It was Trump's first day in office and we have been kind of scared about what's going to happen to the ocean for quite some time since he's been elected. Well, he did not disappoint. There are a number of executive order actions that he did on his first day that are going to impact the ocean in one way or another. We're going to talk about on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast because it's important to know what policies are in place and what you
can do to save those policies. Dr. Andrew Thaler put up a great post on his blog, southernfriedscience.com. You can check that out. I'll put it in the show notes, but let's talk about what he wrote and what Trump did on his first day. Hey everybody, welcome back to another scary episode of the how to protect the ocean. I'm your host Andrew Lewin. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live
for a better ocean by taking action. And look, the next four years are going to be scary because Donald Trump is back in office and he wants to drill baby drill. He's going to change
a bunch of policies or he's going to try to anyway. We're going to talk about some of them today, but if you want to stay If you want to stay abreast of all the information that's coming in, all the policies that are changing, and what you can do to help out, whether it's through direct action and talking to your politician, or helping out another organization to help influence or do something about the
policies, you stay tuned to this podcast. You subscribe, you follow, whatever you need to do, and you head over to speakupforblue.com to make sure you listen to all the episodes of this podcast, as well as our other podcasts that we have out there and our videos and so forth. It's all on speakupforblue.com. And if you want to make sure you don't miss any of the news that's coming out of the U.S. or is coming out anywhere else in the world, You go to speakupforblue.com forward slash
newsletter, put in your email just for free. I don't do anything with emails and you get ocean news and job advertisements and our episodes all to your inbox Monday to Friday at 8 a.m. Eastern. So check that out speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter. Let's go into some of the policies that have been changed on the first day. I'm going to tell you. at how Donald Trump's day one executive actions impact the ocean. We're gonna talk about a bunch of them. I am going to read a
lot of the stuff that he said because I don't know a lot about some of these policies. Andrew's very good at analyzing marine policies, does this for a living, and we're gonna have him on quite a bit to get his take on it as well as his other specialties like deep sea mining and so forth and the deep sea. So here we go. What he did. The first thing he did is revoke President Biden's executive order. So first on the list that was meaningful is initial rescissions of
harmful executive orders and actions. So this is a catch all order that revokes a slew of President Biden's executive actions. among those of which directly and indirectly impact the ocean. So the first one here is, he just named a few, but protecting public health and the environment and restoring science to tackle the climate crisis. This directed federal agencies to review Trump-era regulations that conflicted directives
to confront the climate crisis. The second thing that he revoked was the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which established the Council of Science and Technology experts to advise the actual president, to give them the information that he needs to make the decisions that he needs to make. Third one is tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. which placed the climate crisis at the forefront of US foreign policy and national security.
This is very similar to back in the Obama era when he was president and the Navy actually declared that climate change was the most important risk or was the biggest risk against the United States. The fourth executive action was climate-related financial risk, he rescinded that, to develop a strategy to incorporate climate crisis-related impacts into financial risk assessments.
Like, let's be honest, every type of financial, any type of climate risk, or any type of climate consequence, like wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, floods, These all have to be paid for to clean up. And to look at these financial risks and make those assessments is really important when you look at where we need to divert our money to and how much money we have consequences in cleaning up all the stuff that's been happening. It costs a lot of money to do
that. Where does that money come from? Generally, taxpayers. So he goes on to say that there are a host of other executive orders related to environmental justice, preparing for climate crisis related immigration, and advancing other climate goals. But unfortunately, these executive orders largely expired with the outgoing administration. So it wasn't really any type of action. So it just kind of expired. It would have continued on if Joe Biden had continued on as president for a second term.
