Putting Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the direction of businessman Lee Zeldin earlier this year was like contrasting the Flat Earth Society with building a rocket for moon travel. Last week Zeldin proposed to throw out the regulations that were aimed at controlling climate change and kick-starting the clean energy industries.
If Trump is successful it will gut the 55-year-old agency that was charged with protecting the environment and human health. The EPA — which I saw being formed in 1970 — would now be better labeled The Environmental Pollution Agency.
Specifically, what the Trump administration is proposing is to rid the country of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. In 2007 the Supreme Court justices ruled that the EPA had the power to define what pollutants were endangering the health of Americans and to set restrictions. Two years later the EPA named carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide and a few other gases as the culprits in causing the warming of the Earth (climate change).
Now 16 years later the new administration is saying climate change is a hoax, all of the science supporting it is bogus and the fossil fuel industry and the chemical manufacturers can act more like they did in 1950.
Since 1970 I attended countless hearings that established regulations fleshing out the vague mandates given to EPA by Congress. Brick by brick the rules began to clean things up. The air in Southern Indiana and Louisville became much more breathable, the Ohio River water has been clarified to the point where I would eat most fish caught there. These regulations were fought by the polluters as being too uneconomical to live with. They delayed and modified the new regulations but they basically lost the battles. Today they have taken a giant stride toward knocking down those very same rules like a toddler facing a tower of play blocks.
The gases that were named as an endangerment are called the greenhouse gases because they act the same as the greenhouse glass. Sun is allowed to pass through. The heat is then reflected back into space but cannot pass through as easily as before when man-made gases were added to the normal (natural) blanket of CO2. This natural blanket is vitally necessary to keep each night from plunging to below zero each night. However, the additional greenhouse gases from smokestacks and tailpipes holds too much heat in. Climate change is born.
The result is the melting of the polar ice caps, the shifting our weather to the north and the extremes of storms, floods and wildfires. The Trump administration is basically pressing to the floor the gas pedal that will accelerate the changes that started around 1900 but soared sharply since 1975.
There are several factors that might slow down the Trump anti-science train. One is the built-in slow speed of the process of changing standards. There are hearings meant to bring out the science for and against regulation changes. In the meantime, dozens of lawsuits are in the works aimed at stopping the Trump EPA in its tracks.
Maybe the biggest factor is the energy market itself, power companies and corporations have seen that solar, wind and other alternatives are actually cheaper ways to produce electricity than coal, oil or gas. Also, advanced battery technology is changing for the better monthly. Turning back the energy time machine to 1970 might not be possible in today’s marketplace.
This American energy scene should be much clearer by 2026.
David Ross Stevens was the Courier-Journal’s first investigative environmental writer, from 1968 to 1978. From 1993 to 2003 he taught a course — Environment and People — at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany. His email is dbqwriter@gmail.com