After four years of shrinking national monuments, weakening restrictions on toxins, pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, scrapping the Obama plan to reduce power plant emissions, lowering the mandate for more vehicle efficiency, axing companies’ requirement to report methane emissions, ending a ban on use of hydrofluorocarbons, okaying the polluting of the Great Lakes by new energy projects, lifting the ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, and dozens of other actions, Donald Trump has capped off his attack on the environment by following through on what has been expected since last year: opening the entire 16.7 million acres of the Tongass National Forest to logging and other development, according to a notice posted Wednesday. The move follows on the release last month of the final environmental impact statement on rule-making for Alaska roadless areas.
If the squatter in the White House is ousted, Joe Biden could reverse this shredding of the Tongass protections. But it should be remembered that, unlike the pyroclastic excrement streaming daily from Trump’s puerile Twitter account, eviscerating environmental rules is not something unique to the Trump regime. Billionaires like the Koch brothers and companies like Exxon-Mobil have for decades been hellbent on an agenda of environmental destruction. If Ted Cruz, or Rick Santorum, or Mike Huckabee, or Carly Fiorina had been chosen as the Republican victor in 2016, they would have pursued the same extremist environmental agenda the GOP has been polishing for 40 years. The only difference is they might have done so with less chest-thumping.
Want to stop Trump and the GOP from destroying the Earth? On Mobilize America, there are hundreds of campaigns and local Democratic parties organizing (mostly virtual) get-out-the-vote activities. Find one near you, and connect with members of your community while doing work to turn out the Democratic vote!
Juliet Eilperin reports:
For years, federal and academic scientists have identified Tongass as an ecological oasis that serves as a massive carbon sink while providing key habitat for wild Pacific salmon and trout, Sitka black-tailed deer and myriad other species. It boasts the highest density of brown bears in North America, and its trees — some of which are between 300 and 1,000 years old — absorb at least 8 percent of all the carbon stored in the entire Lower 48′s forests combined.
The move to open for development the nearly pristine parts of the Tongass has long been opposed by conservationists and avidly supported by Alaskan governors, the state’s congressional delegations, the timber industry, and Republicans across the nation determined to roll back environmental protections of all sorts.
It was announced a year ago that the Trump regime was looking to exempt the Tongass from the Clinton era Roadless Rule that put off limits 58 million acres of undeveloped national forest lands across America—including 9.4-million acres of the Tongass—from roadbuilding, logging, and mineral leasing.
At the time, Republican chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Lisa Murkowski said, “I’m very pleased the administration has listened to Alaskans and is proposing a full exemption from the roadless rule as its preferred alternative. I thank President Trump, Secretary [Sonny] Perdue, and the team at the Forest Service for their hard work to reach this point—and for their continued efforts to restore reasonable access to the Tongass National Forest.” Last September, Murkowski wrote an op-ed arguing that the forest is well protected without the bulwark of the roadless rule.
That isn’t the view expressed in 96% of the thousands of letters arguing for keeping the rule sent as public comments to the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service. Nor is it the view of nine Alaska Native tribes who in a July 2020 petition said shielding the Tongass from development is crucial to their livelihoods. Of this, Katelyn Weisbrod at Inside Climate News writes:
The forest is critical to indigenous economies in southeastern Alaska. Tribal members hunt for deer and moose, fish for salmon, gather mushrooms, berries and medicinal plants, and use the massive trees to carve canoes and totem poles.
The forest is "priceless," said Joel Jackson, president of the Organized Village of Kake, one of the tribes that signed the petition. "It's basically our grocery store."
Jim Furnish was the deputy chief of the Forest Service when the Roadless Rule was enacted. He told Weisbrod that he finds support for the change "totally baseless" because the existing rule already allows exceptions for infrastructure need, noting that 57 such exceptions have been allowed for developments such as mines, roads, and hydroelectric projects over the past two decades since the Roadless Rule went into effect. "The Forest Service has been very accommodating of issues that popped up that were difficult to foresee 20 years previously to make accommodations so legitimate needs could be met," he said.
Documentary filmmaker Cyril Christo writes:
The fight for the Tongass, like the other battles beings waged in Alaska, is for the future of an entire ecosystem as valuable, as regal as the Grand Canyon, or the redwoods and sequoias of California. In this unprecedented time of climate change, what is to prevent an area of 25,000 square miles from simply going up in flames? That 9 million acres should be willingly opened as a sacrifice zone to the lumber industry speaks volumes about our political system and our morality as the dominant “culture.” In the past, parts of diapers were made with Tongass trees and most of the lumber shipped off to China, South Korea or Japan. The Tongass attracts $2 billion worth of tourism and the US Forest Service recommends removing the entire Tongass from roadless designation. Who wills their way to such decisions? Not the Tlingit, the landscapes of their existence is one of reciprocity and ritual honoring of the beings in that forest. Not the vast majority of Alaskans who want to see the Tongass protected. The Tongass itself holds about 8 percent of all carbon stored in the United States’ remaining forests. In a time when California, Oregon and Washington have been reeling from the worst fires in memory, why are we still debating the value of forests?
Repairing the environmental damage the Trump regime has implemented or tried to implement in the face of litigation will take years. Among the obstacles in the way will be many Republicans who are now trying in the election campaign to put distance between themselves and the man whose policies they continue to enable even if they wish somebody less vulgar, less inept, and less impulsive were in charge of the wrecking.