Public Policy and Governance – Page 189

Will Children Save The Planet?

Every day, it seems, there is more news about this administration’s attack on climate science, its roll-back of efforts to reduce the carbon emissions that are causing the planet to warm–not to mention regulations intended to ensure that the nation’s water supply is potable and its air breathable.

The Trump Administration’s efforts to protect the bottom lines of fossil-fuel companies are in defiance of mounting evidence about the dangers posed by our changing climate.

Serious disruption to the Gulf Stream ocean currents that are crucial in controlling global climate must be avoided “at all costs”, senior scientists have warned. The alert follows the revelation this week that the system is at its weakest ever recorded.

Past collapses of the giant network have seen some of the most extreme impacts in climate history, with western Europe particularly vulnerable to a descent into freezing winters. A significantly weakened system is also likely to cause more severe storms in Europe, faster sea level rise on the east coast of the US and increasing drought in the Sahel in Africa.

The new research worries scientists because of the huge impact global warming has already had on the currents and the unpredictability of a future “tipping point”.

With Republicans in control of Congress (at least until next January, and beyond if the predicted “blue wave” fails to materialize), political intervention to protect the environment is unlikely. Just as the NRA’s iron grip on GOP lawmakers has prevented passage of sensible gun legislation, campaign donations by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel interests ensure a lack of meaningful Congressional action any time soon.

Enter the children.

A trial date of Oct. 29 has been set for a landmark climate change lawsuit brought by a group of young Americans despite the Trump administration’s efforts to halt the case.

Juliana v. United States was filed in 2015 on behalf of 21 plaintiffs who ranged between 8 to 19 years old at the time. They allege their constitutional and public trust rights are being violated by the government’s creation of a national energy system that causes dangerous climate change.

The trial will be heard before U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken in Eugene, Oregon, according to Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit group supporting the plaintiffs. Aiken joined the court in 1998 after being nominated by President Bill Clinton.

The lawsuit was filed when Obama was still President, and a few days before the Trump administration took it over, Obama’s Justice Department lawyers admitted the accuracy of several of the plaintiff’s scientific claims– including the claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations are now greater than 400 parts per million. They also admitted that fossil fuel “extraction, development and consumption” causes those emissions.

The children’s suit asserts that government’s failure to adequately address climate change imperils their future. The Trump Administration has tried–and failed–to get the case dismissed, or the trial postponed.

“It is a relief to see that the Court understands how imperative it is to get this trial underway as soon as possible, despite all of the delay tactics the U.S. government continues to try to use,” Sophie Kivlehan, 19-year-old plaintiff from Allentown, Pennsylvania said. “I am so excited to have an official trial date on the calendar again so that we can finally bring our voices and our evidence into the courtroom!”

These youngsters–like the teenagers who survived Parkland–aren’t waiting for adults to take action to protect them. (They have evidently weighed the prospects of adults acting like adults, and concluded–reasonably enough–that those prospects are dim.)

The emergence of these young activists lends weight to the hotly debated arguments of researchers who posit that about every eight decades “a new positive, accomplished and group-oriented” civic generation appears, sometimes dubbed the “we generation” in contrast to the “me generations” that preceded it. The “we generation” is “non-cynical and civic minded” and its members believe in the value of political engagement.

These amazing kids may save us all.

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It Just Goes On And On

This time, it’s Rick Perry. (Mr. “Oops”)

Watching the Trump Administration cabinet reminds me of going to the three-ring circus when I was a girl: it was impossible to watch what was happening in all three of the rings at the same time. And there were lots of clowns.

The New Yorker has turned its attention to Rick Perry, who has always struck me as one of the clowns.

On March 29, 2017, Robert Murray, the founder and owner of one of the country’s largest coal companies, was ushered into a conference room at the Department of Energy’s headquarters, in Washington, D.C., for a meeting with Secretary Rick Perry. When Perry arrived, a few moments later, he immediately gave Murray a hug. To Simon Edelman, the Department’s chief creative officer, who was on hand to photograph the event, the greeting came as a surprise. At the time, Edelman did not know that Murray’s political-action committee and employees had donated more than a hundred thousand dollars to Perry’s Presidential campaign, in 2012, and almost as much to Donald Trump’s, in 2016.

