Comprehensive Impacts of Trump’s Second Year: Science & Environment

This publication is meant to be a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the Trump administration. There are many things that happened during the campaign that are not included. For the series covering the second year, impacts from about January 20, 2018, to January 31, 2019, are included. An introduction to this year’s series is here.

There are sure to be things missing, but I have done my best to record these impacts. The impacts are compiled under 20 different categories, or articles:

1. Cabinet and Other Appointments;

2. Science & Environment;

3. Women & Families;

4. LBGT;

5. Judicial/Constitutional;

6. Ethics;

7. Targeting free press/free speech/Privacy;

8. Health & Safety;

9. Consumer Protections;

10. Education;

11. Transportation/Infrastructure/Housing;

12. Immigration;

13. Social Contract;

14. Business/Economy;

15. Budget;

16. General Governance;

17. Character;

18. Military/Defense/Police;

19. World; and

20. Some good news. Because there is always some good news.

Since this series takes a long time to write, I will publish each section as I complete it. This article is on Science and Environment. You can read the complete series on the first year of the administration here.

Photo by William Bossen on Unsplash

Science and Environment

The Trump regime has been especially damaging to science and the environment. From the start, his chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, is a climate change denier and has even suggested that climate change could be good for humanity. In fact, after a United Nations report warned that we have only 12 years to curb climate change, Trump declared that the climate is “fabulous.” He also stated, “I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture.” After the deadly Camp fire in California, he suggested that the wildfires were caused by “not raking leaves enough.” Then, the administration blamed the fires on “radical environmentalists who have prevented forest management.”

Senior lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy school, member of the US National Parks Advisory Board, and former assistant secretary of the Department of Commerce Linda Bilmes warned that Trump is breaking the environment beyond repair, describing how Trump has repealed or froze more than 850 rules and regulations and stating, “Trump’s changes are like Humpty Dumpty because he is undoing decades of painstaking bipartisan negotiations under which federal agencies balanced scientific advice with the interests of states, localities, landowners, business, and conservationists.”

The New York Times detailed more than 80 environmental rules that Trump has rolled back or eliminated. These include rules related to air pollution and emissions, drilling and extraction, infrastructure and planning, animals, toxic substances and safety, water pollution, and other things such as denying funding to certain things or deciding that studies should no longer influence rule-making.

The New York Times also conducted an investigation into the real-life effects of Trump’s environmental rollbacks detailed in this article. The take-aways of that investigation included the fact that Trump is quickly undercutting President Obama’s legacy of protecting the environment; that the negative environmental impacts of this administration span the entire country, leaving no one unaffected; that the rollbacks affect air, water, chemicals, and climate; that despite Trump’s efforts, coal continues to decline; and that although environmental progress has slowed under Trump, there still is some progress.

· Pruitt made sure to appoint regional directors within the EPA who are also climate change deniers and who have long histories of weakening environmental protections.

· The administration is so hostile to the science of climate change that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is the first responder to floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, cut out all references to climate change from its strategic plan.

· The EPA then instructed its staff to tell the public that “there is no scientific consensus about the role of human activity in climate change or about what we can do about it,” providing a list of things that staff are allowed to publicly say about climate change.

· The EPA then removed entirely all internet pages on its website that provided information about climate change.

· In addition, Republicans on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee (of all things!) rejected a leading climate scientist’s testimony, claiming that the earth is not warming, rising sea levels are from cliffs tumbling into the sea, and global warming is helping the Antarctic ice sheet. Of course, this flies in the face of nearly all of the evidence worldwide to the contrary.

· Following the silencing of scientists at the EPA, Trump limited media access to scientists at the US Geological Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

· Trump also decided that scientists require a political review of their research before presenting the research at conferences and suggested that climate change scientists have a “political agenda.”

· Hundreds of scientists, however, have been stuck overseas because of Trump’s Muslim ban. This includes people with plans for higher education, postdocs, and job interviews who were stopped mid-flight from entering or re-entering the United States.

· Trump neglected to appoint someone to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy, a position that was always held by a scientist. Because of that, the de facto head is Michael Kratsios, who has a political science degree and previously served as chief of staff to Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire conservative who, among other things, funded a “science” magazine that questions evolution and climate change.

