Olympic Peninsula Environmental News

The direct destruction brought about by ex-President Donald Trump has gratefully ended. We sit huddled in our homes and businesses, waiting out vaccines he promised but barely delivered, as a pandemic he brashly claimed would “just vanish” continues to wreak havoc with out economy and lives. Now, at least, we can begin the work of creating a better set of environmental protections than before. Rebuilding allows one to redesign and improve from the original, if needed. We clearly now see we need improvement in the laws that Trump and his band of thieves created or demolished in their four long years of infamy. It’s not just the Capital that lays smashed, but our sense that government might protect us from the worse parts of Capitalism. A terrorist from a foreign country could not have done a better job of kicking out so many of the pillars of this democracy. But we endured and now there is work to be done.

He left us granting pardons to some of his notorious henchmen (i.e. Steve Bannon, charged with pillaging a non-profit that raised funds for Trump’s border wall) and a raft of Executive Orders to finally overturn the people’s will and allow the drilling of oil in the Alaska wildlife refuge, among many others. This action, unneeded in a world awash in oil due to depressed economic activity was only done out of spite and to enrich the very companies who claim in their green-washing advertising to be working towards a new business model of “alternative fuels”.

With vast landscapes having been burned to the ground in fires that stunned even the most grizzled fire fighting veterans; thousands of our fellow countrymen and women left homeless from them, and global heat rising year after year to unprecedented levels, the challenges that we face seem overwhelming. We need to work together now more than ever, or face a total collapse into something far worse than destroyed ancient Rome. Democracies and Republics are fragile, there wasn’t one between ancient Greece & Rome and the 1700s. That’s a long time to go under the thumb of corrupt rulers. Trump took our democracy to the brink. Given what he unleashed in his last days, another four years of his Presidency would have altered us forever for the worse.

So I wish all of us to lay aside the anger and threats. There is a ton of work to be done building a new green economy, which is already underway right in front of our eyes. Electric cars, reusable packaging, solar electricity, recycling of existing trash, and lots more has been done and is being refined with every turn of the creative wheel of our industries here and around the world. We need immigrants from everywhere to help us build it. My great grandparents arrived here with nothing. Zero. My father, grandfather, grandmother and grand uncles pulled themselves out of poverty to go on to great careers that helped their communities. Immigrants are who we are, along with the descendants of slaves and native peoples we pushed to the brink in our creation of this country.

So there are things you can do, small and large things, depending on your ability and your financial position. But there are things you can do.

I wish President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris all the best. I leave you with the words of a superb artist out of the British Isles, Charlie MacKesy. His book “The Boy, the mole, the fox and the Horse” is a new best seller and an instant classic.

“This is getting harder”, said the boy.

“Then every step you take is a bigger victory” said the horse.

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