At one point in the meeting, as Edelman recalls, Murray handed Perry a document titled “Action Plan for reliable and low cost electricity in America and to assist in the survival of our Country’s coal industry.” Edelman snapped a closeup.

According to the article, it was barely six months later that Perry sent a letter directing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue a new rule. The ostensible reason for the rule was “to protect the resiliency of the electric grid” from what he described as vulnerability to power disruptions. (Interestingly, barely a month before Perry sent the letter, Perry’s own staff had issued a report concluding that “reliability is adequate today.”)

Perry’s letter instructed the Commission to emphasize “traditional baseload generation”—in other words, coal and nuclear.

Perry proposed that all coal plants in certain areas, including many that do business with Murray Energy, be required to keep a ninety-day supply of coal onsite to provide “fuel-secure” power. Edelman was alarmed: the language in Perry’s letter clearly echoed Murray’s “action plan.” ..Edelman shared his photos of the March meeting with reporters from the progressive magazine In These Times and, later, the Washington Post. The photographs were published on December 6th. The next day, Edelman was placed on leave.

Edelman has since sued Perry and the Department of Energy, and the remainder of the article analyzes the evidence and the federal laws that would seem to have been violated both by Perry’s issuance of the letter and his dismissal of Edelman. Not surprisingly, it concludes that both were wrongful.

The degree of corruption that characterizes this administration is breathtaking. Trump and his “best people” seem utterly oblivious to ethical principles, let alone the legal constraints that govern their operations. I suppose we should be grateful for their overwhelming incompetence–the bumbling that opens windows into their ethical and legal transgressions and mercifully undercuts the efficacy of their efforts to roll back regulations and initiate policies to enrich their benefactors. (Last Sunday, the New York Times had an article about Scott Pruitt’s rush to undo EPA regulations, and quoted environmental lawyers to the effect that persistent, sloppy legal work and inattention to detail has made it much easier to challenge his efforts in court–and win.)

American citizens need to use the next two and a half years to demand a great cleansing of federal agencies. If the predicted “blue wave” materializes in November, Congress will need to initiate a thorough and bipartisan audit of compliance with government’s settled ethical obligations.

Donald Trump didn’t appear out of nowhere. This corrupt, unhinged ignoramus and his “best people” circus are the result of several decades during which plutocracy grew and voters were apathetic. It will take a sustained and determined effort to right the ship of state.

If that blue wave doesn’t materialize, the U.S. will join a list of failed democracies that is getting longer every year.

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Random Thoughts About The Ryan Announcement

I was on the treadmill (ugh!) watching the news, when it was announced that Paul Ryan would not seek re-election.

Virtually all the talking heads, including former Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, prefaced their reactions by noting that Ryan was a “policy wonk” who understood the economy.

Bullfeathers.

As Paul Krugman (whose Nobel Prize was in economics) has repeatedly pointed out, Ryan is an ideologue. A genuine policy wonk would adjust his economic prescriptions in the face of evidence they didn’t work; Ryan’s tax “reform” was a bigger version of the policies that have proved so disastrous in Kansas and Oklahoma. Rather than learn from those lessons, he doubled down. (It reminded me of the old communist sympathizers who explained that a communist system really would work–that Stalin just hadn’t done it right.)

It’s possible, of course, that Ryan isn’t a “true believer”–that his his tax “reform” was a return on his donors’ investment, and he’s not sticking around to suffer what he realizes will be the political consequences.

A couple of commentators reported that–despite all indications that his spine had simply been removed–behind the scenes, Ryan was critical of Trump and had been a restraining influence on our dangerous President. Color me skeptical; however, the remainder of Ryan’s term will offer an ideal test of that thesis. Since Ryan won’t be running again, he’s free to add his voice to those of the other GOP Trump critics (none of whom are running again).

If I were a betting woman, I wouldn’t risk my money on the likelihood of a Ryan eruption of moral outrage or defense of the rule of law.