· He did, however, make other terrifying appointments. He chose Oklahoma Congressman Jim Bridenstine to lead NASA. Bridenstine is rabidly misogynistic and homophobic, opposing same-sex marriage, Obamacare, women’s reproductive rights, and alternative energy options. He believes that fetuses should have the same civil rights as people. One of Bridenstine’s first moves was deciding that he wanted to strip from NASA’s core institutional goals and objectives the “The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space” and the conduct of studies on “the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.”

· He also cancelled NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System research program, which measures and verifies greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, and methane and their impact on climate change.

· In addition, Trump reversed a regulation that President Obama had proposed that was designed to prevent the powerful greenhouse gas methane from escaping into the atmosphere during oil and gas drilling on federal and tribal lands.

· He also made other appointments within the EPA. He chose Peter Wright to lead the agency’s office of solid waste, which oversees toxic waste sites. At the time of nomination, Wright was a Dow Chemical Company lawyer, which is linked to toxic waste that the agency regulates.

· Pruitt restricted the agency’s use of science in rulemakings, pitting him against critics who say it would threaten EPA’s use of science in rulemaking, threatening health and environmental protections.

· Pruitt also made an announcement before well-known climate change skeptics that he signed a rule aimed at “increasing “transparency” in science. This announcement was given with 30 minutes’ notice and excluded reporters, environmentalists, and scientists. What the rule actually does is allows the EPA to ignore some of the best available scientific studies related to protecting our air, water, and land from pollution. The rule also likely violates several laws that require rulemaking to be based on the “best available science.”

· Speaking of ignoring science, the Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment, conducted every four years, was published on Black Friday in order to downplay the fact that Trump’s policies and rhetoric are in direct conflict with the science. The Assessment report found that “climate change is expected to interrupt the way people live day-to-day as it ravages infrastructure, impacts human health, poses challenges to the global economy, and threatens the world’s energy supply.” Trump later said that he didn’t believe the report. Subsequently, Trump’s EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler suggested that Trump would seek to shape the next report, intervening in what scientists are allowed to report.

· Under Trump, the EPA also rolled back and weakened automobile standards for greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy, allowing the auto industry to roll back industry standards worldwide.

· Trump’s Transportation Department also repealed a rule finalized under President Obama that requires states to track greenhouse gas emissions.

· Trump is also trying to revoke California’s long-standing authority to enforce its own strict rules on tailpipe emissions.

· Yet Trump’s EPA granted former Trump advisor Carl Icahn a waiver exempting his refinery from the US Renewable Fuel Standard, saving Icahn millions of dollars. The refinery was denied the waiver under President Obama.

· The EPA granted a last-minute loophole that allows a significant increase in the manufacturing of a diesel freight truck that produces as much as 55 times the air pollution as trucks that have modern emissions controls.

· Trump is trying to end subsidies and tax breaks altogether for electric vehicles and renewable energy sources.

· Under Trump, investment in alternative sources of energy has ended and the “power of the future” is from coal plants.

· He proposed the “Affordable Clean Energy” rule to deregulate the entire industry, which scientists in his own administration admitted would cause at least 1,400 premature deaths annually by 2030 from an increase in the extremely fine particulate matter that is linked to heart and lung disease, up to 15,000 new cases of upper respiratory problems, a rise in bronchitis, and tens of thousands of missed school days. West Virginia would be “ground zero” for the increased deaths and illnesses caused by the deregulation.

· The Trump administration’s EPA relaxed President Obama’s rules preventing coal-fired power plants from releasing mercury and other dangerous pollutants into the air, which are linked to developmental disorders, respiratory illnesses, and cancer, and are especially harmful for pregnant women.

· At the annual UN climate talks that intended to decide on rules to meet the goal of ending fossil fuels and transitioning to cleaner energy sources, Trump set up a side event to promote fossil fuels.

· Trump consolidated The National Center for Environmental Research (NCER) with other EPA offices. The NCER was most known for testing the effects of chemical exposure on adults’ and children’s health. (Spoiler alert: In Year 3, Trump cut research funding for children’s health.)

· Trump and the EPA tried to cover up a federal health study from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The study discovered a water-contamination crisis affecting several areas, with toxic chemicals reaching water supplies near military bases, chemical plants, and other sites in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest.

