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47 Envtl. L. Rep. News & Analysis 10287 (2017)
Ocean Policy and the Trump Administration

handle is hein.journals/elrna47 and id is 303 raw text is: DIALOGUE Ocean Policy and the Trump Administration Summary Each presidential election brings the possibility of large-scale changes in environmental policy. President Donald Trump has not explicitly laid out ocean poli- cies for his new administration, but he has provided some clues; these policies ultimately will be important for the ecological and economic health of the United States and the world. On December 9, 2016, ELI con- vened a panel of experts to discuss some key ocean issues that the Trump Administration will face. Below we present a transcript of the discussion, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations. David Roche (moderator) is a Staff Attorney at ELI. Addie Haughey is Associate Director of Government Relations at the Ocean Conservancy. Mike LeVine is Pacific Senior Counsel for Oceana. Pete Stauffer is the Environmental Director of the Surfrider Foundation. Xiao Recio-Blanco is Director of the Ocean Program at ELI. Laura Cantral is a Partner at Meridian Institute. David Roche: My name is David Roche, a staff attor- ney with the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), and I'll be your moderator today. This is the next installment in our Ocean Seminar Series, which is on Ocean Policy and the Trump Administration. We're on our 10th year of the Ocean Seminar Series now, and we couldn't have done this work without the support of the Naomi and Nehe- miah Cohen Foundation, which has funded and been instrumental in designing and supporting the seminar series for years. ELI is a nonpartisan institution. We do not take politi- cal stands or advocate, we do research and education. However, we let the research and education we do speak for itself. We start from the underlying assumption that environmental conservation is important. However, how we get there is subject to debate and we only lay out the facts. In this Ocean Seminar Series, we give experts a venue to engage in a productive way, and we have five great ones on the line today. I'll introduce each of them as they speak. To build on the ocean theme, it helps to imagine the U.S. federal government as a fleet of ships. In this analogy, the president sets the course, but he isn't the pilot. He tells agency heads what to do, who tell staffers what to do. The agency heads are the ones steering. The ships are outfitted by the U.S. Congress, which as we've seen over the last few years can be a really big hurdle. The U.S. Supreme Court is something like the Coast Guard in the seas. It is like the Coast Guard for more reasons than it just being fun to imagine Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a sailor's cap. They can direct traffic and they can change the course if they see something wrong with it. And the American people are the current, the wind. They have massive power to affect how the ships move even after the course has been set. What can we expect from the Trump Administration? It's tough to know for sure, but there are some hints. But today we aim to dig a lot deeper than tweets. Obviously, tweets can be politics, but that might not necessarily be policy. So, what we're trying to do today is dig deeper. As we set this up, we received some questions and I just want to address those briefly here. First, what can a president really do on ocean policy? And the answer is a whole lot, especially when branches of government align and there are like-minded agency heads. Second, maybe it would be best for ocean conserva- tionists to lay low for four years? Well, while the presi- dent himself might not be involved in every decision, his appointees will. So, maybe it's not the best policy to expect the details of ocean wonkhood to fall through the cracks, I think that is probably unlikely. And finally, isn't it all just speculation at this point? Yes, it definitely is, and I think we're going to have some spec- ulation today. But when things do start moving, they're going to be moving incredibly fast. Our hope is that by starting a dialogue now, we're ready to blow the wind and direct the current in a way that pushes the ships in the direction that's best for what we care about, which here is ocean and coastal issues. And with that, all this intro talk is over, and I'm really excited to introduce you to the panel today. Our first panel- ist is Addie Haughey from the Ocean Conservancy, where she's the Associate Director for Government Relations. Addie Haughey: David, thank you so much, and thanks to ELI for offering this forum for folks to have these con- versations. You talked a little bit about speculation, and I do think it's important to be careful how much we specu- late. What I'd like to do today is keep the speculation to a minimum, but definitely offer some of the baseline facts NEWS & ANALYSIS 4-2017 47 ELR 10287

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