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New Ocean Policies Canceled that Impact the Ocean · How To Protect The Ocean

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It was Trump's first day in office and we have been
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kind of scared about what's going to happen to the ocean for quite some time
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since he's been elected. Well, he did not disappoint. There
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are a number of executive order actions that he did on his first day
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that are going to impact the ocean in one way or another.
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We're going to talk about on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast
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because it's important to know what policies are in place and what you
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can do to save those policies. Dr. Andrew Thaler
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put up a great post on his blog, southernfriedscience.com. You
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can check that out. I'll put it in the show notes, but let's talk about what he wrote and
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what Trump did on his first day. Hey
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everybody, welcome back to another scary episode of
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the how to protect the ocean. I'm your host Andrew Lewin. This is the podcast where you find out
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what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live
0:53
for a better ocean by taking action. And look, the next four
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years are going to be scary because Donald Trump is back in
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office and he wants to drill baby drill. He's going to change
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a bunch of policies or he's going to try to anyway. We're going to talk about
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some of them today, but if you want to stay If you want to stay abreast
1:10
of all the information that's coming in, all the policies that are changing, and what you
1:13
can do to help out, whether it's through direct action and
1:17
talking to your politician, or helping out another organization to
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help influence or do something about the
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policies, you stay tuned to this podcast. You subscribe,
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you follow, whatever you need to do, and you head over to speakupforblue.com to
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newsletter. Let's go into some of the policies that
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have been changed on the first day. I'm going to tell you. at
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how Donald Trump's day one executive actions impact
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the ocean. We're gonna talk about a bunch of them. I am going to read a
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lot of the stuff that he said because I don't know a lot about some of these policies. Andrew's
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very good at analyzing marine policies, does
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this for a living, and we're gonna have him on quite a bit to get
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his take on it as well as his other
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specialties like deep sea mining and so forth
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and the deep sea. So here we go. What he did. The
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first thing he did is revoke President Biden's executive order. So first
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on the list that was meaningful is initial rescissions of
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harmful executive orders and actions. So this is a catch
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all order that revokes a slew of President Biden's executive
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actions. among those of which directly and indirectly
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impact the ocean. So the first one here is, he just named a
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few, but protecting public health and the environment and restoring science
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to tackle the climate crisis. This directed federal agencies
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to review Trump-era regulations that conflicted directives
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to confront the climate crisis. The second thing that he revoked was
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the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which
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established the Council of Science and Technology experts to advise the
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actual president, to give them the information that he needs to make
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the decisions that he needs to make. Third one is tackling the climate crisis
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at home and abroad. which placed the climate crisis at
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the forefront of US foreign policy and national security.
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This is very similar to back in the Obama era when he was president
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and the Navy actually declared that climate change was the most
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important risk or was the biggest risk against the
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United States. The fourth executive action was climate-related financial risk,
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he rescinded that, to develop a strategy to
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incorporate climate crisis-related impacts into financial risk assessments.
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Like, let's be honest, every type of financial, any type of
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climate risk, or any type of climate consequence, like
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wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, floods, These
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all have to be paid for to clean up. And to look
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at these financial risks and make those assessments is
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really important when you look at where we
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need to divert our money to and how much money we have consequences in cleaning
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up all the stuff that's been happening. It costs a lot of money to do
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that. Where does that money come from? Generally, taxpayers. So
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he goes on to say that there are a host of other executive orders related
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to environmental justice, preparing for climate crisis
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related immigration, and advancing other climate
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goals. But unfortunately, these executive orders largely
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expired with the outgoing administration. So it wasn't really any
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type of action. So it just kind of expired. It would have continued on
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if Joe Biden had continued on as president for a second term.
