Environmental (or Anti-Environmental)
Politics News Stories

• Trump Administration No Defender of the EnvironmentEnvironment Remains Under Siege Two
  Years Into the Trump Administration

  The Revelator, Mar. 18 2019 -Two years into his presidency, Donald Trump has racked up some high-profile policy failures. There’s no wall spanning the length of our southern border, no denuclearization underway in North Korea, and ethics scandals have swamped his administration.

  But when it comes to environmental policy changes, the administration’s record of success has been remarkable.

  The Trump team has effectively stalled or reversed at least 78 major environmental rules, including broad national policies aimed at stemming and monitoring air and water pollution, curbing toxic substances in the environment, protecting wildlife, and conserving public lands.

• New Record Budget - But Education and Environment Will be Cut Trump Proposes a Record $4.75
  Trillion Budget (With Cuts to Education
  and Environmental Protection)

  NY Times Climate Forward, Mar.11, 2019 - President Trump sent Congress on Monday a record $4.75 trillion budget plan that calls for increased military spending and sharp cuts to domestic programs like education and environmental protection for the 2020 fiscal year.

  The budget, the largest in federal history, includes a nearly 5%increase in military spending — which is more than the Pentagon had asked for — and an additional $8.6 billion for construction of a wall along the border with Mexico. It also contains what White House officials called a total of $1.9 trillion in cost savings from mandatory safety-net programs, like Medicaid and Medicare, the federal health care programs for the elderly and the poor.

• The Democrats Are Taking Away Your Burgers - Where’s the Beef? No One Is Taking Your Hamburgers.
  But Would It Even Be a Good Idea?

  NY Times Climate Forward, Mar.8, 2019 - The hamburger is suddenly embroiled in a political dispute. Embroiled: get it?

  Supporters of the Green New Deal, according to a Republican talking point, are anti-patty. “They want to take away your hamburgers,” Sebastian Gorka, a former adviser to President Trump, said last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

  Other Republicans, including Mr. Trump, have made similar claims. But the Green New Deal, a broad climate policy proposal, makes no mention of hamburgers, cows or beef.

• Democratic Constituents Press Their Party to Act on Climate Pressed by Climate Activists, Senate
  Democrats Plan to ‘Go on Offense’

  NY Times Climate ForwardMar. 4, 2019 - Facing a showdown vote as early as this month over the embattled “Green New Deal,” Senate Democrats are preparing a counteroffensive to make combating climate change a central issue of their 2020 campaigns — a striking shift on an issue they have shied away from for the past decade.

  Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, outlined the new strategy in an interview last week, casting it as a way to mobilize millennial voters, a key part of the Democratic constituency that the party will need to turn out to win in swing states.

• Climate Science and Politics - Not Necessarily Related Why Good Politics and
  Good Climate Science Don’t Mix

  Mar. 4, 2019  Science & Health - Confidence doesn’t equal competence. But our brains tend to assume it does. And that can create big problems when scientific evidence collides with political rhetoric. The senator who confidently throws a snowball to prove that winter is cold can be more memorable (and more believable) than the one who takes the podium to carefully explain how we know fossil fuel use is changing climate over decades.

  “Denialism has an advantage. Absolutely. There’s no question,” said Stephan Lewandowsky, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol in the UK.

• Hot or Cold: The Weaponization of Weather How the Weather Gets Weaponized
  in Climate Change Messaging

  NY Times Climate Forward, Mar. 1, 2019 - In the summer, when heat waves scorch cities or heavy rains flood the coasts, some climate scientists and environmentalists will point out any plausible connections to global warming, hoping today’s weather will help people understand tomorrow’s danger from climate change.

  Then winter comes. And, like clockwork, those who want to deny the established science that humans are warming the planet will try to flip the script. In January, when large swaths of the country were gripped by bitter cold, President Trump took to Twitter to mock climate fears: “Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!”

• Who Better to Lead the EPA than a Coal Lobbyist? Senate Confirms Former Coal
  Lobbyist Andrew Wheeler To Lead EPA

  Feb. 28, 2019  CNN - The Senate confirmed Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, in a 52-47 vote Thursday, primarily along party lines.

