President Trump would have us believe he’s struck a blow for middle America by banning weak showers, multiple toilet flushes and soggy straws, rescinding a 33-year-old federal requirement for water-saving appliances and a Biden policy against the government’s use of throwaway plastics.
Federal involvement in our plumbing and drinking devices is an easy target for anti-woke warriors. However, Trump’s response is a case of misdirected mocking. Water waste and plastics pollution are serious national problems.
Let’s start with water. It is a finite resource. It circulates through the planet as a liquid, solid or gas, but the amount is constant. About 97 percent is saltwater. Of the 3 percent that’s potable, only one-hundredth of 1percent is available for human uses like drinking, cooking, growing crops and, yes, showering and flushing toilets.
The American Society of Civil Engineers points out that parts of the U.S. are critically short of clean water, and the problem is spreading. Fresh water is so scarce that some municipalities are treating sewer water to make it drinkable, calling the process “toilet to tap.”
A New York Times investigation concluded two years ago that “aquifers are shrinking nationwide, threatening supplies of drinking water and America’s status as a food superpower.” The newspaper reported that “America is depleting its invaluable reserves of groundwater at a dangerous rate,” with 45 percent of water wells experiencing significant supply declines since 1980. Last year, researchers discovered that more than half of the nation’s aquifers are experiencing water loss.
The Times blamed weak state regulations and a lack of federal oversight, but Trump’s refusal to deal with climate change is making things worse. As May began, 32 states and 81.8 million Americans were affected by climate-related drought. The president’s “drill, baby, drill’ energy policy is a huge water-waster; each fracked natural gas well uses 1.5 million to 16 million gallons.
Now, rapidly growing data centers are putting new pressure on water resources. It takes about 300,000 gallons daily to cool a mid-sized data center, enough to supply 1,000 homes.
The responses to water shortages include recycling, desalination and economy-wide conservation. Although the nation’s 134 million households account for only 12 percent of U.S. water consumption, the typical family can reduce its use at least 20 percent and save more than $380 annually with water-efficient appliances and fixtures. Water-saving showerheads alone can save 2,700 gallons a year.
Water shortages have knock-on effects. A water war is brewing between the U.S. and Mexico. Mexico is experiencing a drought and is unable to provide the U.S. with billions of gallons of water under a 1944 treaty. Trump accuses it of “stealing water from Texas farmers” and has threatened to punish Mexico with tariffs.
Overconsumption of water has serious knock-on effects of its own; a study in Nature Cities found that the nation’s 28 most populous cities are sinking, due mainly to groundwater withdrawals. On the East Coast, subsidence makes cities and coastal ecosystems more vulnerable to sea-level rise. Withdrawing oil and gas from underground reserves is another significant cause of subsidence. One of the sinking properties is Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
What about plastic straws? The world is awash in plastic waste. It’s one of the reasons many geologists argue that humanity has entered the Anthropocene, a new epoch in which humanity, for better or worse, is the most influential force on the planet.
Researchers are investigating the impact of plastic particles on human health. Microplastics are in our food, air and water, as well as our brains, lungs, blood, livers, kidneys, reproductive organs, breast milk, bone marrow and semen. One study found that people ingest up to 10,000 particles of microplastics in food and in the air they breathe. People who rely on bottled water ingest approximately 90,000 additional particles each year.
Plastic litter is another issue. More than 300 million people visit America’s national parks each year. They leave behind nearly 70 million tons of trash. A study three years ago found that more than 80 percent of the garbage was single-use plastics like water bottles, food wrappers, and bags. After surveying 58 national parks and forests last year, volunteers reported “the natural landscapes are juxtaposed with single-use plastic items dropped on trails, overflowing dumpsters at campsites and cigarette butts littering the forest floor.”
The litter diminishes the park experience, pollutes water and ends up in wildlife. So, the Biden administration launched a campaign last year to make parks plastic-free in 10 years. Trump’s executive order calls this an “environmentally dubious agenda.” It directs the Interior Department to let vendors in the parks sell single-use plastics again.
What’s dubious is Trump’s rationale. He declared that nonbiodegradable plastic products are part of the government’s “sacred trust to allow Americans to enjoy the awe and beauty of nature in America’s majestic national parks.”
Trump’s real reason for promoting plastics may be transactional. Plastics are made from oil and gas feedstocks. Exxon-Mobil is the world’s biggest producer of single-use plastics. The industry considers this a fallback option as fossil fuel consumption declines. In fact, analysts say plastics will be the oil industry’s “cash cow” and the principal driver of oil consumption in the years ahead.
Oil companies claim the pollution solution is advanced recycling technologies, but less than 5 percent of plastics are recycled in the U.S., and the process is not commercially scalable.
So, Trump can mock paper straws and low-flush toilets. But if he intends to make America and its national parks great again, choking the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and filling our bodies with plastic wastes are not the ways to do it.
William S. Becker is a former regional director at the U.S. Department of Energy and author of several books on climate change and national disaster policies, including the “100-Day Action Plan to Save the Planet,” published by St. Martin’s Griffin, and “The Creeks Will Rise: People Co-Existing with Floods,” published by the Chicago Review Press.
