Page 4 - Pakistan Link - September 25, 2020

P4 – PAKISTAN LINK – SEPTEMBER 25, 2020
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n By Mowahid Hussain Shah
Summer 2020 shall go down as
unforgettable. Multiple cri-
ses kept converging: a global
pandemic, the BLM civil unrest,
socio-economic
devastation of lives
and livelihood,
and Election Year.
The pandemic
seemingly finishes,
then starts again.
In places where
they thought it was receding, it is
coming back.
The world as we know it has
turned upside down. There is a
dread of touch, of the air we breathe,
of enclosed spaces, of indoor dining.
The conviviality of social gatherings
and social security has been punc-
tured by fear and paranoia. America
today is marked by division, discord,
and disparity. Author and historian
Garrett Graff writes in The Atlantic
of September 10: “Today, whatever
shared national spirit existed in the
first weeks of the pandemic has been
fractured beyond repair.” Social me-
dia has exacerbated tribalism.
Officialdom and ‘experts’ in
charge have blundered and floun-
dered, sending mixed signals and
conveying misleading information.
End of summer coincided with the
marking of the 19th anniversary of
the September 11 attacks. America
has yet to relinquish the anguish of
9/11. It remains etched in the pub-
lic psyche. 9/11 marked America’s
tumultuous entry into the 21st cen-
tury, whose seismic aftershocks con-
tinue to reverberate.
As observed in the Independent
(London) of September 11, 2020:
Nineteen years later, the United
States has waged two wars in that
region that delivered few strategic
goals. It’s cost us billions in treasure
and thousands of lives – with thou-
sands more military troops perma-
nently maimed as a result of their
combat service. And our citizens are
divided on just about every issue of
the day, from whether Biden knows
his own name to whether covering
one’s mouth and nostrils can help
prevent the spread of an airborne
Clearing the Air on the EPA’s Coronavirus Response
n By H. Sterling Burnett
TArlington Heights, Illinois
he Environmental Protec-
tion Agency (EPA) recently
issued a memo waiving cer-
tain compliance requirements for
energy firms in light of the COV-
ID-19 outbreak. A group of House
Democrats falsely claimed the
EPA’s memo gives oil and gas com-
panies an “open license to pollute.”
To address lawmakers’ con-
cerns, the EPA has tapped an inter-
nal watchdog to review the policy.
But no matter how hard they look,
the investigators won’t find anything
close to what Democrats have sug-
gested.
Contrary to what outraged
environmentalists claim, the EPA
wasn’t trying to sneak in a regula-
tory rollback as part of a pandemic
relief plan. These temporary waiv-
ers simply made it easier for energy
producers to protect their work-
keeping up with paperwork and
reporting requirements during the
pandemic. The EPA shouldn’t shy
away from issuing these waivers
when needed.
COVID-19 put energy produc-
ers in a tricky situation. Restrictions
disease. …Sadly, bin Laden contin-
ues to be the victor.
Uncertainty and confusion
hover, with US Presidential elections
looming ahead. It may be relevant to
mention that Biden went along with
endorsing Bush. Jr’s catastrophic de-
cision to attack Iraq in 2003 – which
midwifed Daesh. More significantly,
the New York Times of September 9,
2020, cites Trump:
President Trump mounted a
public attack unusual even for him
over the Labor Day weekend, ac-
cusing his military leadership of
advocating war “so that all of those
wonderful companies that make
the bombs and make the planes and
make everything else stay happy.”
It eerily echoes President Eisen-
hower’s warning 60 years ago during
his farewell speech of January 17,
1961, to beware of the Military-In-
dustrial Complex.
The pandemic has enhanced
aloneness and social isolation and
has depleted human companion-
ship. Nearly 2,500 years ago, Aristo-
tle, the tutor of Alexander the Great,
had concluded that man is a social
animal. Down the centuries, those
who have suffered solitary confine-
on non-essential workers made it
hard for these firms to meet ev-
ery federal reporting requirement.
Since noncompliance leads to hefty
fines, energy firms had a choice.
