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Also see: Animals; energy; oil; Clean Water Act;
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June 9: Trump : I believe that the movement
against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies
that would do the asbestos removal. Great pressure was put on politicians, and
as usual, the politicians relented. Millions of truckloads of this incredible
fire-proofing material were taken to special “dump sites” and asbestos was
replaced by materials that were supposedly safe but couldn’t hold a candle to
asbestos in limiting the ravages of fire.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/the-trump-files-asbestos-mob-conspiracy/
March 9:Ivanka Trump's D.C. landlord is tycoon behind planned Ely copper mine
Andrónico Luksic is a Chilean billionaire whose family controls Twin Metals,
the company embroiled in a legal fight with the U.S. government over a proposed
copper mine near the Minnesota Boundary Waters. He also owns the home where two
of the most influential people in Washington, D.C., are living.
That's according to The Wall Street Journal, which reports on the Minnesota
connection to
Ivanka Trump and
Jared Kushner's D.C. home, which Luksic bought just after the November
election. Trump and Kushner were also looking at the house but wanted to rent
it; their broker made the connection to Luksic, a spokeswoman said.
Twin Metals,
a unit of Chilean mining company Antofagasta, is embroiled in several
disputes over its proposed copper mine. It's sued the federal government over
expired mineral rights, and late last year regulators refused to reissue them,
citing the threat of pollution to Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area.
https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2017/03/09/ivanka-trumps-dc-landlord-is-tycoon-behind-mine.html
--- May 22, 2018 -
The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday
said it has reinstated the mining exploration leases for the proposed Twin
Metals underground copper mine southeast of Ely.
---
The move is a reversal of a late Obama administration move that revoked
the leases because of the potential harmful impact of copper mining on the
nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
--- The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management informed
Twin Metals Minnesota of its decision Wednesday. The move comes after the
Interior Department in December ruled that the Obama administration ruling to
withhold the lease was not lawful. Meanwhile the U.S. Forest Service is mulling
how to advance with a study of potential mining impact on the BWCAW, part of
which would be downstream of the mine site on the Kawishiwi River.
https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/business/energy-and-mining/4440253-twin-metals-gets-leases-back-feds --- June 25, 2018 - Two more lawsuits were filed
against the federal government Monday for its recent decision to reinstate
expired copper-nickel mining leases next to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area —
bringing the total to three complaints that altogether represent five
environmental groups and nine Minnesota businesses.
--- Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness filed its own
complaint, and four national environmental groups filed another. Last week nine
businesses from Ely, Minn., that rely on recreation and tourism in the BWCA
filed suit along with the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters. All three
complaints are pending in federal court in Washington, D.C.
--- The leases are held by Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of
Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta PLC, and are located on Superior National
Forest lands just outside the BWCA near Ely. Twin Metals said in a statement it
“firmly believes there is no basis for a court to disturb the reinstatement of
the leases and will take appropriate steps to defend the government’s actions.”
http://www.startribune.com/lawsuits-against-twin-metals-mining-leases-pile-up/486503581/
March 9: ... a list of programs potentially affected by a
Trump administration proposal ... could slash the agency's budget by 24% and
reduce its staffing by 20%. Some of the EPA's most longstanding and best-known
programs are facing potential elimination, including initiatives aimed at
improving water and air quality as well as a number of regulations tasked with
reducing the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/politics/epa-official-resigns-environmental-justice/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlist
March 27: In choosing Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, Trump elected an administrator who
as attorney general of Oklahoma sued the agency he now leads multiple times
over environmental regulations. The Sierra Club commented after Pruitt was
confirmed that "the arsonist is now in charge of the fire department."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/26/politics/kushner-american-innovation-white-house/index.html
March 28:
On February 2, in one of his first acts as Senate
majority leader of the 115th Congress, Mitch McConnell ushered through the
repeal of the
Stream Protection Rule ...
President Donald Trump ordered his
administration to begin dismantling his predecessor’s climate change policies on
Tuesday with a sweeping directive to end what he called a "crushing attack" on
the U.S. economy — by halting efforts to reduce the carbon pollution of electric
utilities, oil and gas drillers and coal miners. ... since that much-ballyhooed vote in early
February, this is how many new coal jobs have been created in Appalachia: Zero.
