(2010), and Mother Earth and Uncle Sam. She is a former president of the Center for Progressive Reform.
Steinzor applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, American Apocalypse: The Six Far-Right Groups Waging War on Democracy, and reported the following:
Page 99 of my book focuses on a disastrous Supreme Court decision, West Virginia v. EPA, that choke-chained the EPA’s ability to combat climate change by requiring fossil fuel-burning industries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. This approach is known as mitigating the disruption of the climate. We will face dire consequences no matter what we do, but mitigation is essential to avoid catastrophic outcomes. Conservatives tout adaptation as an alternative, meaning taking measures like air conditioning and building sea walls to combat climate disruption. Adaptation will play some role, but no credible scientist thinks it will be nearly enough.Learn more about American Apocalypse at the Stanford University Press website.
The Court’s conservative supermajority in the West Virginia case said that even though the electric utility industry supported the Obama Administration’s mitigation rule because it gave companies flexible options, the Obama rule was illegal because it cost too much and was not specifically authorized by Congress. The Trump Administration had a rule that was much weaker and it complied with the Court’s opinion, although it never went into effect because President Biden won the 2020 election. Under West Virginia, the EPA’s efforts to require mitigation from the dirtiest sources are very narrow.
I am relieved to say that page 99 of my book passes the “good idea of the whole work” test. How the six far-right groups—big business, the Tea Party, the Federalist Society, Fox News, white evangelicals, and armed militia—have thwarted efforts to mitigate these existential problems are the book’s core.
For example, fossil fuel industries and their corporate customers have spent billions to undermine all efforts to regulate their contributions to climate change, assisted by another Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that gave corporations First Amendment rights to political speech, lifting the lid on campaign contributions. White evangelicals believe that climate change is the End of Days or the Rapture when non-believers will be eliminated and Christ will return to the earth. Armed militia demonstrated on the lawns of top public health officials, frightening them so badly that they resigned. The next pandemic will find us as unprepared as we were for the last one.
While the six groups do not coordinate their attacks and may even diverge on short-term agendas, their priorities land on a surprisingly tight bullseye: the size and authority of expert agencies like the EPA. Over the long-term, as the prevalence of global pandemics and climate crises increase, an incapacitated national government could usher in unimaginable harm.
--Marshal Zeringue