Environmental (or Anti-Environmental)
Politics News Stories

• 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.

• 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.

• E.P.A.? 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.

• A Democrat and a Republican Introduce Carbon Dividend Act Senate Version of Energy
  Innovation Act Introduced

  Citizen’s Climate Lobby , Dec. 18, 2018 - Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) today introduced the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, the Senate version of bipartisan legislation introduced in the U.S. House several weeks ago.

  Like the House bill, the Senate bill is a climate solution that goes further than any national policy to date, creating over 2 million new jobs, lowering health care costs, promoting energy innovation, and encouraging consumer spending.

• Zinke Might be Replaced By Someone Even Worse Zinke’s Likely Successor Is a
  Former Oil Lobbyist Who Has
  Influenced Trump’s Energy Policy

  NY Times Climate Forward, Dec. 15, 2018 - With Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke departing at the end of the year, the agency will likely be run, at least for a time, by its deputy secretary, David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist who has played a central role in enacting President Trump’s agenda of rolling back conservation measures and opening up public lands to drilling and mining.

  Mr. Bernhardt’s supporters and detractors say that while Mr. Zinke has been the public face of some of the most significant reversals of public land protections in the nation’s history, behind the scenes it has been Mr. Bernhardt pulling the policy levers to enact Mr. Trump’s aggressive energy agenda.

• John Kerry Tells Us to Act on Climate Change John Kerry: Forget Trump. We All
  Must Act on Climate Change.

  New York Times Opinion Page, Dec. 13, 2018 - This week is the third anniversary of the Paris climate agreement. The Trump administration marked it by working with Russia and Gulf oil nations to sideline science and undermine the accord at climate talks underway in Katowice, Poland.

  While I was in New Delhi this week, where I met with solar energy advocates, a comment made thousands of miles away by the journalist Bob Woodward almost jumped off my iPad: The president, he said, “makes decisions often without a factual basis.” This isn’t a mere personality quirk of the leader of the free world. It is profoundly dangerous for the entire planet.

• The Oil Industry’s Attempt to Control CongressThe Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign
  to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules

  NY Times Climate Forward, Dec. 13, 2018 - When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them.

  But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation’s oil industry.

• Trump and Zinke: Get the Frack Out of Our Public LandsTrump, Zinke to Auction Away 700,000
  Acres of Western Public Lands for Fracking

  EcoWatch, Dec. 12, 2018 - President Trump and Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke are continuing their onslaught against American public lands this holiday month and moving forward with plans to auction off 700,000 acres for fracking, endangering clean air and water, the climate and sacred lands.

  "First it's our cherished national monuments, now Trump and Zinke are set to give away even more public lands to the fossil fuel industry," said Becca Fischer, climate guardian for WildEarth Guardians. "Rather than giving back this holiday season, this administration is proving that it will stop at nothing to put our public lands in the hands of dirty energy executives and sell off our rights to clean energy and a healthy environment."

• Trump’s Environmental Threats Now Extend to Polar BearsGovernment Scientists Warned
  Trump’s Oil Plan Would Threaten
  Alaska’s Polar Bears

  Mother Jones, Dec. 11, 2018 - In an internal memo circulated within the Interior Department earlier this year, government scientists issued a stark warning: The Trump administration’s plans to allow oil exploration in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) could further jeopardize the region’s already fragile polar bear population.

  The document, authored in September by the head of the state’s US Fish and Wildlife Service office, noted that the threat posed to the bears could make it legally challenging for the agency to authorize a series of seismic surveys of the area’s petroleum reserves—even if steps were taken to mitigate the project’s environmental impact.

• New EPA Rule Would Sabotage Clean Water Act New EPA Rule Would
  Sabotage Clean Water Act

  EcoWatch, Dec. 10, 2018 - In a move environmentalists are warning will seriously endanger drinking water and wildlife nationwide, President Donald Trump's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reportedly gearing up to hand yet another gift to big polluters by drastically curtailing the number of waterways and wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act.

  "As a result of the change, an estimated 60-90 percent of U.S. waterways could lose federal protections that currently shield them from pollution and development," The Intercept's Sharon Lerner reported on Friday, citing an analysis by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "The new Trump administration rule imposes the most substantial restrictions on the Clean Water Act since its passage in 1972."

• Trump Pushes Fossil Fuels at Climate TalksTrump Team Pushes Fossil Fuels at Climate Talks.
  Protests Erupt, but Allies Emerge, Too.

