Trump favoring industry at expense of EPA - and world

Bill Knight column for 8-19, 20 or 21, 2019

When the Trump administration last week announced that is was significantly weakening regulations protecting endangered species and other threatened wildlife, most folks weren’t stunned and some undoubtedly feel bad for animals, but few probably thought of the endangered species closest to home: human beings.

The move came from the Interior Department, not the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but it’s part of a pattern of backward action and controversies about our environment.

Last month, the White House defended the administration’s environmental performance.

“President Trump’s leadership and policies have made the air, water and environment cleaner,” said Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere. However, as Washington Post fact-checker Jacqueline Alemany reported, “There is little substantiating that statement.”

Indeed, despite overwhelming scientific consensus, Trump still scoffs at climate change’s existence and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement; his administration deleted climate change references on government websites; and this summer he relaxed regulations on coal plants – when Alaska recorded 90-degree temperatures for the first time in a century, Antarctica sea ice was measured at record low levels, and July was the hottest month since records-keeping started in 1880,

It all casts doubt on EPA’s purpose, and first became obnoxiously obvious a year ago, when the administration cut official estimates of the financial consequences of climate change. Instead of about $50 in economic damage from each ton of carbon dioxide (the previous EPA’s estimate), the administration said it would be between $1 and $7. New York Times journalist Brad Plumer explained that Trump’s EPA is confining its analysis to the country, not the planet, AND deemphasizing the impact on future generations.

There’s much more:

* Last year, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned after questions about his spending and apparent ethics violations;

* in June, four former EPA Administrators (Democrats and Republicans) criticized Trump and his EPA. Gina McCarthy (Obama’s EPA chief), William Reilly (from the George H.W. Bush administration), Lee Thomas (Ronald Reagan’s head of the EPA), and Christine Todd Whitman (George W. Bush’s EPA Administrator) told a House Energy and Commerce hearing they’re alarmed by Trump’s EPA’s direction. “EPA is supposed to pay attention to the economic benefit of its regulations, but the environment and health come first,” Reilly testified;

* also in June, a report by State Department analyst Rod Schoonover was blocked by the White House from a House Intelligence Committee hearing. His 12-page statement detailed how greenhouse-gas emissions raise global temperatures and acidify oceans, and contribute to storms’ frequencies and intensities;

* the EPA in May changed the way it calculates how many people could die from pollution. “The Trump administration analyzed the cost of replacing the 2015 Clean Power Plan with a new plan that lightens restrictions on the coal industry,” reported Rolling Stone newsman Ryan Bort. “The [proposed] Affordable Clean Energy could result in up to 1,400 deaths per year by 2030 [but] it will not include this death estimate. The administration is using a ‘new analytical model’ based on the false idea that there are no public-health benefits to making the air any cleaner than what federal law requires”;

* current EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler – a former lobbyist for the Murray Energy coal company, this summer announced the deregulation of rules controlling coal pollution, letting states exempt plants from doing anything; and

* EPA Assistant Administrator Bill Wehrum, the Washington attorney who represented fossil-fuel interests, resigned in June amid a Congressional inquiry about him improperly helping former industry clients.

Maybe it will take states to help. Illinois is one of 18 states where previous targets for decreasing CO2 emissions have been achieved.

“State legislatures across the country during 2018 accepted the reality and energy consequences of closing coal and nuclear power plants and the desire by many to transition to ‘green’ energy sources,” reported the Boston-based Nixon Peabody law firm, which specializes in government relations and regulatory issues.

Illinois officials are backing away from coal. For instance, in June the Pollution Control Board unanimously proposed changes that, if approved, decrease caps, require the reduction of at least 2,000 megawatts of electric generation by coal-fired electric generating units this year; and require Illinois’ EPA to reduce the annual mass caps if some operators retire any units before the effective date of this rule.

Despite such steps, the White House and its industry bootlickers make protection difficult – and illogical

Howard Learner, director of Chicago’s Environmental Law and Policy Center, told Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Hawthorne that Trump’s attempts to bail out fossil-fuel corporations is like “subsidizing landline telephones while the cellular market grows bigger.”

Except that the United States is Earth’s second-biggest polluter, and pollution and climate change are far more harmful than phones.

Yes, humanity may be endangered.