Republican President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 by executive order, consolidating various environmental agencies scattered throughout multiple cabinet departments.
I had just begun teaching High School Social Studies two years before that, and continued until 1984. During the 70s, interdisciplinary teaching was “a thing” and I coordinated with a science department teacher for a part of senior topics that focused on Water and Air Pollution. A huge topic at the time was “acid rain.”
Acid rain was created far from New England but destroyed many lakes and maple trees in New England, Ontario, and the Maritime Provinces. Remember the pictures of dead fish floating on the edges of lakes and the crazy beautiful appearance of a lake so crystal clear – because acid had killed every single form of life right down to the bottom. You don’t hear much about “acid rain” these days, so I got curious and looked it up. And we don’t hear much about it because we, the American people, updated and replaced the Clean Air Act in 1990; that was the turning point.
The bittersweet story of how we stopped acid rain
On BBC, 7 August 2019, by Lesley Evans Ogden. Excerpts below:
At its worst, acid rain stripped forests bare in Europe, wiped lakes clear of life in parts of Canada and the US, and harmed human health and crops in China where the problem persists. Looking back today, there is little argument that the cause was sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emitted by fossil fuel combustion by cars and industrial facilities like smelters and coal-burning utilities. When combined with water and oxygen in the atmosphere, these air pollutants chemically transform into sulphuric and nitric acid. Acidic droplets in clouds then fall as rain, snow or hail.
We know this now. But for a long time, acid rain was a puzzle. …
For example, trout depend on tiny organisms that require calcium to form exoskeletons, but these critical organisms died as acidified waters dissolved their protective coats. This was learned after a lengthy experiment conducted by David Schindler [then an ELA senior scientist and now emeritus professor at the University of Alberta, Canada]. So “lake trout stopped reproducing, not because they were toxified by the acid, but because they were starving to death,” he says.
Scientists began pinpointing culprits and journalists covered the problem through the 1970s and 1980s, but some people working in industry were doing their best to obfuscate, sow doubt and delay action.
“There were lots of deniers of acid rain,” says Likens. At the time, Likens remembers giving public lectures on the topic. On occasion someone would stand up, rudely interrupt him, and say they didn’t believe in acid rain. “I would often respond by saying, ‘Well, have you ever collected a sample of rain and analysed it?’ They would say ‘No’ and I would say, ‘Well try it some time.’”
Like with climate change, says Likens, there were many big, powerful, wealthy people involved with vested interests. From its discovery in 1963 to passage of the Clean Air Act in 1990, legislative action on acid rain took 27 years.
––Read the rest of this success story from the article from which the above text is quoted: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190823-can-lessons-from-acid-rain-help-stop-climate-change
“Acid Rain” is but ONE of the problems with air pollution! Remember when Los Angeles was known for its perpetual “smog”? It’s rare today due to clean air laws and regulations. Of course the really big issue with air pollution today, denied once again by corporate interests, is climate change.
Yet the Republican Party platform mentions slashing corporate regulations multiple times. Their elite billionaire backers can’t wait for these terrible “burdens” to be removed.
On September 7, 2024, in an address to the Economic Club of New York, Donald Trump pledged that for every new regulation his government makes, they will eliminate ten old ones. And, dangerous as that sounds to me, anyway, I have no doubt he will do that if elected.
It will start with another corrupt appointment to the EPA Administrator position. Keep in mind who he appointed during his 2017-2021 term. Trump’s first appointment was Scott Pruitt who, as Attorney-General for the State of Oklahoma, described himself as a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” He brought 14 lawsuits against the EPA while a State A-G. Pruitt was forced to resign as EPA Administrator over a number of unethical actions taken to enrich his own life and family. The replacement was Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist whose top corporate client was Murray Energy. That company’s CEO, Robert Murray, is a climate change denier and a major backer of Donald Trump.
During Trump’s first term in office, over 100 environmental regulations were rolled back, including 28 that relate to air pollution. Here is a list from the NY Times. After each of the 28 items, it tells you what part of the government issued the change, with a link to additional information.
1. Weakened Obama-era fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for passenger cars and light trucks.
E.P.A. and Transportation Department | Read more »
2. Revoked California’s ability to set stricter tailpipe emissions standards than the federal government.
E.P.A. | Read more »
3. Withdrew the legal justification for an Obama-era rule that limited mercury emissions from coal power plants.
E.P.A. | Read more »
4. Formally withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, an international plan to avert catastrophic climate change adopted by nearly 200 counties.
Executive Order | Read more »
5. Changed the way cost-benefit analyses are conducted under the Clean Air Act, potentially making it harder to issue new public health and climate protections.
E.P.A. | Read more »
6. Canceled a requirement for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions.
E.P.A. | Read more »
7. Revised and partially repealed an Obama-era rule limiting methane emissions on public lands, including intentional venting and flaring from drilling operations. A federal court struck down the revision in July 2020, calling the Trump administration’s reasoning “wholly inadequate” and mandating enforcement of the original rule. However, the Obama-era rule was later partially struck down in a separate court case, during which the Trump administration declined to defend it.
Interior Department | Read more »
8. Eliminated Obama-era methane emissions standards for oil and gas facilities and narrowed standards limiting the release of other polluting chemicals known as “volatile organic compounds” to only certain facilities.