And there are no signs there are any coming anytime soon: Tyler White,
president of the Kentucky Coal Association, couldn’t say how many jobs he
thought the repeal of the rule would create, “but I can tell you that it
definitely will help stop the bleeding.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/donald-trump-obama-climate-change-policies-236570
March 30: Florida Rep. Vern Buchanan (R) is slamming the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service (FWS) for downgrading protections for manatees in his home state,
calling the agency announcement Thursday a “huge disappointment.” “The decision
to weaken protections under the Endangered Species Act threatens the survival of
the manatee, one of Florida’s most beloved animals,” Buchanan said in a
statement. “It needs to be reversed.”
http://thehill.com/regulation/energy-environment/326601-florida-republican-blasts-fws-for-changing-manatee-protections
March 29: Today, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt signed an order denying a
petition that sought to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide crucial to U.S.
agriculture.
“We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that
rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment,”
said EPA Administrator Pruitt. “By reversing the previous Administration’s steps
to ban one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, we are returning to
using sound science in decision-making – rather than predetermined results.”
Undated: Chlorpyrifos (CPS), sold under many brandnames, is an
organophosphate pesticide used to kill a number of
pests including insects and worms.[6]
It is used on crops, animals, and buildings.[6]
It was introduced in 1965 by
Dow Chemical Company. It acts on the nervous system of insects by
inhibiting acetylcholinesterase. Toxicity results in more than 10,000 human
deaths a year.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpyrifos
March 29: Battle Lines Being Drawn Over Keystone XL Again ... Pending
Nebraska permit could prove a deal-breaker; Environmentalists and Indigenous
groups promise direct action, legal resistance
April 4: A scientist who coauthored some of the most
influential
studies on air pollution says President Trump's recent executive order to
thwart the Environmental Protection Agency's climate-change plan will
ultimately cut short thousands of American lives.
April 28: Trump Orders Review of Offshore
Oil Drilling Rules ... The order Trump signed on Friday directs Secretary of the
Interior Ryan Zinke to review the five year plan for offshore drilling that
President Barack Obama enacted just days after the 2016 presidential election.
That plan allowed for limited offshore drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico and
off the coast of Alaska, but put off limits any drilling operations in the
Arctic and in parts of the Atlantic.
https://www.courthousenews.com/trump-orders-review-offshore-oil-drilling-rules/
May 3: Environmental and Alaska Native
Groups sued ... to maintain a U.S. ban on oil and gas exploration in most of the
Arctic Ocean and select areas of the Atlantic after President Donald Trump took
steps to put the waters back in play for offshore drilling.
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-groups-sue-drilling-arctic-atlantic.html
May 3: Last March,
The Obama Administration rejected offshore opportunity. Instead of allowing
seismic mapping and possible energy production along the outer-continental shelf
of the eastern seaboard, then-Interior-Secretary Sally Jewel announced that the
mid-Atlantic would be left out of the five-year leasing plan.
The landscape changed last week, however, when President Trump signed an
executive order seeking to replace the Obama Administration’s oil and gas
development plan. Though the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management’s denial of
leases for waters south of the North Carolina coast remains in effect until
2022, President Trump’s executive order shows renewed interest in offshore
opportunity for the future.
https://palmettopromise.org/renewed-interest-offshore-opportunity/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvO2JhuL72AIVSJ7ACh0qmQugEAMYAyAAEgL0BvD_BwE
May 14: Great Pacific Garbage
Patch..........cleanup to begin
A Dutch foundation aiming to rid the world's oceans of plastic waste says it
will start cleaning up the huge area of floating junk known as the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch within the next 12 months, two years earlier than planned.
The Ocean Cleanup aims to use long-distance floating booms that act like
coastlines to gather plastic bag, bottles and other waste as it drifts on or
near the surface of the water while allowing sea life to pass underneath.
The Ocean Cleanup, founded by Dutch university dropout Boyan Slat, announced
that testing of the first system will start off the US West coast by the end of
the year and barriers will be shipped to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between
California and Hawaii in the first half of 2018, two years ahead of the
organization's earlier schedule.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/great-pacific-garbage-patch-cleanup-to-begin.233298/
May 24: It’s true that in March 2017,
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded a
$100 million grant to the state of Michigan to upgrade the drinking water
infrastructure in Flint, which experienced a lead pollution
crisis potentially affecting as many as 100,000 people beginning in 2014.
There has been some dispute, however, over whether this ought to be labeled a
“Trump accomplishment” or an “Obama accomplishment.”
June 1: [Trump] has denied the existence of
climate change and appointed as the head of the EPA a man who
doesn't accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing
global warming by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Obama decried Trump's decision in a
statement released Thursday.
"The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap
the benefits in jobs and industries created," the former president said.
June 1: John Kerry, Obama's secretary of
state and a key player in crafting the Paris agreement, also denounced the U.S.
withdrawal as "a self-destructive step that puts our nation last."
