Humpty Dumpty Has Fallen off the Wall

The meaning of the 19th century nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty has been clouded in mystery since it first became popularized in Lewis Caroll’s book Through the Looking Glass published in 1871. Caroll depicted Humpty Dumpty as an anthropomorphic egg, fragile and impossible to repair, despite the king’s best efforts. No one has established the meaning of the nursery rhyme though many have tried. In such a spirit, I’m going to use Humpty Dumpty as a metaphor for environmental regulation, put on the wall by the government itself, only to see a succeeding government ram the fall and knocking Humpty Dumpty to the ground. Once shattered, all subsequent efforts for rehabilitation are futile. It’s just too late.

In a few short weeks, the Trump administration has gutted laws, agencies, and regulations which have guarded environmental protections for the American people. The president has severely damaged the country’s ability to fight pollution, climate change, and environmental injustice. In his first day of office, he ended America’s commitment to the Paris Climate accords which took 7 long years to corral international ratification from 200 countries. We were the only nation to remove ourselves from the treaty. By following $75 million in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, we can see the economic “return on investment” from Trump’s promise to “Drill baby drill.” With regulations out of the way, the industry is free to initiate more fossil fuel extraction efforts with little to no oversight for environmental pollution, not to mention the devasting impact of more fossil fuel emissions released into the atmosphere for future generation.

The Trump modus operandi is to cut programs, fire employees and withhold funding legally legislated by Congress, then delay the court’s ability to make a judgment about the action. For example, funds approved by Congress in 2022 in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and those approved in the bipartisan Infrastructure Bill of 2021, have been withheld by the Trump administration. Funding for electric car charging stations, wind powered mills, and subsidies for solar panels have been “paused.” The executive branch has usurped the legislative branch’s constitutional responsibility of funding the government. The executive branch is bound the by constitution to “execute” the legislation of the Congress, not dismantle it arbitrarily. Two federal judges have intervened to make just that point, ordering the federal government to resume funding, until otherwise directed by Congress. John Podesta, senior climate adviser to the Biden administration said, “We followed the law and they’re breaking the law. It remains to be seen whether they’ll be allowed to get away with it.”

In a remarkable move, Lee Zeldin, the acting administrator of the EPA, has recommended the agency reverses its 2009 finding by a consensus of scientists that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare. That would contradict decades of scientific consensus and undermine the legal basis of the government to fight climate change. Already government websites are scrubbing the phrase “climate change” on its websites.

If all of that is not bad enough, the Trump administration, under the authority of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has laid off thousands of federal employees in mass from the EPA, the Interior Department, the Department of Energy and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government’s premier science agency. About 10 percent of NOAA’s 13,000 employees have already been dissmissed or are on the chopping block. These are people who monitor hurricanes, coral reefs, and the impact of more severe weather pattern resulting from climate change, thereby providing trusted information to businesses, families, the military and building contractor--both commercial and residential. Last week, a federal judge ruled the firings were illegal, but it remains to be seen if that rebuke will stop Trump from abiding by the court’s rulings. Remember Trump’s haunting tweet from a couple of weeks ago: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”

How deep are these cuts which are supposed to be directed a “waste, fraud and abuse”? On Wednesday last week, Trump said he believed the EPA would be cutting 65 percent of the agency’s more than 17,000 jobs. EPA leader Mr. Zeldin later said he thought the agency would cut its budget 65 percent and make cuts to its workforce. This would effectively gut the EPA, deeming it incapable of monitoring the nation's environmental threats from nature and corporate tycoons.

The Trump Administration is not satisfied with dismantling federal efforts to fight pollution and address long-term climate change. They are also going after states and municipalities who have already created frameworks to address environmental crises. For example, the Trump administration is attempting to declare California’s law of ending the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035. The federal government has not challenged laws like this in the past, but it would be faster than overturning California’s laws through the more normal process of public notice and comment. So much for the outdated Republican principles of “state’s rights.”

In a few short weeks the Trump Administration has knocked Humpty Dumpty off the wall. It’s troubling to consider that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men who come to power when the country has been decimated, will not be able to put Humpty together again. He is breaking the ability of the country to protect the environment and the weakest members of the population. The price of eggs may be too high, at that point, for any of us to use them again.

(I'm indebted to the research of David Gelles, Lisa Friedman, Brad Plumer, Christopher Flavelle, Austyn Gafney, and Camille Baker for facts used in this blog.)