You're listening to Comedy Central Administrative Reagan. Welcome to the Daily Show. Thank you, glad to be here. I'm glad to have you here, you know, because I mean, this is the environment. We're all in the environment, and you're not tossed with UM. I mean essentially making sure that we we can breathe, we can drink water, and we can live. I feel like your life sort of set you up for this because, if my research is correct,
you grew up UM was with the type of asthma. Yeah, a type of respiratory illness where anytime there was an ozon action day or a lot of pollution, I struggle. And Wow, that was really a setback for me because I grew up hunting and fishing with my father and grandfather, So being outdoors meant everything to me because it was a cultural experience learning from them and being with them.
And any moment that I missed being with them, I was in the house because I was on that inhaler or worried about some pollution, right, And I feel like
that's it's an origin story, that's what it is. Yeah. Well, it's like the pollution affected your ability to have fun with your family and You're like, I'm gonna get you pollution and look at you now, administrator of the e p A. Unfortunately, we learned every day about communities around America where they don't have water that is not polluted by industries that are up the road or up the stream. Because of the color of the skin, nobody cares. I
mean you you read the history of America. Every single time people plan where to put a factory or how the factory will affect the neighborhood. It's never in a rich neighborhood. It's never in a nice neighborhood. It's always in a place where the people that have the least access to power to oppose that. How does the e p A stepping and how do you how do you how do you change things like cancer Alley, which is which is insane to even have as a name in
a country it is. And everything I do at a p A is through the lands of environmental justice, contracting, procurement, air quality, water quality, land management starts with are we protecting the least amongst us, those who have political representation and those who have not been at the table for decades? And to your point, uh, systemic racism is by design, and the environment is no different than policing or you know, incarceration or housing. And so this administration hasn't all of
the above all of government approach. So as I think about lead and the eradication of lead in this country, I'm partnering with the Secretary of Housing who is thinking about lead paint while I'm thinking about water. This is about making sure that we protect all people. And I'm excited to be on this team. I'll be honest with you. Here's the dylema. Though you have a wonderful outlook you want to do things, the counter is always money, money
and the interests of money. So you say I want to protect this land, I want to protect the stream. Money says, oh, we wanna we want to turn that into like an oil pipeline, or we want to do something with this land where we're going to destroy the vegetation battles but create jobs and money. How do you how do you manage that as the head of the e p as, knowing full well that the people with money are gonna put pressure on your bosses to say like no, no, no no, no, no, too much environment, We
need money. Oh yeah, money is absolutely both a blessing and a curse. And here's the reality. We are convinced that you have to choose between jobs, economic prosperity and development and protecting people on the planet, and you don't. It requires all levels of government working with communities to
determine what's best and how to do it. And the thing circling back to environmental justice, you don't have to put every refinery in every pipeline in every black and brown neighborhood, or cutting across every tribal community or reservation. There are ways to think about how we do economic development and create jobs in a way that don't overly burden certain communities. And by the way, when we think about climate change and clean energy, this is about taking
advantage of the future. Our economy and society is evolving. Clean energy, clean opportunities create opportunities for jobs and economic development. So it makes this country more globally competitive if we get to jump on countries like China, India and others to deploy these practices at home, and by the way, deploy them at home. And if we start with the most polluted areas, we will be starting with the people who can, who can, who are the least amongst us
and can handle these disproportionate pollution impacts. So start there, protect those people, create jobs in those communities, move forward to a clean energy economy, and continue to be globally dominant. That's the way we should be thinking about this. Many people like the idea of clean energy. Changing to the clean energy seems like that's going to be the biggest hurdle of all. You know, I love clean energy, but I also know that we won't be able to wean
ourselves off of coal tomorrow. We won't be able to not stop using oil tomorrow, not just because of our need, but also because of the energy the people who work in those industries. What do you think a realistic outlook is? You want to keep moving forward, right, but you don't want to be in a place where all of a sudden you cut off your nose despite your face. So how do you find that balance of progress whilst also
not alienating what we do today? I mean, this is why I have conversations with the Secretary of the Department of Defense, Labor, Commerce, Energy. It takes uh planning across government. The reality is is, at one point in time, people like their rotary phones and then all of a sudden, we had iPhones. If we create platforms, technology will move
to those platforms and drive society forward. If we can have an electric grid that's just as smart as the web, and we can put clean energy apps on this platform, well that's interesting. Then you get society moving forward. And by the way, so if I started interrupted, you're almost saying we're still in like the dumb energy phase of how we use electricity and how we how we rooted
around the town, around the city of country. Absolutely, and if we want to take advantage of society moving forward, we all know we have to master technologies and we have to do it before other countries do it. So again, this is just as much about national security as it is about saving the planet and creating jobs. The question is do we not take these opportunities because of political rhetoric.
Why should we not move forward and create new jobs and participate in global competitiveness and let technologies make life for us smarter and easier because we want to hold onto the past. That's where money, the interests really do hamstring Americans moving forward and hamstrings national security. We should not be tied to the old way just because a lot of people will influence. Are making money through the
old mechanisms. You know what, Your enthusiasm is infectious. I don't know if you can ever remove politics from anything in America, but good luck and trying. Thank you so much for joining on the show. Thank you wonderful having you here. Once the Daily Show, Central earned companies in stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.