The Trump administration announced it intends to repeal many Obama era climate regulations, chiefly restrictions on offshore gas and oil drilling imposed after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Spill. Trump claims that lifting these restrictions will encourage domestic energy production and decrease the country’s reliance on foreign oil. If the proposal goes through, the 94 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf placed under protection by President Obama, which includes areas of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, would become available for offshore drilling.

Environmental experts have decried the decision as irresponsible. The increased license that it would grant the private sector would make U.S. waters and their ecosystems vulnerable to exploitation.

“It’s a little depressing right now,” said Vanessa Ehrenpreis, an HHS alumnus and research associate specializing in environmental policy. “It’s disappointing that all that science and critical thinking has been put on the back burner in service of political objectives.”

Ehrenpreis works for the consulting firm Abt Associates in Durham, North Carolina. She assists government agencies – the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation, for example – in developing sensible regulations. Federal policymaking of this nature requires an intricate knowledge of pre existing legislation, as Ehrenpreis attests.

“Such an intricate system of research and technical assessments develops over decades,” Ehrenpreis said. “[The Trump administration] can’t really repeal a regulation without redoing all that technical stuff. So in some ways it’s going to be really hard for them to do what they want to do, which is encouraging.”

Ehrenpreis graduated from HHS in 2012. She attended an affiliate academy, Massanutten Regional Governor’s School, for her junior and senior years, where her fascination with the environment blossomed. With course offerings in environmental science and agroecology, the curriculum at MRGS focuses on green living through the implementation of clean energy sources, sustainable farming and responsible waste management.

She graduated from the University of Virginia in 2016 with a degree in environmental sciences. Along the way, Ehrenpreis had even studied abroad for a semester in Nepal researching biodiversity and community forest management.

“It was amazing,” Ehrenpreis said. “We got to do some really cool research on Tibetan tigers.”

Today, Ehrenpreis can be found at Abt, hard at work reviewing fuel economy regulations that the Trump administration plans to relax. Under the standards introduced by the Obama administration in 2012, automakers would have to increase their fleetwide fuel efficiency to 52.5 miles per gallon by 2025, a 48% increase from the 2016 standard of 35.5 mpg. President Trump’s proposed regulations would lower this goal, saving the auto industry billions, while costing the consumer, who must contend with rising gas prices.

“I think this is one of the conservations we’re not having,” Ehrenpreis said. “People don’t think about fuel economy standards and, for the most part, have very little understanding of what they mean and how they relate to their daily lives.”