100 Days of Harm
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund
In his first three months as president, Donald Trump has waged an all-out, senseless attack on our environment. Enough is enough.
An oil refinery in California
iStock
Like any arbitrary benchmark, the 100-day point of a new president’s term normally tells us only so much about what’s to come. In the case of President Trump’s all-out assault on our environment and health, however, we’ve already seen more than enough.
In his first three months on the job, Trump has acted again and again to undo half a century of bipartisan progress in protecting our rights to clean water, air, and lands. He’s moved to part ways with longstanding American values of conservation in the public interest. And he’s betrayed the covenant we’ve forged with our children to leave them a livable world.
That’s not a plan to put America first. It’s about putting industrial polluter profits first―and putting the rest of us at risk.
Presidents don’t get to roll back generations of hard-won gains with the stroke of a pen. Working with his fellow Republicans in Congress, Trump has already killed rules to protect coal communities from mountaintop demolition that destroys forests and streams. And he may expose more public lands to the ravages of coal mining.
Much of what he’s ordered, though, can be halted, slowed, or turned back around―in the court of public opinion or in a court of law. To do that, we’ll have to stand together and give real voice to truth against a president intent on using the full powers of his high office to try to eliminate the tools we need to protect our families and communities from ongoing harm.
From his first week in office, Trump and congressional Republicans have attacked the commonsense safeguards we all depend on to protect the water we drink, the air we breathe, the lands that grow our food, and the wild places we share. He’s put the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the thumb of Scott Pruitt, an avowed foe of the agency’s mission, while proposing to gut the EPA budget and staff.
He’s taken on the very notion of responsible public oversight with an unlawful and baseless order to scrap two existing regulations for every new one put in place―as though we can cope with emerging threats only if we pretend the old ones no longer exist.
And he’s sounded an ignominious retreat from the essential progress we’re making in the fight against global climate change.
Any one of these tacks would be cause for national alarm and public rebuke. Taken as a whole, the Trump broadside attack on the nation’s environment and health demands the united and concerted opposition of every American, from red state and blue, who cares about our common future.
Whatever our political leanings, we all should be shocked at this radical campaign to roll back environmental safeguards, abandon important national goals, and hobble our environmental steward, the EPA. Trump’s reckless attempts to do just that run wildly at odds with the will of the people, as a raft of recent polling proves.
A solid 61 percent of the country disapproves of Trump’s big polluter agenda, an April poll by Quinnipiac University found. Just 19 percent want the EPA weakened or eliminated, according to a January Reuters poll, with 61 percent saying the agency should be strengthened, expanded, or kept at its current strength. Trump, though, has proposed slashing the agency’s budget by 31 percent, taking it back to 1990 funding levels, and cutting staff by 20 percent.
In one policy area after another, in fact, the disparity between Trump’s actions and public opinion is striking:
Protecting Our Waterways
- Drinking Water: Nationally, fears over water pollution hit a 16-year high in March, with 63 percent of Americans telling the Gallup polling organization they worry “a great deal” about drinking water pollution. Who could blame them? Trump has directed Pruitt to dismantle the Clean Water Rule, put in place to protect wetlands and streams that feed drinking water sources for one in every three Americans.
- Great Lakes: Trump’s cuts would end federal funding to reduce industrial and municipal waste, toxic contaminants, and other pollution in the Great Lakes, the largest surface freshwater ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere. Who’s with Trump on that one? Not the people who understand it the most. In Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and nearby states, 86 percent of the public supports the federal effort to clean up the Great Lakes.
- Chesapeake Bay: Trump has proposed killing, also, a multistate plan to clean up the nation’s largest natural estuary, the Chesapeake Bay, which is being strangled by the toxic runoff from a 64,000-square-mile watershed that reaches nearly to Canada. That flies directly against the interests of those who live at the mouth of the bay: 94 percent of Virginians support the federal bay cleanup program, finds an April poll by Christopher Newport University.
Energy Development
- Clean Energy: What about Trump’s belittling disdain for American clean energy innovation and enterprise? Turns out 71 percent of the country favors wind, solar, and other alternative energy over oil, gas, and coal, with all the damage and danger they bring, according to an April Gallup poll.
- Dirty Energy: Fully 59 percent of survey respondents say environmental protection should come ahead of fossil fuel development, with just 23 percent preferring dirty energy to clean water and air. The 26-point gap between the two, by the way, is the largest margin since Gallup began asking the question 15 years ago.
Fuel Economy
Trump has directed the EPA to weaken or eliminate standards to clean up the cars and dirty power plants that together account for 60 percent of the U.S. carbon pollution that’s driving global climate change. That’s a stone-cold loser in the public mind. Drivers like saving billions of dollars a year at the pump, and an April poll by Quinnipiac finds that 76 percent of the public is “somewhat concerned” or “very concerned” about climate change, with 62 percent saying Trump should not backtrack on standards and rules put in place to fight it.
Climate
- Climate Action: Far from supporting Trump’s retreat from the climate fight, 59 percent of poll respondents say the country needs to be doing even more to fight the carbon pollution that’s causing seas to rise, turning croplands to deserts, and contributing to raging wildfires, flooding, droughts, and storms.
- Jobs: Fully 68 percent of Americans understand that we can fight climate change and support economic growth, like the gains that have put three million Americans to work helping us to become more efficient, building all-electric and hybrid cars, and getting more clean power from the wind and sun.
- Research: The Quinnipiac poll finds that 72 percent of Americans say it’s a “bad idea” for Trump to slash funding for the scientific research we need to better understand climate change and other threats to our environment.
A hundred days into Trump’s presidency, we’ve already seen more than enough. It’s time to gather as one and speak out against his senseless campaign to turn back the clock on 50 years of environmental gains and stanch the promise of more progress to come.
On Saturday, April 29, I’ll travel, along with thousands of others, to Washington, D.C., to march with the People’s Climate Movement. I hope you’ll join us, in the nation’s capital or in any of dozens of sister marches across the country, to show Trump just how far out of step his policies are with the will of the people he serves.
Let’s put Donald Trump on notice. Let’s show him what we believe. We won’t back down from this challenge. We won’t back down from this fight. We’ll defend our health and environment. We’ll hold fast to the values we share. We’ll stand up for our children’s future and their right to a livable world.
Read the full article at: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/rhea-suh/100-days-harm
