One of the hallmark features of this administration is that nothing it does actually benefits the American people as a whole. In fact, the prevailing philosophy seems to be the exact opposite—to harm as many Americans, in as short a period of time, as possible, while catering to the self-interests of a tiny sliver of the most wealthy among us. That philosophy guides its economic and fiscal policies (unwarranted, huge tax cuts for corporations), its social policies (e.g., attempts to gut coverage under the Affordable Care Act), and probably most visibly, its energy and environmental policies.
Trump’s destructive policies regarding energy development and the environment go well beyond transforming the Environmental Protection Agency into a vehicle that exists now solely to defend corporate polluters. Selling off our public lands to private mining companies, eliminating air pollution standards and permitting coal companies to dump toxic ash into our streams are all policies that reflect its wholesale, all-encompassing disregard for concerns about human health.
But humans, unfortunately, are not the only victims of this studied malevolence towards our natural environment.
The Trump administration is taking a major step toward allowing a first-in-a-generation seismic search for oil and gas under Atlantic waters, despite protests that the geological tests involve loud air gun blasts that will harm whales, dolphins and other animals.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is set to issue “incidental harassment authorizations” allowing seismic surveys proposed by five companies that permits them to disturb marine mammals that are otherwise protected by federal law, according to three people familiar with the activity who asked not to be named before a formal announcement.
The irony of an acknowledged harasser issuing a “harassment” permit for oil companies to harm whales and dolphins for profit is remarkable in its own way, but the truth is that there is nothing amusing about permitting corporations to undertake these huge underwater explosions for the sake of obtaining more oil that Americans do not need and will not make us “energy independent.”
“The seismic air guns are firing blasts that are so loud, they create one of the loudest man-made sounds in the ocean, and they fire every 10 seconds,” said Diane Hoskins, a campaign director with the conservation group Oceana. “The blasts are repeated every 10 to 12 seconds, weeks or months at a time, and the sound travels extremely far in the ocean -- the distance of a flight from New York to Las Vegas.”
The blasts are so loud they damage whales’ and dolphins’ hearing. And when their ability to hear is diminished they cannot communicate. When they cannot communicate, they cannot mate, and their ability to find food is curtailed (a study last year showed that zooplankton and other small crustaceans, an essential part of the marine food chain and in particular, whales’ food supply, are wiped out for literally miles from these blasts). So instead, they die.
In its zeal to satisfy the whims of the fossil fuel industry the Administration is proposing opening 90,000 miles of our coastline to this blasting, the reach of which would extend even further. The advocacy group Oceana has estimated that 138,000 whales and dolphins would be negatively implicated by these blasts. The endangered North Atlantic right whale, of which only about 500 remain, is particularly vulnerable to this sonic destruction of its habitat. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, now under control of Donald Trump, has said in response that such testing in some stretches of the North Atlantic will be precluded from November to April, when right whales tend to migrate. It’s not clear whether the zooplankton will be willing to adjust their schedules to accommodate these provisions.
There are also economic reasons arguing against this folly. When the food chain is disrupted, commercial fishing is negatively impacted, because the fish simply aren’t there to catch. But the ultimate purpose of these seismic blasts, to locate and exploit hidden stores of coastal oil—is probably the most destructive consequence of all.
It has been decades since the last seismic surveys for oil and gas along the East Coast -- and those only touched a sliver of the territory the Trump administration is considering for energy development. The Interior Department is developing a proposal for selling offshore drilling rights over the next five years, after putting almost all U.S. coastal waters -- including the Atlantic -- on the table for leasing in a draft plan last January.
Conservationists well recognize that this proposal to conduct underwater blasting is the first step towards the wholesale ravaging of our coastlines by the oil companies, with all the attendant spills and permanent contamination that entails. As Dianne Hoskins from Oceana puts it, this is the Administration’s endgame, and it is almost universally against the wishes of the citizens who live on our beautiful coasts:
“The Atlantic Coast could be turned from beach towns to oil towns,” says Hoskins. “We're going to look at every available tool to fight this.”
The Obama Administration denied these companies permission to conduct this testing in 2017. That in and of itself appears sufficient reason alone for Trump’s Department of the Interior to grant them.
An Administration that deliberately, pathologically ignores its own scientist’s warning about climate change, opting instead of developing alternative, renewable energy sources to pursue the development of every last possible source of fossil fuel, is not acting for the interests of American citizens, but is looking solely to exploit whatever remains of our natural environment for the private benefit of a very few.