Environmental Malignancy

Here is a list of the “accomplishments” of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump Administration:

- Approved construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline (previously blocked)

- Approved the use of a pesticide that it had formerly banned due to the dangers that it poses to humans

- Approved drilling and mining on public lands

- Withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord 

- Restricted the time line for the study of climate change to twenty years in the future (not beyond)

- Proposed opening Alaska’s Tongass rain forest to logging and mining. (The Tongass is one of the world’s biggest carbon-gobbling systems, an important defense against global warming.)

- Reversed clean water standards established under President Obama 

- Told the automotive industry to ignore former mileage standards

- When the manufacturers said that they preferred to adhere to stricter California emissions standards, the EPA revoked California’s ability to set such standards.

And now they are pushing a return to older lightbulb technology. You remember those lightbulbs. They were hot, brittle, and they burned out after a couple of months. Why would anyone want to return to them given the more efficient and longer lasting LED and fluorescent lights that are available today?

The bigger questions is why are they pushing any of this? I can understand them wanting to give the fossil fuel industry more opportunities to make profits - it seems that every US president is beholden to the oil, gas, and coal industries - but most of these policies are extreme even by pro-business and anti-regulation standards. 

For example, the American auto manufacturers don’t want relaxed emissions standards. They have made a lot of progress in this area and see no reason to go backward. They see regression as a competitive disadvantage, as foreign manufacturers will continue to push toward meeting higher emissions standards set abroad.

It seems to be driven by a malignant personality defect, the petty whims of a miserable, self-loathing individual with a flagrant disregard for anything that does not serve his immediate personal interests. I’ll bet that when he was a kid, that individual didn’t go to other kids’ houses to play and have fun. He went there with contempt in his heart, with an intent to break the kid’s toys, eat his candy, steal his lunch money, kick his dog, and torment his little sister before telling everyone that the kid was a loser, and that he went over there only because he felt sorry for him. That’s the level of shockingly mean-spirited, self-aggrandizing assholery to which the leadership of the United States government has stooped.