President Biden. Former President Trump. The new year will bring a sea change in environmental policy in the United States. We will move from the world of special interest fantasies, hopefully, to the world of the public interest.
For four years those of us in the trenches protecting the environment have faced a daily onslaught of bad news from a president who appointed radicals to run our environment-related agencies and believed that more air pollution was good for America. Donald denies climate change is real and dismisses concerns about the environment as fringe views of his opponents. Trump’s people at the Interior Department came right out of the oil and coal industries or came from anti public lands legal organizations that have worked for years to take our national heritage and transfer it to the cattle and oil industries.
Even the Bush/Cheney administration and the Reagan administration were mild compared to Trump. Though Bush/Cheney seemed controlled by the oil industry in terms of land and pollution policy, they had the decency to honor basic, critical non-partisan environmental laws like the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. They didn’t dismiss court rulings that went against their ideologically and forge ahead with illegal actions.
Trump’s people oppose protecting birds, they tried to end protections for most endangered species, they promoted air and water pollution as good for workers. Their views were right of the 1950s, the time Trump pines for in his slogan “make America great again. Bush II was a moderate in comparison.
Trump’s offenses against our land and water, wildlife and people are too numerous to detail. I’m sure people more disciplined than I are writing books on this topic. I have dusty books about the offenses of the Reagan years in my archives. Trump’s environmental policy was far worse.
I could talk about Trump’s border wall being built through national wildlife refuges, across rare desert springs and cemeteries of our native communities. Trump exempted his wall from environmental laws. I could talk about Trump taking land from farmers and ranchers for his grand memorial to himself, his illegal and futile border wall that will destroy populations of critically endangered desert wildlife. His border wall exemplified his environmental policies.
His fans cheer and yell at his rallies when he mentions the Trump memorial border wall. But the carnage, the permanent destruction that will be there for thousands of years and it is beyond ugly. It is vulgar industrial vandalism that shows contempt for the environment, the future, and the people who live in those places. Fitting that his legacy would be an ugly destructive symbol of division and hate. This is Trump, the never-smiling Trump in his fancy New York clothes.
I could open up the list of damages Trump has done to our environment, but I am weary of it. I am tired of being angry. My mind is numb from having so much of the life work of generations of conservationists reversed or damaged by these people who are driven by ignorance and greed. I think of the people he has contempt for, the poor near the chemical plants, the oil and coal workers with their unrealistic expectations from his self-serving rally rants. The people who attend his rallies.
Mostly I am aware that the Trump’s extremism on environmental matters represents the views of a fraction of conservatives and a minority of the general public. Most of the public doesn’t know what he has done to the environment but would be upset if they did.
So, we pick ourselves up and extend our thanks to our fellow citizens who vanquished Trump and elected a highly experienced and moderate Joe Biden to replace him on January 21. That date can’t come soon enough as we expect Trump and his team will do as much damage to our agencies and the land as they can on the way out, even as they work to undermine our democracy and damage our faith in elections and government.
It is hard to understand what motivates people to destroy wildlife, ruin the wilds and poison Americans. Are the David Bernhard’s of the world so drunk on money or so trained on conflict with scientists and liberals who they clearly hate that they are willing to ruin the earth for their own children to make their vindictive point?
Indeed, we will all need to help Joe Biden as he rebuilds our government, tries to calm down Trump’s far-right followers, and prosecutes crimes that are uncovered when his people enter the wreckage of the federal government.
The Trump red hats will vent their anger over the next four years, egged on by the slowly dying oil industry and the derelict ruins of coal and their coat and tie Washington lobbyists. The Trump fans will follow his tweets, sent from pool side at one over-leveraged resort or another as their false hopes turn into fall leaves, blowing down the cold hallways of history.
What can we as a country learn from the Trump disaster? How do we prevent the mentally ill from moving into the Oval Office again? How do we heal divisions and calm the angry, economically frustrated, social medial hyped fellow citizens who only want a fair shake and think this self-absorbed bankrupt New Yorker is their savior?
Hard to know. It used to be that environmental protection was bipartisan. Now it is part of the culture wars. The urban coastal over educated people versus the industrial powers and the angry rural poor. So much so that people in Southwest Colorado elected a high-school drop-out conspiracy theorist who wears a gun everywhere she goes (except in Washington). Yet she flaunts her ignorance about science, law and history. These are marks of pride for the Trump-right.
President Biden will take a battering every day. He will have good people to help absorb the blows from the resentful right and the demoralized Americans abandoned by Trump in the hour of the rampant disease. Hopefully his decency and experience will calm America, as we get back on track, get back to a caring national dialogue, and forge our way forward into our children’s future.
