Trump’s
Slash and Burn
Under cover of tear gas, the Trump administration last week
intensified its ongoing demolition of the country’s bedrock environmental
protections — a series of calculated moves made while the nation remained
gripped by the twin viruses of COVID-19 and institutional racism.
It started on Thursday, June 4, when President Trump used the
pandemic as an “emergency” excuse to issue an executive order allowing
federal agencies to set aside key protections in the Endangered Species Act and
the National Environmental Policy Act in order to speed up the construction of
oil and gas pipelines, highways and other projects.
Trump’s long-threatened NEPA rollback,
which will limit citizens’ ability to voice objections to destructive projects,
poses a direct threat to minority communities already facing greater levels of
illness and death under the COVID-19 pandemic following decades of
environmental racism.
“Here we are in the midst of an epidemic that affects your
respiratory system and communities that are concerned about respiratory health
are losing a voice to stop projects that exacerbate serious health issues,”
David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact
Center at New York University’s School of Law, told The Hill.
The executive order came three days after Trump used police and teargas to
clear away peaceful crowds protesting racially biased police violence to make
room for his now-notorious photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.
And it came the same day the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration announced that world atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had
reached a new record high of 417.1 parts per million, putting the planet
further on the path toward runaway climate change.
“Progress in emissions reductions is not visible in the CO2 record,” NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans said in the announcement. “We continue to commit our planet — for centuries or longer — to more global heating, sea level rise and extreme weather events every year.”
“Progress in emissions reductions is not visible in the CO2 record,” NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans said in the announcement. “We continue to commit our planet — for centuries or longer — to more global heating, sea level rise and extreme weather events every year.”
The text of the press release continued: “If humans were to
suddenly stop emitting CO2, it would take thousands of years for our CO2
emissions so far to be absorbed into the deep ocean and atmospheric CO2 to
return to pre-industrial levels.”
Which made it all the more perplexing when the EPA, following
Trump’s order for additional “emergency” deregulation, announced it would ease the rules that
require factories and power plants to report — or even monitor — their
pollution emissions, although it did state that these industries should
continue to obey existing pollution limits.
In another giveaway to industry, the new policy has been made
retroactive to March 13, 2020.
As if those two changes weren’t enough, the slash and burn of environmental protections continued Friday, June 5, when Trump opened Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing.
The 4,913-square-mile reserve, located 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, was established by President Obama in 2016 under the Antiquities Act and is home to “fragile and largely pristine deep marine ecosystems and rich biodiversity,” according to NOAA.
The move came exactly one week after Trump declared June to be “National Ocean Month” in a bizarre proclamation that focused more on offshore oil and gas development and seafood production than conservation.
The changes were, of course, immediate criticized.
“This rollback essentially sells off the future of the ocean and
the future of the ecosystem for almost no present economic benefit,” Miriam
Goldstein, ocean policy director at the Center for American Progress,
told The Guardian. She
added that it’s “puzzling that the president is doing it now, in the middle of
the pandemic and with police riots going on around the country.”
Much like Trump’s similar moves to shrink or eliminate other
national monuments established by Obama under the Antiquities Act, the change
to Northeast Canyons and Seamounts is probably illegal.
As we’ve written before, presidents have the legal authority to establish monuments but not to rescind or downsize them. Lawsuits over Trump’s previous monument reductions continue to work their way through the courts, and new suits over this rollback are already expected to follow.
As we’ve written before, presidents have the legal authority to establish monuments but not to rescind or downsize them. Lawsuits over Trump’s previous monument reductions continue to work their way through the courts, and new suits over this rollback are already expected to follow.
Still more rollbacks are on the way.
Also on Friday June 5, the Trump administration moved forward
with plans to reduce the protections offered under the Migratory Bird Treaty
Act, another giveaway to the oil and gas industries — a particularly tone-deaf
move during the middle of Black Birders Week, a
nationwide event celebrating diversity in nature that coincided with the
protests over racial police violence.
The changes to the 1918 international treaty law, which has
helped hundreds of species over the past century, would decriminalize
“incidental” (non-intentional) bird deaths caused by industrial projects such
as oil pits, mines, telecommunications towers, wind turbines and other threats.
The changes aren’t final and are subject to a public-comments
period, although citizens have already submitted approximately 200,000 public
comments in favor of keeping the law as-is. But as National Audubon Society CEO
David Yarnold pointed out, comment
periods under the Trump administration “have become a cruel joke.
The administration continues to ignore scientists, experts and … bird-lovers in favor of a few bad corporate actors who can’t be bothered with common sense environmental protections.”
The administration continues to ignore scientists, experts and … bird-lovers in favor of a few bad corporate actors who can’t be bothered with common sense environmental protections.”
Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) also criticized the changes,
saying they would “lead to the deaths of thousands and thousands of birds
protected under the MBTA. The administration’s radical action needlessly ties
the hands of the [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service], while at the same time
undermining our international treaty obligations.”
What does all of this really mean in the long run? Legal experts
have already pointed out that Trump’s executive order doesn’t have many teeth.
“The Order is legally shaky and unlikely to accomplish much,” Dan Farber of UC
Berkeley School of Law wrote this week.
Even corporate interests expressed some doubt, especially since
the executive order will undoubtedly face court challenges. One engineer
tweeted, as quoted by the Washington Post,
that “there is *NO WAY* I would turn a shovelful of dirt based on this Order.”
But industry groups actively celebrated the changes and
expressed hope they would extend beyond the “emergency” period.
“We value the importance of these reforms now and underscore the
need for finalizing rules across regulatory agencies that will implement
permanent reforms,” American Exploration and Production Council chief executive
Anne Bradbury told the Post.
It’s the last two words of Bradbury’s quote — “permanent
reforms” — that say the most. We can expect industry to continue to ask for —
and the Trump administration to grant — expanded, permanent deregulatory favors
beyond this “emergency” period, changes that will continue to worsen our
environment for people, wildlife and entire ecosystems.
And as with so much the Trump administration has done over the
past three and a half years, these slash-and-burn changes will come as quietly
as they can manage, with regressive actions continuing to take place under
cover of darkness or tear gas.
Of course none of them will address the many other real crises
this nation faces — and as we’ve seen this past week, all of them will likely
only serve to make things worse.
John R. Platt is the editor of The Revelator. An award-winning
environmental journalist, his work has appeared in Scientific American, Audubon, Motherboard,
and numerous other magazines and publications. His “Extinction Countdown”
column has run continuously since 2004 and has covered news and science related
to more than 1,000 endangered species. He is a member of the Society of
Environmental Journalists and the National Association of Science Writers. John
lives on the outskirts of Portland, Ore., where he finds himself surrounded by
animals and cartoonists.