This is a link to the NAAEE website, our sibling organisation in North America (covering the USA, Mexico and Canada). It has strong links with the US EPA: the Environmental Protection Agency. Some of these connections are financial; others are less tangible, but just as significant. It’s a relationship that we in the UK have had no experience of. Defra, for all its many strengths, is not an EPA; neither is the EU Commission’s environment team.
But is this relationship under threat? The new Head of the EPA in the Trump government is set to be Scott Pruitt, the Attorney General for Oklahoma, whose main links with the EPA in the past have been in the courts where he has (unsuccessfully) sued the EPA on number of times on behalf of his state which has lots of oil and gas to be exploited. Basically, he was opposed to EPA regulations being imposed on states.
Is this to be a case of a fox in the hen-house running wild? Or will he turn out to be a thoughtful, committed, liberal reformer who not only comes to value carefully-targeted regulation for the greater public good, but also think kindly on environmental education? We shall see, but there are long odds against the latter view.