So the direct threats to the ocean, however, are in the trio of executive orders that remove protections President Biden put in place to prevent offshore exploration of oil and natural gas on the outer continental shelf, which I will just, if you want more information, I will, I'm just going to point to it up top, and I'll link to it in this video and on the show notes that you can go in and listen to. It was all about how he banned I
believe it was like 265 million acres. It was quite large and it was something that would have been really important. But it included the President's hail Mary attempt to prevent rapid expansion of the offshore oil industry in the sentence of drill, baby, drill. So this one is a really weird one because it takes the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, where it's complicated because the president has the power to close lands and protect them from leasing, but
only Congress has the power to open the lands for leasing. So this is going to be really interesting to see if Donald Trump can get Congress to actually rescind the closure of these areas to oil and gas. It will really require Congress to get a vote in. This is where you can help. You can contact your local congressman and say, hey, you know, or congresswoman, and say, hey, you know what? I really love this executive order. I want to
keep it in. Enough of you contact them, they may actually listen. So that's one of the only ways you can do it is really do that. If it doesn't go through Congress, Trump will likely go through the Supreme Court. So this could be a big one. He tried a similar maneuver in his first term, according to Andrew, and lost bigly. So
Trump put in an executive order called the National Energy Emergency. By declaring an emergency, the emergency talks about how executive agencies are going to handle permitting and expediting review of new oil and gas production. Though the declaration cites a need for a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy, the order itself is limited in scope to unreliable, vulnerable,
and supply-limited fossil fuels. Renewables are now exponentially cheaper than the fossil fuels infrastructure, according to Andrew's article, while being both more reliable, resilient and diversified. So it's really interesting to see how things have changed so much because we've invested in renewables and the U.S. has invested in renewables and offshore wind. So that cheapness of putting in
offshore wind projects, that won't change. And this order will only serve to get US to fall behind in the global renewables boom, leaving the states like Texas vulnerable to the climate crisis and the US economy less competitive. So that's not good, obviously.
And so coupled with rescinding a number of the withdrawals and the executive order of unleashing Alaska's extraordinary resource potential, if effective, this would lead to increased exploitation of the seafloor resources and saddle future generations with failing infrastructure that needs to be contained and remediated. The oil and gas industry can be very detrimental to the marine environment. derelict type of platforms that are empty, they're not producing, and
it just sits there. And we try and figure out what we can do with it. So obviously, not really a good thing for us. So the national, this is Andrew's title, the national quote, I guess there isn't an energy emergency wind release, because this is what happens. This is a really bizarre move. So Trump also issued a temporary withdrawal of all areas on the outer continental shelf from offshore wind leasing and review the federal government's leasing and permitting practices for
wind projects. So he declares that there's an energy emergency, but is putting a halt on all offshore wind projects. So that it can't be that much of an emergency if offshore wind is not being like instead of going with both, I can understand him doing the drill baby drill and going for more oil and gas. I can understand it from his perspective because the people who put him there, the his supporters, his donors were or the fossil fuel industry. But
to take away offshore wind does not make sense. It's cheaper to put in, it's more stable, and it's more diversified, and it will help the U.S. in the future, but instead of just continuing that going on, he's putting a temporary withdrawal in all the areas. So,
no permitting, nothing allowed to be going, even though there's a big boom out there. Andrew goes on to say, while the National Energy Emergency calls upon executive agencies to expedite new energy production and reduce the red tape, Trump's wind release calls upon executive agencies to halt new energy
production and bury it in red tape. So the emergency calls for a review of the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act to strip regulations that would limit new energy development while the wind release calls for a review of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act to impose greater restrictions of
new energy development. How does that make sense? So you're gonna review, essentially what they're gonna do is they're gonna lighten the restrictions from the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protections Act that will allow for more exploration of the seafloor to find these hydrocarbon pockets where they can drill for oil. To do that process, it's very harmful to marine mammals and endangered species.