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So the direct threats to the ocean, however, are in the trio of
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executive orders that remove protections President Biden
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put in place to prevent offshore exploration of oil and
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natural gas on the outer continental shelf, which I will just,
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if you want more information, I will, I'm just going to point to it up top, and
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I'll link to it in this video and on the show notes that
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you can go in and listen to. It was all about how he banned I
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believe it was like 265 million acres. It
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was quite large and it was something that would have
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been really important. But it included the President's
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hail Mary attempt to prevent rapid expansion of the offshore oil industry in
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the sentence of drill, baby, drill. So this one is a
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really weird one because it takes the Outer Continental Shelf Lands
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Act, where it's complicated because the president has
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the power to close lands and protect them from leasing, but
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only Congress has the power to open the lands for leasing. So
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this is going to be really interesting to see if Donald Trump can get Congress
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to actually rescind the closure
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of these areas to oil and gas. It
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will really require Congress to get a vote
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in. This is where you can help. You can contact your local
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congressman and say, hey, you know, or congresswoman, and say, hey, you know
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what? I really love this executive order. I want to
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keep it in. Enough of you contact them, they may actually listen. So
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that's one of the only ways you can do it is really do that. If
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it doesn't go through Congress, Trump will likely go through the
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Supreme Court. So this could be a big one. He tried a similar maneuver
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in his first term, according to Andrew, and lost bigly. So
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Trump put in an executive order called the National Energy Emergency. By declaring an
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emergency, the emergency talks about how executive
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agencies are going to handle permitting and expediting review of new oil
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and gas production. Though the declaration cites a need
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for a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy, the order
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itself is limited in scope to unreliable, vulnerable,
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and supply-limited fossil fuels. Renewables are
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now exponentially cheaper than the fossil fuels infrastructure, according
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to Andrew's article, while being both more reliable, resilient
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and diversified. So it's really interesting to see how things have changed so
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much because we've invested in renewables and the U.S. has invested in renewables and
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offshore wind. So that cheapness of putting in
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offshore wind projects, that won't change. And this order
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will only serve to get US to fall behind in the global renewables boom,
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leaving the states like Texas vulnerable to the climate crisis and the
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US economy less competitive. So that's not good, obviously.
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And so coupled with rescinding a number of the withdrawals and
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the executive order of unleashing Alaska's extraordinary resource potential, if
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effective, this would lead to increased exploitation of the seafloor resources and
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saddle future generations with failing infrastructure that needs to
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be contained and remediated. The
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oil and gas industry can be very detrimental to
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the marine environment. derelict
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type of platforms that are empty, they're not producing, and
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it just sits there. And we try and figure out what we can do with it. So obviously,
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not really a good thing for us. So the national, this is Andrew's
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title, the national quote, I guess there isn't
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an energy emergency wind release, because this is what happens. This
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is a really bizarre move. So Trump also issued a temporary
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withdrawal of all areas on the outer continental shelf from offshore wind
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leasing and review the federal government's leasing and permitting practices for
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wind projects. So he declares that there's an energy emergency, but
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is putting a halt on all offshore wind
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projects. So that it can't be that much of
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an emergency if offshore wind is not being like instead
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of going with both, I can understand him doing the drill
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baby drill and going for more oil and gas. I can understand it from his
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perspective because the people who put him there, the his
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supporters, his donors were or the fossil fuel industry. But
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to take away offshore wind does not make sense. It's
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cheaper to put in, it's more stable, and it's more diversified, and
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it will help the U.S. in the future, but instead of just continuing that
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going on, he's putting a temporary withdrawal in all the areas. So,
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no permitting, nothing allowed to be going, even though there's a big boom out there. Andrew
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goes on to say, while the National Energy Emergency calls upon executive agencies to
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expedite new energy production and reduce the red tape, Trump's
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wind release calls upon executive agencies to halt new energy
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production and bury it in red tape. So the emergency calls
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for a review of the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection
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Act to strip regulations that would limit new energy development while
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the wind release calls for a review of the Endangered Species Act and
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the Marine Mammal Protection Act to impose greater restrictions of
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new energy development. How does that make sense? So
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you're gonna review, essentially what they're gonna do is they're gonna lighten the restrictions
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from the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protections Act
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that will allow for more exploration of the seafloor to
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find these hydrocarbon pockets where they can
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drill for oil. To do that process, it's very
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harmful to marine mammals and endangered species.
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To do that process, you need seismic surveys. That
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means you have these acoustic guns that are in the water and
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they trail for like several kilometers, like up
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to nine kilometers, maybe even more depending on the size of the array.
