On environment, a ‘wrecking ball’
Trump has torn up rules, scored wins in this area
WASHINGTON — In a Trump administration beset by lost opportunities, muddled strategies and frequent missteps in its first 100 days, one area stands out for its disciplined approach and early successes: the multi-front assault on environmental regulations.
Unlike the Obamacare repeal stumbles or immigration actions tangled in the courts, the administration has managed in a few months to upend environmental protections and climate actions that fossil fuel industries have targeted for years.
Planned action on climate change has been shelved, national monuments are under review, clean air and water rules have been eroded. Doubt has even been cast on the ability of states to protect their own environmental regulations.
As tens of thousands of protesters are expected to converge Saturday on Washington for the People’s Climate March, they are confronting a policy landscape that perhaps more than any other has been transformed under President Donald Trump.
“It has been a wrecking ball right out of the gate,” said Rep. Jared Huffman of California, a top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. “We shouldn’t underestimate the amount of damage that has already been done to the environment by an administration that can’t seem to get almost anything else done.”
The fast clip at which the administration has eased environmental rules reflects how vulnerable many of them are after having been put into place administratively by an Obama White House that could not get consent from a hostile Congress.
But it is also a sign of the unprecedented sophistication and political organization of fossil fuel and related industries, which have nurtured a network of think tanks and politicians in preparation for this moment. That team of industry-supported activists dominates the leadership of Trump’s environmental agencies, which have set about killing those rules in the hopes of boosting industry.
“We are very heartened by the progress that has been made,” said Myron Ebell, who headed Trump’s transition at the Environmental Protection Agency and has since returned to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industryfunded group that takes a lead nationally in denying mainstream climate science. “I’m not going to take credit, but one might take a look at the work of the transition for the Department of Energy, Department of Interior, and the EPA.”
The transition at each of those agencies was run by leaders from think tanks aligned with the donor network guided by fossil fuel tycoons Charles and David Koch. The organizations over the last several years have sent lobbyists and attorneys across the country to undermine President Barack Obama’s climate action and fight state efforts to promote clean energy.
Among their allies was Scott Pruitt, now the EPA administrator, who during the Obama administration developed legal strategies for fighting federal environmental rules while Oklahoma’s attorney general.
Business groups have praised the administration’s quick work, saying the Obama-era rules were expensive, burdensome and unnecessary.
“A lot of this involves questionable uses of executive authority by the Obama administration that simply had to be put back in the bottle,” said Scott Segal, a lobbyist for energy firms.
But longtime EPA officials have been alarmed by the speed of the changes.
Some of the moves have been high-profile and attention-grabbing: the dismantling of the Clean Power Plan that promised to put the nation’s dirtiest power plants out of business; the shelving of aggressive fuel mileage standards that some states are set on implementing; and the hasty approval of oil pipelines.
But even on days when the announcements don’t make headlines, the tearing-up of environmental rules marches along.
Often the rules involved are obscure and escape broad public notice.
“A lot of this is technical and below the radar, and the real harm isn’t readily understood by the American people,” Huffman said.
The actions have galvanized the environmental movement; as groups scramble to file lawsuits and donations gush in at a record pace. environmental activists are defiant. They predict Trump’s efforts will ultimately collapse as they have in other sectors.
But the confrontation with Trump presents tough questions for the environmental movement and its effectiveness.
Polls show Americans favor action on climate change and strong environmental rules. But they don’t show that the coalition of voters that got Trump elected is concerned by his direction on such issues. Less than a third of Republican voters worry that Trump’s executive order dismantling much of the federal effort to confront climate change would harm the environment, a recent Morning Consult poll says.
More than half of Republicans asked by Gallup in March about their feelings on the future of the environment said they thought it was getting better.