President Trump seems intent on denying science and undermining fundamental protections for public health and the environment. But we know local action will trump attempted rollbacks in Washington. Photo: Shutterstock
We’re not giving in. Yes, approaching a year after President’s Trump’s election, he seems intent on undermining decades of work to protect public health and the environment and fostering an ideology that denies and denigrates the basic facts of science.
But we’ve been here before. In the 1970s, oil companies were intent on drilling for oil on Georges Banks. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan did his best to dismantle the EPA and commercialize our public lands. And we’ve witnessed firsthand the rise of climate deniers at both the state and federal levels funded by the Koch brothers over the last two decades.
We came through those times stronger and more committed to a future that ensures a healthy and thriving New England for all. The reality is that progress in our nation’s capital was hard to come by even before President Trump was elected. That doesn’t mean we stop trying, but it does mean that we focus our strengths – as we always have – on making meaningful progress here at home. Because we’ve long recognized that what happens in one New England neighborhood, town, or state can resonate far beyond our borders – even all the way to our nation’s capital.
That’s why today, we are committed more than ever to ensuring clean air and water for New Englanders. We are determined to advance responsible stewardship of our natural resources and innovative methods to address climate change. And we are dedicated to demonstrating that economic development is not only compatible with environmental responsibility, it is dependent on it.
But CLF is not just playing defense, as you’ll see over the next several days in a special series of posts by my colleagues. In the face of a federal government that seems dead set against our goals, now is not the time to retreat. We can and will move forward on addressing the challenge of climate change. We can and will continue to protect the health of all people. We can and will step up to enforce our environmental laws if the cop on the beat disappears. And we can and will seek to ensure that our actions today do not leave our children and their children a home where none of us would want to live.
Check back for a new blog in our series every day through Wednesday, November 8.
