White House Touts Environmental Record-
Conveniently Ignores Facts
Yesterday, the White House hosted an event touting their record on environmental protection. The brazenness of this claim, from an Administration that has systematically undercut environmental regulations across the board, is clear to anyone who’s paying attention.
Their claim lies on the idea that federal regulators, particularly in the EPA, focused on greenhouse gas emissions to the detriment of their work on “real pollution” like particulates, Sulfer Dioxide, and Ozone. When the President says the US has the “cleanest air” ever, that’s what he’s basing those claims on. It’s the triumph of the visible pollution over the invisible. Nevermind that those actions were taken by previous Administrations and that they are required by Congress and the courts to take action against these pollutants. This White House is bound to take these actions- but they’re going to take credit for it where they can.
We heard EPA chief Wheeler touting their actions on Superfund sites- especially in underserved “Opportunity Zones.” But he didn’t say that the EPA is legally bound to clean up those sites! Nor did he say that the Superfund project is really a federal bailout of corporate interest. A place doesn’t become a Superfund site, after all, because it’s “Super polluted” — it becomes one because the entity liable for the cleanup no longer exists. All too often Superfund is a bailout of bankrupt polluters- just the sort of corporate welfare this White House loves.
Of course, the biggest lies are around climate change. They say that American emissions have dropped, even as the rest of the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement have gone up. While no one should give a pass to global emissions, this claim rests on outdated numbers- emissions were indeed down in 2017, the first year of the Trump Administration. Of course, you’d expect trends based on enacted policy to continue, as a new Administration takes time to put its own policies in place. Emissions from energy we’re going down, based on the Obama Clean Power Plan and multiple other emissions regulations. But, what happened when this coal-hugging, oil loving White House got their own policies in place? Emissions started to tick back up. In 2018, US emissions went up. We should expect that emissions this year will go up further. This talking point, though, is too good to change.
We saw Secretary of Energy Perry saying that American LNG is being exported around the world, replacing “dirty power” plants in Europe. I’ve heard him give that talking point before, and his usual line is about replacing “dirty coal.” But, under this coal-hugging President, you can’t say the truth. They’re hoping you aren’t paying attention- let’s do better.
