This year marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, but rather than enjoying its golden age, the planet faces a new kind of danger. Over the past few weeks, Republicans, the same party that oversaw the creation of environmentally conscious public holidays in 1970, have hit the environment quite a bit, including taking steps to rescind the country’s important Nixon-era policies that protect the country’s air, water, natural lands and threatened species.
President Nixon hosted the first Earth Day, largely established in response to a catastrophic oil spill off the coast of California. Nixon and his wife, First Lady Pat Nixon, planted trees on the White House lawn to commemorate the occasion.
The public holidays guided 10 years of environmental activities and law under his conservative leadership, including the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and the signature of the Clean Air Act. Clean Water Law of 1972. And then, in 1973, the Endangered Species Species Act.
Morgan Miller on the left and Josh Marsh, a longtime Santa Barbara resident, walk along the oil-coated beaches of Refugio State Beach, searching for wildlife to rescue.
(Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)
The scenery now looks quite different. In the first months of his second term, allies, including President Trump and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, have unleashed many orders that experts have said they are revoking the very policies that their party once helped champions.
Zeldin and other Trump administration officials say repeating these environmental protections will save taxpayers money and reduce the deficit that hinders energy independence. Zeldin told reporters Monday that “the power of a great American comeback” is one of the EPA’s top priorities.
Many experts disagree with their legitimacy.
“The original environmental law passed in the ’70s was game-changing for the people,” said Gretchen Goldman, chairman of the nonprofit scientists coalition who recently served as director of climate change research technology for the Department of Transport under President Biden.
These 1970s laws were “passed under the recognition that there were environmental issues that we as a nation cannot ignore,” Goldman said. “At that time, the country was in agreement that it needed to tackle these issues.”
In fact, Earth Day was created with a bipartisan spirit that resonated beyond the party line. Holiday’s founder was Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson, who worked closely with grassroots groups of college students and environmental activists. It arrived the moment the Americans were choking up smog, soot and lead gasoline. When Silent Springs in Rachel Carson’s inventive book was scorning her perception of the dangers of pollution. And NASA was just beginning to send photographs of Earth’s colour from space, offering a new perspective on planetary vulnerabilities.
This kind of bipartisanship is difficult to speculate in today’s divided times. A Gallop report released this month found that 91% of Democrats say the government is too few in the environment, compared to only 22% of Republicans.
The Trump administration continues to take steps that experts will exacerbate pollution and other environmental issues. These include 31 key rules and regulations governing air and water quality standards, electric vehicle initiatives, and fossil fuel controls that warm the planet.
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1. A ghost-like downtown skyline rises Monday afternoon, as you look out over the scenic corridors of Mulholland above the Hollywood Bowl in 1995. (Perry C. Riddle/Los Angeles Times) 2. (Robert Gautier/Los Angeles Times) (Los Angeles Times)
President Trump has also increased oil and gas drilling, coal production and natural resource extraction, including delicate landscapes such as parts of Alaska. And he opens more than half of the country’s national forests for logging, including all 18 national forests in California.
“To say that the Trump administration has launched the worst White House attack in history on environmental and public health is not an exaggeration,” said Manish Bapna, CEO of the nonprofit Council on Natural Resources Defense. “Every day, every hour, the administration is destroying one of the fruits of our time’s signature.”
Bapna’s remarks came at a recent virtual rally of environmental experts who gathered to review Trump’s first 100 days of inauguration. The administration has taken more than 70 actions that have been harmful to the environment so far, including executive orders and changes to regulations, they said.
The Trump administration also provided the nation’s dirtyest industrial polluters to be exempt from controls outlined by the Clean Air Act. Trump this month signed a massive executive order that the EPA and other federal agencies would eliminate a set of environmental rules within a year, or to “sunset.”
David Hawkins, who served as an assistant administrator for the EPA during his time at Carter, said taking such measures “can have serious and immediate consequences.” “The entire federal machinery will be handed over to remove regulations that keep the air clean and keep the water clean.”
One study published by the EPA found that Hawkins helped implement it, including the Clean Air Act, which reduced 230,000 people, heart disease and premature deaths that reduced student days of 5.4 million between 1990 and 2020. The economic benefits of the law over that time frame were $2 trillion. This was 30 times the estimated cost of adherence, the study found.
Hawkins said Nixon’s environmental agenda is likely more motivated by politics than ideology, but he said “what Nixon did addressed the fact that there was a lot of bipartisan political support in cleaning up the pollution.”
“He recognized the legitimate demand for government action,” he said.
Today, Trump administration officials “want to pretend to choose the environment or the economy, but there is no evidence that it is true,” said Goldman of the Coalition of Concern Scientists. “We have solutions, we have technology, we have ways to make our economy flourish while controlling pollution.”
For example, she said, even as the population grew and the amount of cars on the roads increased, US GDP continued to grow even after the implementation of the Clean Air Act.
Clean Air is not the only policy of the ’70s in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. The EPA has also announced that it will amend the definition of “US water” to streamline permits for farmers, landowners and businesses under the Clean Water Act. The guidance is based on a 2023 Supreme Court decision to remove the protection of the country’s wetlands on millions of acres.
The bald eagle soars above Lasville Genes Reservoir in light rain in Westlake Village.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
Additionally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service last week proposed rules that narrow the laws of endangered species by redefineing the meaning of “harming” protected species. This move limits its meaning only to direct actions taken to kill or injure an endangered species or threatened wildlife. Therefore, remove protection that covers their habitat.
The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 after Nixon called on Congress for a stronger law to prevent extinction of species. The law is believed to have saved 99% of species protected from extinction, including bald eagles, California condors and Mexican grey wolves.
Despite many changes over the past 50 years, Earth Day this year retains a special meaning in environmentally friendly California. The president is directly aiming for the state’s climate efforts, including blocking California’s gas ban, withdrawing funds from the Green Hydrogen Hub, withholding disaster aid and undermining the Cap-and-Trade program.
Supporters say these efforts are only a few of the many actions, including the closure of the National Maritime and Atmospheric Administration and its scientific research division, amid many concerns by the current president. Environmental Justice grants suspended at the EPA. Cancellation of funds for a clean energy project at the Ministry of Energy. It directs the Department of Justice to undermine the state’s ability to deal with climate change and limit carbon pollution.
During a recent briefing, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said, “It has increased from my assumptions about my personal and professional expectations of global warming and climate change actually occurring.” “It wasn’t completely changing the tide from the previous presidential administration – I have no illusions there – but I think it’s more likely to be a significant warming now than the most plausible trajectory a few months ago.”
NRDC’s Bapna said the administration’s actions are threatening to cast backlash on the fruits of the country’s ambitious environment over the decades.
“The standards set since the original Earth Day in 1970, government capabilities and legal protection measures have driven unprecedented benefits of our quality of life, our workers’ productivity and economic strength,” he said. “It’s a domestic asset.”
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