To do that process, you need seismic surveys. That means you have these acoustic guns that are in the water and they trail for like several kilometers, like up to nine kilometers, maybe even more depending on the size of the array. The noise that is emitted from these guns that goes down to the seafloor and reverts back up to come back with the signal that will allow the analyst to say, hey, there's
a pocket here, there's no pocket here of oil and gas. If you're in the water with that instrument and that instrumentation goes off, like as a human, it'll blow your eardrums to pieces. So imagine the effect that's gonna happen on marine mammals. Right now, marine mammals use acoustics to communicate to each other, whether it be for hunting, whether it be for safety, whether it just be for social cues, that's how they communicate. And if these guns go off when they're in the area,
they're not gonna be able to communicate as effectively as they used to be. That could harm the way they eat, that could harm the way they act as a pod, and that could eventually harm their lives. And so the regulations that are around a lot of the times, when I worked up in Canada for my colleagues working in the States, they model the area around the ship with the guns, with these acoustic guns. And they say, hey, you know
what? If a whale's in the area within one or two kilometers, depending on where you are, you cannot allow these guns to go off. You have to shut them down. That would allow the whales to pass, and that would allow them to be okay. However, in this situation, they're probably not going to allow that. They're probably going to allow the guns to go off, even if there's whales in the way. That's going to harm more whales. A lot of this stuff is going to be in areas where whales
are endangered. And there's some critical spots where they're endangered. The North Atlantic right whale is a critically endangered species. And if this oil and gas happens up in that area, this exploration, this could be the end of this species, right? You just never know.
This is a huge problem. Yet on the other side of it, they're going to use the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act to add in more restrictions to creating and installing and implementing the offshore wind developments. Just imagine that. But there's an energy shortage because there's an energy emergency, but we're not going to put both energies up. We're not going to explore the diversified way. We're just going to go with one option. Does
not make sense whatsoever. All right, let's go to the next executive order. They pulled out of the Paris Accord. This is not a surprise. Trump pulled out of it, again, like he did in his first term. He said he framed it as putting America first. The Paris Climate Accords is both a treaty and a series of negotiations on how to implement that treaty. By pulling out, the United States no longer has a seat at the
table to advance its climate and energy priorities. And this is Andrew's thought here, quote, I generally think that the Paris Agreement will benefit from not having the Trump administration represent the United States in ongoing implementation discussions. He could just have a delegation that goes there and just stalls everything.
So maybe having the US out for now will allow other countries to advance while the US sits behind and waits and has to play catch up when he's gone in four years, depending on who There and depending whether he's gone in four years who knows a couple other things that we're going to talk about Dismantling of the civil service so the United States government's greatest strength is the civil service according to Andrew Which I agree on
people who serve the country regardless of the party in power I think this is what people get confused up a lot of the Scientists whether they're your scientists or not and people who work for the public service do not have party affiliations They do not, they work no matter what. It doesn't matter, they do not change as the next administration comes in, whether it's a different party. They just work on the projects that they're assigned.
Now the party priorities might dictate what projects they work on, but it's not going to dictate whether, you know, they get fired or not. However, because of this, this allows Trump to kind of remove something. So Trump has taken dramatic steps to degrade the U.S. Civil Service through his reinstatement of Schedule F, a plan that turns career civil servants into political appointees.
So subject to the whims of whichever party is currently in power. So this radical prioritization of the civil service creates a chilling effect on the people whose job it is to warn us when things are going wrong. So Schedule F, if found to be legal, will have a significant impact on NOAA, BOEM, which is the Board of Offshore and Energy Management, the FDA and the USDA, and every executive agency that serves
the American people. And of course, just to make everything even more complicated, Trump has also instituted a hiring freeze for the federal civilian positions. Now, this is not surprising either. We expected this. We expected a freeze. We expected him to go after the civil service because this is what he does. He thinks it's all blown up and it needs to be shrunk. And that's typical of Republican type or Conservative type parties that go in.
