In just 100 days, President Trump has waged an open war on the environment, with a cruel plan to sell off our public lands and sacrifice our air, water and wildlife.

The attack is frightening, although not surprising, considering Trump ran a scorched earth campaign for his second term. What’s alarming is that many California Democrats aren’t just standing by—they’re aiding and abetting the environmental destruction.

When House Republicans proposed the so-called Fix Our Forests Act to clear the way for more logging, Sen. Alex Padilla, led a companion bill, borrowing rhetoric from the right to justify clear-cutting forests and rolling back endangered species protections.

In the California Legislature, Sen. Scott Wiener is proposing to hand immense power to developers so they can shortchange environmental review for an array of projects including freeway expansions and power plants. If signed into law, Senate Bill 607 would put an end to the California Environmental Quality Act as we know it, by ensuring that environmental impact reports will be prepared rarely if ever for most projects.

Democrats have sacrificed environmental protections to gain political points before. But continuing this dangerous game under Trump 2.0 can only end in disaster.

In my three decades of practicing environmental law, I’ve never been more nervous for our future.

Wiener’s proposal to undermine CEQA comes as the Trump administration is taking a wrecking ball to the landmark National Environmental Protection Act and allowing drilling, fracking, mining, and other fossil fuel projects to skip a thorough environmental review. It also follows Trump’s attacks on California’s environmental laws in a series of vindictive executive orders.

In this political climate, our Democratic leaders should work to strengthen state environmental protections — not help the president gut them.

For the past 55 years, CEQA and NEPA have served as bedrock environmental laws for California and the nation. They compel decision makers to look before they leap.

For example, before a massive logging project is launched, its effects on greenhouse gas emissions and the community’s drinking water supply are carefully analyzed. And when an exurban sprawl development is proposed in endangered species habitat or a dangerous wildfire zone, a robust analysis can determine whether there’s a better alternative or further mitigation measures are needed.

Some claim it’s fine to leap without looking, that there’s no time to seek expert opinion or collect scientific evidence. But taking the time to conduct environmental review is what tells us whether a project is safe. If we allow SB 607 to become law, developers who stand to profit can claim a project is harmless and short-cut review despite contrary evidence.

More importantly, CEQA calls for the details of a project to be publicized—meaning engineers, city planners, conservationists, and next-door neighbors can learn the details of a proposed project and have a say in the decision-making process. Efforts to curtail environmental review, including Trump’s assaults on NEPA and other disclosure laws, are fundamentally undemocratic because they foreclose the transparency and accountability that this review is intended to protect.

What’s particularly insulting about the latest attempts to gamble away our environmental safeguards is that communities will be put in harm’s way while the most significant threats are left unaddressed.

For example, the recent LA wildfires were ignited in areas where development extended into shrubland habitats. Destruction was worsened by high winds, an exceptionally dry winter, inadequate city infrastructure and poor land-use planning. Yet Padilla is using this tragedy to justify cutting down forests far away from communities. This will only worsen the climate crisis and offer a false sense of security at a time when Californians need resources to harden their homes and be more wildfire resilient.

Meanwhile, chipping away at CEQA will do nothing to help communities facing skyrocketing housing costs amid climate disasters. Previous bills have already added provisions to CEQA to fast-track infill development, affordable housing, homeless shelters, and other projects with urgent needs.

Why further weaken a law that, in my experience, has been so successful in protecting wildlife habitat and our most vulnerable communities, shaping better projects, and thwarting imprudent and in some instances, outright fraudulent plans? It seems like just another way to cozy up to the building industry.

There’s a time and a place for bipartisanship. But when Trump Republicans are in climate denial, indifferent to the extinction crisis, and willing to eviscerate the protections we struggled to achieve, it doesn’t serve our nation to reach across the aisle. Our environment and community health are non-negotiable. When we allow special interests to log, pollute and pave over the last remaining wild places, the consequences are irreversible.

How would we explain this when future generations ask about Trump’s second term? It’d be a shame to admit that we got fooled into obeying his dictates in advance and giving away our environment for free.

John Buse is senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity.