There is the cliche of the bratty kid who gets mad in a ballgame, so he takes his ball and goes home. Donald Trump, the world’s worst spoiled brat, is trying to blow up the field.
The outgoing oaf of office has put up significant roadblocks for the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to implement its own policies.
The Hill, a Congressional journal, ran an article in Oct. 2020 that revealed the complexities Biden faces in re-instating environmental regulations that Trump trashed.
“Yet because of complexities in the rulemaking process — along with structural changes implemented by the Trump administration — undoing even just some of Trump’s environmental rollbacks could take years,” The Hill article stated. “A recent analysis from researchers with Rhodium Group estimated that rollbacks promulgated by the Trump administration could cause the release of an extra 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.”
Some EPA scientists are resisting Trump’s damaging tantrums.
A Dec. 1 article in the New York Times said the career employees find themselves where they began, in a bureaucratic battle with the agency’s political leaders. But now with the Biden administration on the horizon, they are emboldened to stymie Trump’s goals more openly.
The Times article cites Dr. Thomas Sinks, who directed the EPA’s science advisory office. Before retiring, Dr. Sinks issued an opinion that a pending Trump rule to minimize medical research would compromise American public health.
“I thought this was going to lead to a train crash and that I needed to speak up,” said Dr. Sinks.
By entering the critique on the official record, Dr. Sinks’ dissent will offer Biden’s incoming administrator a powerful weapon to repeal the so-called “secret science” policy.
But other moves by EPA chief Andrew Wheeler may prove onerous to overcome. For a bit of insight on Wheeler, his previous job was as a lobbyist, with the coal mining company Murray Energy as a client. The coal CEO Robert Murray recently died from black lung disease. That’s poetic justice for a coal guy who denied his own condition while also denying climate change and fighting workplace safety.
When Trump was inaugurated, Murray paid $300,000 for the festivities and then gave a wish list to Trump to protect the coal industry. So it’s no surprise that Wheeler, Murray’s lobbyist, would eventually be chosen for the EPA, and Wheeler would support coal instead of the environment.
Wheeler had promised the EPA’s inspector general that he would address accusations from over 250 employees about political interference with science under Trump. He never did.
The Times article also says the agency recently finalized a rule that creates a lengthy new process to overturn policy directives on enforcing laws. That can take months or years, which leaves Trump’s directives in effect long after he’s gone.
Under Trump and Wheeler, it should be called the Environmental Destruction Agency. Let’s hope that Biden’s people can leap over these obstacles and restore the EPA to its original mission: to protect our health, and the air, land and water.
Frank Lingo, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is a former columnist for the Kansas City Star and author of the novel “Earth Vote”. Email: lingofrank@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2021
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