One month in a new and dangerous land

In the wake of a chaotic federal administration, the Environmental Council reasserts science, justice and standing up together
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” ~ Malcomb Forbes
January brought chilling words and deeds from President Donald Trump. In six executive orders he set the stage to reverse our nation’s only substantive climate change strategy. In three others he began a quest to weaponize our civil rights laws against long-standing efforts to create an equal society. In yet another order he threw millions of Americans into chaos by freezing access to federal funding for thousands of grants and programs.
Make no mistake: the motivations and justifications for these shifts are not independent of each other and they are not just simplistically mean-spirited. They are rooted in a vision of America dependent on fear, fear that someone else’s success or freedom must inherently and essentially come at the cost of your own.
At the Environmental Council, our vision for American society is fundamentally different. It is one of true, full participation and prosperity. We believe in one American community, where neighbor supports neighbor, and where our collective efforts, not our selfish obsessions, make our nation strong and our world safe.
In the face of the new administration’s rush to deprive the most needy and vulnerable in our society of even basic protections against the threats of a planet listing towards ruination, the Environmental Council not only reaffirms our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion but we take increased devotion to the cause of creating an environmentally just nation.
We recognize that the reprioritization of federal dollars away from climate change interventions and back to a fossil fuel economy, away from the regulation of polluters and towards their enrichment, will inevitably privilege those whose wealth allows them to escape the crisis of poisoned air and water and a warming planet. Because of this, our work will remain intentionally race- and income-conscious in every regard, from how we connect with communities, to how we choose our leadership, to how we champion lasting protections for our air, our water and the places we love.
The new administration further seems bent on a wild new disruption, endangering lives and sowing even deeper distrust in our democracy. It thoughtlessly, callously, denies resources to approved programs without first conducting an analysis on any, let alone spurious, grounds; blocks access to government data and fires scientists; and seeks the ouster of thousands of public servants who represent America’s best and most thoughtful leadership on environmental programs and practices.
Michigan, we must stand up together against this affront.
To be clear, we do not see the President’s machinations as a partisan mission or as the desires of a majority of our country.
We Americans hold deep environmental and conservation values that sit at the foundation of both major political parties, values we have seen in action in both Democratic- and Republican-led governments. For generations of us from every political ideology, sustainability has been an anchoring theme. Many of our nation’s greatest conservationists have also been industrialists as much as many of our environmental heroes have been moralists. As we have seen great progress come from regulatory protections so have we seen a cleaner world built through market forces. No, this is not a partisan ideology at work.
President Trump’s mission is detached from our American dream, absent the tenets on which our nation was founded, and devoid of the compassion that has guided liberal and conservative alike for two and a half American centuries. In this, it puts us all at risk, and given the scale of our nation’s global influence, it puts our planet at risk.
This must not be our future.
Every conservation group, every environmental organization and every American who craves clean air and water, who finds their soul in the quiet of the woods or grandeur of the mountains, or who feels with certainty a spiritual calling to steward the earth: All of us have an obligation to stand up for something different. Join us in calling on our President to restore our national commitment to the protection of our planet and its abundant richness, for, in the words of another Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt: “We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.”
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