6 Ways Trump Trashed the Environment During the Holidays
By Tara Lohan
In
the weeks following the Nov. 3 election, Trump’s team continued its
unprecedented onslaught on environmental regulations, with nearly a dozen new rollbacks or
threats to public health, wildlife, clean air, public lands and the climate.
As
the New Year approached, the assaults didn’t let up. Here are some of the most
recent:
1.
Cutting Disaster Funding
Despite
a record-tying 16 weather and climate disasters topping $1 billion each this
year in the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency proposed a
plan to curtail federal disaster aid.
It
would affect wealthier states the most, requiring that they have higher levels
of damage than less wealthy states to get federal assistance.
The
proposal, announced on Dec. 14, “would be one of the most significant revisions
of federal disaster policy in nearly a half-century and comes as states grapple
with massive fiscal shortfalls due to the pandemic,” E&E News reported.
The
new rule is now open for public comments until Feb. 12 and would fall under the
incoming Biden administration to move it forward — if it wishes.
2. Efficiency Rollbacks
The
Department of Energy took two steps back on Dec. 15., finalizing new rules that
ease efficiency requirements for some fixtures and appliances.
The
move comes a year after Trump complained that showerheads don’t have enough
flow for him to wash his hair and toilets need to be flushed 10 or 15 times,
which earned him a hearty amount of ridicule on social media.
But
his new rules are no laughing matter when it comes to conservation and
efficiency.
One
of the rules would roll back a water-efficiency requirement for showerheads put
in place by Congress in 1992 during the George H.W. Bush administration. The
other would allow for some new washers and dryers to use more water and energy.
Both
would amount to more needlessly wasted energy, water and money.
3.
No Help for Monarchs
Monarch
butterflies on both the east and west coasts are in perilous decline, with
populations falling 80% or more. So it made sense that on Dec. 15 the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service ruled that the butterflies were in need of protection
under the Endangered Species Act. But the agency unfortunately decided those
protections wouldn’t be immediately forthcoming.
Monarchs
were essentially told to get in line behind other species awaiting protection —
and there are a lot of those these days. “The Trump administration has listed
only 25 species — fewer than any since the [Endangered Species] act took effect
in 1973,” the AP reported. “The
Obama administration added 360.”
The
current plan proposes delaying action to list monarchs until 2024, which would
then be followed by another year of public comment and development of the final
rule: time the species may not have.
4.
Pardons
In
late December Trump issued dozens of pardons and commutations in what The
Guardian called “another
audacious application of presidential power to reward loyalists.” The list
included predictable names of political allies like Paul Manafort and Roger
Stone, but among them was a pardon for Utah state Rep. Phil
Lyman.
Lyman
has railed against the federal management of public lands and in 2015, when he
was serving as a San Juan County commissioner, he led 50 all-terrain vehicles
on a ride through Utah’s Recapture Canyon. The area had been closed to
motorized vehicle traffic to protect archeological sites. The illegal stunt
earned him 5 days in jail and a $96,000 fine.
5.
Airplane Emissions
On
Dec. 28 the EPA finalized the first rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions
from commercial airplanes. But hold your applause: The historic step isn’t
likely to amount to much.
The
agency said that all the planes likely to be affected by the rule would be
compliant by the date required, and therefore, EPA doesn’t think there’ll be
any emission reductions associated
with the greenhouse gas regulations or that they’ll help spur technical
improvements that wouldn’t already have happened.
This
“do-nothing rule,” as
environmental groups have dubbed it, may be hard for the Biden administration
to quickly undo as the EPA has decided to forgo the usual 30-day waiting period
between the publication of the final rule and its implementation.
“The
agency has used the procedural tactic — which is legally allowed with ‘good
cause’ — in recent weeks in an apparent effort to obstruct the incoming Biden
administration,” E&E News reported.
6.
Endangered Species Act
The
outgoing Trump administration took two more swings at the Endangered Species
Act, which it has worked to undo in the last four years.
On
Dec. 15 the administration finalized a rule that narrowed the definition of
habitat to only areas that currently support a
species. This would eliminate the government’s ability to protect areas that
could help support species in the future and areas previously occupied by the
species. The move limits the tools available to protect endangered species, many
of which have seen their historic range greatly diminished by development,
agriculture and now climate change.
Two
days later the Fish and Wildlife Service undermined the law again with a rule that lets
money trump science. The change would allow the agency to omit areas from
critical habitat designation if a review of the economic costs to industry
outweigh the ecological benefits.
Tara
Lohan is deputy editor of The Revelator and
has worked for more than a decade as a digital editor and environmental
journalist focused on the intersections of energy, water and climate. Her work
has been published by The Nation, American Prospect, High
Country News, Grist, Pacific Standard and others.
She is the editor of two books on the global water crisis. http://twitter.com/TaraLohan