June 1: Barack Obama had used his authority as president to join the
Paris accord without a vote in Congress. That means Trump can remove the U.S.
from the accord without a vote. But it will take awhile: Under the terms of the
agreement, he wouldn't actually be able to withdraw until November 2020.
http://publicradiotulsa.org/post/trump-poised-announce-decision-paris-climate-agreement
June 1: ...
in a
statement, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy applauded the move, calling
it the "right call":
June 1: Canada is “deeply disappointed” by
U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate
accord, but will push ahead with measures to fight global warming, Environment
Minister Catherine McKenna said on Thursday.
“Canada is deeply disappointed at the U.S. position. The Paris agreement is a
good deal for Canada and it’s a good deal for the world,” a grim-faced McKenna
told reporters. “No one country can stop action on climate change.”
https://af.reuters.com/article/africaTech/idAFL1N1IY21I
June 5: Trump proposes seismic tests for
Atlantic oil drilling
According to a Federal Register
notice ... the National Marine Fisheries Service is asking for Marine Mammal
Protection Act permits allowing five companies to conduct the seismic surveys
with the air guns, which are considered dangerous to certain types of marine
wildlife.
The Obama administration had blocked that testing.
“The American people own these Atlantic waters. This is the first step towards
drilling them,” said Michael Jasny, director of the Marine Mammal Protection
Project for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
July 10: ... there's growing evidence that a
sixth mass extinction is unfolding, according to scientists who track species
around the globe. In a new study, researchers say the current mass
extinction is even "more severe than perceived" and amounts to
"biological annihilation" affecting thousands of species.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sixth-mass-extinction-biological-annihilation/
July 11: Earth Experiencing Sixth Mass Extinction: Study ...
Scientists describe the number of vertebrate species experiencing population
declines as “biological annihilation.”
“We’ve got this stuff going on that we can’t really see because we’re not
constantly counting numbers of individuals,” Stanford’s Anthony Barnosky, who
did not participate in the study, tells
CNN. “But when you realize that we’ve wiped out 50% of the Earth’s
wildlife in the last 40 years, it doesn’t take complicated math to figure out
that, if we keep cutting by half every 40 years, pretty soon there’s going to be
nothing left.”
https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49841/title/Earth-Experiencing-Sixth-Mass-Extinction--Study/
July 11: "... population crashes can ...
lead to inevitable extinctions ... but currently, scientists say that species
are going extinct at roughly 100 times what would be considered normal --
perhaps considerably more.
August 1: This is not the first time federal
agencies have gotten around environmental and land management laws for border
security. Congress has given Homeland Security the authority to do so. DHS used
that power five times from 2005 to 2008 when the Bush administration constructed
physical barriers on the border.
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/01/540965349/dhs-waives-environmental-laws-for-border-wall-construction
August 24: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke
recommended Thursday that President Trump alter at least three national
monuments established by his immediate predecessors, including two in Utah, a
move expected to reshape federal land and water protections and certain to
trigger major legal fights.
October 9: Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Monday his agency's plans to withdraw the
Clean Power Plan, the sweeping Obama-era rule regulating greenhouse gas
emissions.
October 10: The US is set for a fresh battle
over climate change after the Trump administration moved to tear up the
country’s primary policy to lower emissions and stave off dangerous global
warming.
October 12: "Scott Pruitt is signing up to
kill the largest salmon run on Earth and thousands of fishing jobs," [Senator
Maria] Cantwell said ... "The Northwest can't afford him or his job
killing ideas. We can't let Pruitt pollute our clean water and throw away
thousands of jobs because one mining CEO received special treatment."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/11/politics/congressional-letter-bristol-bay-salmon/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlist
October 15: Interior looks at
behind-the-scenes land swap to allow road through wildlife refuge ... The
project in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge has
long been a priority for Alaska officials, who say it is a “lifesaving” link
needed to connect a remote Aleutian Islands town of 925 people with the rest of
the state. The proposal, which entails turning federal land over to a tribal
corporation, fits neatly with the Trump administration’s broader goal of giving
more control to local communities like King Cove.
October 13: Yesterday, President Donald
Trump announced the nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to chair the Council
on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) released the
following statement:
“Kathleen Hartnett White is a great choice to help the administration realign
priorities at CEQ. Over the past eight years, this executive office has
attempted to use the National Environmental Policy Act as a tool to stonewall
any project with a federal nexus. I look forward to working with her on a long
overdue streamlining of NEPA and other efforts to improve the efficiency and
responsiveness of the administrative state to people.”
https://naturalresources.house.gov/newsroom/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=403155
October 13: The White House on Thursday
announced the selection of Kathleen Hartnett White of Texas to serve as chair of
the Council on Environmental Quality. White served under former Texas Gov. Rick
Perry, now Trump's energy secretary, for six years on a commission overseeing
the state environmental agency.
