Just Before Harvey, Trump Admin Revoked Rules Requiring New Infrastructure to be Climate Resilient & How Donald Trump and Elaine Chao Sold Off Flood-Control Policy to the Highest Bidders 29&28AUG17

SO I JUST HAVE TO ASK, HOW'S THIS CLIMATE CHANGE DENYING ADMINISTRATION WORKING OUT FOR ALL YOU PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR drumpf/trump-pence? Do you think NOT MY pres drumpf/trump will reconsider his action? No, because he is a businessman (4 TIMES BANKRUPT) who is in debt to the 1% and corporate America. Requiring them to rebuild Texas and Louisiana with taxpayer dollars to First World not Third World standards will cut into their profit margins. The American people must demand Congress legislate these rules for all federally funded infrastructure projects so the citizens of Texas and Louisiana and all the American people get the best possible for their tax dollars while helping the areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey rebuild. From +Democracy Now! & The Nation.....

Just Before Harvey, Trump Admin Revoked Rules Requiring New Infrastructure to be Climate Resilient

Published on Aug 29, 2017

Two weeks ago today, President Trump signed a widely overlooked executive order to revoke Obama-era standards that required federal infrastructure projects like hospitals to factor in scientific projections for the effects of climate change, such as increased flooding. Critics say the reversal will put more lives in danger by exposing U.S. infrastructure to the kind of damage inflicted by hurricanes and superstorms including Harvey, Sandy and Katrina. Obama’s order marked a rare climate change measure that was praised by both conservative and progressive groups. Trump announced the reversal during the now infamous press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower that was largely overshadowed by his remarks defending the white supremacist protesters behind the violent rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia. We speak with John Nichols, political writer for The Nation. His new book, "Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America" is out today.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Two weeks ago today, President Trump signed an executive order to revoke Obama-era standards that required federal infrastructure projects like hospitals to factor in scientific projections for the effects of climate change, like increased flooding and rising sea levels. Critics say the reversal exposes U.S. infrastructure to the kind of damage inflicted by hurricanes and superstorms including Harvey, Sandy, and Katrina, and will put more lives in danger.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump announced the rollback during the now-infamous press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower, where it was largely overshadowed by remarks defending the white supremacist protesters behind the violent rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia. Well, for more, we’re joined by John Nichols, political writer for The Nation. His new article headlined, How Donald Trump and Elaine Chao Sold Off Flood-Control Policy to the Highest Bidders. John’s new book, Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America. Welcome to Democracy Now!. Explain the headline of your latest piece, John.

JOHN NICHOLS: Sure. And really, everything we have talked about today—i’ve been listening in—comes together in this. Here we had Dr. Bullard say when you have out-of-control development, no zoning, no planning for the future, and then what we just heard, what we know is coming as regards flood surges, not just on the oceans, but on our rivers across the country. This goes inland.

President Obama in 2015 did something logical. He was a little late to the game. I wish he had done it many years before. But he issued an order for flood management or flood risk management. It was just a standard that was set. It said when we pour trillions of dollars—at least the trillion Trump’s talking about on an infrastructure program—when we pour this huge amount of money into infrastructure—roads, bridges—roads and bridges we might use to evacuate—hospitals, all sorts of things that we build—we ought to make sure that they are climate-resilient.

I want people to learn that term. I write about a lot of this in the book. The term "climate-resilient" means that you’re building, anticipating, tragically, that you’re going to have more flooding. That you are going to have more crises like this. On August 15, with virtually no notice—because Trump went off the rails on issues of race—on August 15, the reason that Elaine Chao, his Secretary of Transportation, was standing behind him through that whole horrible press conference, was because the real thing they were doing that day was gutting out and ending Obama’s order. And what the Sierra Club says is, this is climate denial at its most dangerous.

AMY GOODMAN: Now of course Secretary Chao, Secretary of Transportation, also happens to be the wife of the Senate’s most powerful person, and that is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And what this overall means for Houston as President Trump now heads to Texas?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, what this means for Houston—look, we should always be careful about this. What Obama did and what Trump has done, these are things looking to the future. So a lot of the crises in Houston have been in place for a long time. But what this says for a place like Houston is that as money is poured in to rebuild, there’s not going to be a federal standard that says it has to be climate resilient. There is not going to be a standard that says that the next stuff you build has to be able to handle what we know is coming.

And I got onto this in writing the book because I looked a lot at Elaine Chao. She is a careerist. She comes back whenever there is a Republican president. And she was at the Department of Labor years ago, got horrible marks there for literally ruining programs within, or undermining them. Now, she is the person who is going to be overseeing a $1 trillion infrastructure program, which many Democrats will probably enthusiastically support.

What I’m saying in the article, what I say in the book is, as regards all these departments and all these agencies, we have got to look at what they’re doing. Because if we don’t, we’re going to go through what should be a learning experience—what’s just happened in Houston, what we’re hearing all over the country—this isn’t the only flooding in the country today—what should be a learning experience, we’re not learning at all. In fact, we are literally going backward with Donald Trump, and more importantly, with people like Elaine Chao.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: John, in your book, you have sections—it is basically like a baseball card summary of all the members of the administration.

