Two Environmental Protection Agency officials who served under Republican presidents announced their support Tuesday for Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Former Republican EPA officials William Ruckelshaus and William Reilly — who served under the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, respectively — wrote in a letter that Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for nominating a candidate who wants to erode environmental regulations.
Ruckelshaus also served under former President Richard Nixon, who signed the law giving creating the EPA.
“Donald Trump has shown a profound ignorance of science and of the public health issues embodied in our environmental laws,” the men wrote.
They added: “He hasn’t a clue about Republicans’ historic contributions to science-driven environmental policy: the incontestable environmental improvements in the restored lakes and rivers, the acid rain controls, the reduction of key air pollutants by 70, 80 and 90 percent, and the sharp decline in pollution from automobiles even as their numbers more than doubled.”
The two former EPA officials join Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois in supporting Clinton.
“This is not a decision I make lightly, for I am a lifelong Republican. But Donald Trump does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country,” the Pine Tree State senator wrote in a Washington Post editorial Monday.
Kirk, who is facing a tough re-election race this November, withdrew his endorsement of the GOP nominee in June.
Unlike Kirk and Collins, however, William Ruckelshaus and William Reilly framed most of their opposition around the real estate mogul turned Republican nominee’s environmental positions.
Trump’s views on global warming, they wrote, fly “in the face of overwhelming international science and the public conviction and commitment of almost 200 national governments that adopted the Paris Agreement on climate change in December 2015. Our leadership was essential to that agreement. To back away now, as Trump wants to do, would set the world back decades — years we could never recover.”
Clinton, they added, is committed “to reasonable, science-based policy to meet those challenges.”
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