White was fiercely critical of what she called the Obama administration's
"imperial EPA" and pushed back against stricter limits on air and water
pollution. She is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a
conservative think-tank that has received funding from fossil-fuel companies
that include Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and Chevron.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/trump-to-nominate-climate-doubter-as-environmental-adviser-1.3631517
October 27: Environmental groups celebrate, call on Mexico to drop case against US ... After
several negative rulings against the United States for its strong standards for
the Dolphin Safe tuna label,
the World Trade Organization yesterday agreed that the US is in compliance with
WTO Free Trade regulations. Environmental groups, including the International
Marine Mammal Project (IMMP), are celebrating the ruling, calling it a big
victory for dolphins.
The US standards for use of the Dolphin Safe label require that the tuna fishing
vessels not encircle any dolphins with nets.
industry to deliberately target, chase, and surround the dolphins with nets in
order to get to the tuna.
Fishermen in this region use speedboats to herd dolphin pods, which are herded
for miles until they are exhausted. Then they use massive, mile-long purse seine
nets to surround the exhausted dolphins and the tuna that swim beneath. Many
dolphins die from injuries, physiological stress, and drowning. Meanwhile, baby
dolphins, who are often left behind during the chase, starve or are eaten by
predators. The same pod of dolphins can be chased and netted again and again.
More than 7 million dolphins have died after being trapped in nets since this
fishing method was introduced in 1957.
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/win_for_dolphins_wto_reverses_decision_us_dolphin_safe_tuna_label/
October 28: Six months after President
Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at increasing offshore oil and gas
drilling, the White House has received recommendations on which of
America’s national marine sanctuaries and ocean monuments should be eliminated
or have their boundaries reduced in size.
Among the 11 areas that could be affected and opened to oil and gas drilling,
deep sea mining or other commercial activities are parts of Monterey Bay, and
the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries off the
Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino coasts.
November 14: Twenty-five years ago, 1,500
scientists signed a letter warning humanity that it needed to change its ways in
order to save the planet. A new letter, marking the anniversary of that first
message, has so far been signed by 15,000 scientists, and they say the reason
for the tenfold increase is that things have gotten much, much worse.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/11/14/15000-scientists-just-sent-dire-warning-to-humanity.html
November 20: The EPA would see the biggest
cuts [in current proposals]. It would receive about $7.9 billion in annual
funding, which is $149.5 million less than current levels. The House voted to
cut funding for the EPA by $528 million, and Trump proposed slashing the
agency's budget by $3.6 billion.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/361250-senate-bill-would-cut-epa-funding-by-150m
Undated [as of December 2017]: Deep cuts to
EPA proposed by the Trump administration would jeopardize Americans' health and
safety by reducing the funds that would address pollution including lead, toxic
sites, contaminated water, and much more.
EPA has been making our country cleaner for decades but there is more work to do
Up to ten million homes across America still get their drinking water through
lead pipes – in Flint, Michigan and across the nation.
According to the American Lung Association,
125
million Americans live in counties with unhealthy air quality
We need to be moving forward, not backward – especially when it comes to
protecting children, the elderly, and others who are vulnerable to lung and
heart disease.
EPA accounts for just 0.22 percent, or $8 billion, of a $4 trillion
federal budget. The agency's budget already has been repeatedly cut by Congress
in recent years and is already, in real dollars, close to its lowest level in
forty years.
https://www.edf.org/deep-epa-cuts-put-public-health-risk
December 18: For months, staffers in the
Office of Water had been in help-desk mode, fielding calls from states
implementing a federal rule that set new limits on water-borne pollution
released by coal-fired power plants. The rule on what is known as “effluent” had
been hammered out over a decade of scientific study and intense negotiations
involving utility companies, White House officials and environmental advocates.
The EPA had checked and rechecked its calculations to make sure the benefits of
the proposed change outweighed the cost to the economy.
The announcement from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the agency was
considering undoing the rule. “This action is another example of EPA
implementing President Trump’s vision of being good stewards of our natural
resources, while not developing regulations that hurt our economy and kill
jobs,” the release said.
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-trump-regulatory-rollback-epa
December 22: Brain Drain At the EPA ... More
than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President
Donald Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration
nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels
last seen during the Reagan administration.
https://www.propublica.org/article/brain-drain-at-the-epa
January 4:Trump Seeks to Open Most
U.S. Coastal Waters to New Drilling ... The Trump
administration is proposing to open almost all U.S. coastal waters to oil
drilling, including those off California and Florida where activists have fought
for decades to spare delicate ecosystems from oil spills.
