The Republicans helped create Earth Day. Experts say they now annoy everything they represent

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the day of the earth, but rather than enjoying its golden years, the planet faces a new type of peril. In recent weeks, the republican party – the same party that has supervised the creation of the holidays at eco -consciousness in 1970 – gave considerable blows to the environment, in particular by taking measures to cancel the critical policies of the Nixon era which protect air, country water, natural land and endangered species.

President Nixon presided over the first day of the earth, largely founded in reaction to a devastating dark tide off the coast of California. Nixon and his wife, the first lady Pat Nixon, planted a tree on the lawn of the White House to commemorate the opportunity.

The holidays inaugurated a decade of environmental activism and legislation under its conservative direction, in particular the creation of the American environmental protection agency and the signing of the Clean Act in 1970; Clean Water Act in 1972; and the endangered species law in 1973.

Now the landscape seems considerably different. During the first months of his second term, President Trump and his allies, including the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, sparked a series of orders which, according to the experts, canceled the very politicians that their party helped to defend.

Zeldin and other Trump administration officials say that the return of these environmental protections would save money to taxpayers and reduce administrative formalities that hinder energy independence. Zeldin told journalists on Monday that “fueling the American return” is one of the main priorities of EPA.

Many experts do not agree with their justifications.

“The original environmental legislation that was adopted in the 1970s has a revolutionary for the nation,” said Gretchen Goldman, president of the non -profit union of the scientists concerned, who was recently director of climate change and research technology at the Ministry of Transport under President Biden.

These laws of the 1970s were “adopted under the recognition that we had of important environmental problems that we could not ignore as a nation,” said Goldman. “The country was then in unison that we had to solve these problems.”

Indeed, the day of the earth was created with a bipartite spirit which resonated through the festive lines. The founder of Holiday was a Democratic Senator of Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, who worked closely with a group of lots of students and environmental activists. He arrived at a time when the Americans were choking on smog, soot and lead gasoline; When the founding book of Rachel Carson Silent spring felt awareness of the dangers of pollution; And when NASA was just starting to transmit color photos of the Earth of space, offering a new perspective on the fragility of the planet.

Such bipartite is difficult to understand in the divided times today. A gallop report published this month revealed that 91% of Democrats say that the government is too little about the environment, compared to only 22% of Republicans.

The Trump administration continues to take measures which, according to experts, will worsen pollution and other environmental problems, in particular Loosen 31 keys Rules and regulations which govern the standards of air and water quality, initiatives of electric vehicles and the reduction of the global warming fossiles of the planet.

1

2

1 and 1 A ghost-type center horizon rises through the SMOG on Monday afternoon, as shown in the panoramic corridor of Mulholland on the observation above the Hollywood Bowl in 1995. (Perry C. Riddle / Los Angeles Times) 2 Los Angeles, CA, Wednesday, February 26, 2014 – The view of the Hollywod Bowl Overlook on Mulholland Drive shows a gray sky enveloping the horizon line of Los Angeles as planned for southern California. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) (Los Angeles Times)

President Trump has also accelerated drilling in oil and gas, coal production and the exploitation of natural resources, including in sensitive landscapes such as parts of Rural Alaska. And it has opened more than half of the country’s national forests for logging – including the 18 national forests in California.

“It is not an overestimation of saying that the Trump administration launched the worst attack on the White House in the history of the environment and public health,” said Manish Bapna, general manager of the non -profit natural resources. “Day after day and hour per hour, the administration destroys one of the achievements of our time.”

Bapna’s remarks occurred during a recent virtual gathering of environmental experts who met to review the first 100 days of Trump in power. The administration has taken more than 70 measures harmful to the environment so far, including executive decrees and regulatory changes, they said.

The Trump administration also offered the dirty exemptions from industrial polluters from the controls described by the Clean Act Act – which they can ask by simply sending an email. Trump also signed an executive decree that forced EPA and other federal agencies to eliminate, or “sunset”, a range of environmental rules in a year.

Such steps may have “deep and immediate consequences,” said David Hawkins, who was an assistant director of EPA during the Carter years. “All the machines of the federal government will be returned to get rid of the regulations that keep the air clean, keeping the water clean.”

This includes the Clean Air Act – which Hawkins helped implement and which reduced premature deaths of 230,000, heart disease of 200,000 and school days lost 5.4 million between 1990 and 2020, according to a study published by EPA. The economic benefits of the law in this period were 2 dollars – 30 times the estimated cost to comply, the study revealed.

Hawkins said that the Nixon environmental agenda was probably more motivated by politics than ideology, but that “what Nixon did was to take up the fact that there was a lot of bipartite political support for the cleaning of pollution”.

“He recognized the legitimate action for action on the part of the government,” he said.

Today, officials of the Trump administration “want to claim that we choose the environment or the economy, but there is no evidence that is true,” said Goldman, of the Union of Scientists concerned. “We have the solutions, we have technologies, we have the means to control pollution while allowing our economy to flourish.”

For example, she said, GDP of the United States continued to grow after the implementation of the Clean Act Act, even if the population has increased and the amount of cars on the road has increased.

Clean Air is not the only policy of the 1970s in the Trump administration reticle. EPA also announced that it Revise your definition “Water of the United States” in order to rationalize permits for farmers, landowners and businesses under the Clean Water Act. Advice is based on a 2023 Decision of the Supreme Court This has removed the protections for millions of acres from the country’s wetlands.

A white -headed pygargue rises on the Las Virgenes tank in the middle of the light rain in the village of Westlake.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In addition, the American fish and fauna service and the national maritime fisheries service proposed last week a rule which would house the endangered species law by redefining what it means to “harm” a protected species. This decision would limit the meaning to only direct measures taken to kill or injure the threatened or threatened fauna – thus eliminating protections that cover their habitats.

The Disappearance Species Act was adopted in 1973 after Nixon called on Congress to higher legislation to prevent the extinction of species. The law has been recognized for saving 99% of the species it protects from extinction, including white -headed pygargues, Californian condors and Mexican gray wolves.

Although many have changed over the past five decades, this year’s land day has a particular meaning in the California of eco-consciousness. The President was referred directly to the climatic efforts of the State, in particular measures to block the prohibition of gas cars in California, to finance his green hydrogen center, to retain aid in the event of a disaster and undermine his ceiling and exchange program.

The defenders say that these efforts are only a few among the many actions of the current president, which also include Fulloffs to the Oceanic and Atmospheric National Administration and the clasp of his scientific research arm; Interrupt environmental justice subsidies at EPA; Cancel the financing of clean energy projects at the Ministry of Energy; and direct the Ministry of Justice to Undermining the capacities of states to fight against climate change And limit carbon pollution, among others.

“My personal and professional expectation as to the quantity of global warming and climate change will actually occur has increased my hypothesis a year or two,” said Daniel Swain, UCLA air conditioner, during a recent briefing. “It was not as if we had completely turned the trend with the previous presidential administration – I did not make any illusions there – but I think that currently, the situation is that considerably more warming is now likely that what was the most plausible trajectory barely a few months ago.”

Bapna, from the NRDC, said that the actions of the administration threatened to throw decades of the ambitious environmental achievements of the opposite nation.

“The standards, the government’s ability, the legal guarantees that we have been implementing since the day of origin of the Earth in 1970 have led to unprecedented gains in the quality of our lives and the productivity of our workers and the strength of our economy,” he said. “It’s a national asset.”