don't really know how, we don't know how it's going to end up. But. A great realignment is occurring in how people, one, get their information and two, their trustworthy sources of information.
And I think that it's very, very interesting, you know, because it is very complicated. You look at the EPA, for example, and Hey, we've been fighting EPA decisions for decades. You know, you look at this recent decision, this recent thing that came out that it turned out that they knew that this sewage sludge.
Was really bad and that people shouldn't be spreading it on farms But for for years after they had that information They still recommended that people should spread this crap on farms because every mayor in the country said what am I supposed to do with this shit literally, right?
Peter: Yeah, and so these are the same people who didn't regulate PFAS and PFAS Yeah, right now we look at historically People with resources are able to corral and control the regulatory entities, and that has been true since the time of the robber barons, and it's true to today, and I think that we're in a period where we're, this is going to run its course for a while, and, and, uh, I think people are going to have to look at some point and say, well, am I healthier?
Is the water cleaner? You know, Trump has promised some specific things. The cleanest air and the cleanest water in the world. Yeah. Right? He says he cares about whales. Now, apparently he only cares about them in relation to wind, possible impacts from wind, but not anything else it appears. But he said he cares about whales.
He said he cares about public lands. He said he cares about clean air and clean water. You know, RFK Jr. claims that pesticides are causing a lot of problems. He's absolutely right. And so we need to be able to take what these folks have said and promised and refer back to that in our messaging, in our communications, in our education, and in our policy initiatives.
Because to take them at their face value, that's partly how they got elected. Because people are like, look, I agree with them on X, Y, and Z, and the guy says there are going to be clean air and clean water. And I want that. So I'll, I'll be for that. But now we see, you know, auctioning off public lands, flushing fish species down his low flow toilet.
Yeah. And I don't think this is what people signed up for, but now we're in the phase where. We're just a peanut gallery for the moment. The discontent is going to grow as people realize they were promised a bill of goods and that bill of goods is not being delivered and one of the key ways it's not being delivered is that the quality of life of Americans is going to suffer because cancer rates are likely to continue to rise from toxicity and environmental contamination.
Climate pollution is not going to be cleaned up during his term. Wetlands are going to continue to be destroyed. So, the quality of life, the things, the open spaces that people go to, the areas people like to fish and recreate in, these are all being, gonna be degraded under his watch, and the best we can do is speak truth to power, try to protect human communities and nature the best we can, so that when this tyrant collapses, we are able to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together and realize that at the At its core, we know that people love nature, they love the earth, and they love life, and they want to protect themselves from and their family from environmental toxins and harms, and they love nature.
These things are immutable truths that cannot be explained away.
Ken: That's exactly right. They can be rented. But not bought. We're in a rental period now where the rental interests are the big companies and the special interests and the, uh, assorted, uh, extractors of the world. People who thought they didn't have Trump's ear are mistaken.
Uh, they do have Trump's ear and I think we're going to see the consequences. So let's say a little bit about how you're organized or what has changed since. Uh, the November election in your strategy, has this affected how you're deploying your, your staff and your resources? And I've been telling people, you know, this is an election like this means billions of dollars being spent in the public interest community over four years.
just to stay where we are. Yeah. And I mean, across the, you know, everything from, from voting rights to women's reproductive rights to environmental protection, you know, if you look across the civil society generally, Everyone's at the barricades and it's expensive to be there and it's just to hold the line.
Yeah We're not going to miss, you know one round of the fight Yeah, I guess you're people the same way because i've met so many of them and find them all one after another so inspiring But how does it shape your organizations? Approach over the next four years, which your founders are probably all in this sort of, I'm guessing sort of same mindset that, you know, well, I don't want the next four years to be like this, but it is.
So what does the organization do? Because your organization's critical to what, to the defense. Thank you.
Peter: Our work is cut out for us for sure. Um, even more than it was before we've had, we're having to staff up. We've put out an urgent call for more resources, which has been received favorably. We're hiring 12 new attorneys.
As well as several other staff, um, you know, more scientists, more activists, organizers, campaigners. First of all, we're staffing up. Secondly, there's going to be a lot of defense work. The industry will sue to undo regulations, and the Trump administration, their hack at the DOJ, will just agree. Yeah. And they have these sweetheart settlements.
Industry will file a challenge. The administration will, uh, immediately agree to settle. On terms that get rid of that regulation because, of course. Preserving the environment or wildlife or children's health or exposure to farm workers is not 1 of the priorities. And so we're going to have to intervene, which is very expensive.
Ken: I just want to say one thing about this because it comes up all the time. Isn't this good news for your organization to have Trump, uh, like it was good news to have Reagan. You're going to raise all this money. You're going to, you know, that's going to be fantastic for you, for your finances.
Peter: I mean. Uh, you know, I, I, there will be more people joining environmental groups that, that is true.
I mean, that, that is true, but we'd rather have the wins. Yeah. I mean, really, we want the environment preserved. We're, we're, we're one of the only fields. I think medicine is maybe one of the other ones that we'd be happy to have the problem resolved and be able to just disband because whatever we had set out to do was accomplished, that would be just fine.
