Pictures for Frontline's "The War on the EPA"

Frontline recently aired a documentary, "The War on the EPA." It was disturbing to say the least. What was poignant to me, however, was not just the actions taken to dismantle a regulatory agency, but the language used to justify it. The title, "The War on the EPA," is perhaps an ironic answer to the phrase "The War on Coal," bantered about by the fossil fuel industry and a rallying cry for support of the Trump administration.

There is no "war on coal." That is a fiction, just as this administration’s support for coal miners is a fiction. They support the industry CEO’s who benefit from the labor of the latter. Industry gets more money from deregulation, miners get a nod towards their healthcare but without saving their pensions: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/retired-coal-miners-get-health-care-fix-pension-problems-remain/. And does not the repeal of the steam protection rule simply allow industry to pollute the environments where coal miner’s live and work? http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/319938-trump-signs-bill-undoing-obama-coal-mining-rule Considering the insult, it would seem to be almost obscene that this administration trots out coal miners at ceremonies to dismantle EPA protections. It causes me to wonder at how they get away with this.

Getting away with stamping out environmental and health protections appears to be about message and the money to buy that message. An interesting feature about the fossil fuel industry, for instance, is that they never used the phrase "fossil fuel." I noticed. I think this is their way of pretending that we don’t actually have a limited supply of the stuff. A number of science sites that I’ve read recently give our planet about fifty more years for oil, about the same for natural gas, and about a hundred and fifty more years to exhaust the coal supply. The caveat here is that after the first two are expended, we may not have that much time left on the last one after all. Here language such as the oxymoron, "clean coal," serves to gloss over the increased CO2 emissions from burning all that back up coal, thereby fueling climate change. And industry money helps send out a smoke screen to obscure and confuse the science of anthropogenic climate change to great effect.

Money buys effective anti-environmental protection propaganda and effective legal protection as well. In industry funded attack ads, environmentalists are depicted as demonized "elites" who care nothing for the working man or woman. It is apparently quite effective in garnering support. Perhaps some day we who care about the health of our environment and the well being of our citizens can come up with more effective messages of our own. For now, my charcoal drawings of fossils are just a bit irreverent.