Trump’s Deregulated America of Fears

Trump’s Deregulated America of Fears

It’s essentially a mathematical theorem, that if you remove regulations that were imposed to prevent harm, that bad things will happen.  Trump promised in the campaign, that for every new regulation, he would remove two.  I took that as an upper limit.  He never repeated that after he was inaugurated.  Now, after a year, he is BRAGGING that he and his accomplices have removed 22 regulations for every new one.  Woe is us.

I thought that there were laws that required removed regulations be replaced with new ones that were as science-based or evidence-based as the initial one.  The initial studies for the regulations often took years and were done with public input and concern.  Apparently, the replacement requirement doesn’t really apply to many regulations.  In the 22 to 1 statement, there is no mention of replacements for regulations.  It is not stated if the 1 new regulation was a replacement and weakening of an initially strong regulation.

Unfortunately, we have to look forward to many serious disasters as a result of these deregulations.  Some, such as pollution, could take a long time to clean up and cost the public many times what an industry saved by removing the regulation.

Trump did not mention how many removals or weakenings are being challenged in court.  One such case is the methane pollution from fracking wells.

Trump also promised us, I think, $70 billion in infrastructure repairs to avoid serious accidents.  He hasn’t delivered on any of that, as far as I have heard, and one of the four years of his term has already passed.  The Positive Train Control safety system is available, but has been slow to be installed due to lack of funds.  Had Trump really cared about infrastructure, this would have been one of the highest priorities to have been speeded up over this year.

That would have prevented the tragic accident in Southern Washington that just occurred, where a train was allowed to go over a curve at 80 miles an hour, which was speed limited to 30 miles per hour.  The complete derailment and fall killed three passengers and wounded 100.  The ground system had already been installed, and the locomotive system could easily have been speeded up from its expected early 2018 installation.  Now, we all have to fear any time we get on a train.  Only about 49% of AMTRAK locomotives and 67% of its track is covered by positive train control at this time.

Trump’s 2018 budget would have cut 13% from federal transportation, mostly from subsidies for long distance rail service.  The $630 million cut would be about half of the long distance subsidy for service from AMTRAK.  It would have denied all rail service to 225 cities in 23 states.  So instead of adding to infrastructure, this is erasing it.

Trump has just completed a tax bill that shifts money to the very rich and from Democratic states to Republican states.  It will leave a 10-year deficit of $1.5 trillion, or about $150 billion a year.  But that is on the order of the unfunded costs of disasters increased by climate change: in floods, hurricanes, and wildfires.  The money should have been set aside for these disasters, especially from an administration that is in forced denial of climate science and climate change, by their oil oligarch donors.

 

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
This entry was posted in Climate Change, Climate Science, Donald Trump, Fire Risks, Infrastructure, Regulations, Tax Laws, Transportation, Trump on Climate Change. Bookmark the permalink.

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