The proposal released Thursday will go far beyond President Donald Trump’s April
order directing the Interior Department to consider auctioning oil and gas
leases in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans as well as the Gulf of Mexico.
The plan is unprecedented in its scope; no prior administration has ever
proposed so many lease sales in a single five-year offshore drilling program.
January 14: A bipartisan group of New Jersey
elected officials has teamed up to ask the Trump administration to stop talks of
allowing offshore drilling off the coast of their state.
January 26: The Trump administration
announced Thursday it is doing away with a decades-old air emissions policy
opposed by fossil fuel companies, a move that environmental groups say will
result in more pollution. The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it was withdrawing the "once-in
always-in" policy under the
Clean Air Act, which dictated how major sources of hazardous air pollutants
are regulated.
January 27: The EPA made a surprise move
that could protect the world's largest salmon fishery ... In a surprise
reversal, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it is withdrawing its
plan to suspend environmental protections for an area of Alaska that is home to
the world's most valuable wild salmon fishery.
February 3: The White House has plans to
withdraw its nominee for the Council on Environmental Quality, Kathleen Hartnett
White,
the Washington Post reported. A White House official confirmed to Axios that
she is withdrawing her nomination.
Why it matters: Hartnett White was a controversial nominee, because she
has made remarks in the past that contradict "the conclusion of an overwhelming
number of scientific experts" and their findings on climate change, the Post
said.
https://www.axios.com/white-house-w-1517698686-9d03f15d-b482-41c2-9f84-997356362808.html
February 9: Trump signed a landmark bill
that could create the next big technologies to fight climate change
Donald Trump is no champion of the environment. But this morning, in signing a
bill to continue funding the US government, he also ended up supporting two
pieces of new legislation that could create the next big technologies to fight
climate change.
Trump found himself in this situation because of the peculiar way in which the
US government works. Every so often, both houses of the US congress have to pass
a bill to continue funding the government. This bill needs a super majority,
which means that even though Republicans have a majority in both houses, they
have to get some Democrats on their side.
The budget bill passed today included a lot of extra defense spending. In return
for scratching the Republicans’ back, Democrats secured a slew of spending and
tax credits on health care, education, and clean energy. Some of these had huge
Republican support, such as the 45Q tax credits for carbon capture and 45J
nuclear-power production credits.
March 11: Havasupai
children write letters to Trump, asking for end to canyon mining
The Havasupai – the name means people of the blue-green waters – are one of the
smallest tribes in North America, and they’ve battled canyon mining for decades.
Supai is nestled within Havasu Canyon, which is adjacent to Grand Canyon
National Park. The tiny village was established in 1880 and is accessible only
by foot, horse, mule or helicopter. Bracketed by red rock canyons, it sits on
the southern bank of the Colorado River, 56 miles from Canyon Mine atop the rim.
But Havasupai officials fear mine contaminants will seep into the groundwater,
harming their children and destroying the tribe’s way of life.
https://kdminer.com/news/2018/mar/11/havasupai-children-write-letters-trump-asking-end-/
March 23: 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' is
massive floating island of plastic, now 3 times the size of France
Undated:
Over 5 Trillion Pieces of Plastic Currently Litter the Ocean
Trash accumulates in 5 ocean garbage patches, the largest one
being the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located between Hawaii and California. If left
to circulate, the plastic will impact our ecosystems, health and economies.
Solving it requires a combination of closing the source, and cleaning up what
has already accumulated in the ocean. https://www.theoceancleanup.com/
March 27:North Atlantic right whales may be on edge of
extinction. There's been zero births this year
April 21:Scope of Great Barrier Reef's massive coral bleaching alarms scientists ...
There's more at stake for humans when reefs are on the brink of being wiped out,
hurting tourism and the larger food chain. At the Great Barrier Reef — considered one of the Earth's largest
living structures — about half of the coral died in 2016 and 2017 because of
record extreme heat, a result of climate change driven by greenhouse gas
emissions, the researchers found.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/scope-great-barrier-reef-s-massive-coral-bleaching-alarms-scientists-n867521
May 10: Two
grieving mothers convinced Scott Pruitt to do the right thing.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency met Tuesday with
Cindy Wynne and Wendy Hartley, whose young sons recently died from
inhaling methylene chloride, a chemical commonly found in paint strippers sold
across the country. They wanted to know why Pruitt
delayed an Obama-era rule banning that chemical, which has killed
dozens of people who inhaled it over the last decade.
