Trump v. the ocean

For those of us committed to protecting the ocean, it’s always been clear that restoring healthy seas will be the work of our lifetimes, and that of others who’ll come after us.

Unlike the majority of Americans, I believe the Biden administration did a decent job, particularly in responding to the climate emergency we’re currently living through. During his term, Biden signed into law two major pieces of legislation: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act or IRA.

Nonprofit groups including Blue Frontier, which I founded, created an "Ocean Climate Action Plan" which helped in adding $10 billion to the IRA law, with a focus on coastal resiliency, including $3 billion for greening ports.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently distributed that money in the form of 55 grants to ports around the nation. The money will help ports electrify and decarbonize, which will also reduce air pollution in many adjacent low-income communities. That being said, the EPA is one of the agencies that the incoming Trump team is likely to gut or abolish.

This year will almost certainly be the hottest in recorded history (last year was the hottest to date). The president-elect and the Republican Party have made Big Oil and denial of climate science central to their ideology, identity and fundraising. It doesn’t help that Trump nominated Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman with no environmental background, to head (or behead) the EPA.

Whether you voted for or against Donald Trump, you should have no illusions that the health of our public seas is not one of his priorities. He’s made clear that he intends to "drill, baby, drill" and get rid of regulations and agencies that protect our waters, both salty and fresh.

Trump’s stance poses all kinds of dangers for the global ocean, which absorbs 90% of the heat and a third of the carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of greenhouse gasses. This has resulted in warming, rising seas that intensify hurricanes and ocean acidification that weakens shell-forming creatures. Warmer, more acidic seas also hold less dissolved oxygen expanding dead zones and harmful algal blooms.

However, protecting the blue in our red, white and blue is one of the few remaining areas of agreement among most Americans, both red and blue. This has helped, at least in the past, to minimize the damage that Trump has been able to do.

Trump’s efforts during his first term to open up the U.S. coastline to offshore oil drilling failed after they were met with massive grassroots opposition, as well as opposition from Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, both Republican stalwarts. As consumer activist Ralph Nader once explained to me, "No one takes their family to the beach and if it’s closed because of pollution says, ‘I’m OK with that because I oppose regulations.’"

And when Trump’s son Donald Jr. and a wealthy adviser took the side of the $2 billion local salmon industry, Trump shut down the Pebble Mine in Alaska that threatened Bristol Bay’s world-famous salmon runs.

I believe there are dark days coming for our nation and our ocean. The divisions that mark our country and the world today will get worse before they might begin to get better.

Still, the ocean conservation group that I founded more than 20 years ago will continue its work, with many others of its kind, to try and unite people to protect our ocean, coasts and communities, both human and wild.

We’ve had victories and we expect some major losses, but I still agree with author Isak Dinesen who wrote: "The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears or the sea."

So work hard and sweat because we need to toughen up. Cry some tears for the state of our nation. Then go visit the ocean. It will help clear your mind for the difficult days ahead.

David Helvarg is an author, executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean conservation group and co-host of the Rising Tide Ocean Podcast. This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.