  NY Times Climate Forward, Dec. 10, 2018 -Trump administration officials at high-stakes climate talks here offered an unapologetic defense of fossil fuels on Monday, arguing that a rapid retreat from coal, oil and gas was unrealistic.

  While that stance brought scorn from environmentalists and countries that favor stronger action to fight global warming, there are signs that the administration is finding a receptive audience among other major fossil-fuel producers, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Australia.

• What the Midterm Elections Did For Wind EnergyAnalysis: Wind Sector Takeaways from the U.S. Midterm Elections

  Windpower Monthly, Dec. 7, 2018 -Climbing a wind turbine was a key image of Michelle Lujan Grisham's successful campaign for election of governor in New Mexico in the US midterm elections

  Grisham was subsequently elected in the midterm elections in November, and will take office in January along with a slew of other candidates across America who have advocated for clean energy.

• Trump Puts the Sage Grouse on His Enemies List Trump Drilling Plan Threatens
  9 Million Acres of Sage Grouse Habitat

  New York Times Politics, Dec. 6, 2018 - The Trump administration on Thursday detailed its plan to open nine million acres to drilling and mining by stripping away protections for the sage grouse, an imperiled ground-nesting bird that oil companies have long considered an obstacle to some of the richest deposits in the American West.

  In one stroke, the action would open more land to drilling than any other step the administration has taken, environmental policy experts said. It drew immediate criticism from environmentalists while energy-industry representatives praised the move, saying that the earlier policy represented an overreach of federal authority.



• Michael Bloomberg Would Challenge the Coal Industry Michael Bloomberg, Focusing on
  Climate Change, Says He Would
  Battle the Coal Industry

  New York Times Politics, Dec. 4, 2018 - On a wintry day, Michael R. Bloomberg stood in black tassel loafers in melting snow while he inspected solar panels on a rooftop, then said he would make climate change “the issue” of the 2020 presidential race.

  Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is mulling a run for president, was blunt about his determination to combat the impact of human activity on the environment, and he made clear once again his willingness to take on the coal industry.

• Trump Seeks Energy Dominance, But…Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’ Doctrine
  Undermined by Climate Change

  the New York Times, Nov. 29, 2018 -It’s been a defining phrase of the Donald Trump presidency, “Energy dominance,” a doctrine that emphasizes the expansion of coal and oil production as well as the weakening of environmental regulations, including those that address climate change.

  But at every turn, according to a broad scientific report on climate change issued last week, rising global temperatures threaten to undermine the president’s vision of an energy-dominant America.

• What the Planet Gives Us, Government Taketh AwayGood News, Bad News for Renewable Energy In Washington, DC

  CleanTechnica, Nov. 28, 2018 -There is good news and there is bad news regarding renewable energy in Washington, DC this week. On the local level, the DC City Council unanimously approved a plan for the city to get 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2032. Only California has a more aggressive policy. It is looking to go 100% renewable by 2030. At the federal level, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources voted to approve the appointment of yet another renewable energy skeptic to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

  Wait. Don’t celebrate just yet.

• Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee Introduced in the HouseBipartisan Carbon Fee Bill
  

  Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Nov. 28, 2018 -Five members of the U.S. House of Representatives from both parties just introduced the most significant climate change legislation Congress has seen in over a decade.

  Sponsored by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL), Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL), Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Rep. John Delaney (D-MD), the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act is a climate solution that goes further than any national policy to date, creating over 2 million new jobs, lowering health care costs, promoting energy innovation, and encouraging consumer spending.

• How Trump Guarantees that Gas Emissions Will RiseHow Trump Is Ensuring That
  Greenhouse Gas Emissions Will Rise

  NY Times - Climate Forward, Nov. 26, 2018 -President Trump had a clear message Monday when asked about the core conclusion of a scientific report issued by his own administration: that climate change will batter the nation’s economy. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  Mr. Trump then laid responsibility for cleaning the atmosphere on other countries like China and Japan: “Right now we’re at the cleanest we’ve ever been, and that’s very important to me. But if we’re clean but every other place on Earth is dirty, that’s not so good. So I want clean air. I want clean water. Very important.”

• New EPA Chief: Friend to Coal, Enemy to Clean AirAs EPA Chief, Wheeler Could Prove a Bigger Foe to Clean-Air Advocates

  Green Car Reports, Nov. 20, 2018 -President Trump's new pick as EPA Administrator may be more effective at rolling back environmental progress than his scandal-plagued predecessor.