  Wheeler, also a former Republican Senate aide on environmental issues, has been acting administrator since July, when former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned amid a host of ethics controversies.

  Since Wheeler began leading the agency, he has continued work on many of the same priorities as his predecessor, including looking to roll back Obama-era air and water pollution regulations.

• Green New Deal Finally Gets Attention The Green New Deal Is Better
  Than Our Climate Nightmare

  NY Times Editorial, Feb.23, 2019 - It’s hard to believe, but worth recalling, that during the presidential debates in 2016, not a single question about climate change was put to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

  That, of course, was before a plague of hurricanes, droughts and savage forest fires in California and around the world captured the public’s attention; before Mr. Trump brought renewed focus to the very issue he had dismissed as a hoax by fecklessly rolling back nearly every positive policy thing President Barack Obama had done to address it; before a series of frightening scientific reports appeared last year, warning that the window of opportunity to ward off the worst consequences of a warming globe was quickly closing.

• Trump Doesn’t Believe that California Needs Clean Air Trump Administration, Getting
  Set for a Major Rollback, Ends
  Clean Air Talks With California

  Feb. 21, 2019  NY Times Climate Forward - The Trump administration, setting the stage to move forward with one of its most consequential climate-policy rollbacks, announced Thursday that it had decided to scrap negotiations with California over the president’s plan to undo Obama-era fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks.

  The move makes a protracted legal battle almost certain. At the heart of the talks was California’s longstanding right to opt out of national auto emissions rules and set its own tailpipe standards. State officials have vowed to sue to protect that authority if the administration tries to impose weaker federal standards on California and the dozen states that follow its lead.

• Can There be a Green New Deal Without Dems Support? A Green New Deal Is
  Technologically Possible. Its Political
  Prospects Are Another Question.

  Feb. 21, 2019  NY Times Climate Forward - President Trump derided the Green New Deal as a “high school term paper that got a low mark.” Congressional Republicans mocked it as “zany.” Even Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, called the proposal a “green dream,” and some of the party’s 2020 candidates are starting to describe it as merely aspirational.

  Yet, despite that disdain, the goals of the far-reaching plan to tackle climate change and economic inequality are within the realm of technological possibility, several energy experts and economists said in recent interviews.

• Despite Clean Coal Boasts The Industry is Failing TVA’s Envisioned Flexibility
  Options in Wake of Coal Plant Closure

  Feb. 20, 2019 Energy Central - Much was made in the past few weeks after President Trump took to Twitter to try and drum up support for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to keep open a struggling coal-powered plant, with the TVA Board ultimately voting to close the no-longer-economic plant.

  This story caught many people's attention because of the direct hand the President attempted to play in his continued support for coal-fired generation before ultimately being shunned by the power provider itself, but the bigger story laying underneath this higher-profile one was the full TVA Draft 2019 Integrated Resource Plan that accompanied this decision and provided a broad and deep outlook into the future of energy flexibility foreseen by the power provider to seven states.

• Wildlife to Donald Trump: Please Don’t Build This Wall The Border Wall's Wildlife Impacts

  Feb. 15, 2019 Living On Earth - President Trump has declared a state of emergency to secure funding for a wall along the US border with Mexico. If built, the wall would disturb critical habitats and block migration routes for animals already stressed by climate change, and could possibly lead to extinction for some rare and endangered species. Biologist and Outdoors Coordinator for the Sierra Club Sergio Avila talks with Host Bobby Bascomb about the impacts of a wall on some rare species including jaguars and pygmy owls.

  Read or listen by clicking now.

• Interior Dept. Nominee Pushes to Devastate Ecosystem Top Leader at Interior Dept. Pushes a
  Policy Favoring His Former Client

  Feb. 12, 2019 NY Times Climate Forward -As a lobbyist and lawyer, David Bernhardt fought for years on behalf of a group of California farmers to weaken Endangered Species Act protections for a finger-size fish, the delta smelt, to gain access to irrigation water.

