Trump is Gambling With OUR Jobs and OUR Resources by Cancelling Regulations

Trump is Gambling With OUR Jobs and OUR Resources by Cancelling Regulations

 
Trump started his 100 days allowing coal companies to pollute streams, and ended it with erasing the ban on offshore oil drilling in sensitive population zones and ecological zones. He also removed regulations on drilling devices that led to the $25 billion Deepwater Horizon Disaster. This affects us in California where we remember the Santa Barbara oil spill, and have Marine Protection Areas like in Laguna Beach. This affects Alaska where the Exxon Valdez oil spill destroyed the environment for more than a decade.

 
Does Trump think that he is graced by God, as he claimed during his inauguration, and no accident will occur anyway? Does he believe that the messiest industries, the fossil fuel ones, will regulate themselves, as BP claimed before, during, and after the Deepwater Horizon 5 million barrels of oil pollution. Or, is Trump preparing to cast blame on Obama, or his Cabinet, by providing a path of Plausible Deniability. Or, is Trump going to escape responsibility, as he did in his businesses, by declaring bankruptcy.

 
As an aside, lets wonder what has become of Exxon 28 years later, after the Exxon Valdez polluted Prince William Sound? What’s that, their CEO is Secretary of State, and being honored by Putin for agreeing to help Russia build offshore oilfields? And now seeking an exemption for Exxon to sanctions on Russia for stealing Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the first of which is oil rich, and the second mining rich.

 
Back to Trump’s Plausible Deniability. Trump’s Simple-to-Read Executive Orders now ask for studies of the regulations, that he wants to get rid of, by the appropriate Cabinet department. So, of course, the Cabinet secretaries, hand chosen to destroy their Department, will recommend the removal or almost total destruction of the regulations. Then Congress and Trump will cancel or almost totally diminish the regulations. When the inevitable catastrophes occur, Trump can blame the people who wrote the reports, the Cabinet Secretaries who dropped the regulations, and the Congress which voted to cancel them. And of course, blame Obama, who wrote the original regulation, although that doesn’t make any sense. Trump is Gambling With OUR Jobs and OUR Resources by Cancelling Regulations

 
Trump started his 100 days allowing coal companies to pollute streams, and ended it with erasing the ban on offshore oil drilling in sensitive population zones and ecological zones. He also removed regulations on drilling devices that led to the $25 billion Deepwater Horizon Disaster. This affects us in California where we remember the Santa Barbara oil spill, and have Marine Protection Areas like in Laguna Beach. This affects Alaska where the Exxon Valdez oil spill destroyed the environment for more than a decade.

 
Does Trump think that he is graced by God, as he claimed during his inauguration, and no accident will occur anyway? Does he believe that the messiest industries, the fossil fuel ones, will regulate themselves, as BP claimed before, during, and after the Deepwater Horizon 5 million barrels of oil pollution. Or, is Trump preparing to cast blame on Obama, or his Cabinet, by providing a path of Plausible Deniability. Or, is Trump going to escape responsibility, as he did in his businesses, by declaring bankruptcy.

 
As an aside, lets wonder what has become of Exxon 28 years later, after the Exxon Valdez polluted Prince William Sound? What’s that, their CEO is Secretary of State, and being honored by Putin for agreeing to help Russia build offshore oilfields? And now seeking an exemption for Exxon to sanctions on Russia for stealing Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the first of which is oil rich, and the second mining rich.

 
Back to Trump’s Plausible Deniability. Trump’s Simple-to-Read Executive Orders now ask for studies of the regulations, that he wants to get rid of, by the appropriate Cabinet department. So, of course, the Cabinet secretaries, hand chosen to destroy their Department, will recommend the removal or almost total destruction of the regulations. Then Congress and Trump will cancel or almost totally diminish the regulations. When the inevitable catastrophes occur, Trump can blame the people who wrote the reports, the Cabinet Secretaries who dropped the regulations, and the Congress which voted to cancel them. And of course, blame Obama, who wrote the original regulation, although that doesn’t make any sense.

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.
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