The Legacy of the Trump Presidency

 

                                                            Roscommon/Crawford Chapter

What Will Trump’s Most Profound Legacy Be? Possibly Climate Damage

(Editor’s note – The New York Times has two investigative journalists who regularly report on climate change topics. This blog was prepared using two of their most recent offerings. Note that the quoted text portions of this blog are verbatim excerpts from their recently published reports.)

“WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will use the next four years to try to restore the environmental policies that his predecessor has methodically blown up, but the damage done by the greenhouse gas pollution unleashed by President Trump’s rollbacks may prove to be one of the most profound legacies of his single term.”

“Most of Mr. Trump’s environmental policies, which erased or loosened nearly 100 rules and regulations on pollution of the air, water and atmosphere, can be reversed, though not immediately. Additionally, pollutants like industrial soot and chemicals can have lasting health effects.”

The Trump administration has taken action on most of its major environmental priorities, including new rules that loosen caps on carbon pollution from power plants and weaken the federal government’s authority to control the dumping of contaminants or dredging of wetlands and smaller streams.

It has blocked stricter federal gas-mileage standards from taking effect — undercutting President Obama’s most significant climate policy — and revoked California’s right to set its own, tougher air-quality standards. It has sought to narrow the federal government’s authority to set pollution limits under the Clean Air Act, a move that could constrain future administrations for decades.

Here are some of the other major changes: The administration has allowed more pollution, drilling and logging in formerly protected areas while weakening protections for wildlife.

It has made fundamental changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock law that has existed for five decades to accelerate approvals for pipelines, highway construction and other major projects despite their environmental risks.

At Trump’s direction, his administrators have rolled-back 37 policies for safety and environmental damage associated with drilling for fossil fuels. They have provoked an easing of requirements on power plants that leak waste into waterways, scaled back oversight of mine safety, approved seismic drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge, and perhaps most significantly, allowed an “opening more than 9.3 million acres to logging in Alaska’s vast Tongass National Forest, one of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforests. This forest boasts the highest density of brown bears in North America, and its trees — some of which are 1,000 years old — absorb more carbon than any other forest in the United States.”

Various environmental groups have challenged these actions in court. Some 89 rollbacks have faced lawsuits. At this point, the Trump administration has received 17 court rulings in favor of their changes and 37 reversals against their rule changes that result in a lessening or outright elimination of environmental protections. One egregious example of a recent loss occurred when The EPA was forced to bar dental offices from flushing mercury into sewers after the Trump Administration was sued for delaying implementation of this 2016 rule.

Trump appointees at the EPA, the Interior Department and other agencies have followed a simple playbook: Speed up the administrative process to suspend or overhaul environmental rules and replace them before January 2021. Even as the administration has suffered dozens of court losses, Trump has managed to win even when losing, by preventing some Obama-era rules from taking effect or by delaying compliance dates for industry adherence to earlier requirements.

By doing so, the Trump White House also has made it harder for the next Democratic administration to quickly restore previous efforts to drive down emissions linked to global warming, shift to cleaner forms of energy and prevent drilling on sensitive public lands. While Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has promised bold action on climate and a renewed focus on environmental justice, much of his first term could be spent trying to reestablish safeguards put in place during his years as vice-president under Barack Obama.

Early on, the Trump administration employed a tactic that Democrats and Republicans had used in the past: It temporarily froze regulations that had not yet gone into effect. But then it took it one step further, delaying the dates by which companies would have to comply with some rules that were already in effect.

Federal judges have repeatedly ruled that the administration failed to follow the Administrative Procedure Act, which sets requirements for notice and public comment regarding proposed rules. That forced Trump officials to finalize at least a dozen Obama-era rules they opposed. Environmentalists and Democratic attorneys general have systematically challenged key rollbacks, winning 37 of 54 recent decisions, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Several of these cases remain under appeal.

In several instances, the Trump administration’s push to suspend Obama administration rules kept them from taking effect. For example, the Obama administration restricted the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells. Under Trump, the Bureau of Land Management told companies they did not need to meet those standards, a move that the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California ruled was illegal. The BLM wrote a new methane rule, but the same court found it flawed and vacated it nearly 2½ years later. The U.S. District Court in Wyoming this month struck down the original Obama-era rule. All the while, oil and gas companies have been allowed to release methane, doing further damage to our atmosphere.

Untangling this morass of environmental issues will be a tall order for the Biden Administration but our very future depends on it. Look for more on the Biden policy in a future blog.