  As a top official since 2017 at the Interior Department, Mr. Bernhardt has been finishing the job: He is working to strip away the rules the farmers had hired him to oppose.

• New Mexico Signs on to 100% Clean Energy New Mexico Embraces
  Transition to 100% Clean Energy

  Feb. 8, 2019 Energy Central -New legislation (called the Energy Transition Act) introduced in New Mexico’s legislature would put the state on course to nation (and planet) leading renewable energy targets and 100% carbon free electricity generation by 2045.

  New leadership in the state is taking climate change seriously. Isn’t it time for “certain other” politicians to do the same?

• Bipartisan Support: Giant Step Forward In Protecting Our Natural Legacy Public Lands and Waters
  Bring a Moment of Unity

  Feb. 13, 2019  National Resources Defense Council(NRDC) - In an overwhelming bipartisan vote of confidence in the future of public lands and waters, the Senate passed one of the most important wilderness protection bills in a quarter century on Tuesday, safeguarding more than 1.3 million acres of pristine natural habitat and nearly 620 miles of rivers.

  The legislation permanently takes mining off the table for broad reaches of public lands in Montana and Washington State, protecting nearby Yellowstone and North Cascades National Parks from the threat of toxic mining waste. And it authorizes permanent financing—from oil and gas royalties paid to the federal government—for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which provides crucial grants supporting federal, state, and local conservation programs nationwide.

• Trump Conveniently Forgets to Mention Climate Change in SOTU Address Trump’s State of the Union
  Address Ignores Climate Change

  Feb. 5, 2019 EOS - Although President Donald Trump gave several nods to science and U.S. energy dominance in his State of the Union (SOTU) address on Tuesday evening, he never addressed climate change. Nor did he talk about the impact of the recent government shutdown—and the possibility of another one next week—on U.S. federal science agencies and on science research.

  Are you shocked?

• Who Needs the Arctic Refuge -Certainly Not the Oil Industry Trump Administration Drills Down
  on Alaska’s Arctic Refuge

  Feb. 4, 2019 The Revelator -The Trump administration is barreling ahead with plans to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the largest refuge in the country and an area of global ecological importance.

  Many refer to the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge — the very place where oil drilling is being planned — as the “American Serengeti.” A home for grizzly bears, wolves, musk oxen and a host of other species, the area is famous as the birthing ground for the enormous Porcupine caribou herd, which each spring floods across the refuge’s coastal plain in the tens of thousands, arriving in time to raise newborn calves amid fresh tundra grasses.

  The coastal plain is also the annual destination for millions of migrating birds, who come from nearly every continent on Earth to raise the next generation of swans, terns and over 200 other species. In late summer these avian visitors disperse to backyards, beaches and wetlands across the planet.

• Climate Justice? We Sure Could Use Some The Quest For Environmental Justice
  and The Politics of Place and Race

  Jan. 28, 2019 Climate Reality Project - Today, hardly a day passes without the media reporting on some individual or community group fighting a landfill, incinerator, power plant, chemical factory, pipeline, or some other polluting industry.

  This was not always the case. Before the environmental justice movement burst on to the national scene, pollution in communities of color and poor neighborhoods was largely ignored by the media, industry, government, and green groups. The fact that marginalized communities were overburdened with pollution was viewed as “collateral damage” and the price of doing business.

• Humans Are Not the Only Ones Affected by a Border Wall Trump’s Border Wall Threatens
  Rare Butterflies and Native Bees

  Jan. 15, 2019 The Revelator - The list of environmental impacts from President Trump’s proposed border wall keeps growing.

  Numerous experts have expressed fear that the wall would have devastating effects on birds, jaguars, fish, butterflies and potentially thousands of additional species.

  Now a new research project reveals that dozens of beautiful native bee species, most of which are rarely seen in the United States, could also be hurt or wiped out by the border wall. Bees perform crucial work as pollinators of plants that feed birds and other animals. If their numbers are reduced or species are lost altogether, it could cause a cascade of harmful environmental impacts.

