The world has come to a virtual standstill as a consequence of the coronavirus outbreak, and it is now the topic that dominates our thinking – and rightly so, given the danger that COVID-19 poses. However, we should be more aware of the fact that the outbreak is a symptom of the larger issue of environmental pollution, and evaluate the conduct of our leaders in relation to these linked issues accordingly – especially in the United States of America.
The coronavirus pandemic is certainly a serious issue and should be regarded with grave concern, but it is also a relatively short-term one. Once a working vaccine has been found, and it has been successfully tested and deployed (which may take a year or more) [1], the pandemic will be quelled – just as previous pandemics such as SARS and Ebola were quelled. However, the cliché that ‘prevention is better than the cure’ must lead us to look at how such diseases originate.
The destruction of natural habitats to make way for farms, housing, and mines; climate change; live animal markets and the illegal trade in animals worldwide – all of these factors put animal wildlife in direct contact with human beings and increase the risk of infection from animals. SARS, like COVID-19, may have originated in bats, and Ebola may have come from gorillas and chimpanzees. Hence the warning of the UN’s environment chief, Ingers Andersen, that the coronavirus pandemic is a ‘warning shot’ that the pressures humanity is placing on the natural world will damage not only the planet, but humanity as well [2].
In this light, it would do well to reflect on the conduct of global leaders in light of the coronavirus pandemic. It is no surprise that one of the worst offenders on the environmental issue – Donald Trump of the United States of America – is also among the global leaders that has disastrously mismanaged the response to the coronavirus outbreak.
The Trump administration has distinguished itself in many ways from the administrations of previous U.S. Presidents – and rarely (if ever) in a good way. The environment is a case in point, as Trump’s disdainful attitude to this topic stands in marked contrast to one of his most reviled predecessors. While a previous Republican President, Richard Nixon, is often condemned for his actions in office, one of his positive achievements was the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 [3]. The subsequent trend up until the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States had been one of improvement on environmental matters. To take one example, U.S. air pollution had declined since a 1990 reform of the Clean Air Act. True, much more needed to be done, but it was better than nothing [4]. Certainly, it was better than what has happened since Trump took office.
The appointment of climate-change denier Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA illustrated Trump’s contempt for the issue. When Pruitt was forced to step down in disgrace regarding ethical scandals relating to spending and conflicts of interest, he was succeeded by Andrew Wheeler, a coal-industry lobbyist [5]. A consequence of this contempt is that air pollution – which, remember, had been in decline since 1990 – has begun to increase since 2018 [4]. By December 2019, ninety-five environmental regulations have been either rolled back or are in the process of being rolled back – regulations that the Trump administration viewed as a hindrance to big business, particularly to the fossil-fuel industry [6].
Among those regulations are a change in the application of the Endangered Species Act (making it more difficult to protect wild animals from the ill-effects of climate change); withdrawing limits on how many endangered marine animals and sea turtles can be unintentionally killed or injured with sword-fishing nets on the American West Coast; and weakening habitat protections for the sage grouse in order to open nine million acres of Western land to oil and gas drilling. These are clear instances of humanity putting pressure on the natural world that will result in damage to the planet and to us, as Andersen warned. However, the dominant coverage of the coronavirus outbreak has obscured much of this, and while Trump may want to wish the pandemic away as quickly as possible in an election year, he is not above using the fact that people are preoccupied with it to force through further rollbacks on environmental regulations with little fear of scrutiny.
Using an event that dominates the news cycle to get away with underhanded activity is not a novel addition to the political playbook. Jo Moore, a British government aide when Tony Blair’s Labour government was in power, gained infamy when she issued a memo on September 11, 2001 – the day that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were attacked. In the memo, Moore declared that it was ‘a good day to bury bad news’ – i.e. to use the preoccupation with the 9/11 attacks to release news stories that would be unflattering to the Blair government, such as councillors’ expenses [7]. It is clear that – whether by accident or design – in using the coronavirus outbreak to surreptitiously continue rolling back environmental regulations, Trump is following Moore’s lead.
Lack of a decent healthcare system or a social safety net is certainly exacerbating America’s rate of infection, but blame has to be laid at the feet of the President – a man who initially attempted to deny the severity of the crisis [8] (just as the risible Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro continues to do) [9], who has promoted the use of an unproven drug produced by French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi (which he owns shares in) [10], who has resorted to denouncing the media for daring to hold him to account for his inexcusable incompetence with regard to the pandemic [11], who has attempted to galvanize racial tension (a tried-and-tested Trumpian ploy) by labelling COVID-19 the ‘Chinese virus’ [12], and who has promoted the idea of injecting disinfectant into coronavirus patients to cure them – a clearly dangerous ‘recommendation’ that prompted officials and Reckitt-Benckiser (which manufactures disinfectant product Lysol) to issue a warning not to heed said ‘recommendation’ [13].
Enough damage has been done by Trump since the coronavirus outbreak hit America. He should not be allowed to enact regulatory changes which will cause further problems of a similar kind in future. Greater pressure should be brought to bear on the Trump administration on this issue, and neither he nor his acolytes should be allowed to use the current pandemic as a way of deflecting attention from the issue. Otherwise, we will suffer more crises of this kind in the years ahead.
SOURCES
[1] Lovelace Jr., B. (2020) The slow race to make a coronavirus vaccine is on as nations try to speed yearlong process. CNBC [Online] January 31, Available at https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/
Image credit: David Mark