In all fairness, Ryan didn’t want the job as Speaker, and for good reason. Thanks to the very successful national Republican gerrymander in 2011, the party won seats well in excess of its votes, but a significant number of those elected from districts that had been designed to be deep red were extremists determined to hew to a Tea Party/White Nationalist vision of America (and not so incidentally, intent upon forestalling primary challenges by candidates even farther to the right.) Estimates are that there are some 80+ members of the GOP’s “lunatic caucus” –and they feel no need to listen to the party’s leadership, which they scorn as the “establishment.” Herding cats would be simple by comparison.

Those of us who detest Trump and the feckless Republicans in Congress who have utterly failed to constrain him are tempted to cheer Ryan’s announcement. And I am certainly encouraged by its implications; without Ryan (not to mention the other 26+/- Republicans heading for the door) , it will be even more difficult for the GOP to hang on to its majority.

But there are six months between now and November, and Trump is increasingly unhinged. As Mueller’s investigation gets closer, as the legal and ethical lapses of his cabinet and cronies become public, and international events he clearly doesn’t understand pressure him to make decisions he is ill-equipped to make, he increasingly resembles a cornered animal.

A rational man would reach out to knowledgable people for advice, but Trump is not a rational man. He’s threatening to bomb Syria, to nullify the Iran accord, to start a trade war with China, and God knows what he’ll say or do when he meets with Kim Jong Un in North Korea.

As the rats desert his sinking ship, he’ll be perfectly willing to take us all down with him.

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Sanctuary

You may have read about Jeff Sessions’ recent lawsuit against California. Sessions is pursuing the Trump Administration’s vendetta against immigrants (ostensibly against undocumented immigrants, but with rhetoric that signals distaste for anyone–legal or not–who is less pale than a Norwegian), and he’s determined to overcome any obstacles to that task.

Vox explains the lawsuit.

The Department of Justice has just filed a lawsuitagainst the state over three laws it passed in 2017 that limit government officials’ and employers’ ability to help federal immigration agents, and that give California the power to review conditions in facilities where immigrants are being detained by the feds. Sessions, in a Wednesday speech to the California Peace Officers’ Association, a law enforcement union, is giving the message in person.

It’s a huge escalation of the Trump administration’s fight against “sanctuary cities” that limit local-federal cooperation on immigration enforcement. After a year of slow-moving or unsuccessful attempts to block “sanctuary” jurisdictions from getting federal grants, Sessions is moving to stop them from passing laws that limit cooperation to begin with. And he’s starting with a shot across the bow: targeting the bluest state in the union, whose 2017 bills represented a model for progressives to use federalism against the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

Sessions’ is determined to pursue his punitive federal policy without having to deal with impediments to enforcement enacted by progressive cities and states. According to Vox, we should view this lawsuit as the next phase “in a battle the Trump administration and California are equally enthusiastic about having: an ongoing culture war between progressive politicians who feel a duty to make their immigrant residents feel as safe as possible, and an administration (and its backers) whose stated policy is that no unauthorized immigrant should feel safe.”

Vox is right to label this a culture war. I used to reserve that term for fights over the so-called “social issues”–abortion, same-sex marriage, prayer in schools, religious icons on public land and the like. That was before I realized that environmentalism had also become a culture war issue, and that the division wasn’t simply between religious and secular Americans, but also between adherents of very different religious worldviews.

We Americans are currently very polarized, to put it mildly. The expanded “culture war” of which immigration is a part is an outgrowth of our increasing tribalism, our stubborn residence within bubbles populated primarily by our “own kind,” both intellectually and geographically.

The big question is whether this is an era of transition–a time of paradigm shift brought on by rapid changes in technology and especially communications–or whether it is something more lasting. The activism of the younger generation that we have seen in the wake of the Parkland shooting is a hopeful sign that it may be the former–that the fear and insecurity that have prompted recent, distressing eruptions of bigotry and racial resentment will pass as my generation dies off.

The challenge will be to keep the Donald Trumps and Jeff Sessions of the world from inflicting irreparable damage in the meantime.

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They’re All Nuts

The other day, I spotted a bumper sticker that really says it all: “Any Sane Adult: 2020.”