• Six Things to Know About The 'Green New Deal’ The 'Green New Deal’:
  Six Things to Know

  Jan. 15, 2019 Yale Climate Connections - When the decks seem stacked against a nation – whether it’s extreme weather or soaring asthma rates, dismal job prospects, or plummeting stocks – there may be an opportunity to reshuffle the cards.

  History offers precedent. “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people,” nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed during his 1932 acceptance speech to the Democratic convention. Over the following eight years, his administration went on to devise and unleash an array of experimental programs that would pull the country out of the Great Depression.

• Elizabeth Warren to Fossil Fuel Interests: Keep Your Money Elizabeth Warren Is the
  First 2020 Candidate Who Won't
  Accept Fossil Fuel Money

  Jan. 14, 2019 Earther Gizmodo - Climate change continues to be a focus of Elizabeth Warren’s nascent presidential campaign. The latest sign came on Saturday when activists approached her at a campaign event in New Hampshire to sign a pledge not to take fossil fuel donations for her presidential bid. She did, becoming the first to sign the pledge for a 2020 presidential campaign.

  It’s becoming increasingly clear climate change will be one of the defining issues of the Democratic presidential primary. Candidates have staked out positions early on, including Warren who has said through a spokesperson that she “supports the idea of a Green New Deal.” Signing onto the no fossil fuel pledge is an even bigger step toward staking out her position.

• Arctic Drilling Continues During the Govt. Shutdown The Govt. Wont Let the Shutdown
  Get In The Way of Arctic Drilling

  Jan. 8, 2019 VOX -As the partial government shutdown stretches on and on, leaving piles of garbage in national parks to grow and scientific experiments in limbo, the Interior Department is deploying its staff to advance fossil fuel extraction on public lands.

  The Bureau of Land Management, the office at Interior that handles permitting for oil and gas on 700 million acres of public lands, is closed for the shutdown. Yet it’s still continuing its work on permitting mining and drilling, as Elizabeth Harball at Alaska’s Energy Desk first reported Friday.

• In China: Don’t Photograph - Don’t Tell, or Face Arrest Missing Chinese Photographer Known
  for Capturing Environmental Threats

  Jan. 24, 2019 National Geographic - Chinese Photographer Lu Guang spent nearly 40 years documenting the effects of environmental destruction in rural and industrial regions of China. Then, in November, he disappeared.

  Lu, who lives with his family in New York, returned to China to lead a photography workshop in late October. The region he was visiting, Xinjiang, is the location of detention sites holding hundreds of thousands of Muslim prisoners. About a month and a half after his disappearance the Chinese police informed Lu’s family that he had been arrested, his wife told the New York Times.



• Morning Sun Supports Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act We Endorse the Energy Innovation
  and Carbon Dividend Act

  Jan. 7, 2019 The Morning Sun - Public opinion about global warming is changing in the face of additional scientific information, reports from national and international organizations, and, most importantly by far, increasingly frequent disastrous weather. Various measures to address climate change have been undertaken, some with very promising effects, but no effort has been proposed in the U.S. that actually addresses the size of the threat caused by global warming. A massive long-term problem requires a massive and long term response.

  This is why The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act is important. The policies established by this Act will, over the coming decades, reduce levels of carbon emissions sufficiently to dramatically reduce the damage caused by global warming and will do so without wrecking the economy. The act was introduced into both the House and Senate late last year with Republican and Democratic sponsors and will be reintroduced this year.

• Young Members of the New Congress Want to Fight Climate Change Liberal Freshmen Are Shaking the Capitol Just Days Into the New Congress

  NY Times Climate Forward, Jan. 6, 2019 - It took less than 48 hours into the new Congress for some of the most liberal freshmen of the now Democratic-controlled House to upend Capitol Hill — and they see no reason to slow down.

  They have pressed for an ambitious and costly climate change proposal that would eliminate the use of fossil fuels in 12 years and provide a job to anyone who wants one. After conservatives tried to embarrass Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York with old footage of her dancing, she faced them down by videotaping new footage of her dancing — outside her new congressional office.

