My Trip To the White House

Yesterday I made my first ever trip to the White House to hear President Trump talk about the great progress the United States has made on making sure we have clean air and clean drinking water.

This point is incredibly important to make because most Americans seem to think that the environment is always getting worse, when if fact just the opposite is true. The environment in the United States has been improving for decades.

President Trump mostly stayed on script, letting several cabinet secretaries talk about the achievements that have been made since the President took office. Despite claims that the President’s policies would destroy water quality, a recent study performed by researchers at Yale and Columbia University found the U.S. was number one in terms of having access to clean drinking water.

This means the United States, which is tied for number one with nine other countries, has cleaner drinking water than France, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, and other countries that are considered to be our betters from an environmental standpoint. This sentiment is pervasive, but it is demonstrably false.

The same is true for air quality, where the United States outclasses Germany and France.

The most fun part of the day was meeting Andrew Wheeler, the Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency. I told him about our study, Doubling Down on Failure, and he called one of his aides over to get my information so I could send the study to him! It was a very gratifying experience.

Oh yeah, my seat was pretty good, too.