JOHN NICHOLS: You would get that one. [laugh] Yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But the privateers—you go into Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Seema Verma, Sonny Perdue—all of these folks that the administration has hired, and you give little snapshots of their privateering approach.

JOHN NICHOLS: And Elaine Chao is the first one on the list. And this is the interesting thing: our media does such a lousy job today of covering the whole of a presidency. It looks at the individual. What did Donald Trump tweet today? We don’t look at the people who are actually competent. I may disagree with them on—but they know how to run an agency. Former governors, former cabinet secretaries, who Trump has put into these positions.

Well, they have some universals. They are generally climate deniers. They are generally deeply tied to corporate industries, especially the fossil fuel industry. Just put one simple fact together. On any given day, Scott Pruitt of the EPA is undermining climate science, climate responses. Rex Tillerson is dismantling our international response on this issue related to some of the things we talked about.

But Elaine Chao comes out way at the top of this list. That’s why she starts the chapter. Because she is going to be very central to building the future of this country. Literally, the promise of infrastructure, which Democrats and Republicans agree on. If we don’t do that with climate justice—as Dr. Bullard talked about—if we don’t do that with functional structural soundness, and if we don’t do that with some economic common sense—in the article I wrote for The Nation for today, free market think tanks were with Obama on this issue! They were saying, "Yeah, if you’re going to pour billions of dollars into stuff, then you should really make sure that it will survive." And this administration is rejecting it.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we are going to go through that deck of baseball cards and we’re going to post that online at Democracynow.org. Who are the people in the administration? What do they represent? John Nichols, political writer for The Nation. His new book out today, "Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America." I’m Amy Goodman with Juan González. Thanks for joining us.

GUESTS

• John Nichols
  

  political writer at The Nation. His new book, "Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America" is out today.

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LINKS

• "Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America"
• "How Donald Trump and Elaine Chao Sold Off Flood-Control Policy to the Highest Bidders"

How Donald Trump and Elaine Chao Sold Off Flood-Control Policy to the Highest Bidders

In mid-August, the administration moved to gut a necessary initiative to guarantee the flood resilience of infrastructure.

Even before Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, with devastating impact on the infrastructure of a flooded Houston and other communities, the Trump administration was thinking about and acting on flood-control policies.

Unfortunately, the president’s team was thinking about what corporate interests wanted, and acting on their behalf—even as specialists on flooding issues pleaded with the administration to do otherwise. On August 15, Trump and his team overturned an Obama-administration rule requiring that infrastructure projects, including roads and bridges, be designed to withstand the consequences of climate change—such as rising sea levels.

Experts in climate change, coastal management, and environmental policy begged the administration to maintain the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard for “climate resilience.” The concern crossed traditional lines of ideology and partisanship, as free-market economic groups and Republican members of the House praised the standard.

But politically influential real-estate developers and builders lobbied for overturning Obama’s order. And they got their way, thanks in no small part to one of the industry’s most powerful allies in the administration, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

Since Trump took office on January 20, Chao and other presidential appointees have rushed to sell off critical decisions to the highest bidders in a crony-capitalist frenzy the likes of which Washington has never before seen.

“This is climate science denial at its most dangerous.” —Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune

Most Americans have little sense of the extent of the crisis, because Trump steals the limelight—even from his own actions. For instance, the announcement of his executive order revoking the Obama initiative to promote sound infrastructure development in areas prone to increased flooding as a result of over-development and climate change came during the same press conference where Trump went on a bizarre and troubling rant about the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

There can be no question that the president’s startling comments about “fine people” marching with white supremacists to defend monuments to the Confederacy were newsworthy.

But so, too, was the administration’s move to implement an industry-allied transportation secretary’s “deconstruction of the regulatory state” when it comes to vital policies regarding flooding and climate change. Chao is a former international banker with Citicorp, Bank of America Capital Markets Group vice president, and Wells Fargo board member who was associated with the corporate-friendly, deregulation-obsessed Heritage Foundation for years. She also has a long history of dismissing environmental concerns, and famously resigned from the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2015 after being informed that the foundation was preparing to increase support for the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” project.

That made Chao a fine fit for a Trump administration where cabinet secretaries and agency heads are busily dismantling environmental protections and initiatives to address climate change.

Chao was with Trump when he announced the gutting of Obama’s order to insure the “climate resilience” of infrastructure projects. As the cabinet secretary who will be overseeing much of Trump’s $1 billion infrastructure initiative, she was at the ready on August 15 with complaints about long environmental reviews and regulations and a promise that “This new Executive Order will slash the time it takes to get vital new infrastructure projects approved and delivered.”

Trump headed off to his golfing vacation after the press conference. But Chao was hard at work, she assured reporters: “At the Department of Transportation, we are already putting the Administration’s principles into action.”

That’s what scared the Sierra Club, even before Harvey hit, even before the flooding in Houston and other Texas communities confirmed the vulnerability of our infrastructure in this new era of devastating floods.

“This is climate science denial at its most dangerous,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune in mid-August. He stressed that the administration’s moves were “putting vulnerable communities, federal employees, and families at risk by throwing out any guarantee that our infrastructure will be safe.”

John NicholsTWITTERJohn Nichols is The Nation’s national-affairs correspondent. He is the author of Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America, forthcoming from Nation Books this fall, and co-author, with Robert W. McChesney, of People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy.