Our planet is for sale

There was a time, not so long ago, when everyone in politics could agree that having clean air, water, and a healthy planet was a benefit to all of us. After all, it was Richard Nixon, a Republican, who created the Environmental Protection Agency and created some of the first environmental regulations in our country. 

As we’ve become well aware, the GOP said goodbye to good faith governance years ago. Since Nixon created the EPA, every successive Republican president has gone to extreme lengths to undermine, weaken, and even destroy the EPA’s ability to maintain a liveable planet for us and for future generations. 

Trump and his MAGA extremist acolytes have made their stance clear as day with Project 2025: our planet is for sale to the highest bidder. Here are just a couple of their plans: 

• Weaken the EPA’s ability to set standards for things like tailpipe emissions,  industrial waste disposal, and acceptable lead and chemical levels in our water and air.
• Eliminate the Inflation Reduction Act’s historic investments in clean energy, electrification, and green infrastructure by rolling back subsidies, grants, tax credits, and other incentives. 

Just think: they are willing to send us back to a time when lead poisoning and asthma rates were through the roof, all to please their friends and donors in the fossil fuel, petrochemical, and other industries. 

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking is the common thread in the MAGA agenda: sacrifice the many for the prosperity of the privileged few. It’s why they’re bent on undoing all forms of social, economic, and environmental progress we’ve made.

We can’t count on the Republican party to act in the interest of our country, much less our planet. The only way to get them to change course is to repudiate them at the ballot box.

Yours in the fight, 

Jim