The response I see most often to the relentless rollback of federal environmental regulations and the dismantling of essential agency functions is an impulse to restore or block the cutbacks. I have that response myself; it’s only natural. But I have come to conclude that while understandable, the impulse is not just wrong; it instead feeds and provides energy to the forces tearing it all down. Rather than just fighting to keep environmental protection as it was before the destruction began, the environmental community should envision and articulate a forward-looking protection framework that better equips us to address the environmental challenges staring us in the face.
I have come to understand the forces driving the abandonment of environmental standards and their scientific foundation as a repudiation of a broader societal status quo many believe has left them behind. Against the backdrop of empty Orwellian pronouncements and slogans that promise clean air and clean water supported by the best science, we are witnessing the dismantling of the entire infrastructure that delivered cleaner air and water and made America the world’s epicenter of science and discovery. The national dynamics that have allowed this to happen are ignored at our collective peril. It is in this context that a response that simply defends what was and leaves it at that is a mistake. We have to do more than just defend a framework that didn’t fully equip us with enough tools to protect the environment. A new and more finely tuned and, yes aggressive, plan that sustains the gains of the past while looking forward is the way to build support for a cleaner environment.
Much of the environmental regulatory structure, until recently anyway, is rooted in the wave of federal environmental legislation that began in the early 1970s. This first-generation legislation was remarkably effective in eliminating the gross pollution that made waterways open sewers and air dark and unhealthy with soot and smog. Those same laws have proven to be somewhat less well-suited to solving today’s environmental challenges that include eliminating carbon pollution, nutrient enrichment of our waters, and chemicals of emerging concern.
The environmental community should be putting its collective energy into envisioning and developing a set of laws and regulations that are forward-looking and solve the problems of today and tomorrow. We need to be doing this now because the pendulum will swing back when people realize we have been led down a road to air that is dirtier, water more polluted, and a hotter and less habitable world.
We will all be better served by being ready with a better approach and not just calling for the restoration of what was. In fact, having and being able to articulate a better way forward than the status quo for actual environmental improvement makes it more likely that the country will choose that path forward before it is too late.
