While Trump is creating havoc with his mismanagement of the immigration issue, and tweeting insults to everyone who doesn't view him as God's gift to the American voter, environmental protection is being insidiously sabotaged, mostly under the radar. He is a master at creating smoke screens with his distraction tactics while real damage is being done inside a cloud of diversion. Since being elected President, 67 environmental rules and regulations have been relaxed covering virtually every protection of our environment. To quote the President of the Environmental Defense fund, "The Administration is eroding a 50-year bipartisan legacy of American health and environmental protection. It has suppressed taxpayer-funded public information, gagged the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientists, suspended its grants and contracts, and frozen federal protections that reduce harmful pollution. And its attacks on our environmental safeguards are just beginning."
The last sentence is telling. "... the attacks on our environmental safeguards are just beginning." Although our withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord may have been mostly symbolic, his executive and cabinet level directives are infinitely more damaging. Lowering regulations on toxic air pollution, allowing fresh water pollution, reducing protection of endangered species, downsizing national monuments (Bear Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante), opening up oil and gas lease auctions are just a few of the actions that should scare anyone concerned about the legacy we are leaving our children. One environmental expert says environmental enforcement under the EPA is at the lowest level in 24 years.
This administration in the name of economic growth and "payback" to its corporate supporters is willing to sacrifice our future and the future of this planet. Where the hell are we going to move to when our environment is obliterated? Mars? This is it folks, the one and only earth we have. When November rolls around vote for no one who is not a strong advocate on environmental protection and realistically willing to confront climate change as an issue.
D.G.G.