President Trump’s administration and his fearfully compliant congressional majority treat our public seas like a treasure chest to be looted. On election day this November, that record should weigh on the minds of voters who care about the economy and our blue world.
Trump’s personal hatred of offshore wind power (since Scotland approved wind turbines off his Aberdeen golf resort in 2013) has led to orders to shut down projects under construction up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Since federal judges have stymied that, the administration has spent $4 billion in taxpayer money to get companies to pledge to stop building (cleaner, cheaper) offshore wind projects on both coasts and commit instead to destructive and dangerous oil and gas drilling.
Along with pushing new offshore oil leasing for the West Coast and Alaska, ignoring a range of laws in the process, the administration is attempting to “decertify” California’s coastal protection authority under the Coastal Zone Management Act because of the state’s supposed “environmental extremism.” California, which if it were a separate nation would be the world’s fourth-largest economy, is pushing back strongly.
Trump’s political appointees also attempted to decommission the $386-million Ocean Observatories Initiative, which tracks conditions in the global ocean, but were forced to stop by widespread protests and had to pledge to reinstate the deep-sea arrays they’d already removed off the coast of Oregon.
The gutting of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and politicization of science has included getting rid of experienced top professionals and firing everyone who’d worked there less than two years under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency purge.
By executive order, Trump has opened national marine monuments to commercial fishing — another order being legally challenged.
The administration is fast-tracking deep sea mining leases off American Samoa and on the high seas in violation of the U.N. Law of the Seas Treaty (that the U.S. has not signed but until now always abided by). It’s also now working to more quickly allow offshore nuclear power barges.
Trump officials’ undermining of the Endangered Species Act and national security directives to keep unprofitable coal-fired power plants operating threatens the habitats of sea turtles and right whales, will increase mercury content in tuna and will increase emissions of greenhouse gases.
Disregard and disrespect of international maritime law is clear in the extrajudicial killings of more than 200 people on boats (suspected of drug smuggling) around Latin America — including the slayings of at least two survivors of initial attacks, a war crime. The marine pollution caused by Trump’s reckless war on Iran, including the oiling of mangrove forests in a U.N. biosphere reserve, is also worth noting.
This is all taking place in a late summer of climate-linked disasters on an unprecedented scale including marine heat waves and a “super El Nino” that could be driving coastal flooding, major storms and severe droughts as soon as this fall.
However, we’re coming up on Americans’ chance to do something about all this: Midterm elections are Nov. 3. If you care about the ocean, vote the ocean! Voters can check out their elected representatives’ records as evaluated by the League of Conservation Voters Congressional Scorecard. Also, they can do their own research on which lawmakers have been consistent ocean and climate champions and which candidates plausibly promise better policies for our public seas.
Although the Republicans in Congress have almost all bowed completely to the Trump administration rather than representing their constituents’ interests, your choice is still not as simple as voting against one party and in favor of another. You should do your duty as a citizen, educate yourselves on the candidates you get to decide on (local, state and national) and then vote for those good people who understand the links between the ocean’s health and the health of our economies, our cultures and our very lives.
David Helvarg is the executive director of the ocean policy group Blue Frontier and a co-host of the podcast “Rising Tide.” His latest book is “Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp.”
