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Committing crimes against humanity’s future….
The environmental rollbacks came one after the next this week, potentially affecting everything from the survival of rare whales to the health of the Hudson River.
On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed to strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams, narrowing the reach of the Clean Water Act.
On Wednesday, federal wildlife agencies announced changes to the Endangered Species Act that could make it harder to rescue endangered species from the brink of extinction.
And on Thursday, the Interior Department moved to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region in the high Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.
If the Trump administration’s proposals are finalized and upheld in court, they could reshape U.S. environmental policy for years to come, environmental lawyers and activists said.
“This was the week from hell for environmental policy in the United States,” said Pat Parenteau, a professor emeritus and senior fellow for climate policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School. “Unless stopped by the courts, each of these proposed rollbacks will do irreparable harm to the nation’s water quality, endangered species and marine ecosystems.”
The quick pace of these proposals was notable, even for an administration that has enacted Mr. Trump’s agenda at breakneck speed.
While the administration was working in Washington to dismantle environmental protections, 3,300 miles to the south, negotiators from nearly 200 nations were trying to improve the planet’s health at the United Nations climate summit in Brazil.
A White House official, who declined to be identified, said the timing was unrelated to the U.N. climate summit, which the Trump administration boycotted this year. It was the first time since the annual summits began 30 years ago that the United States was not present.
“The Trump administration unveiled many historic announcements this week to further President Trump’s American energy dominance agenda,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said in an email. “President Trump serves the American people, not radical climate activists who have fallen victim to the biggest scam of the century.”
A range of industries supported the changes, including groups representing farmers, oil drillers, chemical manufacturers, home builders and real estate developers.
“The developments this week were definitely major steps toward the administration’s goal of achieving and restoring American energy dominance and manufacturing dominance as well,” said Chris Phalen, vice president of domestic policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group. “We’re definitely very pleased with what came out.”
The E.P.A. kicked off the wave of deregulation on Monday, when it proposed to significantly scale back the Clean Water Act, which Congress passed in 1972 to protect all “waters of the United States” from pollution or destruction.
The agency said it would more narrowly define “waters of the United States” to exclude many wetlands and streams across the country. The changes could strip federal protections from up to 55 million acres of wetlands, or about 85 percent of all wetlands nationwide, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
The environmental rollbacks came one after the next this week, potentially affecting everything from the survival of rare whales to the health of the Hudson River.
On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed to strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams, narrowing the reach of the Clean Water Act.
On Wednesday, federal wildlife agencies announced changes to the Endangered Species Act that could make it harder to rescue endangered species from the brink of extinction.
And on Thursday, the Interior Department moved to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region in the high Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.
If the Trump administration’s proposals are finalized and upheld in court, they could reshape U.S. environmental policy for years to come, environmental lawyers and activists said.
“This was the week from hell for environmental policy in the United States,” said Pat Parenteau, a professor emeritus and senior fellow for climate policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School. “Unless stopped by the courts, each of these proposed rollbacks will do irreparable harm to the nation’s water quality, endangered species and marine ecosystems.”
The quick pace of these proposals was notable, even for an administration that has enacted Mr. Trump’s agenda at breakneck speed.
While the administration was working in Washington to dismantle environmental protections, 3,300 miles to the south, negotiators from nearly 200 nations were trying to improve the planet’s health at the United Nations climate summit in Brazil.
A White House official, who declined to be identified, said the timing was unrelated to the U.N. climate summit, which the Trump administration boycotted this year. It was the first time since the annual summits began 30 years ago that the United States was not present.
“The Trump administration unveiled many historic announcements this week to further President Trump’s American energy dominance agenda,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said in an email. “President Trump serves the American people, not radical climate activists who have fallen victim to the biggest scam of the century.”
A range of industries supported the changes, including groups representing farmers, oil drillers, chemical manufacturers, home builders and real estate developers.
“The developments this week were definitely major steps toward the administration’s goal of achieving and restoring American energy dominance and manufacturing dominance as well,” said Chris Phalen, vice president of domestic policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group. “We’re definitely very pleased with what came out.”
The E.P.A. kicked off the wave of deregulation on Monday, when it proposed to significantly scale back the Clean Water Act, which Congress passed in 1972 to protect all “waters of the United States” from pollution or destruction.
The agency said it would more narrowly define “waters of the United States” to exclude many wetlands and streams across the country. The changes could strip federal protections from up to 55 million acres of wetlands, or about 85 percent of all wetlands nationwide, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
