Let’s Not Sacrifice the Natural World to Build an Artificial One

There are many reasons to object to the slew of executive orders issued by President Trump during the opening days of his second term – they represent an attempted power grab by the Executive Branch, they break with longstanding norms, and, perhaps worse yet, they rely on highly questionable rationales.

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iStockphoto

This is certainly the case with the executive order titled “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” which directs federal agencies “to facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources, including, but not limited to, on federal lands.” To achieve this end, the administration seeks to invoke rarely used provisions of the Endangered Species Act to grease the skids for energy development. This includes convening on a standing basis the Endangered Species Committee aka the “God Squad” – a panel that has been convened only a few times in the more than four decades since the ESA was amended in 1978. If resurrected, the God Squad will be comprised of a small group of cabinet secretaries and state officials empowered to summarily decide that a project can proceed even if it means the likely extinction of a species.

What could possibly justify the regular use of such a draconian method of determining the fate of a species? From the text of the order and numerous other pronouncements of the new administration, the reason is clearly to increase the production of fossil fuels, despite the fact that the United States is currently producing record amounts of oil and gas. The justification for the executive order and the assertion that an energy emergency exists are further undercut by the administration’s open hostility toward wind installations and renewables in general. One must ask: If we are suffering from a lack of energy, why is the administration actively working to stymie some of the fastest growing and cheapest sources of power?

Given how unconvincing the stated rationale is in the order, we are forced to try to decipher what the real impetus behind the scheme is. Beyond eliminating environmental and wildlife protections fossil fuel companies find burdensome, the case can be made that it is primarily about increasing domestic natural gas production, both to allow a greater amount of gas to be exported and to generate copious amounts of electricity to power artificial intelligence and the energy-hungry data centers that make it possible.  

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Microsoft

Demand forecasts for electricity have dramatically increased across the country in the last year to satisfy the voracious energy needs of AI and we are now being told that building data centers in the U.S. is a national security priority. Even the Biden administration in its final days issued an executive order to facilitate the construction of AI data centers and associated energy infrastructure on federal lands (albeit with a heavy emphasis on renewable energy).

And perhaps it’s helpful that the Biden administration also took this extraordinary step through the issuance of an order. The fact that it did so can help us see that we are facing a serious problem that shouldn’t be viewed through a partisan lens: powerful interests on both sides of the aisle favor the expeditious buildout of an artificial world at the expense of the natural world. Do we really want to trade many of our last remaining wild places, healthy ecosystems and functional wildlife corridors for climate-altering fossil fuel infrastructure and hulking data centers?  

In the next few months, we will see efforts to advance this agenda through more than just executive orders. Watch carefully as Congress takes up “permitting reform” and how proposed legislation will undercut not just the ESA but other bedrock environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act and Clean Water Act. Make no mistake, statutes and associated regulations that govern management of our federal lands, waters and wildlife will be targeted as obstacles to be removed or weakened in the quest for energy dominance and the buildout of AI.  

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Copyright, 2019. THE GEORGIA PHOTOGRAPHY FANATIC

Sadly, a future rich in AI but devoid of natural life is not only a scene out of a sci-fi book, but a reality that could very well unfold in the near future one presidential order and one congressional act at a time if we are not vigilant. It is imperative we make clear to our elected federal officials that they have no mandate to deny Americans a clean and healthy environment or to destroy decades of conservation successes, and that we cherish the beauty and abundance of the natural world far more than the artificial world that threatens to replace it.

Let your Representatives know that wildlife and the environment are an important issue, and that the Endangered Species Act is worth saving.