As a reporter and resident of the Highlands, one of the spots where the modern environmental movement began, I’ve been reading news releases from the federal Environmental Protection Agency for years. They often have the tone of an overexcited eighth-grade science teacher at the beginning of a field trip. We’ve created a new online tool to map toxic releases! We’re giving out grants to help towns fight climate change! We think farmers are great!
But over the past two months the releases have sounded like something Dr. Doom yells at the Fantastic Four.
“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion,” said newly appointed EPA chief Lee Zeldin — a former New York legislator and gubernatorial candidate — in a release proclaiming “the greatest day of deregulation our nation has ever seen.” The phrasing — implying faith, not facts — took many people aback, as we assume the EPA wants to fight climate change.
Zeldin also announced the EPA would “reconsider” the Endangerment Finding, a 2009 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that because greenhouse gas drives climate change, it can be classified as a dangerous pollutant, which gives the EPA the authority to regulate it under the Clean Air Act. Zeldin called this “the Holy Grail of the climate change religion.”
This week Zeldin said in a video release that the EPA was shuttering the tiny museum at agency headquarters, partly because there is nothing in it that praises President Trump. As he vowed that the “shrine” to environmental justice and climate change would be “shut down for good,” the camera lingered on a photo of a Black scientist in a museum display.
What has changed in the releases seems to be an underlying belief that climate change is a mirage, despite overwhelming scientific evidence and public support to mitigate its effects. Even in the realm of faith, the most concise and clearest text on the science behind climate change and the moral case for doing something about it was written by Pope Francis in his 2015 encyclical letter Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home. He went into greater detail eight years later in an addendum in which he wrote: “It is no longer possible to doubt the human — ‘anthropic’ — origin of climate change.”
Francis addresses those who warn that reducing fossil fuels will lead to fewer jobs, noting that rising sea levels, droughts and other phenomena “have left many people adrift. Conversely, the transition to renewable forms of energy, properly managed, as well as efforts to adapt to the damage caused by climate change, are capable of generating countless jobs.”
The EPA says that it’s still committed to providing clean air, land and water — including the Hudson River. Those three things continue to poll extremely well with Americans of all political persuasion. But it’s hard to square that with news releases that boast about rolling back regulations that control the pollution that contributes to climate change.
If you can’t sleep tonight, visit the EPA’s Documerica (dub.sh/documerica), which the fledgling agency created in the early 1970s by hiring freelance photographers to take pictures of how polluted the country had become. The Statue of Liberty surrounded by an oil slick says it all.
On social media recently, the EPA posted an article praising President Trump for pledging to build and deregulate coal plants. That’s like a fire department praising an arsonist. Local environmental leaders suggest, half-kidding, that perhaps some progress can still be made if they focus on upgrades to water treatment plants and soil remediation programs and avoid the phrase climate change.
Maybe the “religion” doesn’t involve people who are worried about climate change but those who aren’t. It must take a lot of faith to still believe it’s a hoax, to keep trudging ahead when nearly every scientist, and the Pope, says we’re making a terrible mistake. Even His Holiness knows that no divine power is going to swoop down and fix the problem for us.
