With National Attention Elsewhere, Trump Ramps Up Environmental Scorched Earth Policy

Charlton-Chilao Recreation Area, San Gabriel Mountains, Angeles National Forest.

By Mia Taylor with Tommy Hough

The Trump administration has unleashed a new series of assaults on the environment, public health, and wildlife over the past 48 hours, announcing four actions that will result in dramatic curbs on long-standing, effective environmental regulations, threaten recovering marine areas, and endanger millions of wild birds.

• On Thursday, the administration announced two moves to permanently weaken federal authority to issue any sort of stringent clean air and climate change rules. The president signed an executive order urging agencies to waive critical environmental reviews on infrastructure projects being built during the COVID-19 pandemic, threatening the long-standing National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).
  
  
• That move came in lockstep with an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal to change the way it uses cost-benefit analyses to enact Clean Air Act regulations, a measure effectively limiting the strength of all future air pollution controls.
  
  
• Speaking in Maine on Friday, the president also disregarded 20 years' worth of effective enforcement of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and signed an order allowing a renewal of commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, an area critical for endangered whales and marine life.
  
  
• And in perhaps the most needlessly cruel move, the administration disclosed it is moving forward with rolling back the landmark 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, championed at the time of its passage by then-former President Theodore Roosevelt. Expressly designed to protect wild bird species from extinction, the move would end the federal government's practice of treating bird deaths caused by industrial outlets as criminal violations, and could result in a massive increase in bird mortality at a moment in which birds are experiencing extinction-level population declines.
  
  

Individually each of these changes do grave damage, but collectively they underscore the president's intention to work at breakneck speed to dismantle as many as environmental regulations as possible during his tenure, undermining policies created to protect public health and wildlife, while handing a new trove of victories to planet-wrecking fossil fuel companies.

"It's impossible to overstate just how cruel and pernicious Trump's presidency is for our environment and our climate," said club president Cody Petterson. "Every day he unravels protections that took decades of struggle and effort to achieve."

The latest attacks on the environment cap an end-of-the-week assault unleashed by the Trump administration. "With the nation's attention on COVID-19 and the protests sweeping our nation, the Trump administration is accelerating its headlong race to the bottom to dismantle our nation's post-war legacy of environmental protection," said Petterson.

Club co-founder and former president Tommy Hough was equally blunt. "This administration's environmental nihilism and hostility to conservation knows no bounds," said Hough. "If it grows, this administration will kill it. If it is preserved, they seek to exploit it. This is an administration that just enabled trophy hunters to murder bears and other wildlife in their wintertime dens. It is cruelty incarnate."

Hough also noted the timing and petty returns. "With the attack on MPAs, Trump is hoping to dial in Maine's electoral votes in November. With his assault on clean air he's again looking out for his Big Oil and Big Gas benefactors. And cowardly using the biggest pandemic in 100 years and greatest civil unrest in 50 years to give 'cover' to these rollbacks is pure political swamp cynicism."

All of these moves come as Trump's poll numbers decline and his chances of re-election dim. Faced with the demise of his administration, Trump is dramatically stepping up his attacks on our nation’s conservation heritage, and decimation of wildlife and the environment.

"The extractive industries that dictate Trump's environmental policy will try to destroy as many of our regulations and wild spaces as they can," said Petterson. "It's essential we not only fight tooth and nail against these efforts, but loudly impress upon our elected officials and candidates the central importance of quickly repairing our ravaged environmental regulations and protections if we are able to liberate our nation's capital from the corporations that have looted it over the last four years."

Photo by Tommy Hough