In an Age of Despair, Hope is More Important an Ever

Persistence pays off. | Photo: Vladimir Varfolomeef, some rights reserved

Commentary: If you're an environmentally concerned person who reads the news, there's a good chance you're in a little bit of a funk this month. The incoming administration has been consistent about very few things, but one of those things is a firm commitment to roll back environmental protection. The next four years are likely to be very hard on the planet.

There's a lot of bad news coming our way, in short, and it's enough to make a person who cares about the climate, wildlife, and clean air and water want to hide under the covers until for the next few years. Add to that the cynicism in public life, already rampant and growing ever faster, and you might decide that only the willfully clueless could maintain something like optimism as we all head into the next four years.

But such cynicism deprives us of the most effective tool we have for changing the world: the conviction that we can change the world. In fact, a clear-eyed, pragmatic optimism may well be the most sensible strategy for dealing with the threats to the environment were likely to see in the near future.

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Optimism may seem like a tall order: bad news for the environment is likely to come fast and furious in the next few months as the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress settle in to ordering all the items on their decades-old wish list.

Within the first six months of 2017 we can expect a serious attempt to gut the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal body charged with keeping us safe from polluted air, water, and soil. We can expect similar attempts to slash the U.S. Department of Agriculture's ability to monitor food safety, and of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to keep us safe from toxic chemicals on the job. Signature environmental laws such as the Magnuson-Stevens Act that protects ocean fisheries from overexploitation, the National Environmental Policy Act - which requires federal agencies to consider the environmental effects of the work they do - and a host of federal laws regulating pollution from the fossil fuel and chemical industries are almost certain to be rewritten to emphasize business interests over the health of people and the environment.

One federal environmental law, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), has been the nemesis of the most conservative elements in Congress since the 1970s. There have been numerous attempts by past Republican legislators to restrict the ESA's reach, from the 1970s-era bill that allowed the Tellico Dam project to hurt the Endangered snail darter to moves by the 104th Congress to remove the law's Critical Habitat components. (The law has been eroded by Democrats as well, but they've usually used bureaucratic inertia rather than legislation.)

California condors recovery program may well take a funding hit | Photo: DJMcCrady, some rights reserved

Though this fact doesn't get a whole lot of mention in the press, the Endangered Species Act was at the center of the militia uprising in 2014 at the Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada: Cliven Bundy's notorious refusal to pay his taxpayer-subsidized livestock grazing fees starting in 1993 was in part a reaction to the listing of the desert tortoise as Threatened in 1989. The law, never far from the right-wing's attention, is touted by the far-right as part of a New World Order plan to depopulate the countryside. Donald Trump has shown, through everything from Cabinet appointments to retweeting wild rumors spread by sites like Infowars, that he takes these notions seriously. In short, there's an exceedingly large chance that ESA will be severely curtailed or even rescinded in the first year of a Trump administration.

Trump has promised to make it harder for news media to report critically on his policies, most famously through threatening to tighten up the libel laws to expose news organizations to lawsuits by public figures. (There are no federal libel laws to tighten up, but he might not let that stop him.) If he succeeds in throttling the press, or if the larger news organizations become more circumspect over fears of lawsuits, that affects our ability to know what's happening to the environment as a result of Trump administration policy.

The Freedom of Information Act, a crucial tool for members of the public to learn about the plans of government agencies, is another likely target for revision or abolition. And then theres the judiciary. As the new administration appoints new federal judges, the ability of the judiciary to rein in excesses of the Executive and Legislative branches will dwindle. Take the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has a not-undeserved reputation as the most environment-friendly federal appeals court in the United States. Of 17 Senior Circuit Judges on the Ninth Circuit, 16 are older than 70 this year. Eleven of them are 80 or older. There's a very good chance the Trump administration will be selecting appointments for several of those Senior Circuit Judge seats in the next four years, potentially altering the court's trajectory when ruling on environmental cases.

Antonio Gramsci | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

These are all pretty good arguments for pessimism, to be honest.

The Italian political philosopher Antonio Gramsci would have found much to recognize in this scenario. He was well-acquainted with the idea of a political leader who erodes rights and freedoms after taking power. A left-wing activist in the 1920s under Mussolini, Gramsci was imprisoned at age 35 along with other opponents of the Fascist regime in November 1926.

Gramsci was never released: he died due to inadequate medical care i

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