• Look Who’s Minding the Renewable Energy Store Is a Fossil Fuel Fox Guarding The Renewable Energy Henhouse?

  CleanTechnica, Jan. 5, 2018 - Early in his tenure at the White House, President* Trump nominated a notorious fossil fuel fan to head up the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Clean power stakeholders were rightfully horrified. And yet, the agency’s renewable energy mission appears to be reasonably intact.

  For those of you keeping score at home, the head of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is also an Assistant Secretary of Energy, which is the reason why the post requires Senate confirmation.

• Green Things Are Coming to the 2019 Congress A Greener U.S. Congress for 2019

  Living On Earth, Jan. 4, 2019 - In the 116th United States Congress seated January 3, 2019, Democrats now hold a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in nearly a decade.

  Under Speaker Nancy Pelosi the House leadership now recognizes the science of climate change and has created a new Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, Tiernan Sittenfeld, joins host Steve Curwood to discuss this new environmental majority in the House and related incoming committee chairs.

• Floridians: Ask Ron DeSantis Will Do For the Environment A To-do List for Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis on the Environment

  SunSentinel, Jan. 4, 2019 - As a member of Congress, Ron DeSantis opposed price supports for sugar. And as a candidate for governor, he emphasized water quality and said “I don’t want to wait 15 more years” for action.

  If you knew only these positions, you might think Ron DeSantis is a Democrat. But DeSantis is a Republican who ran away from the lousy environmental records of fellow Republicans Rick Scott and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, who hoped to succeed Scott. Like the outgoing governor, Putnam was joined at the hip with the sugar industry, one of Florida's biggest polluters.

• The Trump EPA Doesn’t Think Mercury is Toxic Trump EPA Says Mercury Limits On
  Coal Plants Too Costly, Not 'Necessary'

  Oregon Public Broadcasting, Dec. 28, 2018 - In another proposed reversal of an Obama-era standard, the Environmental Protection Agency Friday said limiting mercury and other toxic emissions from coal and oil fired power plants is not cost-effective, and should not be considered ‘appropriate and necessary.’

  The EPA says it’s keeping the 2012 restrictions in place for now, in large part because utilities have already spent billions to comply with them. But environmental groups worry the move is a step toward repealing the limits, and could make it harder to impose other regulations in the future.

• Environmental Protection? We Don’t Need No Stinking’ E.P.A.
  Smithsonian, EPA Ready to Close as Shutdown Toll Deepens

  Bloomberg News , Dec. 28, 2018 - More lights are going out in U.S. government offices as the partial federal shutdown heads toward a second week and entities from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Smithsonian Institution run out of money.

  Nearly 14,000 workers at the EPA prepared to be furloughed at midnight, the seventh day of a shutdown that showed scant signs of ending. The Smithsonian said all museums, research centers and the National Zoo will close starting Jan. 2 unless the shutdown ends. The Federal Trade Commission in a tweet said it had closed.

• The Farm Lobby: Fighting Climate Science and Policy The Farm Bureau: Big Oil’s Unnoticed
  Ally Fighting Climate Science and Policy

  Dec. 21, 2018 Inside Climate News - When Republican Rep. Steve Scalise stepped to the dais in the U.S. House of Representatives in July and implored his colleagues to denounce a carbon tax, he didn't reach for dire predictions made by the fossil fuel titans that pushed for the resolution. Instead, he talked about America's farmers.

  Advocacy groups with close ties to the oil billionaires Charles and David Koch had urged House leaders to get the anti-tax resolution approved.

• Trump Delivers on His Promise: To Hell With Water What’s At Stake Under the
  New Trump Water Rule?

  The Allegheny Front , Dec. 20, 2018 - When President Trump started his tenure he promised to repeal something called the ‘Waters of the U.S.’ rule. And this week he made good on that promise.

  The revised definition of “Waters of the United States” was released by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers on Dec. 11.

  On the latest episode of the Trump on Earth podcast, we spoke with Ariel Wittenberg, who covers the Clean Water Act for E&E News, about the major changes to the Obama-era rule and their implications.