RFK jr is a distraction. His role is to make a lot of noise, undermine confidence in modern medicine, and pretend to be doing great things for Americans, even as he is promoting placebos and useless treatments. But why, you might ask? Who profits from that, besides the supplement industry? Watch the man capering on the stage with his brain worm, while the oil industry disembowels all environmental protections.
Here’s a short summary of what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin did just last week, via the New York Times—and it’s really just the tip of the iceberg:
In a barrage of pronouncements on Wednesday, the Trump administration said it would repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, protections for wetlands, and the legal basis that allows it to regulate the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet. …
Mr. Zeldin said the E.P.A. would unwind [31] protections against air and water pollution. It would overturn limits on soot from smokestacks that have been linked to respiratory problems in humans and premature deaths as well as restrictions on emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin. It would get rid of the “good neighbor rule” that requires states to address their own pollution when it’s carried by winds into neighboring states. And it would eliminate enforcement efforts that prioritize the protection of poor and minority communities.
In addition, Zeldin said the mission of the EPA would fundamentally change. No longer would the agency’s purpose be “to protect human health and the environment,” as its been since Richard Nixon established the EPA in 1970. Instead, Zeldin said the EPA’s purpose would be to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.”
Where’s the protection in the Environmental Protection Agency’s name going to go? Maybe we should change that word to Profiteering. Zeldin, by the way, is a Republican lawyer and climate change denier with no qualifications in environmental science, whose sole attribute is unflagging loyalty to Donald Jargogle Trump.
Rural America is going to be drowning in floods of swine effluent and rotting poultry, while breathing coal smoke and clouds of pesticides. Hey, nothing megadoses of Vitamin A and lots of ivermectin can’t cure, right?
This is sick and evil no doubt.
It is what the GOP is and what they do.
There are a few things that are going to slow down the GOP plan to turn the USA into a toxic trash dump.
.1. Most states have an EPA equivalent, sometimes called the EPA or Department of Environmental Quality, DEQ.
These are usually underfunded, understaffed, and don’t have much in the way of authority. They can usually only issue small fines.
.2. The corporations polluting our envirnoment are still subject to various civil laws for harms they cause.
In theory anyway, they can be sued in court if their coal ash pile collapses into that river that millions of people use for drinking water.
Strangely enough, this is what happened in the old USSR.
The commies didn’t have an EPA and the idea of taking care of the environment wasn’t a priority. Which meant the USSR had high levels of industrial pollution every where.
Kill The Poor. Dead Kennedys 1980. Just not with neutron bombs, but rather with plagues and environment and climate collapse. Same concept.
”The EPA’s purpose would be to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.”
Is that so? Tell that to all the tariff zealots surrounding Trump whose policies are doing the exact opposite.
If you actually look at polling data, most Americans are in favor of protecting the environment such as clean air and clean water.
In this article, it is 92%.
The MAGAts are way out of touch with the American people.
No one wants to live in a trash heap and die young from emphysema and cancers, all diseases caused by air and water pollution.
“Majorities of Americans say that the federal government is doing too little to protect key areas of the environment. Overall, 63% of U.S. adults say the federal government is doing too little to protect the quality of lakes, rivers and streams. Just 7% say too much is being done here, while 29% say the federal government is doing about the right amount in this area.
Ironically, what the EPA etc.. did was and is working.
The EPA like the CDC and NIH are victims of their own incredible success.
People aren’t dying of polluted air and water, common childhood diseases, or heart disease and cancer like they did in the good old days a century ago when the average US lifespan was 47 years instead of 77 years.
When I was a kid, the environment was trashed and a lot more polluted than it is now.
.1. The river near our house up north was heavily polluted and biologically dead. You wouldn’t even think of swimming in it.
These days it is cleaned up, popular for swimming and kayaking, and supports a salmon run.
.2 The air was polluted to the point where you could see it. Smog.
In Los Angeles, in one day, your car would pick up a film of oil.
Your lungs would tell you that you were in Pasadena on a summer day, because it was hard to breath.
.3. Lead in gasoline did wonders for the environment.
..4 Acid rain was killing fish and destroying food chains in a lot of places.
.5. DDT was driving a lot of bird species to extinction, including the bald eagles. It made their eggs more fragile.
I’m sure most people don’t want to go back to those days.
@PZ OP
Did you mean to say “he is promoting placebos and useful treatments” or perhaps useless treatments instead?
Hardly surprising, considering the head clown in charge. On a similar note, Russian state TV said that they should erect a statue in honour of Trump destroying trust in the US economy. https://is.gd/pCnPSk
Lee Zeldin (I read Led Zeppelin scrolling the text) is a typical appointment by a Republican POTUS (Pissant of the…) going back to St. Ronny and James Watt: utterly unqualified, appointed solely to wreck the agency.
Zeppelin should be his name. A complete air-head.
Well, so much for the U.S.-Canada Air Quality Agreement, signed in 1991 to reduce the production of acid rain, primarily in Eastern Canada and North-Eastern U.S. Both countries signed that treaty because both recognized that pollutants don’t care about political boundaries. Given Trump and crew’s attitude during Covid, they’ll probably be just fine with acid rain as long as it’s only destroying buildings in Canada or New York, and would only suddenly rediscover an interest in the environment if the White House starts dissolving.
On the American side, yes, that was signed by George H. W. Bush. Never thought I’d feel nostalgic for Bush the Elder, but these days he seems like a temporary regression to the mean and return to relative sanity in the middle of the Republican rush to shove the Overton Window off the cliff over the last sixty ears.
RFKjr started his career as an environmental lawyer (incorrect assumptions of mercury poisoning were what got him into anti-vaxx), but everything we’ve seen since then shows that he probably never actually cared about the environment even then, he was always mostly about cosplaying David fighting Goliath for his own self-aggrandizement. He got involved in environmental lawsuits because it let him feel important for bringing big companies to heel.
This is one of the things that angers me so much when Americans tell other people to butt out of their politics. We all knew this was coming. This stuff affects us all. Is this pollution going to stop at the American border?
When I read that I thought it was from the Onion; but no, it’s real. Really.
RFK Jr. is the most effective kind of distraction – one that is going to get people killed and so can’t be safely ignored.
Sadly he has given Sorry Antivaxer a new lease of life.
This is where RFK pseudoscience is a perfect intersection with MAGA idiocy. RFK can waste billions on bogus studies about seed oils, food dyes, GMOs, and vaccines, while ignoring the PROVEN POLLUTANTS THAT CAUSE MORTALITY! If he had any moral consistency, he would oppose the EPA efforts to reduce environmental regulations. But he’s simply a liar with no principles whatsoever. He’ll say whatever Trump wants now that he has a seat at the table.
@1. raven : “The commies didn’t have an EPA and the idea of taking care of the environment wasn’t a priority. Which meant the USSR had high levels of industrial pollution every where.”
Exhibit A what they did to the former Aral Sea :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
Ofc, whether they were actual “commies” in anything other than name is a whole other question..
@15
they sound like the same bunch now “running” our country throwing words around on top of fake news and lies
@StevoR #15:
Lake Ladoga provides the water to St Petersburg and other adjacent cities and towns. Go stay in a hotel there and they’ll tell you not to drink the tapwater. It’s fine for washing in, but don’t use it even for cleaning your teeth. The hotels do provide free bottled water, which I think comes from Karelia upstream of the industrial regions.
@17
BRAWNDO. IT’S WHAT PLANTS CRAVE. (It has electrolytes).