The pro-pollution Republican Party and Executive Order 13771

The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs. -- Republican Senators Rick Scott’s only mention of the environment or climate change in his March 2022 radical right plan for America; Reasonable interpretation: Essentially all federal government policies to deal with climate change or pollution are nutty and must be opposed

This post is just a short reminder that the Republican Party is staunchly anti-climate science and pro-profit from pollution capitalist.

In 2020, the Brookings Institution published an article that discussed the GOP’s intensely hostile attitude toward environmental regulation, The Trump administration’s major environmental deregulations. It commented:

Over the last four years, the Trump administration has taken on a massive deregulatory effort. With the issuance of Executive Order 13771, the administration’s two-for-one rule, federal agencies were directed to eliminate two regulations for each new rule issued. Much of this effort has focused on scaling back previous Obama-era regulations and weakening agencies’ statutory authority. Notably, environmental regulation has proven a prominent and easy target, as many existing policies and regulations had never been enshrined into law. The Trump administration has replaced the Clean Power Plan, redefined critical terms under the Endangered Species Act, lifted oil and natural gas extraction bans, weakened the Coal Ash Rule, which regulates the disposal of toxic coal waste, and revised Mercury and Air Toxic Standards–just to name a few[1].  

Over the past few months, various federal agencies have finalized major environmental deregulations marking the end of, in some cases, years-long processes. The rules vary in consequence, from walking back pesticide bans to encouraging fossil fuel extraction on federal lands, weakening emissions standards, and even countering previous Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) findings.

The article goes on to point out that T**** and his pro-pollution Republican Party enablers eliminated or weakened regulations on toxic pesticides, greenhouse gas emissions and mercury and toxic air pollution, while expanding the scope of waterways and wetlands that could be polluted and/or bulldozed into non-existence.

The failure to enshrine into law environmental policies and regulations constitutes a massive bipartisan failure. Democrats has chances to put real teeth into environmental regulations, but they failed to do so. Now, it is too late. Republicans have publicly made it crystal clear that the only sense in which the GOP takes the environment and climate change seriously, is when environmental or climate policies and regulations need to be opposed and blocked or eliminated. That allows the private sector to profit from pollution with minimal government interference and no concern for climate change. In other words, Republican Party policy rewards pollution for profit. Some of that profit flows into Republican Party coffers. For Republicans and major polluters, it’s a gigantic win-win. For the public interest and the environment, it’s a gigantic lose-lose.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Just Drew for linking to the Brookings article about the Executive Order.