The women and their families reportedly came out of the meeting
disappointed. But on Thursday, the EPA
released a statement saying it “intends to finalize” the rule
prohibiting methylene chloride from being used in paint and coating removal
products. That doesn’t mean the rule is final yet; that will happen “shortly,”
according to the EPA’s release. “EPA is working diligently to implement
the new law get the most modern and safe chemicals to market, and to ensure the
safety of existing chemicals,” it read.
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/148377/two-grieving-mothers-convinced-scott-pruitt-right-thing
May 10:
California Governor Signs Order to Reduce Wildfire Danger
Gov. Jerry Brown has signed an executive order that aims to reduce the dangers
of wildfires following some of the deadliest and most destructive blazes in
state history.
The order calls for accelerating forest management procedures such as cutting
back dense stands of trees and setting controlled fires to burn out thick brush.
Brown wants to double the forest area managed by such practices to 500,000 acres
(781 square miles) within five years.
Brown's order also calls for streamlining the process of allowing private
landowners to thin trees and encouraging the building industry to use more
innovative wood products.
May 16:The Senate
gave Scott Pruitt third-degree burns.
The Environmental Protection Agency administrator has shown a knack for
verbal gymnastics, particularly in his handling of
myriad ethics scandals. But he flopped on Wednesday while being
grilled by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Democratic Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico asked Pruitt
about reports that he ordered his motorcade to
deploy lights and sirens to cut through D.C. traffic. “There
are policies in place that govern the use of lights” that “were
followed to the best of my knowledge,” Pruitt replied. Asked again whether
he ordered sirens, Pruitt
said he did “not recall that happening.” Udall then
revealed an internal EPA email in which Pruitt’s former head of security
said Pruitt “personally encouraged” the use of sirens.
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/148442/senate-gave-scott-pruitt-third-degree-burns
May 17:
Arnold Schwarzenegger has a proposition for Environmental
Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt following
a Politico report about the administration's handling of a study containing
warnings about toxins in water supplies.
"I'm a simple guy so I have a simple remedy when people like Pruitt ignore or
hide pollution: if you don't have a problem with Americans drinking contaminated
drinking water, drink it yourself until you tap out or resign," Schwarzenegger
wrote.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/17/politics/arnold-schwarzenegger-scott-pruitt/
May 24:
The Environmental Protection Agency is facing a major new scandal
after it worked with the White House to bury an alarming federal study detailing
widespread chemical contamination of the nation’s water supply.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/18/trumps_epa_doesnt_want_you_to
May 29: Hunters in Alaska could be allowed
to kill black bear cubs and wolf or coyote pups in their dens, set bait for
brown bears, and kill caribou while they are swimming on national wildlife
preserves in the state.
The proposal represents a
National Park Service push to defer to states in situations where there is
conflict between state and federal regulations.
A close aide to Scott Pruitt last year ordered a set of 12 fountain pens that
cost the Environmental Protection Agency $1,560, according to agency documents.
Each $130 silver pen bore the agency's seal and Administrator Pruitt's
signature, according to the documents, which were obtained by the Sierra Club
through a Freedom of Information Act request.
June 6: No,
Californians, it's not against the law to shower and do laundry on the same day
— even though loud voices in the conservative blogosphere are claiming it is.
Taking aim at
two water-conservation laws signed last week by Gov. Jerry Brown, a
conspiratorial far-right financial blog called Zero Hedge reported Sunday that
Californians could be fined $1,000 a day if they bathe and wash their clothes on
the same day.
Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, author of AB 1668, accused Zero Hedge,
Nunes and others of spreading "pure fiction."
June 28: Environmental groups have
criticized the Trump administration’s decision to make much of southeast
Wisconsin exempt from the latest federal limits on smog pollution. Those rules
would have required Foxconn and other smog-producing factories to install more
effective pollution-control equipment, scale back production or make
emissions-trading agreements with cleaner facilities. Illinois Attorney General
Lisa Madigan said last month she plans to file a lawsuit challenging the
Environmental Protection Agency’s decision.
August 16:
White House Orders Up More Logging To Combat Wildfires
The Trump directive makes no mention of climate change.
The Trump administration announced a new policy to fight wildfires, doubling
down on its assertion that the best response is better forest management rather
than focusing on climate change.
Forecasters predicted the water will continue to rise through the weekend at the
L.V. Sutton Power Station. Duke Energy spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said the
utility doesn't believe the breach poses a significant threat of increased
flooding to nearby communities.
September 24:Federal judge
restores grizzly protections, canceling bear hunt
"This case is not about the ethics of hunting, and it is not about solving
human- or livestock-grizzly conflicts,” the judge [U.S. District Judge Dana
Christensen] wrote.