E.P.A. | Read more »
9. Withdrew a Clinton-era rule designed to limit toxic emissions from major industrial polluters, and later proposed codifying the looser standards.
E.P.A. | Read more »
10. Revised a program designed to safeguard communities from increases in pollution from new power plants to make it easier for facilities to avoid emissions regulations.
E.P.A. | Read more »
11. Amended rules that govern how refineries monitor pollution in surrounding communities.
E.P.A. | Read more »
12. Overturned Obama-era guidance meant to reduce emissions during power plant start-ups, shutdowns and malfunctions. As part of the process, the E.P.A. also reversed a requirement that Texas follow emissions rules during certain malfunction events.
E.P.A. | Read more »
13. Weakened an Obama-era rule meant to reduce air pollution in national parks and wilderness areas.
E.P.A. | Read more »
14. Weakened oversight of some state plans for reducing air pollution in national parks.
E.P.A. | Read more »
15. Established a minimum pollution threshold at which the E.P.A. can regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources: 3 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. (Power plants meet this threshold, but oil and gas production facilities fall just below it.)
E.P.A. | Read more »
16. Relaxed air pollution regulations for a handful of plants that burn waste coal for electricity.
E.P.A. | Read more »
17. Repealed rules meant to reduce leaking and venting of powerful greenhouse gases known as hydrofluorocarbons from large refrigeration and air conditioning systems.
E.P.A. | Read more »
18. Directed agencies to stop using an Obama-era calculation of the social cost of carbon, which rulemakers used to estimate the long-term economic benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Executive Order | Read more »
19. Released new guidance that allows upwind states to contribute more ozone pollution to downwind states than during the Obama-era. (The E.P.A. under Mr. Trump also rejected petitions from a handful of states over failure to address upwind states’ pollution.)
E.P.A. | Read more »
20. Withdrew guidance directing federal agencies to include greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews. But several district courts have ruled that emissions must be included in such reviews.
Executive Order; Council on Environmental Quality | Read more »
21. Revoked an Obama executive order that set a goal of cutting the federal government’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent over 10 years.
Executive Order | Read more »
22. Repealed a requirement that state and regional authorities track tailpipe emissions from vehicles on federal highways.
Transportation Department | Read more »
23. Lifted a summertime ban on the use of E15, a gasoline blend made of 15 percent ethanol. (Burning gasoline with a higher concentration of ethanol in hot conditions increases smog.)
E.P.A. | Read more »
24. Changed rules to allow states and the E.P.A. to take longer to develop and approve plans aimed at cutting methane emissions from existing landfills.
E.P.A. | Read more »
25. Withdrew a proposed rule aimed at reducing pollutants, including air pollution, at sewage treatment plants.
E.P.A. | Read more »
26. Threw out most of a proposed policy that would have tightened pollution standards for offshore oil and gas operations and required them to use improved pollution controls.
Interior | Read more »
27. Amended Obama-era emissions standards for clay ceramics manufacturers.
E.P.A. | Read more »
28. Relaxed some Obama-era requirements for companies to monitor and repair leaks at oil and gas facilities, including exempting certain low-production wells – a significant source of methane emissions – from the requirements altogether. (Other leak regulations were eliminated.)
E.P.A. | Read more »
When you read some of the details of the regulations that were weakened or eliminated above, you understand better the lie in the Republican Platform when it says on page 7 as part of its plan to fight inflation:
- Cut Costly and Burdensome Regulations
Republicans will reinstate President Trump’s Deregulation Policies, which saved Americans $11,000 per household, and end Democrats’ regulatory onslaught that disproportionately harms low- and middle-income households.
Low and middle income households are most likely to experience death, injury, and life-long illness from polluting coal plants in their neighborhood, polluting methane, chemical plant explosions, and train derailments. That’s the burden that regulations are attempting to save them from. I don’t know where they came up with the $11,000 figure, but it is meaningless. The only party to financial savings are corporate CEOs and stockholders. And regardless of anything in the Republican Platform, the super wealthy is a major constituency and source of support for the Party.
Bottom line: Trump is not making America great again; he’s making it more polluted and deadly – again.
Resources:
Acid Rain Bittersweet Retrospective (BBC, 8/7/19): https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190823-can-lessons-from-acid-rain-help-stop-climate-change
Coal Catastrophe (Mountain State Spotlight, 12/12/21): https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2021/12/12/coal-massive-environmental-catastrophe/
Wikipedia: William Ruckelshaus. His life story is a good read. A quiet American hero. There is so much irony in it. He his contacted by the Reagan administration to come back and administer the EPA. The original Reagan appointee couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with the Superfund mess; this was the mother of current Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch (Anne Gorsuch Burford). They had to go back to competence after she acted like a right-wing fanatic and according to Wikipedia: she “had depleted the EPA by asking Congress to cut the agency’s budget, eliminating jobs and halting enforcement activities. On his second day after taking over for Burford, Ruckelsaus fired four people on the agency’s management team. Trump would have promoted her!!
Over 100 Environmental Roll-Backs Under Trump (NY Times, 1/20/21) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html
