Sustainability Weakening common-sense environmental safeguards puts U.S. at risk

By Sally Bethea

When it comes to protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the health and prosperity of our communities, there is no question but that Donald J. Trump and his campaign-donor cronies in Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Business have been systematically weakening the bedrock environmental safeguards that were passed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in the 1970s.

Focused on excessive profit-making – and cruelly indifferent to the impacts of their activities on the health and well-being of average Americans –these corporations and the elected officials that do their bidding are putting all of us at increasing risk, especially non-white and low-income populations.

However unexpectedly, and no matter his motivations, Richard Nixon was an environmental hero. At the signing of one of the most important environmental statutes ever passed by Congress, Nixon said on January 1, 1970: “It is particularly fitting that my first official act in this new decade is to approve the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA]… By my participation in these efforts, I have become further convinced that the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.” only chance to voice concerns about the impacts of federally-permitted and federally-funded projects on their homes and communities. Think: power plant, highway, dam, hazardous waste landfill, airport, pipeline and more.

Gina McCarthy, former head of the U.S. EPA and now president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has said: “We live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. Americans deserve to have their voices heard before their families’ health and well-being are put at risk by projects that bring unwanted and unnecessary pollution and disruption into their communities.”