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The noise that is emitted from these guns that goes
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down to the seafloor and reverts back up to come
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back with the signal that will allow the analyst to say, hey, there's
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a pocket here, there's no pocket here of oil and gas. If you're in
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the water with that instrument and that instrumentation goes off, like as
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a human, it'll blow your eardrums to pieces. So imagine the effect
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that's gonna happen on marine mammals. Right now, marine mammals
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use acoustics to communicate to each other, whether
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it be for hunting, whether it be for safety, whether it just be for social cues, that's
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how they communicate. And if these guns go off when they're in the area,
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they're not gonna be able to communicate as effectively as they used to be. That
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could harm the way they eat, that could harm the way they act as a pod,
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and that could eventually harm their lives. And so the regulations
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that are around a lot of the times, when I worked up in Canada for
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my colleagues working in the States, they model the area around the ship
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with the guns, with these acoustic guns. And they say, hey, you know
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what? If a whale's in the area within one or two kilometers, depending
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on where you are, you cannot allow these
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guns to go off. You have to shut them down. That would allow the
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whales to pass, and that would allow them to be
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okay. However, in this situation,
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they're probably not going to allow that. They're probably going to allow the guns to go off, even
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if there's whales in the way. That's going to harm more whales. A
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lot of this stuff is going to be in areas where whales
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are endangered. And there's some critical spots where
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they're endangered. The North Atlantic right whale is
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a critically endangered species. And if this oil and gas
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happens up in that area, this exploration, this could be
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the end of this species, right? You just never know.
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This is a huge problem. Yet on the other side of it, they're
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going to use the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species
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Act to add in more restrictions to creating and
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installing and implementing the offshore wind developments.
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Just imagine that. But there's an energy shortage because there's an energy emergency,
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but we're not going to put both energies up. We're not going to explore the diversified
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way. We're just going to go with one option. Does
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not make sense whatsoever. All right, let's
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go to the next executive order. They pulled out
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of the Paris Accord. This is not a surprise. Trump pulled
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out of it, again, like he did in his first term. He
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said he framed it as putting America first. The Paris
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Climate Accords is both a treaty and a
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series of negotiations on how to implement that treaty. By
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pulling out, the United States no longer has a seat at the
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table to advance its climate and energy priorities. And
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this is Andrew's thought here, quote, I generally think that the Paris Agreement will
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benefit from not having the Trump administration represent the United
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States in ongoing implementation discussions. He could just have
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a delegation that goes there and just stalls everything.
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So maybe having the US out for now will allow other countries to
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advance while the US sits behind and waits and
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has to play catch up when he's gone in four years, depending on who There
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and depending whether he's gone in four years who knows a couple other things that we're going to talk about
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Dismantling of the civil service so the United States government's greatest
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strength is the civil service according to Andrew Which I agree on
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people who serve the country regardless of the party in power I think this is what
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people get confused up a lot of the Scientists whether they're your scientists or
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not and people who work for the public service do not have party affiliations
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They do not, they work no matter what. It doesn't matter, they do
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not change as the next administration comes in, whether it's
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a different party. They just work on the projects that they're assigned.
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Now the party priorities might dictate what projects
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they work on, but it's not going to dictate whether, you
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know, they get fired or not. However, because of this, this
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allows Trump to kind of remove something. So Trump has taken dramatic steps
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to degrade the U.S. Civil Service through his reinstatement of Schedule F,
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a plan that turns career civil servants into political appointees.
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So subject to the whims of whichever party is currently in power. So
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this radical prioritization of the civil service creates a chilling effect
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on the people whose job it is to warn us when things are going wrong.
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So Schedule F, if found to be legal, will
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have a significant impact on NOAA, BOEM, which
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is the Board of Offshore and Energy Management, the FDA and
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the USDA, and every executive agency that serves
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the American people. And of course, just to make everything
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even more complicated, Trump has also instituted a hiring freeze for
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the federal civilian positions. Now, this is not surprising either.
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We expected this. We expected a freeze. We expected him
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to go after the civil service because this is what he does. He thinks it's all blown up
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and it needs to be shrunk. And that's typical
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of Republican type or Conservative type parties that go in.
