Last week, I saw on the State House News Service that Attorney General Maura Healey was releasing a report on her efforts to stop the Trump administration from weakening and/or eliminating multiple environmental protections. I followed the link and read the report. It's titled, "Fighting for a Healthy Massachusetts: Stopping Illegal Federal Environmental Attacks and Rollbacks." You should read it, too, if you haven't already.
A short time later, perusing the New York Times website, I saw this headline: "The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here's the Full List." I clicked on it and slowly went through the list. Here's a particularly nasty sample: early in his term, Trump revoked a rule that prevented coal companies from dumping mining debris into streams.
My mind flashed to this statement by Trump during his first debate with Joe Biden, a line he repeated near the end of the second presidential debate last week: "I want crystal clean water and air. I want beautiful, clean air."
Yes.
And Vladimir Putin wanted nothing more in 2016 than Hillary to win the presidency.
Since January of 2017, Trump's first month in office, the Massachusetts AG's office, acting in concert with attorneys general from other states, has initiated more than 200 separate challenges to what Healey describes as "the Trump Administration's attempts to gut environmental protections."
Healey, et al., have gotten results. For example:
In 2017, a lawsuit she was a party to stopped Trump from rolling back restrictions on the use of hydrofluorocarbons, one of the most harmful greenhouse gases.
In 2017-18, Healey (and others) successfully opposed the federal Department of Energy in court over the department's plan to abandon energy efficiency standards for appliances and industrial equipment. This action, she estimates, will save U.S. consumers and businesses $12 billion over time.
In "Fighting for a Healthy Massachusetts...," Healey writes:
"The Trump administration is engaged in a concerted effort to delay, weaken and repeal critical environmental policies. Unless stopped, that effort will jeopardize decades of progress in cleaning up the environment and protecting human health...
"The Administration is also taking aim at important procedures and safeguards that guide the federal government's decision-making about issues that affect our environment -- for instance, by seeking to undermine the role of scientific research and to eliminate consideration of climate change and health harms.
"On top of that, EPA and other federal agencies have drastically cut back their efforts to enforce the rules still on the books, giving a free pass to violators and creating more work for states."
No doubt the report was timed to hurt Trump's re-election campaign at a point when the presidential race is at its hottest. Whether it will have an impact is impossible to say. Unquestionably, it serves as a reminder of how health is on the ballot November 3: ours and our planet's both.
Even if Biden wins, we won't be in the clear environmentally because of how Trump, with Mitch McConnell's help, has installed scores of true conservatives to federal judgeships, including two -- and soon three -- to the Supreme Court.
There are slowly moving but well funded efforts underway to shatter the basis of federal regulation-making on the ground that the Congress has delegated too much of its lawmaking authority to un-elected bureaucrats.
During the hearings on her nomination to the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett was asked for her views on climate disruption caused by global warming. "You know," she said, "I'm certainly not a scientist. I would not say I have firm views on it."
To another question on the same topic, Barrett replied, "I will not express a view on a matter of public policy, especially one that is politically controversial."
Not just cynical dogs who blog are finding that an ominous dodge by a lawyer advertised as a brilliant intellect.
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