A Toxic Environment

I wish Donald Trump, Scott Pruitt, and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke could be made to take a hike on one of the trails near my house, through the woods of central New Jersey, with a guide to help them understand what they are seeing. In the air, they might observe a large bird with a mostly black body, but having beautiful white markings on the undersides of its wings. They might also come upon young holly bushes growing in the wild. I go hiking with a good friend who serves as such a guide. He has explained to me that the bird is the black vulture, a species that has not been known to range this far north until just recently. Likewise, the holly bushes grow very well here when planted on people’s lawns, but they only just become viable in the wild. It is one thing to blame a string of warm days in March on climate change, but it is observations of changing ranges of plants and animals that really make the case. Anyone can observe these changes if you know what you are seeing. Once you confirm with your own eyes that climate change is real, there is a large body of research to draw upon to explain why it is happening.

Of course, taking Trump and his cohorts on such a hike might not be enough to change the disastrous course they have set for environmental policy. The closest thing Donald Trump has to an ideology is a pathological need to undo any policy that was implemented by Barack Obama. An overview of this administration’s actions on the environment shows this quite clearly. In addition, there is Trump’s bizarre obsession with “saving” the coal industry through deregulation. So the mining industry now has permission again to release their toxic waste into our waterways, poisoning both wildlife and human beings unfortunate enough to live downstream. Trump has also signed off on measures to allow oil drilling in formerly protected forests and fisheries.

There is, unfortunately, very little that we as concerned citizens can do to stop this. Here is where Trump’s use of executive orders has been most effective. Some can be challenged in court, but the president has a great deal of latitude regarding the environment, and many of Trump’s actions here simply reversing executive orders that were signed by Obama. So, since no legislation is needed, protests at town halls of moderate Republicans will not win this fight. Trump has also practiced action by neglect here. Simply by refusing to appoint the necessary staff, Trump has hampered the ability of the federal government to enforce even those regulations that he can not eliminate.

One cause for optimism comes from a source that certainly surprised me: Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg has a new book out, written with former Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope. The book is a reminder that the words conservative and conservation have the same root. A conservative, in the old meaning of the word from before the hostile takeover of the Republican Party by the Tea Party, used to be someone we could count on as an ally on environmental issues. Indeed, Bloomberg and Pope lay out the capitalist case for sound environmental policy. Coal is dying for market driven reasons, not because of overregulation. Bloomberg and Pope make the case that stewardship of the environment is not only good for the planet but also smart business. Bloomberg was the mayor on New York City for two terms, so it is not surprising that he sees solutions as coming from cities, especially at a time when the federal government is so misguided about the environment. To be fair, I have read about the book, but I have not read it yet. But it seems to me that these are arguments that can only help our cause. As activists, we should be making arguments that help us attract the widest possible backing. We stand in opposition to a president whose positions are far from the mainstream. On the environment, as on so much else, we need to draw support from everywhere, and press the advantage we have. The majority of Americans agree with us. We don’t even need to take them into the woods to help them see it.

For my musical selection, a bit of irony felt appropriate: