Horowitz: A Tale of Two Presidencies on the Environment
Rob Horowitz, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™
Horowitz: A Tale of Two Presidencies on the Environment
Reagan appointed William D. Ruckelshaus to replace Ann Burford at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1983, the year before he was again on the ballot, and publicly acknowledged that his administration needed to do a better job on the environment. Ruckelshaus had impeccable environmental credentials, having ably served as our nation’s first EPA Administrator in the Nixon Administration. Burford and a number of her staffers were under scrutiny for failing to clean up toxic waste and for their ties to the chemical industry and other polluters. That same year, Secretary of the Interior James Watt, a champion of development on public lands, was pushed out.
Fierce anti-environmentalists, Watt and Burford (Justice Gorsuch’s mom) were originally appointed to carry out Reagan’s belief that our environmental policies had gone too far and were severely impeding free enterprise. Coupled with their exits was a moderation in policy. President Reagan realized a change in rhetoric by itself was insufficient.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTIn contrast, President Trump has opted to dress up the same destructive and unwise policies as somehow good for the environment. Triggered by poll findings that his record of rolling back environmental progress was hurting him with millennials and with suburban swing voters, the president recently surrounded himself with his environmental officials and went on at length about what a good job his administration was doing on clean air and clean water. “As the Cabinet Secretaries will tell you, from the very beginning, I have given them clear direction to focus on addressing environmental challenges so we can provide the highest quality of life to all Americans,” Trump remarked. “In addition to clean air and clean water, that means being good stewards of our public lands; prioritizing cleanup of polluted lands that threaten our most vulnerable citizens, and threaten them very dearly…”
These remarks are completely divorced from reality. As numerous fact-checkers have pointed out, this Administration is loosening regulations protecting streams and wetlands, rolling back clean air requirements and opening up public lands to more energy development. This is even before we get to its total abandonment of leadership and actions to curb climate change. As presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told The New York Times, “It is an utter farce for the president to talk about America’s environmental leadership, when he has been a champion of the polluters.”
As with so many other issues, however, Donald Trump appears to think that a sufficient number of voters will believe reality is what he says it is rather than what anyone can see with their own eyes. Or perhaps more precisely, he is betting on his ability to sow confusion, making it more difficult for people to separate fact from fiction and counting on this confusion to cause people to give him a pass.
I don’t believe the American people are that easily fooled. While environmental issues are unlikely to be at the center of the 2020 elections, Trump will pay a price--perhaps not as high a price as he deserves--for his disastrous over-all environmental record and his irresponsible retrenchment on climate change.
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