When I talk to people they are very aware of President Trump’s childish chitchat with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un and the possible dangerous consequences. Some are downright scared. I am.
A war with North Korea and a resulting nuclear holocaust could destroy our planet.
We should be scared.
What most people don’t mention is Trump’s environmental policies that threaten the earth as we know it. Trump’s recent decision to allow oil drilling off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the Arctic Region could result in disastrous consequences. Drilling off the California, Oregon and Washington coast could result in polluting some of the most scenic coastlines in the world. The same can be said of the coast of many states off the Atlantic. The president has exempted Florida at the request of Florida’s GOP Gov. Rick Scott. What do you think he would do if asked by Gov. Jerry Brown to exempt California? The huge area in the Arctic region opened up for oil drilling has been protected for years.
At the same time President Trump did this, he abolished the tax on offshore oil meant to pay for cleanup in the event of spills such as the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
Trump has lifted the moratorium on federal coal leasing and removed the requirement that federal officials consider climate change when making decisions, thereby gutting the Clean Power Plan.
“Gutting the Clean Power Plan is a colossal mistake and defies science itself,” said Gov. Brown. “Erasing climate change may take place in Donald Trump’s mind, but no where else.”
Many actions by Trump roll-back Obama era policies aimed to curb climate change and limit environmental pollution, while others threaten to limit funding for science and the environment.
Recently Trump downsized two National Monuments in Utah. The Bears Ears Monument was reduced in size by 1.35 million acres, reducing the monument created in late 2016 by 85 percent. He also cut the 1.88 million acre Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, created in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, nearly in half. Those portions cut from the monuments are now subject to mining, and oil and gas drilling. There are lucrative oil and gas fields in the Bears Ears monuments northern and southeastern boundaries.
Guess what happens next?
If you guessed possible strip mining and God only knows what else, you would be right.
Even protected lands are not protected. The Trump administration recently opened new mineral, oil and gas leasing opportunities in protected lands, easing drilling regulations and rolling back habitat protections for endangered species. He also has rolled back Obama-era restriction on mining, drilling, and coal and gas burning operations. Power companies can now pollute at will.
Trump has decreed it will no longer consider the accidental killing of birds a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), reversing decades of precedent over several administrations. Under the act BP was fined $100 million for killing between 600,000 and 800,000 birds as a result of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Fossil fuel groups have praised the reversal of the MBTA. They would.
Trump has signed a sweeping executive order that instructs regulators to rewrite key rules on U.S. carbon emissions. He has temporarily withdrawn from the Paris Accords under which we are pledged to cut greenhouse emissions between 25 and 28 percent by 2025 compared to 2005 limits.
In his first two months Trump nullified a regulation barring surface — mining companies from polluting waterways. He has since removed restrictions on hydraulic fracturing on federal and tribal lands. He has approved two major, controversy
al oil pipelines: the Dakota Access and the Keystone pipeline. The Keystones pipeline has already sprung several leaks.
Trump appears to be following the advice of some Evangelicals who seem to believe that what we do to the earth doesn’t much matter because Christ is coming any day now to take us to a new place he has prepared for us. I’m a believer, but, I’ve been hearing that since I was four, my mother heard that since she was four, and my grandmother heard that when she was four. Since time immemorial it’s been said the Christ was returning any minute. What if there’s no earth for Christ to return to?
It wouldn’t surprise me to drive up to Lake Tahoe someday and see an oil platform in the middle of the lake. Don’t laugh, with Trump in office we will soon have no environmental protections whatsoever. Money trumps earth.
The earth we love is threatened by the most dangerous president ever, Donald J. Trump.
Glen McAdoo, a Fallon resident, can be contacted at glynn@phonewave.net.
