Op-Ed by Jessica Shepherd
President Trump’s claim in September that he is “the number one environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt” is as ironic as it is galling. In truth, it would be more appropriate to call Trump the number one anti-environmental president of all time for his assault on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the greater environmental community.
Trump has consistently thumbed his nose at environmental protections by withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, his ongoing attempts to reinterpret touchstone environmental laws like the Migratory Bird Act, and through his appointments of climate-change denier Scott Pruitt, and then coal and oil ally Andrew Wheeler to head the EPA.
Kowtowing to Trump, the EPA, in defiance of their name and mission “to protect human health and the environment”, has steadily given in to industry interests — waving away concerns about pesticides, reducing constraints on toxic emissions in our air and water, scrapping requirements for mining companies to set aside cleanup funds, and loosening stream-side dumping regulations on the coal industry. Moreover, Trump has signed off on watered down EPA regulations intended to limit greenhouse gas emissions by reducing fuel economy standards and doing away with limits on methane flaring for oil and gas production on public lands. And let’s not forget Trump’s push for oil and gas leasing here in Alaska with the opening of the Arctic Coastal Plain to drilling and expansion into previously off-limit areas in the National Petroleum Reserve.
Talking advantage of a dire situation, in March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic diverted our attention, the EPA suspended enforcement of environmental regulations on companies that were deemed unable to comply with emission standards due to the pandemic. At the same time, Trump signed an executive order scaling back the review process for new projects under the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.
Also, in March, the Department of Justice (DOJ) scraped the longstanding use of Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs) to fund environmentally beneficial projects. According to the EPA “A SEP is an environmentally beneficial project that a violator voluntarily agrees to undertake in settlement of a civil penalty action, as an option to offset some portion of the monetary penalty. One goal of the SEPs is to improve the environmental health of communities that have been put at risk due to the violation of an environmental law.” SEPs were frequently used by the EPA to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy. Examples include investments in local wind and solar power generation, retrofitting diesel-powered school buses with pollution control devices, the purchase of hybrid vehicles for a National Park, and funding for energy-efficient building technology for public buildings.
Thanks to the Trump Administration, the air we breathe now contains higher levels of mercury and other toxic particulate matter from vehicles and coal-fired power plants, and CO2 levels, despite a downturn at the start of the pandemic, are once again trending upward toward an ill-fated future. Faced with another four years of Trump, we’ll need to rename the EPA the “Environmental Destruction Agency” (EDA) and rewrite its mission to better reflect its new role in destroying human health and the environment.
Mind you, this is just an overview of Trump’s egregious environmental rollbacks.
If there is any good news, it’s that Trump has not been completely successful in his vendetta against established environmental safeguards. For example, his attempt to water down the Migratory Bird Treaty Act would have resulted in a reinterpretation of the law to apply only to the intentional killing of birds, laying blameless those whose actions cause the “incidental” killing of millions of birds annually through industrial activities like power line electrocutions, toxic tailing ponds, or the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that killed more than a million birds. A federal court overturned the policy revision in August of this year.
In contrast to Trump’s crusade against the environment, Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan would invest in net-zero emissions while creating new, green energy jobs. His 110-page plan will benefit first those communities who have been most directly affected by environmental violations, especially communities of color and the Native community. The comprehensive plan promises to “take immediate action to reverse the Trump Administration’s dangerous and destructive rollbacks of critical climate and environmental protections.”