In Canada, when we had Conservatives, they shrank the public service quite a bit in a number of areas, including science, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and the Environment Canada at the time, now Environment Canada and Climate Change. They were reduced quite
significantly and that's not up. You know, that's really not a not surprising at all Unfortunately, he goes on he says of all the executors that would impact America's oceans the ones that pose the most imminent and existential Threat are those that threaten the very function of government and seek to dismantle the US Civil Service The people who work in the public service are the ones who are working on these projects. They worked on them for decades throughout
their career and they do a damn good job. And it's really a shame when all the priorities get shifted and some of the projects that are long term either get shelved or they get significantly reduced, which really impairs the amount of science and advancement of science that we can do and understanding of what happens in our oceans and the oceans surrounding the US, including the Gulf of Mexico, which that will be another thing
that we'll talk about another day. The Department of what he calls memes, which is the Department of Doge, which is basically an energy, it's the Department of Efficiency is where, is what it really is, but he pronounces it doggy, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, so D-O-G-E. It's now a temporary commission that ends on July 4th, 2026, and
half of the leadership has already announced their departure. Predicting which Musk-aligned project will stick and which will fade into obscurity is an exercise in futility, he says, Whether it impacts ocean-related agencies remains to be seen. So some of the knucklehead stuff, as Andrew calls it, that happened. Trump is fixated on Greenland. Trump wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Neither of these are real meaningful policy agendas. Greenland is not
for sale. The Danish kingdom have said that, and you are free and duty-bound to ignore the oddly small strip of the Gulf of Mexico that got a weird ceremonial name. So essentially what happens is they're going They announced that the Gulf of Mexico will be called the Gulf of America anywhere that is surrounded by the state waters. They're going to call it the Gulf of America. Now, Andrew rightly points out that that strip is not a gulf anymore. It's
not. A gulf is essentially a body of water that is surrounded by land all the way around. It's like an inlet. It has one inlet that comes in through the Sargasso Sea, then the Caribbean Sea, and it comes out. Like, it's just surrounded by land. That's a gulf. This is not a gulf. It's just a strip of water. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. It's just really, you know, Trump is fixated on this, and it's become a
big thing. And now he just won't let it go. will not stop talking about it, which allows him to get more interest in it and so he gets more attention for it. That's what he likes. He likes attention, especially when it comes to the environment and it comes to, you know, just
being really weird in some places. Anyway, Andrew... rightly puts in a section at the end, what you can do, and obviously if you're an American citizen, you don't have to have direct influence over the actions of the executive branch, but you do have the influence over your legislators. An executive order is only as strong as the process behind it and supported by Congress. Unlike many aspects of American life, the OSHAs enjoy unprecedented bipartisan support, People
love the ocean. Coastal communities in red states want wind and the jobs and energy infrastructure wind brings. So NOAA enjoys strong bipartisan support. Andrew goes on, he goes, I know things seem dark for environmental and oceans constituents, but Trump has a weak Congress with the tightest margins in modern history. He can't afford to lose a single congressperson on his legislative agenda. If he does, things will flip the other way. So for the next four years, we're going to do what we can,
according to Andrew, to help separate the noise from the signal. We need you to get very familiar with the representatives and call them on every issue that matters to you. It's a great article. That's why I want to go through it. It's something that he put together fairly quickly. you know, as usual, puts in so much detail. And I feel, and there's a lot of links in there, so I'm going to link to it in the show notes. Just hit the links in the show notes below or the description below. And
that's it for today's episode. I'd love to hear what you think. Put a comment down below if you're on YouTube or Spotify and let us know how you feel. And if you are listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and just the audio, you can hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean that's at
how to protect the ocean. And don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell here on YouTube as we grow the channel out to bring you more information on what's going to be happening over the next four years in the US and abroad. as we normally do. This is going to be a very important four years and we're going to need everybody we can to help out and resist a lot of the changes that will go against protecting the environment
and the ocean. So that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. We're getting up and we're getting ready to resist. It's going to be interesting. It's going to be kind of fun to bring it together as a community, but I really am looking forward to working with all of you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew