On Environment, Biden Needs to Do a Lot More Than Roll Back the Rollbacks

By Jonathan Thompson, In These Times

01 December 20

President Trump gutted almost 100 environmental protections. Here’s a list of the ones Biden should undo first and why he must not stop there.

n ear­ly 2017, not long after Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump moved into the White House, his chief advi­sor, Steve Ban­non, said that the administration’s aim was the “decon­struc­tion of the admin­is­tra­tive state.” A char­i­ta­ble lis­ten­er might have heard a run-of-the-mill lib­er­tar­i­an goal, to down­size the bloat­ed gov­ern­ment in order to make room for per­son­al liberties.

It has since become clear that Trump cared more about free­dom for gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions?—?and for that mat­ter, Covid-19?—?to run rampant.

Per­haps nowhere was Trump’s approach more thor­ough than when it comes to the Earth. He removed lim­its on mer­cury and methane emis­sions, inca­pac­i­tat­ed the Clean Water Act and gut­ted pro­tec­tions for the Ton­gass Nation­al For­est in Alas­ka, to name just a few of near­ly 100 roll­backs. All pur­port­ed­ly to help the econ­o­my, achieve “ener­gy dom­i­nance” on pub­lic lands and make him look good?—?ener­gy-effi­cient light bulbs, he said, “make you look orange.”

Pres­i­dent-elect Joseph R. Biden has indi­cat­ed that he’ll quick­ly roll back the roll­backs as soon as he’s inau­gu­rat­ed. Yet a reset is not enough. In fact, many of the rules didn’t cut it under Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, and though Oba­ma tried to fix many of them, his efforts often fell short. Here are a few exam­ples of poli­cies and rules that Trump oblit­er­at­ed, and that Biden?—?hope­ful­ly with Congress’s help?—?could now rebuild, mak­ing them bet­ter and stronger than before.

Clean Pow­er Plan: Pres­i­dent Obama’s plan man­dat­ed a cut in pow­er sec­tor car­bon emis­sions by 32% from 2005 lev­els by 2030, which essen­tial­ly would have forced coal out of the ener­gy mix while leav­ing room for nat­ur­al gas. Before it went into effect, Trump gut­ted the plan, though it was hard­ly nec­es­sary: Eco­nom­ics forced coal plant retire­ments after Trump’s elec­tion, coal min­ing jobs con­tin­ued to wane and emis­sions dropped even more than the Oba­ma plan would have required. The plan was obso­lete before it was finalized.

Biden’s plan must include more ambi­tious emis­sions cuts and, equal­ly as impor­tant, pro­vide for a just tran­si­tion for work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties that will be aban­doned by the fos­sil fuel industries.

Oil and gas devel­op­ment: Trump rolled over the envi­ron­ment by rolling back rules for frack­ing, stock­ing the Inte­ri­or Depart­ment with indus­try insid­ers, ram­ming through approvals of pipelines built by his mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar donors, and by slash­ing roy­al­ties paid by oil companies.

Yet Obama’s poli­cies were equal­ly friend­ly to ener­gy devel­op­ment. His admin­is­tra­tion leased out two mil­lion more acres of pub­lic land to oil and gas com­pa­nies dur­ing his first term than Trump and over­saw a drilling boom of unprece­dent­ed mag­ni­tude. Biden needs not only to roll back the roll­backs, but also to over­haul the leas­ing process to shift pow­er away from cor­po­rate board­rooms and back into pub­lic hands, and increase oil and gas roy­al­ty pay­ments across the board to give Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers a fair shake.

Bears Ears Nation­al Mon­u­ment: In 2015, the Nava­jo Nation, Ute Moun­tain Ute, Hopi and Zuni tribes asked Oba­ma to des­ig­nate as a nation­al mon­u­ment 1.9 mil­lion acres of pub­lic land in south­east­ern Utah, with trib­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives hav­ing a major man­age­ment role. When Oba­ma estab­lished the mon­u­ment, it was 600,000 acres small­er than the pro­pos­al, and the trib­al role was reduced to an advi­so­ry one. Trump slashed the mon­u­ment by 85% and rammed through a shod­dy man­age­ment plan for what remained, fur­ther dimin­ish­ing the trib­al role.

Biden should restore the mon­u­ment, giv­ing the trib­al nations an equal role in deter­min­ing new bound­aries and cre­at­ing a strong man­age­ment plan.

That’s only the begin­ning. Biden will also have to restore anoth­er 80 or more reg­u­la­tions, redi­rect agen­cies that have been steered off-course, inval­i­date the lease sale for the Alas­ka Nation­al Wildlife Refuge, bring sci­ence back into pol­i­cy-mak­ing, stop the build­ing of the bor­der wall, and clean the house of Trump appointees who are try­ing to destroy the so-called admin­is­tra­tive state from within.

That includes William Per­ry Pend­ley?—?Twit­ter han­dle @Sagebrush_Rebel —?whom Trump installed as act­ing direc­tor of the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment in 2019. This Sep­tem­ber, a judge ruled that Pend­ley?—?nev­er approved by Con­gress?—?had served unlaw­ful­ly, and ordered him out of his role. Antic­i­pat­ing Trump, Pend­ley changed his title and refused to leave, insist­ing that the law and the court’s order “has no impact” on him.

With Trump now tak­ing a sim­i­lar stance, Biden may be forced to drag two peo­ple out of office come January.