And
to hand out favors to favorite polluters
I worked in TV news for
18 years. No matter how bad the news got I never had a problem watching it.
Until now.
My viewing habits have
been reduced to periodically tuning in to see how many hundreds, or thousands,
have died today.
But far away from the justifiably wall-to-wall coverage of COVID-19, the Trump Administration is unrepentantly using the pandemic to hand out gifts to its favorite polluters.
But far away from the justifiably wall-to-wall coverage of COVID-19, the Trump Administration is unrepentantly using the pandemic to hand out gifts to its favorite polluters.
COVID-19 news deeply
saddens me. This other stuff infuriates me.
Last week, the American
Petroleum Institute (API) sent a 10-page letter to
the White House requesting a loosening of regulations, citing the
COVID-19-related crash in oil and gas prices and the threat it posed to the
fossil fuel industry.
The White House, via Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, granted their wish list and then some.
The White House, via Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, granted their wish list and then some.
EDITOR'S DISCLOSURE: I collaborated with Peter often when I was working in Washington and he was communications director for Greenpeace. - Will Collette
Past talk warning against the feds "picking winners and losers" in energy went by the boards.
Past talk warning against the feds "picking winners and losers" in energy went by the boards.
Five days later, Wheeler
issued an order that gave API even more than it asked for, calling for a
suspension of any enforcement of EPA regulations if any company,
fossil fuel-based or not, or local government can prove that COVID-19 was the
cause of its failure to comply.
Former EPA Administrator
Gina McCarthy, now the President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense
Council, called the move "an open license to
pollute.":
But seriously @EPAAWheeler it’s not politicization to demand that the public know when industry has stopped monitoring and reporting its pollution. It’s common sense. It’s the right thing to do. https://twitter.com/GinaNRDC/status/1245794159371395072 …
The EPA required
companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. No more. Because
coronavirus.
Wheeler also took the
heat off entities forced by court-sanctioned consent decrees to fix pollution
problems. Because coronavirus.
EPA cut frackers a break
on wastewater discharges. Because coronavirus.
While their wishes were
not yet granted, the struggling domestic coal industry is also using the health
and financial crises to push for bailout money.
If you thought they were asking on behalf of the tens of thousands of displaced
miners and their families, they're not.
The industry actually
asked for relief on abandoned mine cleanup, and for a reduction in their
payments to a fund for miners felled by black lung disease.
In a separate move, the
EPA also waived requirements for
oil refineries to produce reformulated (RFG) or "summer blend"
gasolines. RFG's were first called for in the Clean Air Act revisions of
1990-91, signed by President George H.W. Bush. They took effect in 1995, and
were credited with reducing ground-level ozone emissions—the primary cause of
summer smog.
Any such emergency
measures are normally given a fixed expiration date, or at least a date when
the emergency will be re-evaluated. Not this time. Wheeler's decrees carry no
end date.
Trump Administration
efforts to provide a $3 billion bailout for
the oil industry were put on hold. The plan was to have the Energy Department
purchase surplus oil and fill the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).
But critics warned that
such a move would further draw down the U.S. Strategic Bullshit Reserve (SBSR),
already under unprecedented stress.
An alternate plan to
store surplus private oil in the SPR by leasing its vacant 77 million barrel
capacity to petroleum operators was announced by Trump late Friday.
State legislatures have
piled on. South Dakota, Kentucky, and West Virginia all advanced measures to
outlaw protests at pipeline construction sites by labelling the projects as
"critical infrastructure."
To be fair, such
measures had already been enacted in more than a dozen other states, thanks to
the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which provides
pre-fab anti-regulatory bills for introduction by pliant state legislators
nationwide.
Note: Watch your State
Houses for ALEC'S "Auxiliary Container
Act," designed to turn back state and local bans on single
use bags and cups, aka "auxiliary containers." Continuing to toss
away our plastics with abandon is, after all, apparently a way to fight
coronavirus.
Also, keep an eye on All
Saints Churchyard in Oxfordshire, UK, for when George Orwell starts spinning in his grave.
Leave it to others to
copy an insidiously bad American idea. The government of Brazil's
climate-denying President, Jair Bolsonaro, has stopped its already-meager
efforts to curb illegal logging in the Amazon.
Brazil's Environment
Minister said many of the nation's field agents were over or nearing 60 due to
a hiring freeze, and that not sending the old folks into a potential hot zone
would be the compassionate thing to do.
Never mind that illegal
loggers will be freer than ever to export logs and import viruses in the
Amazon.
The death toll from
COVID-19 may end up in the millions.
The small consolation
that its scars could provide a lesson about listening to scientists may be lost
in the noise, and the tears of the most sorrowful year of our lifetimes could
be repeated as the climate worsens.
Peter Dykstra is our
weekend editor and columnist. His views do not necessarily represent those of
Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate or publisher, Environmental Health
Sciences. Contact him at pdykstra@ehn.org or on Twitter at @Pdykstra.