[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 67 (Wednesday, April 25, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2429-S2431]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             EARTH DAY 2018

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last Sunday, April 22, marked the 49th 
Earth Day. Given the Trump administration's reckless assault on the 
environment, it is frightening to think where we might be on the 50th 
Earth Day.
  President Trump hasn't built that ``big, beautiful'' wall he 
promised. More than a year into his term, he still hasn't filled dozens 
of critical posts, from Cabinet Secretaries to ambassadors.
  Looking at what hasn't been done, a reasonable person might assume 
that this President still hasn't learned how to make government work. 
That might be true in many areas, but when it comes to the environment, 
it is dead wrong.
  From day one of his administration, President Trump has used budget 
cuts, executive orders, and other administrative and regulatory tools 
to push a concerted rollback of environmental protections. President 
Trump has repealed or frozen some 850 rules and regulations, many of 
which have a direct impact on the environment.
  He has signaled his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris 
climate accord. America is the largest emitter of carbon gases, and we 
are the only nation on Earth that is not part of the global effort to 
save the planet from climate chaos and catastrophe.
  Under this President, we have ceded global leadership on the climate 
to other nations, especially to China. Not only is that shameful, it is 
bad business. Some of the best-paying jobs of the 21st century will be 
in renewable energy industries. How are we going to create those jobs 
and industries in America with a President and administration that 
refuse to admit even the existence of climate change?
  Since Earth Day last year, the U.S. has suffered some of the 
deadliest and costliest disasters in our history. Last August, 
Hurricane Irma battered the southern U.S., especially south Florida. It 
was followed quickly by Hurricane Harvey, which caused an estimated 
$200 billion in damage and pummeled Houston. In September, Hurricane 
Maria caused the worst natural disaster on record in Puerto Rico. 
Nearly 8 months later, most of the island is still without electricity. 
After the hurricanes came the wildfires, including some of the worst 
wildfires in California's history.
  Scientists warn that without significant reductions in carbon 
emissions, climate chaos will become more frequent, more deadly and 
more expensive.
  What is FEMA's response? Strategic plans drawn up by FEMA during both 
the Obama and George W. Bush administrations acknowledged climate 
change as a serious threat, right up there with terrorist attacks. 
Under this President, FEMA has dropped any mention of climate change 
from its strategic plan. The reality we dare not deny has become the 
crisis whose name the Agency dare not utter.
  Last year and again this year, President Trump has sent Congress 
budget plans that would gut the Department of Interior and the 
Environmental Protection Agency.
  Scott Pruitt, the President's choice to run EPA, is an ethical 
nightmare, but he is a polluter's dream. He has vowed to withdraw the 
Clean Power Plan, a plan to cut emissions from the U.S. power sector by 
32 percent from 2005 by 2030. Administrator Pruitt has signaled that he 
wants to roll back modest new fuel efficiency standards for cars and 
light-duty trucks--standards that would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas 
emissions significantly. The EPA under Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt 
has suspended the ``waters of the United States'' rule, designed to 
reduce pollution in 60 percent of the Nation's lakes, rivers, and 
streams.
  EPA is not the only member of the Trump Environmental Wrecking Crew.
  Today, 94 percent of the outer continental shelf in the Pacific, 
Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans is off limits from oil and gas exploration. 
The Department of the Interior is proposing to open 90 percent of the 
outer continental shelf for future oil and gas drilling. On top of 
this, this administration has weakened safety requirements that prevent 
oil spills.
  Interior's Bureau of Land Management is also selling off thousands of 
federally owned parcels of land for oil and gas development. Among the 
national treasures up for sale are two national monuments in Utah: the 
Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, home to some of the richest 
and most important archeological finds in our Nation.
  Interior Secretary Zinke had a special flag designed for himself and 
ordered that it be flown whenever he was in the Department 
headquarters. It would be more fitting if he flew the white flag of 
surrender because that is what this administration is doing.
  They are surrendering America's global leadership in the efforts to 
save this planet from climate catastrophe, and they are surrendering 
decades of important and lifesaving progress we have made since the 
first Earth Day in safeguarding our environment, preserving our natural 
treasures, and protecting the health and safety of the American people.
  They are undoing decades of bipartisan agreements that balanced 
science

