Unsafe drinking water, not climate change, is the most immediate threat to the world's environment and kills thousands of people every day, according to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
"We have 1,000 children die every day worldwide because they don't have safe drinking water," Wheeler told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett in an interview airing Wednesday. "That's a crisis I think we can solve...I really would like to see maybe the United Nations, the World Bank focus more on those problems today to try to save those children."
The agency's global clean water initiative will be announced in Washington on Wednesday, and Wheeler noted the U.S. has several clean water financing programs that can be models for the United Nations and other international organizations to provide money for third-world countries.
Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, also told Garrett his EPA is working to combat climate change, to which he says man "certainly contributes."
The Trump administration plans to roll out two regulations later this year to replace rules that limit carbon emissions from power plants and clean car standards, which Wheeler said will be done in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States.
Meanwhile, Wheeler said the United States has the "safest drinking water in the world," and that water in Flint, Michigan, which had suffered for years, now meets EPA standards.
"Part of the problem with Flint was there was a breakdown in once they got the data, once the city of Flint, the state of Michigan, the Obama EPA – they sat on it," Wheeler said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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