>> Michael Molina: Good morning, everyone.
We're going to get started here. I'm Michael Molina.
I'm the deputy chief of staff here at the EPA.
And without further ado,
I'm just going to ask Logan Taaffe
to come up here and lead us in the
Pledge of Allegiance and the Scout's Oath.
>> Logan Taaffe: Good morning. Thank you so much for coming.
If you could all join along with me in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Scout salute.
>> Multiple Speakers: I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
>> Logan Taaffe: Thank you so much. And scout sign.
If you could join me along with the oath.
Thank you.
>> Multiple Speakers: On my honor,
I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country,
to obey the Scout Law, to keep people at all times,
to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake,
and morally straight.
>> Logan Taaffe: Thank you.
>> Michael Molina: Okay.
Now we're going to have Administrator Wheeler
sign the MOU that has already been signed by the Boy Scouts.
[inaudible commentary]
>> Andrew Wheeler: I want to thank everyone
for being here today.
I especially want to thank all of the scouts.
Thank you very much.
This is a historic occasion, a signing of an MOU,
Memorandum of Understanding,
between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the Boy Scouts of America, or Scouts of America.
Thank you all for being here, and thank you for helping us
recognize this important occasion.
So I am Andrew Wheeler, the 15th EPA administrator.
I am a Vigil member of the Order of the Arrow
from Ku-Ni-Eh Lodge,
Standard Council, Cincinnati, Ohio,
and a proud Eagle Scout of Troop 960 in Fairfield, Ohio.
To all the scouts who are here today,
I hope you all achieve the Eagle award.
It has been one of the most important achievements
in my life.
When I graduated from law school,
because I was an Eagle Scout, I got my first interview at EPA.
I joined the EPA straight out of law school
and worked there for four years as a career employee.
And it was because I had my Eagle Scout on my resume.
So I really strongly recommend all of you stay in scouting
and complete your Eagle award.
I have -- I have often said the job
that I have loved the most in my life
was working at a Boy Scout summer camp
when I was in college.
I was the nature conservation director
at Woodland Trails in Camden, Ohio.
I worked there for three summers when I was in college.
It's now a tossup to me as to which job I prefer,
being EPA administrator
or working at a Boy Scout summer camp.
But both jobs, out of my entire career,
have been two of the -- two of the most important
and most rewarding jobs that I have had.
Today's MOU recognizes the importance
of what the EPA stands for.
The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency
is to protect public health and the environment.
Boy Scouts and Scouts, including the young women
who now participate in Scouts
and everybody in the Explorers program,
the scouting program, and the Cub Scouts,
are dedicated to the outdoors.
They're dedicated to conservation,
following the Scout Oath, following the Scout Promise,
and the Scout Slogan of "Do a Good Turn Daily."
Scouts also follow the Outdoor Code.
The Outdoor Code is "as an American,
I will do my best to be clean in my outdoor manners,
be careful with fire, be considerate in the outdoors,
and be conservation minded."
Today, we are unveiling a new award sponsored
by the EPA for scouts across the country.
And a picture of the award is here to my right.
It says, "Protecting human health and the environment,"
and it has the Boy Scout emblem
as well as our EPA 50th anniversary emblem.
This year marks the 50th anniversary
of the Environmental Protection Agency.
We were founded 50 years ago
when a number of environmental problems
were plaguing our country.
We had a lake in Ohio, the Cuyahoga River
that led to Lake Erie, that was on fire.
We had hazardous waste dumps around the country.
Pollution was at an all-time high.
And the EPA was created in 1970.
Since 1970, our outdoor environment
has improved greatly,
and a lot of it not only because of the EPA,
but working with people across the country,
with states, with local governments,
and with private-sector organizations,
environmental organizations,
and organizations such as the Scouts.
For years, scouts have done a number
of important conservation-minded activities,
including Eagle Scout --
Eagle Scout projects to improve the environment
and communities around the country.
To commemorate the anniversary of the EPA this year,
we are sponsoring this new award.
And, in order to complete the award, you have to --
you have to earn four different merit badges.
You have to first earn a merit badge
in an animal studies group such as bird study,
insect study, mammal study, reptile, or amphibian study,
which will help scouts learn how the earth's other inhabitants
can be used as an indicator
of the quality of the environment around them.
The second badge that you have to earn
is an outdoor activity merit badge,
such as backpacking, camping, climbing, gardening, canoeing,
which will encourage scouts
to explore the natural environment around them,
calling attention to the challenges
that we face in environmental protection,
conservation, and stewardship, both regionally and nationally.
