Five ways Donald Trump will force conservation into politics
5x5 Conservation has always been about politics: it’s naive to think that saving the environment or animals can be divorced from questions about economics, industry, agriculture or how people live.
President Obama made conservation and politics uneasy bedfellows: on the one hand he committed the Paris climate change agreement, on the other he supported the Keystone XL pipeline. Trump has made it an easy distinction: he only cares for things with a dollar value. America’s greatness resides in its natural resources, not in its natural wonders, and the world outside only exists for American profit.
If you find someone who likes the environment but supports Donald Trump, they’re either a liar or an idiot. Here’s a few reasons why.
1 Killing gorillas Nothing illustrates the Trump doctrine more than expectations that America’s new president could be taking aim at endangered gorillas by rolling back rules which force US companies to disclose the use of ‘conflict minerals’ in their products.
The illegal mining of metals like tantalum, tin, gold or tungsten in the Democratic Republic of Congo is forcing eastern lowland Grauer’s gorillas closer than ever to the edge of extinction: their numbers have dropped 77% in the past 20 years, to less than 4,000.
Rival militias in the war-torn state use the proceeds of mining to buy arms, and war-struck communities litter the gorillas’ homelands with deadly snares to catch small animals, while bushmeat poachers can operate with impunity in the chaos, killing adults and taking baby apes for the pet trade.
It’s not a perfect rule, but companies which have to disclose the source of their products tend to avoid the sketchier locations. The only way to discourage it would be for other countries and regions like the EU to enforce disclosure rules on imports from the USA.
2 Scott Pruitt The former attorney general of Oklahoma made his reputation as a pollution advocate for the fossil fuels industry and a climate change skeptic. His appointment as head of the Environment Protection Agency was essentially a raised middle finger to everyone who works at the EPA or cares about the environment.
Pruitt promised this week to begin an aggressive roll-back of federal environmental regulations in favour of state-fostered regulations, because pollution conveniently stops at state boundaries. He’s convinced that it’s better to create jobs and spur on growth in polluting industries in the short term than building clean industries in the long term. It would be cynical to suggest that these industries are more likely to employ Trump voters with lower skills and education than clean industries which need high technology.
3 Oil and clean coal It’s almost commendable that supporting the oil industry is such an honest choice for an administration that has such a tenuous relationship with facts. Pushing ahead on Keystone XL is another calculated “screw you” to groups who will never vote for Trump or his team.
Clean coal is less honest, given that it’s never existed as a viable economic direction. It’s true that you can prevent a lot of the sulphur, CO2 and other byproducts of burning coal from reaching the atmosphere, unfortunately it just makes it so uneconomic that you’d be better off finding something else. However, it’s really good as a smoke-and-mirrors exercise to pollute debates on energy policy.
4 Climate Change American scientists and federal agencies like NASA may have been instrumental in bringing climate change to global attention, but that didn’t stop Donald Trump from calling it a Chinese hoax designed to cripple the US economy, even as China signed up to the Paris climate change treaty.
One of the Trump administration’s first moves was to order the removal of climate change information from the Environmental Protection Agency’s website. A month later Trump received a public letter from 300 scientists asking him to withdraw the US from the United Nations Convention on Climate Change. Lead signee Dr Richard Lindzen is the head of MIT and a famous climate change contrarian, but many of his co-signees have no experience in climate science, or even any history of published science.
5 Giving orangutans a bad name With his orange skin and wispy overcomb, it’s become a lazy stereotype to liken Donald Trump an orangutan. This is a huge insult to orangutans, who are sensitive, intelligent social creatures. I’d suggest another species, but it seems cruel to liken any animal to someone so unpleasant.
