Trump’s EPA rollbacks jeopardize our warming planet and its wary people | Editorial

Way back in what now seems like ages ago, magic was popular in nightclubs, on TV, sometimes even at friends’ parties if someone knew a few card tricks. No matter where the acts were performed, a legerdemain’s success typically depended on the illusionist’s ability to divert attention from what their hands were doing right in front of an audience’s eyes.

There’s a master magician in the White House right now. Less than a year into his presidency, Donald Trump has so many plates spinning precariously on sticks that it’s hard to focus on any one of them.

Making matters worse, the news media fall for the latest misdirection and too often give short shrift to important stories that demand more of Americans’ undivided attention.

Take, for example, the Trump administration’s mission to reverse what had been the government’s thoughtful approach to making our air safer to breathe and water safer to drink.

Like a CEO more concerned with his company’s bottom line than any harm that might result, Trump has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to stop enforcing dozens of federal rules enacted to save lives.

“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down the cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S., and more,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

Similar to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Zeldin seems to have been chosen by Trump to dismantle the agency he now directs rather than fulfill its mission.

Zeldin announced in July that he is shutting down the EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), a move favored by the American Chemistry Council, a trade group of more than 80 oil, refining, and mining associations that often disagree with EPA assessments of their products’ health risks.

H. Christopher Frey, who was President Joe Biden’s assistant EPA administrator in charge of development, says the quality of science conducted by ORD through its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) is a “poster case study” of science that’s subject to intense scrutiny. “What the industry does is try to engage in a proxy war over policy by attacking the science,” Frey said.

IRIS assessments outlining the dangers of formaldehyde, ethylene oxide, arsenic, and other chemicals were expected to lead to regulatory actions by the Biden administration, but that’s unlikely with Zeldin calling the shots for Trump.

Also likely to be abandoned is a Biden administration lawsuit filed against a neoprene manufacturer suspected of polluting the air near homes and schools in Saint John the Baptist Parish, La., with chloroprene, a known carcinogen.

“They’ve been trying for years to shut down IRIS,” Darya Minovi, a Union of Concerned Scientists senior analyst, told Inside Climate News, “because when IRIS conducts its independent scientific assessments using a great amount of rigor … you get stronger regulations, and that is not in the best interest of the big business polluters and those who have a financial stake in the EPA’s demise.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists says more than 400 firings, funding cuts, and other attacks on science occurred in the first six months of the Trump administration, which has led to a dramatic decrease in federal grants for research on topics including cancer, infectious disease, and environmental health.

Zeldin won’t admit he’s helping Trump undermine the EPA. He instead described the elimination of ORD as one of numerous “organizational improvements” that will deliver $748.8 million in savings to taxpayers. But Trump’s reduction-in-force measures, combined with earlier departures and layoffs, have cut the EPA’s workforce by 23%, to 12,448, its lowest level since 1986.

Such a dramatic reduction in staff will unquestionably hamper the EPA’s ability to protect Americans from environmental risks. Zeldin says ORD will be replaced by a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, but it will be smaller than ORD and focus primarily on coastal areas and drinking water safety. So, chemical companies, rest easy. You will be under much less scrutiny.

It’s important that all of us try to tune out less meaningful distractions in the news and place more focus on what is happening to federal agencies created to protect us from environmental and other dangers. Understand, too, that many federal workers are afraid to speak out. Trump placed 139 EPA employees on administrative leave in July for signing a letter to Zeldin voicing concern for his policies.

“We’re witnessing a willful disregard for scientific consensus, the reversal of decades of vital environmental regulations, the dismantling of the EPA’s crucial research arm, and a pervasive culture of fear taking hold across the agency,” said Justin Chen, president of the union that represents EPA workers.

You might expect the type of repression Chen describes in an autocratic nation that allows the subjugation of workers to protect businesses’ profits. But this is America. We can do better, and we should, by first ignoring the less important distractions that capture our attention daily online and on TV and focusing more clearly on what is happening in plain sight, every day, right before our eyes.