The Cuyahoga River, which runs through downtown Cleveland, Ohio, used to catch fire every decade or so. It started in the 1860s, when the river became choked with industrial waste, and the conflagrations continued all the way until the 1960s – the same decade that Americans got serious about environmental protection.
People in the US now take for granted their clean water, clean air, and healthy forests. And when those are jeopardised, such as when residents of Flint, Michigan, could no longer drink their tap water, they feel enraged – and justly so. But at this moment in history, the ability of Americans to expect a healthy and safe environment is in greater danger than at any time since the Cuyahoga River last caught fire in 1969.
The policy proposals outlined by Donald Trump and the thinktanks advising his campaign would turn back the tide on America’s bedrock environmental laws. Most of these laws were passed during the administrations of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon in the 1960s and 1970s.
Indeed, the blockbuster Project 2025 policy platform calls for “a whole-of-government unwinding” of the nation’s environmental laws, and states that the Environmental Protection Agency’s “structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed.”
Environmental protection should be a non-partisan issue. Instead, it has become ideologically supercharged by its proximity to climate politics. Much of this polarisation comes from highly successful lobbying campaigns from entrenched interests – particularly fossil fuel companies – that are threatened by proposals for an energy transition.
Such issues are hardly new to American politics. In the 20th century, timber companies and mining firms swallowed up huge swathes of American forests, polluted waterways, and threatened beloved ecosystems. And in the 1960s, two enormous hydroelectric dams were nearly built that would have flooded the Grand Canyon’s Colorado River.
By the end of the 1960s, these assaults on public land, air, and water had slowed. But conservation and commonsense prevailed only because of regulation that evaluated the potential private benefits of development against the potential public costs. Industry frequently lost out, but public lands, public health, and America’s natural heritage won.
Today, few Americans would argue against the wisdom of these decisions to slow old-growth timber harvesting, to stop damming wild rivers, and to clean up the acid air in US cities. Yet they are now witnessing a once-in-a-generation push to turn back the clock on these hard-won victories, while also scuttling the path-breaking climate and green manufacturing achievements of Joe Biden’s administration.
Trump has promised to fire experts in government, install loyalists in their place, and adopt a “drill, baby, drill” mentality. And unlike in decades past, the threat of this deregulation is amplified by the enormous challenges posed by climate change, and the brazen willingness of certain cronies to peddle conspiracy theories about ecology and earth science.
Endangering the future
Gutting regulatory capacity, reducing public support for emergency preparedness (for example, by privatising the Federal Emergency Management Agency), and pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement. These actions all reveal a shocking naivete, as though the era of environmental tragedy were purely a thing of the past.
But in 2023 alone, the US suffered a record 28 climate and weather-related disasters – shattering the previous record of 22 such disasters in a given year. Each caused more than US$1 billion (£770 million) in damage, with a total price tag north of US$90 billion.
These figures come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which Project 2025 says “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatised, or placed under the control of states and territories.”
America’s environmental regulations are, admittedly, far from perfect, and the agencies tasked with enforcing them are often so underfunded that developers face long, burdensome delays. Bipartisan proposals to improve these issues are currently being hotly debated in Congress.
The future of America’s farms, infrastructure, homes, coastal communities, and forests is on the ballot. As election day approaches in this decisive decade for climate action, Americans should look to the past to ensure they don’t take a healthy environment for granted, while securing a safe climate for current and future generations.
Upon signing the landmark 1964 Wilderness Act, which protected vast swathes of US public land, President Lyndon B. Johnson called environmental regulations “the highest tradition of our heritage as conservators as well as users of America’s bountiful natural endowments.” This heritage and our shared planetary future depend on voters to steadfastly defend this tradition of stewardship.
This article was first published in The Conversation.
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