Trump’s Environmental Policies Aren’t the Problem
Hand-wringing about Trump’s Environmental policy changes misses the big picture
Trump’s Executive Order on Climate caused a lot of buzz this week. I’m not going to go into too much detail, other than to affirm that it’s awful:
His other nasty and egregious anti-environment policies will potentially, in the long term, kill more people than the repeal of the ACA.
Approving the Dakota Access and Keystone Pipelines, eliminating 90%+ of the EPA’s budget, forbidding the Energy Department to use the phrase “Climate Change,” and these are the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg.
But, really, if we take a step back, we might gain a little perspective. The underlying issues are far more profound and deep-rooted than Trump’s attempts to run rough-shod over our ability to live on the planet. They’re awful, yes, but they’re just the shit-flavored icing on a very old turd cake.
For example, the underlying problem in the Flint water crisis, still woefully under-addressed, is the fact that we polluted the Flint river to such an extent that the water became unsafe to begin with:
There are a lot of “if we hads” in the Flint situation, but ultimately, “if we had refused to dump toxic poisons in our drinking water,” we wouldn’t be in this place now.
Let’s look at a few of Trump’s destructive policies and actions, but with a little more nuance, shall we? Again, all of these are bad news, but when you scratch the surface, very little of the problem is really directly Trump’s doing.
- Leaving the Paris Accord. Most rational scientists agree: the Paris Accord is weak sauce, a last-gasp attempt to get the world to agree on a CO2 target that won’t even mitigate the most damaging effects of global warming. It’s so weak that even Exxon supports it. I mean come on.
- Pipelines for Everyone! Obama halted construction on the “sexy” Dakota Access and Keystone Pipelines — which was good of him! And now Trump pushed them through, which is not good. But, during Obama’s administration, the Federal government approved DOZENS of pipelines in other sensitive places. How is what Trump did any different under the surface?
- Pulling Teeth from the EPA. We need an EPA, it’s true. And, the new attitude under Scott “Head Should Be In A Basket” Pruitt seems to be, “push through whatever is going to kill all of the things.” However, this very same EPA approved the neonicotinoids that are most likely killing the bees. They’re in bed with Monsanto, and have been for some time.
See, the problem isn’t Trump; he’s just a louder manifestation of the quiet way we’ve been demolishing the environment for a long, long time. The underlying problem in question?
Humans, particularly in capitalist and colonialist societies, no longer understand our role in the biosystem.
We see “nature” as “something you go to” instead of “something we participate in.”
We see nature as a commodity instead of a partner. We write idiotic think-pieces on why we shouldn’t recognize rivers as persons. We use plants the same way we use designer purses, as decoration for our houses and business parks. We pour poison on our front yards and on our food and dump toxins in our drinking water. We come up with ways to divorce plants from the soil, and think that resource-dependent ‘ag-tech’ will save us, when in reality, within this system, it will help only the wealthiest humans who can afford to access it.
These are the underlying problems, and regardless of whether or not Trump makes these awful changes to policy stick, until we come up with a way to address our inability to participate in nature, there’s no turning back from the damage we’ve done.
At this point, we very seriously risk human extinction. We’d better get our acts together and learn our place on the spectrum of the biosystems we occupy really damn fast, otherwise our kids, grand kids, and great-grand kids are going to die.
