To say that 21st Century humanity finds itself in a time of dire and unprecedented environmental crisis is an increasingly obvious and undeniable fact. Thanks to climate change, warming and rising oceans, desertification, the poisoning of air, land and water, species extinction, and dozens of other destructive trends, billions of people are confronting life-altering changes in the world around them that are leading to hardship, the abandonment of long-established ways of life, mass migration and conflict.
Put more simply, we live in a time in which humans are slowly drowning in their own effluent and if we don’t get our act together very soon, the chances that we and our descendants will experience a series of rapidly metastasizing disasters mounts every day.
So, what to do?
Seen from a global perspective, the answers are not that complicated. Humans must bring a rapid end to their opioid-like addiction to fossil fuels, end mass deforestation, develop ways to dramatically curb polluting chemicals, and reduce and manage their solid waste.
Unfortunately, as anyone who’s contemplated cranking down the AC on a steamy, sleepless night can attest, effecting these kinds of fundamental global overhauls in how we live is much easier said than done when it comes to making decisions at the local and individual levels.
And this is especially true when people in positions of leadership pay only lip service to addressing the massive challenges we face or even deny their existence at all.
North Carolinians — particularly those who reside in the state’s southeastern region — are watching this latter scenario play out right now in the way the Trump administration is failing to respond to the problems posed by the chemical pollutant known as GenX and the family of “forever chemicals” to which it belongs known as PFAS.
As award-winning journalist Lisa Sorg has documented over a period of several years for Inside Climate News and NC Newsline, these chemicals — which have been scientifically linked to a host of human health problems — are used to manufacture Teflon coatings, stain-, grease- and water-resistant materials, and other consumer products. They get their “forever” moniker from the fact that, when released into the air or water, they do not break down but instead persist in the environment for hundreds of years.
For decades, a company known as Chemours spewed vast quantities of PFAS into the air and water surrounding its facility in Cumberland County — a fact that has led to what experts say is widespread and dangerous pollution of public water systems and private wells across the surrounding region. A series of lawsuits and regulatory actions designed to make the company clean up its act and compensate the affected people and institutions followed.
Not surprisingly, however, forcing a giant corporation armed with a fleet of lawyers and political connections to admit its errors and the damage those errors have caused — much less pay an adequate sum to rectify them — is always an uphill fight.
This brings us back to the matter of public leadership. As with virtually every other matter of environmental regulation it has touched since January of 2025, the Trump Environmental Protection Agency has sought to downplay the effects of PFAS and other forever chemicals and roll back public safety and health regulations.
And this trend was manifested most recently and destructively in a proposed lawsuit settlement that EPA announced last week.
Under the proposed terms, Chemours would be required to fund a series of water clean-up and pollution mitigation efforts in West Virginia, New Jersey and North Carolina, but as numerous critics have pointed out, none of the thousands of individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit will get their day in court to describe their pain and property loss. What’s more, the ultimate payout toward cleaning up Chemours’ mess will likely amount to a relative pittance.
As North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson rightly observed in a scathing joint statement with Gov. Josh Stein, the proposal gives Chemours vast authority over how funds will be allotted and could end up leading to the expenditure of as little as $2 million per year to address water pollution in North Carolian that’s impacted hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians.
“Our state is ground zero for GenX contamination,” Jackson said, “but this deal does practically nothing to clean up our water. Chemours made this mess, and Chemours should clean it up.”
Stein echoed that assessment, saying, “This deal does nothing meaningful for North Carolinians. This EPA, which has already weakened protections against chemicals like GenX, is now allowing polluters to pick and choose how and where they’ll fix their contamination — leaving North Carolina with no guarantees.”
In short, the proposed settlement, if ratified, stands to become just the latest a long and disastrous series of decisions in which humans have put the toxic combination of corporate greed and head-in-the-sand environmental denialism ahead of the common, near- and long-term good. And as even a casual glance at the world around us makes clear, the window for making these kinds of shortsighted decisions is rapidly closing.
NC Newsline senior contributor and award-winning journalist Rob Schofield authors regular commentaries and hosts the"News & Views" weekly radio show/podcast. Republished from NC Newsline.
