Before he leaves office in January, President Donald Trump is apparently doing as much as he possibly can to exacerbate catastrophic climate change, harm indigenous communities, and create irreversible harm to endangered wildlife as he possibly can. He’s also doing something that may cause more harm than good in the Middle East, The American Independent [1] reports.
I wish I were exaggerating. But I’m not.
I’ll try to encapsulate all of the goings-on in a nutshell:
- Trump issued a “request for nominations” Monday, that asks oil companies to pick areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that they’d prefer to use when drilling for oil, the Center for Biological Diversity reports.
“Trump is trying to lock in climate chaos and the extinction of polar bears and other endangered Arctic species on his way out the door,” said Kristen Monsell, the center’s legal director, in a statement [2] earlier this week. “This is unconscionable. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge can’t be replaced, so we can’t let this lame-duck president give it away to Big Oil.”
It’s a move that would also harm the indigenous Gwich’in and Inupiat communities that live within these sacred lands. The seriousness of this situation isn’t lost on Jody Potts (Han Gwich’in). She’s the regional director of Native Movement, and in the same press release, she noted the oil lease sales “demonstrate the Trump administration’s complete disregard for the human rights of the Gwich’in and Inupiat people and our ways of life that depend on the health of the Refuge’s coastal plain.”
“In the Arctic, our peoples are being heavily impacted by a climate crisis due to fossil fuel extraction, which we cannot afford to continue,” Potts said. “As a Gwich’in person, I know my family’s food security, culture, spirituality, and ways of life are at stake.”
- Trump’s apparently also trying to cram in more building of his wall before Biden steps in, and that’s of course, causing considerable destruction. Builders contracted by the U.S. government are rushing right along to put up as much of the wall as they can before January, when their contracts may be canceled.
“Every single day, the Department of Homeland Security continues to dynamite, to blow up these rugged mountains in order to clear a path for a wall, that in all likelihood, will never be built,” Laiken Jordahl, who works with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an interview with NPR [3] Monday.
“So now it’s just destruction for destruction’s sake.”
This unnecessary destruction is also harming wildlife communities. One case in point is the Salineño preserve in Starr County, Texas. This preserve, according to conservation activist Scott Nicol is “21/2 acres of some of the best bird habitat” has already been “acquired by the Army Corps of Engineers and is set to be destroyed by the border wall.”
NPR reports the sale was concluded on Election Day but was fortunately canceled following public outrage. But Customs and Border Protection officials are claiming the land “is necessary for the execution of planned border barrier in support of U.S. Border Patrol’s operational requirement in the Rio Grande valley.”
Some officials are also concerned about what Trump is doing on an international level as well.
- He’s still trying to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the hopes of cutting them by half (to about 2500) by January 15, officials told The Associated Press [4] Monday. Some officials, like Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, a top U.S. commander for the Middle East, are fighting this due to concerns that this may monkeywrench peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government. McKenzie and other officials say U.S. forces could still serve to suppress ISIS forces in the region.
The American Independent story also highlights other issues that may have serious consequences and readers curious about this should refer to the article because my space here is limited. Which means I’m going to sum things up by noting that it will be a happy day when Trump leaves. It’s hard to imagine someone who’s been as selfish as this man who is willing to cause additional destruction to the planet’s already fragile climate, wildlife, and indigenous communities.
What a happy occasion that January day will be.