Tag: Trump abuse of the environment

6 former EPA heads laid out a plan to rescue the agency after Trump

For nearly the past four years, the Environmental Protection Agency has been led by former oil and gas industry lobbyists who have prioritized rolling back environmental regulations instead of enforcing them. With the presidential election looming, six former heads of the EPA are leading a call to reset the agency and return it to its original mission instead of, you know, serving the interests of major polluters.

William Reilly, Lee Thomas, Carol Browner, Christine Todd Whitman, Lisa Jackson, and Gina McCarthy, all former Administrators of the EPA, joined more than 500 former EPA senior managers and employees as part of the Environmental Protection Network to make recommendations on how the agency can get back on track. The collection of agency veterans is bipartisan and includes administrators and employees who served under both Democratic and Republican leadership, suggesting that there is something significantly different in how the agency has operated under Trump.

The Environmental Protection Network put forth hundreds of pages of documentation that seek to establish “specific and actionable steps that EPA can take to reset the course of the agency to address the most significant and pervasive threats to public health and our environment.” The plans range from better incorporating environmental justice into the EPA’s daily work to reducing emissions from vehicles. They even get into the nitty-gritty, suggesting changes to how the EPA performs economic analyses and reevaluating the agency’s relationships with states, cities, and tribal lands. Some of the plans appear to be in direct response to Trump-era policies. A plan to restore science as the backbone of decision making at the agency, for instance, would directly address the Trump administration’s attempt to limit the use of scientific research when making decisions about public health. Continue reading.

Trump formally pulls out of landmark Paris climate agreement

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Monday began the yearlong process of withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.

The official announcement cements a promise Trump made in the White House Rose Garden in 2017 when he first announced his intention to withdraw from the global climate change agreement signed by every other country in the world.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the move in a statement.

View the complete November 4 article by Rebecca Beitsch on The Hill website here.

House votes to block drilling in Arctic refuge

The Hill logoThe House on Thursday passed legislation that would block drilling along the shoreline of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

The 225-193 vote in favor of the bill, which follows the passage of two offshore drilling bans on Wednesday, sends a signal to Senate Republicans and the White House, who have said the climate change-focused legislation has no future in the upper chamber or as a law.

“Most Americans would agree there are some places so special, so wild, so spectacular, that they have to be off limits to being spoiled by oil and gas development,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), sponsor of the House bill. “If you believe that, then surely that proposition has to apply to the Arctic refuge.”

View the complete September 12 article by Rebecca Beitsch and Miranda Green on The Hill website here.

House takes aim at Trump’s drilling plan with three bills

Bills would block offshore exploration in parts of the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the Pacific and Atlantic coasts

Lawmakers from both parties evoked the memory of the 2010 BP oil spill Tuesday to drum up support for a trio of House bills that would hamper offshore drilling and President Donald Trump’s energy agenda.

The House is expected to vote Wednesday and Thursday on three bipartisan bills that would block exploration in parts of the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

One of the bills, by Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Florida, would permanently ban oil and gas leasing in eastern areas of the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast. The measure would amend and make permanent a provision in a 2006 law that placed a moratorium on drilling there that is set to expire in June 2022.

View the complete September 11 article by Elvina Mawaguna on The Roll Call website here.

Trump Praises Bolsonaro As Brazilian Leader Lets Amazon Burn

Trump praised Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, after he rejected millions of dollars in international aid pledged to help fight fires in the Amazon rainforest.

“I have gotten to know President @jairbolsonaro well in our dealings with Brazil,” Trump wrote on Tuesday. “He is working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects doing a great job for the people of Brazil – Not easy. He and his country have the full and complete support of the USA!”

Trump’s support of the Brazilian authoritarian comes a day after Trump skipped the G-7 session in which climate change was discussed, and world leaders announced a $20 million aid package for the rainforest.

View the complete August 27 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Trump pushes to allow new logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest

Washington Post logoPresident Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7-million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago, according to three people briefed on the issue, after privately discussing the matter with the state’s governor aboard Air Force One.

The move would affect more than half of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, opening it to potential logging, energy and mining projects. It would undercut a sweeping Clinton administration policy known as the “roadless rule,” which has survived a decades-long legal assault.

Trump has taken a personal interest in “forest management,” a term he told a group of lawmakers last year he has “redefined” since taking office.

View the complete August 27 article by Juliet Eilperin and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

NOTE:  With the Amazon, the “lungs of the world”, losing a soccer field size piece of forest every minute, losing any trees that can help clean carbon from the air could increase the chance for climate disaster.

The White House Saw Riches in the Arctic Refuge, but Reality May Fall Short

New York Times logoWhen the Trump administration first pushed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration, it predicted that drilling would generate a windfall for the federal Treasury: $1.8 billion, by a White House estimate.

But two years later, with the expected sale of the first oil and gas leases just months away, a New York Times analysis of prior lease sales suggests that the new activity may yield as little as $45 million over the next decade. Even the latest federal government estimate is half the figure the White House predicted.

The lofty original projection was just one element of a campaign within the administration to present in the best possible light the idea of opening the refuge’s coastal plain after decades of being stymied by Democrats and environmentalists, according to internal government communications and other documents reviewed by The Times.

View the complete August 21 article by Henry Fountain and Steve Eder on The New York Times website here.

White House poised to relax mileage standards, rebuffing automakers and setting up probable fight with California

A last-minute push by automakers appears unlikely to sway the Trump administration from abandoning President Barack Obama’s signature climate policy to improve mileage standards for cars and light trucks, two government officials said Friday.

The administration’s plan to freeze federal fuel-efficiency requirements for six years and end California’s authority to set its own standards has injected uncertainty into the auto market and raised the prospect of a drawn-out legal fight between federal officials and the nation’s biggest state.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department are poised to finalize a proposal this summer that would set federal car standards at roughly 37 miles per gallon, rather than raising them to nearly 51 miles per gallon for 2025 models. The rule would also revoke California’s existing waiver to set its own rules under the Clean Air Act, a practice the federal government has sanctioned for decades.

View the complete June 7 article by Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis on The Washington Post website here.