It isn’t just our demented President. It’s his whole sorry crew.

Initially, I thought Scott Pruitt was just corrupt–bought and paid for by the fossil fuel companies he used to represent. And he certainly is corrupt, but the sleaze is only part of the problem. It appears he is as delusional and grandiose as Trump.

A recent profile of Pruitt in Mother Jones is chilling.

Pruitt’s quieter style masks the extent to which his approach to governing is the practical implementation of the president’s wrecking-ball rhetoric. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to “get rid” of the EPA “in almost every form.” In just his first year in office, Pruitt has already made stunning strides in that direction. He’s dismantling the Obama administration’s landmark Clean Power Plan, which imposed greenhouse gas limits on fossil-fuel-fired power plants. He has slashed enforcement efforts against polluters and tried to repeal rules meant to safeguard drinking-water supplies. He has threatened to roll back fuel economy standards. He’s moved to weaken new rules for smog, coal ash, and mercury pollution, poorly enforced a new toxic-chemical law, and refused to ban the dangerous pesticide chlorpyrifos. He’s taken aim at dozens of lesser-known rules covering everything from safety requirements for replacing asbestos to emergency response plans in hazardous chemical facilities.

Pruitt has chased away longtime EPA staff and dismantled scientific advisory boards. He has put representatives of fossil fuel companies in charge of key environmental decisions.

Pruitt has been almost cartoonishly contemptuous of the EPA’s work, pushing draconian cuts to the agency’s science, climate, regulatory, and enforcement offices. Meanwhile, in just his first year, he has reportedly expanded his around-the-clock security detail at a cost of at least $2 million annually. He spent $25,000 on a secure phone booth inside his office, at least $12,000for flights around the country between March and May (each of which included a leg in Tulsa), $58,000 on chartered and military flights over the summer, and nearly $40,000 on a trip to Morocco to promote natural gas exports. His frequent first-class trips with his security detail have added more than $200,000 to that tally.

Pruitt cites his evangelical Christianity to justify his environmental positions, especially his climate-change denialism.

But his biblical references are not restricted to climate change. Pruitt’s two guiding stars—evangelical faith and political zeal—sometimes seem interchangeable. In October, when he announced a controversial new “conflict of interest” policy barring researchers who receive EPA grants from serving on the agency’s science advisory boards, he quoted the Book of Joshua: “Choose this day whom you’re going to serve.”

The GOP is filled, of course, with politicians who twist biblical references to advance whack-a-doodle positions.

Pruitt evidently sees no conflict between his brand of Christianity and unethical behavior. Recently, there have been revelations about a sweetheart deal for a room in a Washington condominium owned by an energy lobbyist. One reporter noted that taking what look very much like bribes from energy lobbyists “is just par for the course for Pruitt.”

Pruitt wanted the EPA to purchase a “time-share” in a jet airplane for his personal use (and was evidently miffed when he was told it would be prohibitively expensive). He disregarded rules to give large raises to personal cronies he’d brought on staff. Newsweek reports that Pruitt uses high-ranking EPA investigators– who are supposed to be delving into environmental crimes– as his personal security detail.

“This never happened with prior administrators,” a former official of the agency’s Criminal Investigations Division told The Washington Post, which first reported the news. “These guys signed on to work on complex environmental cases, not to be an executive protection detail.” The Post report suggested that the EPA would spend $800,000 for “the security detail’s travel expenses” this fiscal year.

The corruption and grandiosity are appalling, but those pale in comparison to the damage he is doing to the environment. CNN recently obtained a secret memo detailing Pruitt’s new control over enforcement of the Clean Water Act.

In a new directive, Pruitt says he–and he alone– will make final decisions under the Act.

Pruitt has explicitly stripped authority from his staff and regional administrator and turned himself into America’s Water Czar. By secret fiat. If anyone wants to open a coal mine, pesticide plant, or factory farm, they no longer have to show that their actions won’t damage local streams, rivers, lakes and aquifers. They just need a nod from Pruitt.

Evidently, Pruitt doesn’t have grandchildren who will have to drink water, breathe air, or live on a ravaged planet.

I wonder where I can get that bumper-sticker……

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