President Trump’s July 8 event on his administration’s environmental leadership was met with a fair deal of criticism — and rightfully so. Though the address aimed to promote the environmental successes that Trump has accomplished in the past two years, many viewers found it to be nothing more than a publicity stunt.
Since taking office, Trump has approached environmentalism by shaming previous administrations over past legislation and rolling back environmental policies. This week’s address provided a golden opportunity for bipartisan conversation, but Trump did not take advantage.
Rather than presenting environmentalism as a subject that requires collaboration, trade-offs, and humility, Trump’s statements Monday prove his approach to environmental issues will remain overconfident and underinformed — and his smugness only prevents discussions that would determine the best path forward for environmental health.
After all, the speech was Ivanka Trump’s idea in the first place. She knew that the 2020 Democratic candidates are wisely prioritizing climate change discussions, making it politically advantageous for President Trump to portray himself as an environmental steward. She even pushed her father to share his environmental record publicly to show that he too could be trusted to make progress in environmental policy.
This was met with confusion from Trump’s own administration, with a senior official telling Axios, “I don’t know why we’d spend any time talking about their [Democrats’] issues.”
Trump is only talking about environmentalism now because he sees this as another opportunity to pummel the Democrats. Indeed, Trump seems incapable of making any progress in environmentalism without attacking a past or present political rival in the process.
While signing the 2018 Save Our Seas Act, Trump was sure to point out that “previous administrations did absolutely nothing” to fight the foreign countries that are most responsible for ocean pollution. In Monday’s address, he went so far as to claim that he and his administration were working “harder than many previous administrations, maybe almost all of them.”
However, this claim is deceptive and contested. Many environmental and public health experts fear that air pollution and the state of renewable energy will only regress under the Trump administration.
Trump’s unwavering confidence in his own haphazard environmental practices is perhaps what most severely threatens our prospects for growth. Ignoring the progress that still needs to be made ensures that it won’t, as was made glaringly clear at Monday’s event. By refusing to acknowledge that different parties and nations may be making progress in ways that he has not considered implementing, Trump keeps environmental health stagnant.
Trump and his guest speakers lauded the United States, with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler calling America the “gold standard” in environmental protection. While there is plenty for the administration to be proud of, only focusing on accomplishments is dangerously shortsighted and silly in the face of all that still needs to be done.
The Trump administration needs to take a look at environmental statistics and admit that the U.S. doesn’t have all the answers. Though he praised improvements in air quality on Monday, Trump failed to mention that the U.S. is still the world’s second-worst carbon dioxide emitter. He was quick to reprimand East Asian countries for polluting oceans but did not hint at the fact that the U.S. is responsible for 750,000 pounds of plastic pollution annually.
Trump seems perpetually willing to bury his head in the sand and disregard scientific reports that even his own administration produces.
President Trump’s environmental address was little more than an exercise in self-congratulation. Not just because of the guests who showered the president with praise or the superlatives that were thrown around, but because of the egoism that defines Trump’s approach to the environment. His administration refuses to treat environmentalism as the scientific and economic issue that it is.
Rather, the environment is a topic that Trump seems to address only when it serves his political goals. He had the opportunity Monday to map a path forward, to admit where the U.S. falls short, and to invite open and innovative bipartisan dialogue. But in the end, the president decided that putting on an arrogant and self-centered show of accomplishments was more important.
Fiona Harrigan is pursuing a B.S. in Natural Resources at the University of Arizona. She is currently a photographer at the Foundation for Economic Education and a Young Voices contributor.
