Even while dealing with a host of other important issues, beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration must find a way to reverse this tsunami of environmental destruction.
As his days in the White House dwindle, Donald Trump is doing everything he can to wreak environmental destruction. Preventing that will require a huge and immediate effort by the incoming Biden administration. How bad has Trump been? On Sunday, Trump verbally trashed the Paris climate agreement in an address to the Group of 20 summit. He is handing out last-minute oil-drilling leases that would despoil the vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is a pristine home to caribou, waterfowl, polar bears, Arctic foxes and other species. He has declared open season on the centuries-old trees in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest intact temperate rain forest and the “lungs of the country,” by opening it to logging. Trump’s recent actions follow four years of assaults on our planet. He has undermined clean air and clean water rules. He has promoted the burning of fossil fuels, which contribute to climate change by releasing greenhouse gases into the environment. He has hacked away at environmental enforcement. He has tried to trade away congressionally designated wilderness. He is trying to put environmentally damaging roads, destroying plant life, in the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. He has allowed permitting to proceed for mining that threatens the spectacular Boundary Waters wilderness on the Canada-United States border.
