Seven weeks from now, Barack Obama will leave the White House for the last time and become a private citizen with a head full of gray hair after two grueling terms as president. Had things turned out differently, that is—if Hillary Clinton had taken three more states—we’d now be seeing end-of-term assessments of President Obama’s probable legacy on a range of matters, the economy, civil rights, civil liberties, foreign policy, the environment, et cetera, in quite a different way than surely will now be the case.
Because we were going to pretty much see a continuation of what Obama was doing—the good and the bad. In the case of the environment, the key questions of many assessors would have been: how much further might President Clinton take the good, and how much of the bad might she abandon? That all changed on November 8.
What we’re obviously about to see instead of this carrying forward and possible expansion of a lot of current policies and programs will be concerted efforts to dismantle or diminish everything positive Obama did when he had to find a way around Congress to do it. Though continuing a penchant for being contradictory, the guy who apparently has won those three states Clinton was edged out in continues to sound as if he plans to grind Obama’s environmental legacy into powder. And he’s got many allies in this matter in Congress who are champing at the bit to get a chance to make their fossil fuel patrons happy.
To be clear, Donald Trump and the Republicans he now leads want to wreck more than what Obama did that they hated. And obviously more than merely environmental matters. They’ve got Great Society programs in their crosshairs, too. And New Deal programs that haven’t already been torched.
A few of them would be happy going back further still, mucking about with the post-Civil War amendments, say with the birthright citizenship conveyed in the 14th Amendment. All but the lunatics among them know that this is probably overreach even under the coming reign of Trump Enterprises, Inc. So, they’ll go for the more recent stuff that sticks in their craw, gutting Dodd-Frank, gutting federal education programs, gutting the Iran nuclear deal, et cetera, ad nauseam.
Environmental policy is, of course, rich with targets for attack. While eco-advocates—including me—have been sharply critical of a few of the environmental policies and programs the president has initiated or continued, especially in his first term and especially on energy, we’re about to get a rough lesson on just how much he did right as the Trumpkochians scheme to put these programs and policies to the sword. Yes, we are going to miss Obama when he’s gone.
But, as Kevin Freking of the Associated Press points out, he’s not gone yet. And he’s being pushed by eco-advocates to take additional action before he is:
Trump's plans have environmental groups encouraging Obama to go out swinging for the fences. The Sierra Club, for example, is encouraging supporters to sign a petition urging Obama to approve three new national monuments that have generated much tension in the states involved. The proposals are: Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, Grand Canyon National Heritage Monument in Arizona and Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada. The Sierra Club is also calling on Obama to permanently ban drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic.[...]
Athan Manuel, director of the lands protection program for the Sierra Club, said Obama has an "incredible environmental legacy" already, but the work the group is asking him to undertake in his final weeks in office would make it that much stronger and would be difficult for a Trump administration to reverse. He said that undoing a national monument or a drilling ban in the Arctic would likely require congressional action. Even with the GOP in charge of both chambers, it would be difficult for Republicans to find the votes to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate.
If the filibuster remains on the books in Senate, Manuel may be right. Congress has only rarely abolished national monuments. And since you’re wondering whether Trump could simply issue a countermanding executive order, a president has never revoked a national monument. In fact, U.S. Attorney General Homer Stillé Cummings in 1938 stated in a written opinion that a president has no such authority.
But that was nearly 80 years ago, and it was never tested in any court. A new attorney general might very well take a different stance. And a very different president than who sat in the Oval Office then will be sitting there soon. So, while it’s certainly worth a try for Obama to establish these monuments, counting on them staying monuments less than two months from now isn’t something anybody should bet the rent money on.
It’s going to be much more difficult in other environmental arenas. The Trump administration can wreak havoc by refusing to implement any of the Paris Climate Agreement. While the new president cannot reverse fuel efficiency standards, for example, that’s not true for a new methane emissions rule on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management is working on that rule now and may have it completed in time for Obama to sign before he departs from office. But if this happens, it’s not hard to imagine the battle that will most certainly ensue in the courts, with the new administration perhaps choosing not to defend the rule against their pals in the oil and gas business.
While the efforts of Trump and Congress to undermine eco-policy on the national level should be battled at every turn by green advocates inside and outside the Democratic Party, our resistance cannot thrive solely on defense. An offensive strategy is needed as well.
Here’s just one of many ways to do that. Scores of small and large municipalities and a few states have been taking strong, positive action to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and plan for adjustments to ameliorate and cope with the impacts of climate change. Every effort should be made to persuade other cities to follow the leaders in this regard, building a collection of local and state programs, some of which can be turned into national policies beginning in January 2021.
The campaign to spread these ideas, policies and practices from their current locales across the nation should focus on creating jobs, on health, on sustainability. And they should be an integral part of local organizing with an eye to the crucial business of regaining control of the state legislative bodies we’ve lost over the past few years and making inroads into the ones the Republicans have held for decades.
