“Stop all grants to advocacy groups?” I’m assuming “advocacy groups” refers to environmental groups, many of which employ scientists and policy wonks with expertise directly relevant to EPA concerns…Why in the world should the EPA simply stop using these groups? It’s possible to have strong convictions about the environment (whether nature-or human-centered, whether left or right) and maintain a high level of professional integrity. Environmental activists can still provide high quality information and advice. The EPA doesn’t have to embrace their ideological convictions to benefit from their input.
There was a time when Republicans embraced the cause of environmental protection. Think Progress noted that “some of the greatest conservationists ever to take the oath of office were Republicans.” Both Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists rated Richard Nixon one of the greenest president ever. And we're not talking ancient history here: both Presidents Bush supported cap and trade policies to reduce pollution…So what happened?
The American public has largely come around to Carter’s vision of protecting huge swaths of wilderness in the US. For example, by 2017, 70% of American voters opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This included 84% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 52% of Republicans. (Leiserowitz et al, 2017). However, Trump was not among those Republicans…on his last day of office, his administration “issued drilling leases on more than 400,000 acres (160,000 hectares) of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge” (Reuters, January 19, 2021)
“Abstraction is the enemy of personal empathy, but it’s essential for equitable elections. Villages are communal, but they aren’t truly democratic. A level of abstraction is necessary to imagine other citizens as equal agents with rights, not clan histories.” - Adam Gopnik, To Fix Democracy, First Figure Out What’s Broken
Excerpt from Plan for Trump Administration: “The next Administration should champion the elimination of the Conservation Reserve Program…The USDA should work with Congress to eliminate this overbroad program.”
Comment: Note that the Conservation Reserve program, established during the Reagan administration, already targets highly erodible land and areas with “significant adverse water quality, wildlife habitat, or other natural resource impacts related to activities of agricultural production”. Those are specific and concrete environmental harms – not overly broad at all.
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise is a project led by the Heritage Foundation that outlines policy goals for a second Trump term. William Perry Pendley is the author of Chapter 16: Department of the Interior. Pendley was appointed to deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2019 and later served in an unofficial capacity as acting director of the BLM for the remainder of the Trump administration. My intention for this series of posts is purely informational, so for now I’m keeping my opinions to myself.
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise is a project led by the Heritage Foundation that outlines policy goals for a second Trump term. Mandy Gunasekara is the author of Chapter 13: The Environmental Protection Agency. Gunasekara was Chief of Staff to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler from March 2020 – January 2021. Here are excerpts from Chapter 13. Note that my intention in this series of posts in purely informational. For now, I’ll be keeping my opinions to myself.
The following are excerpts from articles written during or shortly after the Trump administration. List of articles:
The Trump administration’s major environmental deregulations.
The Trump Administration Rolled Back More Than 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List.
Trump Cuts EPA Budget Again.
Latest Trump proposal on endangered species could limit future habitat, critics say
The environmental legacy of President Trump.
Consumer sentiment measures are the best predictor of how Americans feel about the economy, especially the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI). The CSI provides a composite consumer sentiment score, based on answers to the following 5 survey questions…
The responses to another survey question shed a little light on the matter. In response to Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “The economic and political systems in the country are stacked against people like me”, 51% of respondents either strongly or somewhat agreed. But what does that even mean?
Actually, “findings” is too strong a word. The data is all self-report and thus subject to desirability bias. The homeless individuals in the study know the researchers want the intervention to be successful. They form relationships with the “phone buddies” who ask them all these questions. I imagine some participants would hesitate to tell the whole truth and nothing but.
Andre Perry and David Harshbarger of the Brookings Institute have already crunched those numbers. To quote:
…approximately 11 million Americans (10,852,727) live in once-redlined areas, according to the latest population data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2017). This population is majority-minority but not majority-Black, and, contrary to conventional perceptions, Black residents also do not form a plurality in these areas overall. The Black population share is approximately 28%, ranking third among the racial groups who live in formerly redlined areas, behind white and Latino or Hispanic residents…While still a tremendously large population, the approximately 3 million Black residents in redlined areas account for just 8% of all non-Latino or Hispanic Black Americans.
What do migrants want? Opinions vary:
“Settler colonialism is distinct from migration because immigrants aim to integrate into an existing society, not replace it.” Wikipedia/Settler Colonialism
“Like many immigrant groups, Africans are keen to preserve their cultural identity and ensure their children do not replace their traditional values with foreign ideas.” Africa Renewal/United Nations publication
So what is it? Assimilation to the new or preservation of the old? I suspect for most immigrants it’s a combination of the two.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) defines Palestine refugees as:
“…persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict…The descendants of Palestine refugee males, including adopted children, are also eligible for registration.”
“Xi’s statement that the Chinese “firmly oppose hegemony and power politics in all their forms” might also seem ironic to Taiwan, which suffers regular large-scale displays of military force aimed to intimidate them; Canada, which saw China detain two of its citizens in an attempt to coerce Ottawa into rejecting a U.S. extradition request for wanted Chinese executive Meng Wanzhou; or Australia, against whom China’s government imposed heavy economic sanctions after Canberra called for an investigation of the origins of COVID-19.” - The Diplomat June 01, 2023
These excerpts are from: “To Fix Democracy, First Figure Out What’s Broken”, by Adam Gopnik/The New Yorker. September 25, 2023.
Example of effective political messaging: “We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-- everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world.” - President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress, January 6, 1941
Unhelpful responses to this list (shorthand version): it’s not that bad; it’s not his fault; Robots/AI will solve a lot of these problems; just raise taxes on the rich/corporations; Trump/the right-wing/conservatives/Republicans are way worse; so-and-so says it ain’t so; but what about all the things he gets right?!
“In short, moderates work to puncture the kind of ideological groupthink that can occur when many people who are politically certain come together. They’re clearly not ditherers who believe in nothing. Instead, they approach politics and policy with a sense of humility about accepting the future is unknown and a belief that they should encounter the world with respect for the possibility of error.” Why America Needs Moderates (Joseph Romance/Discourse Magazine, May 4, 2023
What is a moderate? For the purpose of this post, a moderate is someone who considers themself a moderate. Moderates don’t get much press or respect, but it turns out there are lots of them…