So when Democrat presidents come in. Membership in environmental groups tends to lag because people think, Oh, this problem is being covered and I can help these other important issues that I care about. And when someone as hostile as Trump comes in, people rally. And, and I think people are doing that across the spectrum of things he's threatening, including a variety of other issues, the amount of resources that it's going to take to just hold the line, as you said, is going to be enormous.
We're not, we're not moving totally away from being on offense. You know, you look at issues like lead pollution. You look at the pesticide front, you look at some of these other issues, especially where the administration has, has, has asserted their concern or their stated interest, clean air, clean water.
Oh, we'll give you a little platter of clean air and clean water issues to, to discuss and let's see, let's see how much you care about clean air and clean water. You know, he said go wild on health. Well, one of the ways, the best ways to go wild on health is stop poisoning people. Yeah.
Ken: That's right. And a lot of these things, you know, RFK is talking about, we've been, I've been posting about it to point out to people that a lot of these things aren't in Bobby Kennedy's jurisdiction at HHS if he is confirmed.
So we're still going to be having an EPA that is now going to be run by industry folks. You know, the regulated industry is going to populate the regulatory positions. Uh, same with interior, same with energy and so forth. These are all, you know, aggressively anti environmental.
Peter: Exactly, and it's just shameful that R. F. K. Jr. is lending his voice to these shameful anti environmental efforts. And you know, as soon as they was announced for HHS, the industry said, Keep him away from agricultural policy. Trump even said, keep Bobby away from the oil. Oh, keep him away from the oil, keep him away from agricultural policy.
Nonetheless, there's a administration figure who raised a lot of concerns about pesticides and contaminants overall and public health and, and, and rightfully so, and so we intend to press forward on these issues, make progress where we can find allies where we can. I think the States are a big source of inspiration where 45 years ago, when Reagan became president, the state AGs were not there.
But the bottom line is, you know, people still care as much as they did yesterday, as much as they did in December, they love the environment. They love their families. They love their homes. They want to live in a. Uh, healthy, clean environment where they have access to wild nature. We're going to see that commitment tested.
We see Trump already mobilizing the Endangered Species God Squad to attempt to undo any decisions that would help stave off the extinction of a species. But at the same time, we have, you know, we have resolve. Our staff is pumped up, pumped up to fight. These folks are indefatigable. Whenever I get depressed, when I talk to a group of these people, I get recharged.
Absolutely. Because this is the future. These people are the future. and God bless them for their limitless energy. Completely.
Ken: I'm sure you feel the same way, that it's a privilege to do the work you and I do. And likewise, much as we may be bummed out that we're spending the next few years this way personally instead of maybe making greater progress, The real inspiration for the fight for me comes from protecting the people and for you, the people in the places who are really going to take the brunt of these awful decisions, this exploitation, these misrepresentation of science, uh, destructive issues.
Policies and attitudes that are going to hurt our climate are going to hurt the living world or including human beings to be able to stand up and be a voice and fight for those folks is so much more important than anything that might be happening institutionally to the environmental movement or organizations because our strength really is that we've dedicated ourselves to that, that protective posture and it'll never go away.
Peter: No, it's, it is an honor to be able to do this work, a privilege and honor. And, you know, as a, uh, someone who, I feel very strongly about environmental issues, obviously, but a variety of them, and for me, contaminants is one of the big ones. I'm a, I'm a survivor of childhood cancer myself. Oh, I didn't know that.
And so, I take these issues, like, really seriously, and when, you know, you see these officials say, Oh, there's only a, you know, this will only increase your chances of Premature death or cancer by, you know, one in a hundred thousand, well, that's easy unless you're that one or unless your kid is that one or your, your niece or nephew is that one.
And so the environment is, is, and, and, and nature was my solace while I was sick with cancer. That's, that's where I found peace. That's where I found. the healing energy of the forest and nature. Well, God bless.
Ken: And, uh, I I've used so much of your time and yet there's so much more I want to talk to you about.
I think we have to get back together on screen or off.
Peter: Let's do that again.
Ken: I just want to say, brother, everyone should know about the Center for Biological Diversity. When you think of people who are going to be on the front lines on the barricades in the foxhole, whatever metaphor you want. Um, over the next four years, no one is going to be more valued in that, in my view, no organization more valued, and there are a lot of great ones out there, right, than the Center for Biological Diversity.
So I hope everyone will throw in and help you out because you're helping all of us out and thank you so much. Your organization inspires me and my organization
Peter: every day. Well, likewise, Ken, we're, to stick with the wild theme here, we're birds of a feather flock together. So let's, let's keep it going.
Ken: I think that's right, brother.
All right. More to come. All right. Peter, thank you so much. You too, Ken. Peter Galvin, thank you for joining us and thank you for all the work you and your colleagues do over at the Center for Biological Diversity. Just the most badass environmental group going. And I also want to thank all of you out there for listening.
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