[[Page S2430]]

and the public good with the interests of States, localities, 
landowners, business, and conservationists.
  This past weekend, on the eve of Earth Day, the New York Times 
published an oped entitled, ``America Before Earth Day: Smog and 
Disasters Spurred the Laws Trump Wants to Undo.'' The article recounts 
five devastating ecological disasters that shook Americans deeply in 
late 1960s and the 1970s and led to the creation of major environmental 
laws that have saved millions of lives and reversed horrendous 
environmental damage.
  The accidents include the Cuyahoga River burning in 1969, which 
helped spur passage of the Clean Air Act, and the toxic poisoning of 
Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY--a catalyst for the creation in 1980 of 
a superfund that would make oil and chemical companies pay for the 
pollution they cause and not walk away from the devastation and stick 
taxpayers with the tab.
  The Trump administration is working to dismantle not just to these 
major environmental laws and abdicate America's role as a global leader 
on environmental protection, it is reneging on a bipartisan tradition 
on conservation and preservation of America's public lands that goes 
back more than a century, to a proud Republican President by the name 
of Teddy Roosevelt.
  I ask unanimous consent that that full New York Times op-ed be 
printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  Fortunately, American businesses and scientists, State and local 
governments, and the American people themselves refuse to wave the 
white flag. They refuse to sell America's clean air and clean water and 
the health of the American people to the highest bidder.
  They are working in boardrooms and classrooms, in laboratories, in 
city halls, State houses, and courthouses to solve the urgent 
environmental challenges of our time and preserve the bipartisan 
environmental progress we have made.
  The Trump administration needs to listen and stop waving the white 
flag of surrender. Our world and the health of our children and 
grandchildren is worth fighting for.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From The New York Times, April 21, 2018]

  America Before Earth Day: Smog and Disasters Spurred the Laws Trump 
                             Wants to Undo

            (By Livia Albeck-Ripka and Kendra Pierre-Louis)

       A huge oil spill. A river catching fire. Lakes so polluted 
     they were too dangerous for fishing or swimming. Air so thick 
     with smog it was impossible to see the horizon.
       That was the environmental state of the nation 50 years 
     ago. But pollution and disasters prompted action. On April 
     22, 1970, millions of people throughout the country 
     demonstrated on the inaugural Earth Day, calling for air, 
     water and land in the country to be cleaned up and protected. 
     And that year, in a bipartisan effort, the Environmental 
     Protection Agency was created and key legislation--the Clean 
     Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act--
     came into force.
       Now, the Trump administration has made eliminating federal 
     regulations a priority, and an increasing number of 
     environmental rules are under threat.
       Here's a look at five environmental disasters that shifted 
     the public conversation and prompted, directly or indirectly, 
     lawmakers to act.


                      The Santa Barbara Oil Spill

       On January 28, 1969, an oil rig exploded off the coast of 
     Santa Barbara, Calif., spewing three million gallons of crude 
     oil into the ocean in one of the worst environmental 
     disasters in the history of the United States.
       At the time, there were no federal measures in place to 
     regulate offshore drilling.
       After the spill local officials pleaded with the federal 
     government to end oil exploration off the California coast. 
     But it was not until 1978 that the first federal regulations 
     were passed.
       Just over 40 years after the Santa Barbara rig blowout, on 
     April 20, 2010, an even worse spill, known as the Deepwater 
     Horizon disaster, resulted in the tightening of federal 
     rules.
       But this past January, the Trump administration said it 
     would reopen vast areas of United States coastal waters to 
     new offshore oil and gas drilling projects. Shortly 
     thereafter, the administration began the process of rolling 
     back safety regulations on existing rigs.
       Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, has also proposed 
     revising a five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing, 
     which conservationists say would harm marine life and could 
     also pose a danger to humans.


                        The Cuyahoga River Fire

       The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland in 1952. The river burned 
     at least 13 times before the 1969 fire that was covered by 
     Time magazine. On June 22, 1969, the Cuyahoga River near 
     Cleveland caught fire--both literally and in the public 
     imagination. A few months later the conflagration became a 
     big story in Time magazine, which described the Cuyahoga as a 
     river that ``oozes rather than flows.''
       The story prompted outrage throughout the country, where 
     many rivers, after decades of industrial pollution, were too 
     dangerous for swimming, fishing or drinking. (The main photo 
     in Time was actually of the Cuyahoga when it caught fire 17 
     years earlier, in 1952. The river had burned at least 13 
     times.)
       The fire, fueled by an oil slick on river's surface, and 
     resulting media coverage galvanized the outrage into broader 
     public action.
       It culminated in the passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act. 
     That measure, like the Clean Air Act, was an extension of 
     earlier laws. But the piecemeal nature of the earlier rules 
     had resulted in a lack of oversight and regulatory control. 
     The 1972 act coordinated the rules and gave regulatory 
     authority to the nascent E.P.A.
       Since the law's creation, waterways across the United 
     States are markedly cleaner, though half still fall short of 
     national goals. Recent decisions, though, could lead to 
     backsliding.
       The E.P.A. has suspended the Obama-era Waters of the United 
     States rules, which sought to clarify which waterways are 
     considered part of the national water system. Smaller bodies 
     of water, like intermittent streams and wetlands, have been 
     in a legal gray area since the 1972 act despite having 
     significant impact on water quality.
       Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, also removed Clean 
     Water Act decision-making authority from regional offices, 
     leaving him the sole arbiter.