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In Canada, when we had Conservatives, they shrank the public
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service quite a bit in a number of areas, including science, Department
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of Fisheries and Oceans, and the Environment Canada at the time, now
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Environment Canada and Climate Change. They were reduced quite
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significantly and that's not up. You know, that's really not
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a not surprising at all Unfortunately, he goes on
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he says of all the executors that would impact America's oceans the ones that pose
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the most imminent and existential Threat are those that
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threaten the very function of government and seek to dismantle the US Civil Service
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The people who work in the public service are the ones who
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are working on these projects. They worked on them for decades throughout
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their career and they do a damn good job. And
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it's really a shame when all the priorities get shifted and
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some of the projects that are long term either get shelved or
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they get significantly reduced, which really impairs
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the amount of science and advancement of science that we can do
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and understanding of what happens in our oceans and the oceans
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surrounding the US, including the Gulf of Mexico, which that will be another thing
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that we'll talk about another day. The Department of what
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he calls memes, which is the Department of Doge, which is basically
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an energy, it's the Department of Efficiency is where,
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is what it really is, but he pronounces it doggy, and
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don't let anyone tell you otherwise, so D-O-G-E. It's now
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a temporary commission that ends on July 4th, 2026, and
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half of the leadership has already announced their departure. Predicting which Musk-aligned
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project will stick and which will fade into obscurity is an exercise in
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futility, he says, Whether it impacts ocean-related agencies
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remains to be seen. So some of the knucklehead stuff, as Andrew calls it,
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that happened. Trump is fixated on Greenland. Trump wants
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to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Neither
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of these are real meaningful policy agendas. Greenland is not
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for sale. The Danish kingdom have said that, and
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you are free and duty-bound to ignore the oddly small strip of
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the Gulf of Mexico that got a weird ceremonial name. So essentially what
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happens is they're going They announced that the Gulf
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of Mexico will be called the Gulf of America anywhere that is surrounded
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by the state waters. They're going to call it the
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Gulf of America. Now, Andrew rightly points out that
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that strip is not a gulf anymore. It's
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not. A gulf is essentially a body of water that
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is surrounded by land all the way around. It's like an inlet. It
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has one inlet that comes in through the Sargasso Sea, then the Caribbean Sea,
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and it comes out. Like, it's just surrounded by land. That's
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a gulf. This is not a gulf. It's just a strip of water.
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So it'll be interesting to see what happens. It's just really, you know, Trump is
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fixated on this, and it's become a
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big thing. And now he just won't let it go. will not stop talking about
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it, which allows him to get more interest in it and
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so he gets more attention for it. That's what he likes. He likes attention, especially
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when it comes to the environment and it comes to, you know, just
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being really weird in some places. Anyway, Andrew... rightly
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puts in a section at the end, what you can do, and
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obviously if you're an American citizen, you don't have to have direct influence
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over the actions of the executive branch, but you do have the influence
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over your legislators. An executive order is only as strong as
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the process behind it and supported by Congress. Unlike many aspects
19:01
of American life, the OSHAs enjoy unprecedented bipartisan support, People
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love the ocean. Coastal communities in red states want wind and the
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jobs and energy infrastructure wind brings. So NOAA enjoys
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strong bipartisan support. Andrew goes on,
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he goes, I know things seem dark for environmental and oceans constituents,
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but Trump has a weak Congress with the tightest margins
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in modern history. He can't afford to lose a
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single congressperson on his legislative agenda. If he does, things
19:31
will flip the other way. So for the next four years, we're going to do what we can,
19:34
according to Andrew, to help separate the noise from the signal. We
19:38
need you to get very familiar with the representatives and call them on every issue
19:42
that matters to you. It's a great article. That's why I want
19:45
to go through it. It's something that he put together fairly quickly. you
19:48
know, as usual, puts in so much detail. And I feel,
19:52
and there's a lot of links in there, so I'm going to link to it in the show notes. Just
19:55
hit the links in the show notes below or the description below. And
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that's it for today's episode. I'd love to hear what you think. Put a comment down
20:02
below if you're on YouTube or Spotify and let us know how you feel. And
20:05
if you are listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and just the audio, you
20:09
can hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean that's at
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here on YouTube as we grow the channel out to bring you more information
20:20
on what's going to be happening over the next four years in the US and abroad.
20:24
as we normally do. This is going to be a very important four years and
20:27
we're going to need everybody we can to help out and resist a
20:30
lot of the changes that will go against protecting the environment
20:34
and the ocean. So that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening.
20:38
We're getting up and we're getting ready to resist. It's going to be interesting. It's
20:42
going to be kind of fun to bring it together as a
20:45
community, but I really am looking forward to working with all of you. Thank
20:48
you so much for listening to this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew