State gets a climate denial upgrade, judge orders Pruitt to move on smog, and oil companies write their own offshore drilling rules.
Stalling on Smog
A federal judge this week ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to implement long-delayed anti-smog rules. The order adds yet another twist to a winding and unnecessary saga that typifies Pruitt’s tenure at the helm of the EPA.
In 2015, the Obama administration strengthened limits on ground-level ozone, the primary component in smog. The prior limits had been inadequate; the weight of scientific evidence clearly showed that smog was increasing the rates of respiratory disease and killing people.
Six months into his reign as EPA chief, Pruitt said he would delay by one year the October 1, 2017, deadline for implementation of the new rules. Sixteen state attorneys general and a host of environmental groups, including NRDC, immediately sued. Pruitt then reversed course, announcing that he would leave the deadline unchanged. Perhaps one of his lawyers told him he didn’t have a leg to stand on.
We should have suspected something was amiss—Pruitt would never agree to implement evidence-based rules to protect Americans from pollution. It now appears that he never had any intention of actually meeting the October 1 deadline. He figured it would be easier to ignore it than to actually change it.
In the March 12 ruling, the judge ordered Pruitt to comply with the rule by April 30. It’s encouraging that the judicial branch remains committed to holding the administration to its legal obligations, but the ruling also illustrates the limits of a judge’s power. Pruitt missed a deadline, people sued him, and all the court can do is give him a new deadline—exactly what he was hoping for. In fairness, Pruitt would be in extremely hot water if he ignored the new, court-ordered deadline, but his decision to buy himself seven months by knowingly breaking the law carried zero practical consequences.
Trump Chickens Out on Organic Standards
The Trump administration this week withdrew a rule designed to ensure humane treatment of chickens whose eggs are sold under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s organic label. After repeated delays in the rule’s implementation, Monday’s final withdrawal decision reverses the results of a seven-year review process, which concluded that existing organic standards don’t meet consumer expectations or assumptions. In essence, the organic label is a form of false advertising.
How so? Consumers believe that the organic standard guarantees that egg-laying chickens are spending time outdoors, pecking and scratching, doing what chickens do. But the existing standards guarantee no such thing. USDA rules allow egg producers to pack tens of thousands of birds into a shed, with each bird getting less than a square foot. As long as there is an opening to the outside world, like a screened opening in the wall, it’s considered “outdoors.” The new rule would have closed that loophole.
Here’s the most outrageous part of the withdrawal of the rule. Of the 47,000 public comments the USDA received on its proposal, only 28 supported the withdrawal. Taking orders from a handful of Big Agriculture companies over the objection of average Americans is offensive on its face, but it’s particularly absurd given that this rule is entirely about consumer expectations. If consumers overwhelming say that they don’t support the current organic label, there’s no good reason not to listen to them.
Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse
Appointing Rex Tillerson, the leader of one of the world’s largest oil companies, to lead the State Department was a bad decision. The State Department is responsible for managing international climate change agreements, so its leader has a major role to play in addressing global warming. But now, as if responding to some kind of dare, Donald Trump has found a secretary of state who’s even worse than Tillerson on climate change. President Trump fired Tillerson via tweet this week, replacing him with CIA chief Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo was president of an oil field services company that partnered with the Koch brothers, the men behind America’s most active climate-denial network. The Koch political machine helped get Pompeo elected to Congress and eventually funneled $375,000 into his campaign coffers. Pompeo has called the Paris climate accord part of a “radical climate change agenda” and implied that President Obama’s focus on global warming somehow distracted him from preventing a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.
As the leader of ExxonMobil, Tillerson had a unique opportunity to move toward climate solutions, and he didn’t do it. He has also obfuscated on climate change science. But things could have been worse―and now they might be.
Next week, I expect President Trump to fire Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator and replace him with a man-shaped barrel of oil that’s eternally on fire.
You Can Judge a Man by the Company He Keeps
Documents obtained this week by the watchdog group Documented reveal that the head of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the agency tasked with ensuring the safety of offshore drilling operations, has spent 98 hours in meetings with oil and gas lobbyists and executives since May 2017. He has spent less than two hours with NGOs dedicated to drilling safety. During this period, the Trump administration announced plans to roll back offshore safety regulations.
It’s important to note where those rules came from. After the Deepwater Horizon exploded, killing 11 people and spilling nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama convened a commission of politicians, industry insiders, and technical experts to determine what happened and to propose a set of rules to ensure that it never happens again. The commissioners fought for years against industry lobbyists to get the administration to adopt the most important of their recommendations. Now, after years of deliberation and intense negotiation, along comes a guy who hangs out with industry lobbyists and then undoes all of that work.
The farce of the Trump administration would be hilarious if it weren’t for the fact that its refusal to do the hard work of governing actually risks lives and the future of our environment.
Stay up-to-date on Trump’s environmental antics by visiting NRDC’s Trump Watch.