· Acting chief Andrew Wheeler fired all of the members Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), which is a panel of scientific experts charged with assisting the EPA’s air quality standards, ozone, and other pollutants under the Clean Air Act by providing academic knowledge to the process. The firing came in an email from an EPA staffer. Wheeler then announced new appointees to the CASAC, most of whom came from local regulatory agencies rather than academia. The new chair of the Committee is a consultant who has done work for the oil industry. One of the fired members, Professor Jeremy Sarnat, stated, “What the new and previous EPA administrators have done is dismantle a process which has, over many years, proven itself to be highly successful and effective. The new process now consolidates input to a small, and in some cases unqualified, group of individuals, and ultimately opens EPA up to the charge that it is politics, not science, that is driving this new policy.”

· Wheeler also scrapped plans to form a similar advisory panel to aid in a recently launched assessment of the ground-level ozone limits.

· Speaking of CASAC, in another study conducted by the Committee, the author accepted funding from the American Petroleum Institute, and then allowed this industry lobbying group to proofread and edit the study’s findings before they were published, which is highly unusual.

· The Trump administration cut funding and instituted a ban on acquiring new human fetal tissue for research. This ban has affected the research at a minimum of three NIH agencies: The National Eye Institute (NEI), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

· The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report detailing how Trump is not only deep in climate change denial, but also how he is “hollowing out the workforces of the agencies charged with protecting American health, safety, and natural resources.” The report documents some of the most egregious and anti-science policies and practices at the Department of the Interior under Secretary Zinke, describing how the office suppresses science, denies climate change, silences and intimidates agency staff, and attacks science-based laws that help protect our nation’s world-class wildlife and habitats. The Union of Concerned Scientists has called Trump a “Monumental disaster at the Department of the Interior.”

· Despite protests from conservationists, local tribe leaders, Democratic lawmakers, and the United Nations’ expert on Indigenous rights, the Trump administration has allowed citizens and companies to start staking claims on sections of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah so the new stakeholders can conduct hard rock mining on the formerly protected lands. Canadian mining firm Glacier Lake Resources Inc. was ready and waiting to acquire the Colt Mesa deposit in Grand Staircase-Escalente.

· And when the mining and drilling companies damage wildlife and habitats on this public land, they no longer have to pay for it under Trump.

· Trump’s Congress gave 2,400 acres of Tonto National Forest that is home to Apache natives to an Australian mining company that is partly owned by China.

· Trump is also trying to lift a moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies, preparing to allow fracking and oil drilling on 400,000 acres of public land and 1.6 million acres of mineral estate in California.

· Trump’s Interior Department officials dismissed evidence that national monuments and public sites boosted tourism and spurred archaeological discoveries when opening them up for mining and drilling.

· The Secretary of the Interior Department, Ryan Zinke, increased entrance fees for national parks, stating that allowing military members, veterans, the elderly, children, and the disabled to enter for free is too costly.

· And for those who do make it to a national park, Trump rolled back environmental regulations there, too. The National Park Service rescinded the “Water Bottle Ban” that allowed parks to prohibit the sale of disposable plastic water bottles.

· During the government shut down (more on that in other articles in this series), the national parks were transformed to “the wild west.” They were unsupervised with no one at the gates or the visitor centers and with trash and human waste overflowing into the parks with restrooms closed. The national parks were being called “America’s trashcans,” and overflowing toilets and porta potties were a public health hazard while food and trash left all over, as well as people walking off trails, are expected to cause many years of damage.

· Trump’s Interior Department is held the largest sale of oil and gas leases in the country’s history, auctioning off 77.3 million acres of offshore waters to drilling.

· Zinke then appointed Susan Combs as acting secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks overseeing federal wildlife policy after his attempt to appoint her to assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget stalled in the Senate due to opposition from both Republicans and Democrats. Combs is a former Texas state official who is best known as being a fierce opponent to the Endangered Species Act.

· As a result, the administration declined to list 25 species as endangered, including the Pacific walrus, turtles, crayfish, black-backed woodpecker, and tiger beetle. The Pacific walrus was due to be classified as endangered because of the significant loss of its Arctic sea habitat. Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said about this decision, “This is a truly dark day for America’s imperiled wildlife. You couldn’t ask for a clearer sign that the Trump administration puts corporate profits ahead of protecting endangered species.”