The third merit badge that you would have to earn
is in the earth sciences area such as energy,
forestry, geology, oceanography, plant science, or weather.
These serve as a lens into the various sciences
that the EPA uses to protect the environment.
And the fourth merit badge that you would have to earn --
and this is one that you specifically have to earn --
is the public health merit badge
because the EPA is a public health organization or agency.
In addition, we would ask all scouts to participate
in an environmental public health community service project
as part of an approved scouting program
totaling at least six hours.
So to cap that, you have to earn four merit badges,
three of which come from a list of merit badges,
the fourth being the public health merit badge.
And then you have to complete a service project.
In order to earn this badge,
you have to complete all of these steps
before December of 2021.
So you have almost a year and a half
in order to complete the requirements
for the EPA 50th anniversary scouting award
that you see to my right.
I hope each and every one of you here today
and everyone watching this video will earn this award.
This has been the culmination of a lot of work
over the last months putting this together,
and there are a lot of people that I should thank,
not the least of which, Craig Poland
from the National Capital Regional Council, to my left.
Thank you very much, Craig, for your help on this.
From national headquarters, April McMillan.
I also want to thank locally here Jack Bowles
from Great Falls, Scoutmaster and also an EPA employee.
And I believe your son Julian is here with you.
I also want to thank Logan Taaffe
for leading us this morning
in the Pledge of Allegiance and the Scout Oath.
I also want to thank my nephew Luke Cooper,
who is a star scout at Annapolis,
and he joins us today too.
And I hope Luke is one of the first scouts to earn this award.
And, Luke, there's no pressure on you,
but I hope you're one of the first scouts to earn this award.
This is an appropriate setting
for the commemoration of this MOU today.
Not only is the National Boy Scout Memorial behind me,
the statue that you see behind me,
but here on the Ellipse was the sight
of the first National Scout Jamboree in 1937.
So I think this is a fitting place for us
to recognize scouting.
It's a beautiful day to be outside.
I hope that this is the start
of a long and fruitful collaboration
between the Environmental Protection Agency
and the Scouts.
We have a shared mission to protect the environment.
We have a shared mission to do a good turn daily.
And there is nothing --
there is nothing more appropriate than our --
than our mission to protect public health
and the environment than what the Scouts do on a daily basis
and what you do in your lives each and every day.
So, again, I want to thank you all for being here.
I want to thank you for commemorating
the signing of the MOU today.
And, again, I want to encourage all of you
to earn this new award.
You have a little over a year and a half to do so.
And I -- and I hope that you continue to fulfill
the mission of the EPA and the Scout Law, Scout Oath,
and the purpose of the Boy Scouts of America.
Thank you all for being here.
[applause]
>> Michael Molina: We're actually
going to play a message from Ms. April McMillan
at national headquarters in Texas, Boy Scouts,
and hopefully this audio works.
>> April McMillan: Good morning.
I am so glad to be here with you today,
to be a part of this historic partnership
with the Environmental Protection Agency.
Thinking back on the history of the Boy Scouts of America,
it's only natural that we should partner with the EPA.
After all, environmental studies and conservation
are an integral part of the Boy Scouts of America.
In fact, some of our very first merit badges way back in 1911
included things like conservation,
angling, or, you know, what we now call fishing,
first aid to animals, forestry, gardening, and so many more.
In fact, those early merit badges,
they really played a part in what we now have --
in today's Boy Scouts of America
as a robust conservation and environmental program.
And as the issues surrounding our environment have changed,
so has our program so that now, in addition to all those things,
we also study things like air pollution, water pollution,
methods of oil cleanup, so many things that now
have come with technology advancement.
And Scouts, well, we use that.
We use all of their studies to provide
millions of hours every year of service
by helping to conserve wildlife,
to conserve energy, our forests, soil, and water.
In fact, you know, we hear all the time
from people who have natural resource careers
that they found their passion here in scouting.
So we're taking advantage of this amazing partnership
with the Environmental Protection Agency
to develop a new award program that will last through 2021.
So scouts who earn certain merit badges on topics
like animal study, outdoor activities,
earth sciences, and some public health
and who also complete at least six hours of community service
as a part of their scouting program,
they're going to earn this really cool badge
to wear on their uniforms.
My guess? Super collectible item.
So I'd like to take this time
to thank the Environmental Protection Agency
for partnering with us to provide
this amazing opportunity for our scouts.
Scout on.
>> Michael Molina: Sir?
>> Male Speaker: [inaudible]
>> Michael Molina: Oh, I'm sorry.
