There actually have been people and movements that were more broadly antiscience than today’s this-or-that skeptics: what we used to call “new age” types, e.g., members of religious cults and believers in the occult. In his oft-cited 1993 book Science and Anti-Science, Gerald Holton mentions “interest in astrology” as indicative of antiscience beliefs, as least as “conventionally” understood (his word).

A sense of panic rarely leads to thoughtful planning. More often panic leads to bad policies, rushed implementation, poor outcomes, and political backlash. Better to tread carefully and self-correct as necessary.

“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.  

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.

From Chapter 10 of Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise , a project led by the Heritage Foundation that outlines policy goals for a second Trump term: “For a conservative USDA to become a reality, and for it to stay on course with the mission as outlined, the White House must strongly support these reforms and install strong USDA leaders… There would be strong opposition from environmental groups and others who want the federal government to transform American agriculture to meet their ideological objectives.”

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.