                        The Love Canal Disaster

       In the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal in Niagara 
     Falls, N.Y., began complaining of odd smells, rashes and 
     liquid leaching into the basements of their homes. Decades 
     earlier, the Hooker Chemical Company had dumped toxic waste 
     in the canal and buried it. Outraged, the residents of Love 
     Canal organized and were eventually relocated from their 
     town.
       While the residents of Love Canal were not the first or 
     only community to confront the toxic legacy of industry, 
     their plight caught the attention of national media, and 
     ultimately, helped prompt the creation of the Comprehensive 
     Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, 
     commonly known as the Superfund.
       Passed by Congress in 1980, the law meant that chemical and 
     petroleum companies would be taxed to create a cleanup trust 
     fund.
       Over time, however, the trust fund has dwindled, with 
     taxpayers increasingly footing cleanup bills. In the E.P.A.'s 
     2019 budget, staff cuts have been made, while some people 
     nominated for key positions have direct links to polluting 
     industries. In December, the administration also rejected a 
     proposed rule that mining companies prove they have the money 
     to clean up pollution left behind at their sites.


                         The Smog-Filled Skies

       Pittsburghers used to say that if you wore a white shirt to 
     work in the morning, that the shirt would be as gray as the 
     air by lunchtime. In cities and towns throughout the country, 
     Americans didn't just breathe the air, they could all but 
     touch it. In the nation's National Parks, air pollution 
     clouded the views.
       This was the United States before the 1970s Clean Air Act.
       There was no single smog event that led to the act. In the 
     years leading up to its passage, though, ``You had growing 
     awareness in the scientific community about problems like 
     smog,'' said Eric Schaeffer, the executive director of the 
     Environmental Integrity Project. ``You had the beginnings of 
     an understanding that it was bigger than any state agency 
     could manage.''
       The act was an overhaul and extension of the 1963 Clean Air 
     Act. It enabled the newly created E.P.A. to set standards 
     related to six key pollutants that were known to harm human 
     health.
       In recent months the Trump administration has signaled its 
     desire to undo some of parts of the act. Mr. Pruitt, the 
     E.P.A. administrator, has said that Obama-era car emissions 
     standards designed to reduce greenhouse gasses and other 
     pollutants linked to respiratory diseases and heart disease 
     are set ``too high.''


                  The Near-Extinction of the Gray Wolf

       In the early 1970s, the gray wolf was teetering on the edge 
     of extinction in the lower 48 states. Throughout the earlier 
     part of the century, the wolf was largely considered a trophy 
     and was hunted and skinned for its fur to within an inch of 
     the species' life.
       In its company were dozens of other species at risk of 
     dying out, with few laws to protect them.
       In 1973, shortly after the first Earth Day, with the 
     American public increasingly aware of the importance of 
     biodiversity, the Endangered Species Act was signed into law 
     by President Richard M. Nixon. The act was designed to 
     prohibit the killing or harassing of protected species or 
     damaging the habitats necessary for their survival.
       Shortly thereafter, the gray wolf was listed as 
     ``endangered'' under the act and--alongside the bald eagle, 
     American alligator

[[Page S2431]]

     and dozens of other species--began to slowly recover in some 
     areas. Scientists estimate that the act has directly 
     prevented the extinction of more than 200 species.
       The act has long been a point of contention between 
     industry and conservationists, and has come under criticism 
     from previous administrations. But under the Trump 
     administration, at least 63 separate legislative efforts to 
     weaken the act have been undertaken since January 2017, 
     according to the Centre for Biological Diversity.
       Among them were the delisting of various species that 
     conservationists argue are not fully recovered, like grizzly 
     bears in Yellowstone National Park. The attempts to water 
     down the act are ``among the worst'' by any administration, 
     said Bruce Stein, the chief scientist of the National 
     Wildlife Federation.

                          ____________________