· Other actions stripped protections from the gray wolf in Wyoming and along the western Great Lakes; a plan to keep the sage grouse from being listed as endangered for the next decade; and a measure to remove from the endangered list the American burying beetle, an orange-flecked insect that has long been the bane of oil companies that would like to drill on the land where it lives.

· Additionally, Trump and Congressional Republicans have launched a two-pronged attack on the law that saved the bald eagle.

· Trump also stripped the Endangered Species Act of key provisions that ended the practice of extending similar protections to species regardless of whether they are listed as endangered or threatened.

· American animals aren’t the only ones threatened. Trump created a new advisory board to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants, lions, and rhinos, and stacked the board with trophy hunters, including some members with direct ties to Trump and his family.

· After decades of Democrats blocking efforts to protect Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling, the Interior Department moved toward allowing oil and natural gas drilling there.

· The Interior Department is also trying to conduct seismic testing for oil and gas in the Arctic national wildlife refuge, allowing “shaker vehicles” to send tremors underground to detect hydrocarbon deposits.

· Trump also authorized companies to “incidentally, but not intentionally, harass marine mammals” such as humpback and other whales when conducting this seismic drilling to test for oil and gas. In fact, studies have shown that these seismic tests could harm tens of thousands of dolphins, whales, and other marine animals.

· Trump wasn’t done with harming Alaska, though. He rolled back a rule prohibiting aggressive predator control tactics in national preserves in Alaska, including killing bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens and shooting swimming caribou from motorboats. The roll back will again allow controversial sport hunting and trapping techniques on 20 million acres of federal lands in Alaska.

· Trump also signed a resolution to allow the dumping of mining waste into the country’s waterways, reversing an Obama regulation that prohibited such dumping.

· Trump also reversed President Obama’s work in protecting the Great Lakes from leasing for oil and gas or other private development.

· He also reversed President Obama’s “Waters of the United States” rule, which had expanded federal pollution and development protections to smaller rivers and streams. Scientists estimated that this rule removal could affect the safety of tap water for more than 100 million Americans.

· Other parts of the Clean Water Act have also been damaged. Trump removed federal protections for national wetlands, as well as for streams, creeks, washes, and ditches that run during rain or snow melts. The president of the American Rivers environmental group stated, “The Trump administration has just given a big Christmas gift to polluters.” And scientists estimate that these waterways are now more vulnerable to destruction by developers, oil spills, and fertilizer run-offs.

· If that wasn’t damaging enough to our waterways, Scott Pruitt assigned himself more authority to determine environmental regulations for any project near regional waterways, making final decisions about what is allowed under the Clean Water Act and whether projects such as coal refineries and power plants might have a negative environmental effect.

· They weren’t done with water. Trump ended an 8-year-old policy to protect oceans, created after hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, killing people and wildlife and harming the fishing industry in Gulf coast states.

· Trump’s Congress passed the “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act,” weakening many conservation measures, including the mandate to use science-based fishing catch limits.

· Trump withdrew another Obama regulation that set higher standards for the treatment of animals that could be sold as organic.

· Trump overturned bans on the use of pesticides that are linked to declining bee populations and the cultivation of genetically modified crops in US national wildlife refuges.

· The EPA created a series of loopholes by authorizing Significant New Use Rules (SNUR) to allow asbestos back into US manufacturing.

· Trump also Trump removed a nine-slot Capital Bikeshare station at the White House that was staffers requested and used under President Obama.

· Trump is bulldozing a butterfly refuge, a national wildlife refuge, a state park, and other private property to build his border wall.

The border wall actually threatens 111 endangered animal species and is expected to result in “severe ecological consequences” and “significant environmental costs,” according to Dr. Shonil Bhagwat:

“As well as destroying natural habits, building a concrete wall would split animal populations in half, making it harder for them to breed and increasing the risk of diseases. . . . And then you have the fact the wall will ravage a unique desert habitat that straddles the two countries and will prevent the movement of local animals. The wall will most likely wipe out the last remaining jaguars in the US, because it will cut them off from jaguars in Mexico with which they breed.” In addition, “all that concrete will generate millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions.”

· In fact, the Trump administration has waived more than 30 environmental laws to build his border wall, claiming the waivers are for “national security.”

· Unfortunately, the anti-science culture has “trickled down,” too. A Florida state senator introduced a bill to allow school districts to teach student “alternatives” to concepts thought of as “controversial,” such as climate change and evolution.

The next article will be on Women and Families.