They could force staff to come back
to work and risk spreading the virus.
Or they could shut down, eliminate
jobs, and deal a blow to our nation’s
already struggling economy.
The EPA’s memo gave energy
firms a way out of this dilemma. In
light of the pandemic, the agency
announced it would grant exemp-
tions for certain routine reporting
and monitoring requirements for
drilling sites. It let energy firms can
comply with social distancing or-
ders without fear of retribution.
Environmentalists claimed the
EPA memo would make it easier for
energy firms to skirt emission lim-
its. The Union of Concerned Scien-
tists accused the agency of using the
COVID-19 crisis to “make another
crisis like climate change worse.”
Cynthia Giles, who ran the EPA’s
Office of Enforcement during the
Obama administration, called the
memo a “nationwide waiver of en-
vironmental rules for the indefinite
future.”
These accusations are false. EPA
clearly stated it would only grant ex-
www.PakistanLink.com
Deadly Summer
ment can easily verify to the veracity far-reaching. England has just im-
of Aristotle’s position.
Social isolation, which was con-
sidered as a threat to human living,
Traditions will be
eroded, and millions of
irreplaceable occasions
will never now happen.
Grandparents, aunts
and uncles, cousins,
birthdays, big
gatherings: the rich
tapestry of family life
will stand horribly
impoverished. As
Zoom fatigue sets in,
the six-person rule
will be a psychological
calamity. We are in for
a grim, painful winter
is now being preached as a tool for
survival. Its consequences could be
emptions if the agency determines
“noncompliance was caused by the
COVID-19 pandemic.” And the
agency still enforced limits on regu-
lated pollutants.
Contrary to environmentalists’
and partisan congressional Demo-
crats’ claims, EPA’s action didn’t give tion permission slip. It was a neces-
energy producers the green light to
pollute. It merely allowed energy
companies to focus their limited
resources and personnel on energy
production to ensure Americans
can heat and power their homes
throughout this crisis.
There’s nothing unusual with
this type of temporary relief. The
federal government has often
modified reporting and account-
ing requirements during crises. The
Obama EPA issued 13 enforcement
discretion orders during Hurricane
Sandy in 2012. From 2005-2006,
the EPA issued over 40 enforcement
discretion orders in response to
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Dem-
ocrats didn’t claim these exemptions
would lead to environmental harm.
What’s the difference? It must be the
person in the Oval office making the
decision. Pure politics!
In the past, EPA has seen fit
to waive compliance requirements
for energy producers in response
OPINION
posed a draconian 6-person rule.
The Daily Telegraph (London) of
September 9 had this to say about it:
This new regime will be espe-
cially devastating for families and
friendships. They will bear the brunt
of the social distancing, and our
society will end up more atomized.
Traditions will be eroded, and mil-
lions of irreplaceable occasions will
never now happen. Grandparents,
aunts and uncles, cousins, birthdays,
big gatherings: the rich tapestry of
family life will stand horribly impov-
erished. As Zoom fatigue sets in, the
six-person rule will be a psychologi-
cal calamity. We are in for a grim,
painful winter.
There is a sharp transforma-
tional contrast between pre-Coro-
navirus America and now. The
pandemic and its politicization have
exposed polarizing fault-lines with-
in. The common purpose neces-
sary to confront an invisible enemy,
which poses an existential threat to
lives and livelihood, is just not there.
The uncomfortable fact is that
all of the aforementioned could be
signposts to America’s foreseeable
decline.
to temporary, localized natural di-
sasters. It makes perfect sense that
the agency would have a similar
response to an unprecedented pan-
demic that has dealt a financial blow
to the energy industry.
The EPA ruling was not a pollu-
sary, reasonable response to a once-
in-a-lifetime crisis.
(H. Sterling Burnett, PhD
(hburnett@heartland.org) is a se-
nior fellow on energy and the envi-
ronment at The Heartland Institute,
a nonpartisan, nonprofit research
center headquartered in Arlington
Heights, Illinois)
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