Mr. Poland now is going --
is going to say some words representing the Scouts.
>> Craig Poland: Morning, everybody.
>> Male Speaker: Morning.
>> Craig Poland: Now I was under the impression
that there was a Scout contingent here today,
so we're going to try this one more time.
Good morning, everybody.
>> Multiple Speakers: Good morning.
>> Craig Poland: Very good. Very good.
Thank you for coming out today.
I'm Craig Poland, scout executive
and CEO for National Capital Area Council.
It's good to see everyone here. I'm an Eagle Scout
and a National Outstanding Eagle Scout recipient,
and I'm very proud of that.
It's great to see all of our scouts here.
And I want you to know we appreciate you being here.
It's a little part of history this morning
in the annals of the Boy Scouts of America,
and so you get to be a little bit a part of that,
which I think is pretty cool.
This will be national award that is earned
by literally thousands of individuals,
and to say that you kind of were here to see its inception,
I think, is meaningful in some way.
Our Capital Area Council is a very strong and vibrant council.
We serve the District of Columbia
as well as 16 counties in Maryland and Virginia,
in addition to serving the United States Virgin Islands
and scouts that live abroad in Canada and South America.
So we're a wide-ranging council.
Last year we served over 57,000 young men
and women with scouting programs
here locally and 18,000 adult volunteers.
So we're a large, active council as well.
I thought I'd start off with my comments
this morning with a brief quote from Jane Goodall,
who is a noted researcher and scientist.
And she said, "You cannot get through a single day
without having an impact on the world around you.
What you do makes a difference,
and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."
Now I think that's very appropriate for us
as scouts when we think about it.
We're in the outdoor world all the time
and can have a significant impact on our natural resources,
and I think it's important that we do that.
For 110 years, if you think about this,
our organization has used the outdoors
as a classroom to help educate youth and adults
in terms of being proper environmental stewards.
That's been a central part of what we have done
as an organization.
In fact, you heard April McMillan mention this.
Currently, we have about 135 merit badges for scouts,
BSA, members to work on.
And of that 135, over a quarter, so 35 of those badges,
focus on having adults and young people
in the outdoors positively interacting in a meaningful way
with the environment and nature.
I think that's a pretty significant part of our program.
Some of those badges include forestry,
fish and management, nature, sustainability,
and many, many others that have an impact on young people
and their ability
to physically put their hands on the environment
and to make a positive difference.
Now we know from independent research
that involvement in scouting for young people
compared to non-scouts makes a significant difference.
Young people are more likely to graduate from high school,
graduate from college, earn higher household incomes,
but also, importantly, value education
and value the environment.
And I think that's incredibly important.
I can't think of a better partnership and a better partner
to have than the Environmental Protection Agency.
As you heard Administrator Wheeler say,
we share so much in common, and we absolutely do.
And taking care of our planet is a responsibility
that every one of us share.
The earth is something that every one of us have in common,
and I think that's incredibly important.
So on behalf of National Capital Area Council
and the Boy Scouts of America,
it's my pleasure and honor to thank Administrator Wheeler,
as he mentioned, who's also a proud Eagle Scout
and National Outstanding Eagle Scout,
for helping to assist in the development of this program
and his team for organizing
and putting all of this together.
It clearly and absolutely will impact thousands
and thousands of scouts across our country
over the next year and a half,
and it will also, as importantly,
positively impact our environment.
And for that I think we can all be thankful.
I appreciate you coming today. Thank you so much.
[applause]
>> Michael Molina: Thank you so much, Mr. Poland.
Julian, would you like to come up
and give a little perspective from a scouting --
a scouting perspective?
>> Julian Bowles: Can you hear me?
>> Michael Molina: You can take your mask off
[inaudible].
>> Julian Bowles: Good morning. My name is Julian Bowles
from Troop 673 in Great Falls, Virginia.
It is my honor to speak here
and to represent my troop as well as scouts everywhere.
Protecting the environment is of mutual importance
to the EPA and the Scouts.
To commemorate EPA's 50 years of scouting --
and scouting's 110-year commitment,
this agreement to create an environmental protection award
is quite fitting.
It is a great opportunity for scouts to be involved
in bettering our environment
and to learn a thing or two in the process.
The award is a nice combination of earth sciences,
animal studies, outdoor activity, and public health.
The environmental challenges of the future
will require leaders in the areas of this knowledge.
I know that many scouts in our troop
and all over will look forward to earning this award.
And thank you to Administrator Wheeler
and Scout Executive Poland for this amazing opportunity
to be involved in the launch of the award.
[applause]