America has entered a dangerous era of political polarization and cultural warfare. Issues that used to be bipartisan have become subject to division and conflict. Fifteen years ago, Americans were largely united that we should have clean air and water and we should protect the vast array of wildlife on the federal lands we all own together. Now we have an administration that is bent on erasing a century of laws created by liberals and conservatives alike that protect our environment and keep our children from breathing toxic air and drinking poisonous water.
The Trump administration believes that environmental laws and regulations constrain industry profits and slow the economy. They think that jobs are lost when we stop industry from polluting. This outdated view is actually a rational for bending government to serve industry and hurt the public interest. Regulations and strong consumer and environmental protection laws not only protect the public and common values like clean water and clean air, they also promote innovation, entrepreneurialism and create jobs in advancing technology. For example, as the carbon-based economy, out of necessity, gives way to the new world of renewables and advanced energy conservation and technology, millions of jobs are created. Old dangerous, low paid jobs in coal and oil give way to new jobs, many of them well paid.
Trump works to recreate the energy policies of the 1950’s where the nation had coal fired power plants with no pollution controls and we drove cars and trucks that got bad gas mileage, polluted heavily, and cost consumers a lot to operate. Trump has worked to prop up the dying coal industry and to open up vast areas of Bureau of Land Management land to oil and gas drilling, even in places that had been set aside to protect wildlife, archaeology and other critical concerns. These are initiatives pushed by Koch Industries and their many political organizations. And Donald continues to slow or thwart every effort the government makes to promote wind, solar, and other low carbon energy sources. (Fortunately, those industries don’t need Donald Trump and they are thriving and creating thousands of jobs.)
Using the rational that environmental protection damages economic development and costs jobs, Trump has attacked environmental protections across the board.
Trump and his industry lobbyist agency heads have also attacked action to control the largest source of carbon pollution – buildings. Buildings use vast amounts of natural gas and electricity and an accelerating revolution in building design and energy efficiency has drawn the ire of the right-wing oil lobby and the ever-nostalgic Donald Trump who feels we should all have a right to waste energy just as a matter of personal freedom.
Trump’s team tried to thwart the sale of LED and compact florescent lightbulbs and encourage people to use obsolete incandescent bulbs that use many times more energy than LEDs and burn out quickly, causing waste and expense. Trump’s people have attacked the Energy Star system that rates appliances for energy efficiency, and he has insinuated that energy efficiency is a bad thing because it lowers the demand for oil and coal and therefore costs jobs in the coal mines. Again, it appears that Donald is reacting to the culture of science and progress embodied in progressive building design (driven by science) and policy built around science.
And it doesn’t stop there. Trump want to increase the amount of air pollution in the US, pollution that is known to be ruining our climate. Not only does he want to prop up the coal industry with taxpayer dollars, he wants to end pollution controls on coal plants while he encourages the oil industry to vent off and leak natural gas (methane) into the atmosphere. Not only does this worsen the climate crisis, it wastes money as vented-off gas cannot be taxed by the government for royalities. Fortunately, even conservative judges have blocked these efforts, but Trump’s people persist in working to increase air pollution from the oil and coal industry.
Now we learn that a report in Nature details that the amount of methane being released from oil and gas operations has been underestimated by regulators by about 40%. The US is responsible for a third of the methane pollution in the atmosphere, much of it from public lands. And the Donald Trump administration continues to stop all regulation of methane pollution from oil and gas operations. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, far worse than carbon dioxide. The entire Trump administration denies that the climate is changing.
Recently Trump rewrote regulations related to the Waters of the United States or the Clean Water Rule. Here Trump’s team weakened regulations protecting ponds, wetlands and streams that don’t always flow into a river. They allowed that people could dump any sort of pollution in such waters and destroy wetlands to facilitate oil industry activity or real estate development. This rule change would allow the oil industry to pollute the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (see below).
Meanwhile Trump’s people are working to kill millions of birds and other wildlife across America. Donald weakened the Migratory Bird Protection Act that has been supported by presidents of both parties for decades. The act makes it illegal to kill songbirds and other birds that migrate. Donald Trump told industry that they can destroy birds without consequences, and he encourages local governments to stop protecting birds so that industry can ruin bird habitat, kill birds directly or poison them with pesticides.
According to Science Magazine, North American bird populations have declined 30% since 1970. That’s a loss of 3 billion birds. Trump’s folks have told landowners in the Midwest that they don’t need to maintain the thousands of natural ponds that exist in that region that are critical habitat for millions of birds. If they want to fill these ponds in or fill them with toxic waste or manure, the Trump administration encourages them to do so. This will result in homeless and dead birds, but the Trump people couldn’t care less.
Meanwhile Trump’s people have proposed virtually eliminating the US Fish and Wildlife Service that runs National Wildlife Refuges nationwide. These refuges protect endangered species and migratory birds. Trump has also gutted the Endangered Species Act at the request of the oil industry and of course his regulation changes don’t square with Congressional intent so multiple lawsuits have been filed to block his efforts. The US Justice Department must defend Trump’s anti-environmental rollbacks and the taxpayer foots the bill to defend actions that go against the public interest.
Then there is Alaska. Trump rolled back pollution controls on the offshore oil industry put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that killed millions of animals and polluted virtually the entire Gulf. The oil industry wants to move into pristine Alaska waters that are roiled by storms and ice and they have asked Donald to give them unfettered access with virtually no pollution controls at all. Of course, Donald is happy to comply and doesn’t care if the oil industry ends up killing millions of birds and whales and if they end up severely damaging the salmon industry and filling the ocean with oil and chemical pollution.
Trump is opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the oil industry at the request of Senator Lisa Murkowski. The refuge is home to millions of caribou and tens of millions of birds and polar bears. These animals have nowhere else to go so oil development will mean extinctions. Trump doesn’t care. The industry would lace the area with pipelines and roads and ponds of oil waste and garbage dumps and broken-down vehicles. There would be diesel pollution and noise and dead animals. There would be ports on the ocean where oil would leak into the water and marine life would contend with noisy polluting tankers. This is a dream for republicans and for the Trump people. For nature and the natives of the area is a dark permanent nightmare. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is probably the most important wildlife area in North America. Nothing in Canada or Russia resembles it. It is the last place for the species that live there. The damage done will take centuries to for nature to repair. Extinction is forever.
This is just an overview and general accounting of some of Trump’s environmental crimes. There are many more and the depth of these tragedies would require a book to describe. Trump has tried to hide all of this activity behind platitudes and lies about his concern for forests and air. The facts lead anyone who cares into a staunch opposition to any more time in office for Donald Trump.
