Must we choose between saving democracy and saving the Earth?

Some people tell me that I should be talking more about the climate crisis than the crisis of democracy.

But you know something? We can’t deal with the climate crisis unless our democracy is saved.

Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), just announced that the Trump administration will revoke the scientific determination that underpins the government’s legal authority to combat climate change — the “endangerment finding” of 2009, which concluded that planet-warming greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health.

That simple finding has allowed administration after administration to set strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants, and other industrial sources of pollution.

Without it, the EPA will have no authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions that are accumulating in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, leading to rising seas, fiercer storms, more deadly heat waves, and other extreme weather events.

What the hell are they doing?

I’m old enough to remember Rachel Carson’s 1962 classic Silent Spring and her riveting story about the widespread pesticide poisoning of man and nature. Her book fueled public demands for direct government action to protect the environment — not for its future exploitation, but for its own innate value.

Environmentalism became a political movement that sought not only to preserve the Earth but to regulate and punish those who polluted it.

Sensing the groundswell, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson added the environment to their speeches and legislative programs. In his 1964 and 1965 messages to Congress, Johnson spoke forcefully about safeguarding wilderness and repairing damaged environments.

The environmental movement continued to grow, boosted by a public increasingly concerned about the quality of air and water.

Richard Nixon invoked the environment during the bitter presidential election of 1968. Then, as president in 1969 and 1970, he directed a succession of sweeping measures that vastly expanded the federal regulatory protections afforded the environment, including the creation of the EPA.

Why, then, are we heading backward — precisely at a time when greenhouse gases have begun to cause environmental disaster?

Because our democracy has been captured by large corporations, including the oil and gas industries, intent on turning back the clock on environmental protection. They poured money into the campaigns of politicians — like Donald Trump — who promised to gut it. He openly promised Big Oil and gas he’d get rid of all environmental regulations if they supported him in the 2024 election.

We cannot deal with the climate crisis unless our democracy is strengthened to reflect the will of the people rather than the profits of giant corporations.

Democracy and the environment are not two separate issues, of which we must choose one. They are in many respects the same. But democracy is the foundation for all else. If we lose it — as we are in the process of doing — we can’t do anything, because there’s no “we.”

• Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com