October 18: Audubon Vows to Fight
Trump Administration’s Rollback of Bird Protections
Calls Plan to Rewrite Rules Bad for Birds and Business
“There is zero demand or desire from the American people for gutting bird
protections and putting nearly every bird in this country at greater risk,” said
David O’Neill, National Audubon Society’s Chief Conservation Officer. “But the
Administration is doubling down on its efforts to weaken a law that has
motivated businesses to adopt simple practices that have saved billions of
birds. The hundred year old law is part of Audubon’s legacy and it is our
responsibility to mobilize our more than one million members to protect it.”
https://www.audubon.org/news/audubon-vows-fight-trump-administrations-rollback-bird-protections
October 19:President Donald Trump, pointing a finger at a persistent political
nemesis, said this week that
California’s wildfires are costing American taxpayers “hundreds of billions
of dollars.”
November 12:The president of the
California Professional Firefighters criticized President Trump on Saturday
after he
threatened to withhold federal payments to the state, claiming its forest
management is "so poor." The president made the comments as the state is
battling multiple deadly wildfires.
November 12:
As deadly wildfires forced more than a quarter million Californians to flee
their homes, President Trump recently alleged the infernos are the result of
nothing more than poor "forest management." He also threatened to eliminate
unspecified federal funds.
The
Camp fire in Northern California’s rural Butte County had killed 42 people
and destroyed more than 6,400 homes as of Monday, making it the state’s most
deadly and destructive fire in history. Authorities said more than 200 people
remained unaccounted for. The fire started on Nov. 8, 2018 in a wooded area near
the town of Paradise.
November 15:As wildfires that
have claimed 48 lives rage in Northern and Southern California Wednesday, 3,000
miles away Wall Street was turning its back on shares of electric and gas
utility PG&E Corp. (PCG
-
Get Report) as the stock plunged.
The company filed an 8-K document with the Securities and Exchange Commission
saying that if it was found liable for the blaze its insurance will not be able
to cover the damages.
"While the cause of the Camp Fire is still under investigation, if the Utility's
equipment is determined to be the cause, the Utility could be subject to
significant liability in excess of insurance coverage that would be expected to
have a material impact on PG&E Corporation's and the Utility's financial
condition, results of operations, liquidity, and cash flows," the filing said
Tuesday.
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/pge-sinks-again-as-california-wildfires-rage-14781549
November 16:The number of people
missing in California's wildfires has soared to over 600, and the death toll has
risen to 66. In the
Camp Fire in Northern California, 631 people were unaccounted for after
officials on Thursday added more than 500 names of
people reported missing.
November 19:
'Make America Rake Again': Confusion in Finland over Trump's wildfire comments
Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said in an interview published Sunday that
although President Donald Trump claimed the European leader told him Finns
rarely have forest fires because they
"spend a lot of time raking," he doesn't recall discussing that with Trump
when they met last weekend in Paris.
Niinistö told the Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, a CNN affiliate, that the
subject of raking was never brought up in his conversations with Trump. He said
that they did discuss the California wildfires when they met, and that he told
Trump "we take care of our forests."
The Finnish President told the newspaper that he intended to convey that
although Finland is covered by forests, the nation has a good monitoring system
which has helped to prevent catastrophic wildfires. He added that he only sees
raking in his own yard, and surmised that raking perhaps came to Trump's mind
after he saw firefighters raking some of the burned areas in California.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/18/politics/finnish-president-trump-raking-forest-fires/index.html
November 20:Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is blaming "radical environmental
groups" for a lack of forest management that he says are spreading the deadly
California wildfires.
In a Tuesday conference call with reporters, Zinke criticized "lawsuit after
lawsuit by, yes, the radical environmental groups that would rather burn down
the entire forest than cut a single tree or thin the forest."
November 20:The National Weather
Service has
issued a
flash flood watch for the regions battered by the Camp Fire from Wednesday
through Friday. The agency warns that
more than
4 inches of rain could fall by Sunday.
“I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We have a much different,
we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a ‘forest nation,’ and they spend a lot of
time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem,”
Trump said.
November 24:Climate report: Trump administration downplays warnings of looming
disaster
Democrats ramp up pressure to act in wake of most sobering government analysis
yet
The
Trump administration attempted to downplay the stark findings of its own
climate change assessment, as Democrats sought to pressure the White House to
avert looming economic and public health disaster.
The
US National Climate change assessment, the work of 300 scientists and 13
federal agencies, was released on Friday afternoon. It found that wildfires,
storms and heatwaves are already taking a major toll on Americans’ wellbeing,
with climate change set to “disrupt many areas of life” in the future.
November 25: The shores of Cape
Cod, Mass., have seen a spike in the number of debilitated and dead sea turtles,
with nearly 600 animals washing up so far this year, according to wildlife
officials.
