Image courtesy of USA Today
In the past six months since taking office, President Donald Trump’s administration has taken aim at dissolving a dizzying array of programs, laws, and Congressionally-approved budgets. The blizzard of executive orders, court challenges to standing laws, budget cancellations, and fanciful social media means that any one harmful move to critically important laws can get lost. As thousands of scientists and climate experts around the world have concluded: addressing climate change and reducing greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is critically important to every person on this planet, as well as the survival of future generations.
It’s time to stop tiptoeing around the issue and call this what it is. Trump and his partners aren’t just attacking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they are dismantling the EPA, and rolling back the base legislation underlying this nation’s environmental protections and our move toward clean energy.
In July, hundreds of EPA employees signed a letter criticizing the Trump administration’s environmental policies.
The letter, signed by 620 EPA employees, titled a “Declaration of Dissent,” accused the Trump administration of undermining the EPA’s mission of protecting the environment by promoting “harmful deregulation” and showing “disregard for scientific expertise.”
The document was released publicly the week of the 4th of July. Then 139 of the signatories were placed on leave. The letter raised concerns over changes to the EPA’s research and development practices and cuts to its environmental justice initiatives, which provide funding to support vulnerable communities.
Underlying all environmental initiatives is the U.S. Clean Air Act, and the U.S. Clean Energy for America Act. The Trump administration is chipping away at both.
It was back on January 20 (Inauguration Day) when Trump signed an executive order declaring a “national energy emergency.” It has directed the federal government to take funding away from the climate agenda instigated by former President Joe Biden to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accord, and toward fossil fuel production.
The “endangerment finding” was established back in 2009 during former President Barrack Obama’s administration. In addition to the legal basis for the EPA, it set emission standards for greenhouse gases. But Trump’s new EPA cabinet person, former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin is now arguing that recent Supreme Court decisions bring into question the legality of the 2009 “endangerment finding”, claiming that it has no basis in fact.
This of course, is making the fossil fuel industry quite happy.
This move is vehemently opposed by dozens of environmental groups. They point out that Trump’s move to delegitimize the 2009 endangerment finding will destroy the basis for the EPA’s charge to regulate greenhouse gases, and as a result the nation’s clean energy economy. The economies of many states, including Colorado, are heavily invested in development of clean energy.
But representatives of the fossil fuel industry say that the rules limiting climate pollution from power plants and cars and trucks are unfair. Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute Director Daren Bakst, told NPR this week that “the potential harms in the 2009 endangerment finding are ‘speculative at best’.” And then he added a common conservative argument; “that even if the U.S. eliminates all greenhouse gases, it would have little to no measurable effect on global temperatures.”
Well, gee isn’t that why the Paris Accord was signed, so the countries of the world could work on this together? The fact is that the U.S. has historically been the largest emitter of man-made climate pollution. But in another of his early moves during his first six months in office, Trump took us out of the Paris Accord.
If the EPA Endangerment Finding is no longer valid (translation: ignored) the chances of putting back into place new greenhouse gas regulations would be difficult. But that’s not the only goal: Trump’s administration wants to roll back existing laws.
Environmental groups say the questions become: With weather extremes growing, how much longer can the nation’s leaders ignore what is happening to the planet under the guise of “the economy”? And how can we ordinary Americans make our voices heard that we want a future on this planet not just for us, but for the future generations who will inherit it?
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