  On Friday, Trump announced that he plans to formally nominate Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler as EPA Administrator to replace Scott Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general, who was known for his record of suing the EPA 13 times.

• The New Brzilian President - a Foe to the EnvironmentBrazil’s Election Results Could Create
  Tons of Additional Greenhouse Gases

  M.I.T. Technology Review, Nov. 14, 2018 -Environmentalists and scientists fear that Brazil’s newly elected president, the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro, will accelerate the destruction of the nation’s Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna, which rank among the world’s largest storehouses of carbon.

  Both absorb massive amounts of greenhouse gas, stocking it away in trees, grasses, roots, and soil. Bolsonaro’s campaign rhetoric and ties to agribusiness have led observers to fear he’ll push to loosen environmental rules and monitoring, says Tica Minami, coordinator of Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazon campaign…

• More Goofs from the Presidential RetweetTrump’s Misleading Claims About
  California’s Fire ‘Mismanagement’

  NY Times - Climate Forward,Nov. 12, 2018 -As Californians were fleeing the huge wildfires that have left both ends of the state ablaze, President Trump took to Twitter over the weekend, blaming the infernos on forest management and threatening to withhold federal payments from the state.

  His statements, which drew outrage from local leaders and firefighters, oversimplified the causes of California’s wildfires.

• How Did the ‘Climate’ Do in the Mid-Terms?Climate Change and the
  Elections: Five Takeaways

  NY Times - Climate Forward, Nov. 7, 2018 - The results of Tuesday’s elections could have a significant influence on how the United States deals with global warming in several ways.

  In the Trump era, much of the action to fight climate change has been happening at the state level. On that front, the results were mixed: Several key climate policies on the ballot, including a carbon tax in Washington State and an aggressive renewable power target in Arizona, were defeated soundly. But Democrats who favor clean energy also took control of a number of key governorships and state legislatures, opening doors for expanded action.

• Wash State Voters Reject Carbon Tax Ballot MeasurePeople Will Never Vote For a
  Carbon Tax, So Let’s Stop Asking

  M.I.T. Technology Review, Nov. 7, 2018 -Late last year, Washington state Senator Reuven Carlyle predicted that his state’s voters were ready to say yes to a carbon tax. The Trump administration’s efforts to roll back environmental laws, and the mounting toll of climate change on Washington’s forests, salmon, and orcas, would finally convince them.

  Which raises an obvious question: If a solidly Democratic state, grappling with rising climate dangers and driven by anti-Trump fervor, still can’t push a carbon tax past the finish line—what are the odds any US state can, much less the country as a whole?

• Mid Term 2018 Voters Reject the EnvironmentBallot Measures Taking Aim at
  Climate Change Fall Short

  San Francisco Gate, Nov. 6, 2018 -Efforts to nudge the nation away from burning fossil fuels and toward harnessing renewable source of energy were rejected by voters Tuesday across a swath of resource-rich states in the western United States.

  Voters in Arizona, one of the nation's most sun-soaked states, shot down a measure that would have accelerated its shift toward generating electricity from sunlight. Residents in oil- and gas-rich Colorado defeated a measure to sharply limit drilling on state-owned land.

• Florida Governor Race - One Candidate Accepts Climate ChangeFlorida Gov. Candidates Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis Face Off in Contentious Debate

  NY Times - Climate Forward, Oct. 21, 2018 -Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum delivered fiery exchanges in their first debate, showing a national audience why they are locked in a fierce, closely matched race to become Florida’s next governor. They differed not only on their strikingly opposite policy positions, but also on matters of personal integrity and character that have shaped the election.

• Another Win for Trump - Another Loss For the Environment Supreme Court Halts
  Landmark Climate Change Lawsuit

  Think Progress, Oct. 20, 2018 - President Donald Trump’s Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to stop the lawsuit in a filing on Thursday. Roberts approved the request on Friday even though the U.S. high court in a unanimous ruling in July had said that the case could proceed.

  The lawsuit uses a legal theory known as atmospheric trust litigation, which argues the government must hold certain common elements such as rivers or shorelines, and in this case, the atmosphere, for public use. By failing to protect and preserve a clean atmosphere for future generations — by promoting fossil fuels, for instance — the lawsuit argues that the government is violating its obligation to the public trust.