Trump Leaves a Destructive Climate Wake
Humpty Dumpty Ran on The Wall;
Humpty Dumpty Had a Viral Fall;
All the King’s Governors and all of his Judgemen,
Couldn’t Put Humpty in Office Again. (We hope.)
The NY Times had a series of gloom and doom articles on Trump’s wake on the environment, and it was a literal Wake also for environmentalism. This was after their editorial with detailed articles asked readers to reject Trump for a second term.
Briefly, Trump is stacking the agency scientific advisory committees with deregulators and non-scientists, probably from the industries being regulated. Some of these will outlive his administration.
Also, his wake of 200 federal judgeships come mainly from the Federalist Society, funded by oilman Charles Koch. They are also ruling on Republican backed vote blocking strategies. They will continue to rule Republican on election appeals.
Then, Supreme Court Super-stacker Justice hardly-in-waiting Amy Coney Barrett opposes the Executive Branch Agencies actually adopting regulations. She wants them to be explicitly passed by the Congress. Any simple regulation can run hundreds or a thousand pages covering all cases and details. This takes many experts and scientists many years to draft, and is subject to public input periods and modifications. It is totally unrealistic to expect mostly lawyers and non-scientists in Congress to actually get involved in the details. Hence, no regulations, even though they are badly needed.
Finally, Trump has started his high-speed massive destructive Wake with three months left before the next administration takes over. He is hardly leaving any scientific agency unflooded. He is actually swamping them. Instead of a 60 day comment period of comments on regulations, followed by discussion and changes, he has shortened all that to 30 days. The regulations are also being designed to be non-changeable. Of course, one can always appeal to the courts, above.
The climatecasechart.com at Columbia U. Law lists 855 federal litigations going on already on climate relevant regulations.
Trump has now installed two non-scientific assistant administrators in the CDC. He has been censoring their notifications and websites. This has been going on in other agencies as well. We also know that he is escalating his lies and has abandoned any safety goals to fight the Coronavirus and save lives.
It will take a long string of pumps to drain the environmental flood left by Trump.
