Many political organizations use this post-election period to try and set the agenda with their policy agenda. Most of the time, though, they wait until they actually know what the new administration will be before finalizing things. After all, what you would ask of a House, Senate and White House would probably depend on which party controls those bodies.
But an honest reckoning with what is actually happening in the real world has never been a huge concern for industry-funded propaganda groups like the Heritage Foundation, who published their “Proactive Environmental Policy Agenda for Congress and the Administration” on Monday, November 2. The day before the election.
Which actually makes sense, since their agenda isn’t in any way actually proactive, or really an environmental policy agenda at all. Instead, it’s really more of an industry wish-list of regulations that should be removed or weakened, with the addition of the tobacco industry-originated, so-called “science transparency” rules that would censor epidemiological studies showing the health impacts of pollution.
The Heritage Foundation authors, former US Chamber of Commerce policy counsel and director at the North Carolina-based tobacco and industry-funded John Locke Foundation Daren Bakst, and former intern for then-Rep. Mike Pence Katie Tubb, write that “a clean and safe environment” is “a shared value regardless of ideology,” and that the “agenda rejects policies that force Americans to choose between a clean environment and economic growth, individual freedom, and federalism as a false choice.”
Upon reading the policy suggestions, however, that’s precisely what they do, and each time they choose polluter profits over public health. They’re not even shy about their desire to politicize science. The first is the suggestion that the politicians in Congress should determine how much pollution should be allowed, not the EPA’s science-based process that focuses on human health.
They also want the EPA to stop counting co-benefits (i.e. deny a bulk the health benefits of reducing pollution from burning coal) and for Congress to simply “prohibit the regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.”
It’s the same story for their water policy suggestions, which include Congress limiting the scope of regulations, prohibiting EPA from regulating non-point sources of pollution, preventing states from exercising their rights to use water permits to stop pipelines, and revoking EPA’s authority to veto state’s water plans if they’re not stringent enough.
On land and wildlife, it's more of the same: turn over public lands for private profit, make visitors pay for upkeep instead of taxes, and otherwise codify the Trump-era pro-polluter/pro-extraction public lands policies.
Finally, they offer “Sound Science and Transparency” recommendations, laying out the plan originally concocted for the tobacco industry by Steve Milloy (and Chris Horner) to use to fight laws against second-hand smoking, and then adapted by… wait for it… Steve Milloy (and Chris Horner) to try and stave off regulations on the fossil fuel industry.
Given that the Heritage Foundation has taken funding from both the tobacco industry and the fossil fuel industry, it makes sense that they would embrace these policies, which have been staunchly opposed by basically every scientific organization in the country.
“The United States does not have to choose between economic growth, individual freedom, federalism, and a clean environment,” the authors conclude, and “policymakers should reject recommendations that force such a choice, and embrace those policies that view them as interrelated and integral to each other.”
Which is true, and exactly why policymakers should reject each and every one of the preceding recommendations.