Trump to the Environmental Protection Agency: Shut Up!

January 25, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

 

The employees of the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA—the highest-level U.S. government agency that is supposed to be responsible for identifying and preventing damage to environment and health—received orders from above on Tuesday: SHUT UP! The Trump-Pence regime has muzzled the EPA: From this moment forward, there are to be no press releases issued by the EPA and no social media or blog messages; no unapproved speaking engagements or participation in webinars; incoming media requests are to be closely screened; and nothing new is to go up on their website. Similar orders have apparently gone out to employees of the Interior Department, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Health and Human Services. All of these agencies play some role on issues related to the environment, and have been involved in efforts related to climate change, including its effects on human health.

That same day, Badlands National Park, located in South Dakota and part of the Department of Interior, posted a series of tweets about climate change: “Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate,” read one of the tweets. By that afternoon, the tweets were gone.

Trump and his top conspirators are climate change deniers. They refuse to accept the fact that global warming exists, or that humans have anything to do with it if it does. Welcome to the ignorant, fascist world of Trump—where global warming is a trick by China to get advantage over America and keep it from its rightful place as the dominant power of the world. This is absurd, completely unscientific nonsense. But that will not stop them. Because their absurd, unscientific nonsense now has the power of the state behind it—which gives them the ability to impose the “alternate realities” of Trumpworld on public discourse—and silence anyone who opposes them. “Fascism always seeks to impose an absolutist and fantastical version of reality on society and to straitjacket any attempts to get at the objective truth of anything.” (See “Lives in the Balance... Which Will Win? Trump’s First Days: The Heavy Hand of Fascism and the Spark of Resistance“)

The gravity of this move to muzzle the EPA cannot be exaggerated. The more they are able to continue, the more these American Nazis will work to transform the EPA into a servant of their alternate world, where climate change is not happening, and where any further scientific research into solving it becomes unnecessary—with catastrophic consequences for life on this planet. In the name of the environment—in the name of humanity—this fascist regime has got to be stopped before it is able to fully consolidate its hold.

 

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