Scientists say that the naturally migratory turtles are heading farther north as
climate change warms the planet's oceans. Some are now summering in the Cape Cod
Bay, where they become trapped "by the Cape's hook-shaped geography," according
to the sanctuary.
"Stranding season" typically lasts from about Thanksgiving to Christmas. This
year's numbers have already passed what's typical for a year — and the total
might climb to 1,000 sea turtles before the end of December.
November 27: Senate panel advances
Trump’s energy nominee despite Dem objections
The 13-10 vote in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee lines up
Bernard McNamee, a senior Department of Energy official, for a vote on the
Senate floor. The vote was along party lines, except for Sen.
Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who broke with his party to support McNamee.
Since Trump nominated him earlier this year, McNamee has faced fierce opposition
from Democrats and environmentalists. They say his history working for the
conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Trump administration —
including a key role in pushing a bailout for coal and nuclear plants that FERC
itself rejected — goes against the expectation that FERC is impartial and
fuel-neutral.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/418426-senate-panel-advances-trumps-energy-nominee-over-dem-opposition
November 28: FACT CHECK: Trump's
Claims About 'Record Clean' U.S. Air
Asked why he was skeptical of a federal report detailing the significant
consequences of climate change, Trump said: "One of the problems that a lot of
people like myself — we have very high levels of intelligence, but we're not
necessarily such believers. You look at our air and our water, and it's right
now at a record clean."
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/28/671521901/fact-check-trumps-claims-about-record-clean-u-s-air
December 6: Trump's EPA Plans To Ease Carbon Emissions Rule For New Coal Plants
The Trump administration plans to eliminate an Obama-era requirement that new
coal-fired power plants have expensive technology to capture carbon dioxide
emissions.
December 6:The Trump administration has released plans to lift or alter habitat
protections for the greater sage grouse across millions of acres of Western
land.
The long-anticipated
proposals, released Thursday by the Bureau of Land Management, would revise
a sweeping conservation effort made under the Obama administration, allowing for
more development in the chicken-sized bird's vast habitat.
December 10: As global ecocide
approaches, Trump seeks more oil in Alaska
The United States Department of the Interior issued a
notice late last month signaling its intent to “jump-start development” in
the National Petroleum Reserve in
Alaska (NPR-A), part of a 23-million-acre stretch of oil-rich natural
habitat that makes up the largest tract of undisturbed land in the United
States.
The notice, the latest effort by the
Trump administration to
increase oil exploration and mining activities on ecologically sensitive federal
and tribal landscapes, “envisions clean and safe development in the NPR-A while
avoiding regulatory burdens that unnecessarily encumber energy production,
constrain economic growth, and prevent job creation.”
The Washington Post
reported that it will take “about a year” to create a new plan for
extracting oil reserves from NPR-A, according to Joe Balash, assistant secretary
of land and minerals at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
The 11-million-acre NPR-A site represents roughly half of a larger wildlife
refuge originally set aside by President Warren G. Harding in 1923. It also
falls within the ancestral homelands of the Gwich’in Nation of Alaskan Natives,
an indigenous community that uses NPR-A lands to hunt porcupine caribou herds
that frequent the area.
December 11:Trump EPA Proposes Major Rollback Of Federal Water Protections
Vast amounts of wetlands and thousands of miles of U.S. waterways would no
longer be federally protected by the Clean Water Act under a new proposal by the
Trump administration.
The proposal, announced Tuesday at the Environmental Protection Agency, would
change the EPA's definition of "waters of the United States," or WOTUS, limiting
the types of waterways that fall under federal protection to major waterways,
their tributaries, adjacent wetlands and a few other categories.
Undated: We are not holding our
breath that President Trump will start backing up his administration’s
environmental agenda with scientific facts. But we are holding him accountable
for what he says.
President Trump’s torrent of misleading statements and flat-out lies has an army
of journalists working 24/7 to set the record straight. To help those who focus,
as we do, on climate, energy, and other environmental issues, NRDC will call out
Trump whenever he distorts the facts about such matters. Here, we offer our
inaugural edition of Trump Lies. We expect to update it regularly. https://www.nrdc.org/trump-lies
December 15:
Ryan Zinke, Face of Trump Environmental Rollbacks, Is Leaving Interior
Department
Trump quietly issued an executive order to expand logging on public land
on the grounds that it will curb deadly wildfires
The executive order instructs the secretaries of agriculture and interior to
consider harvesting a total of 4.4 billion board feet of timber from forest land
managed by their agencies on millions of acres, and put it up for sale. The
order would translate into a 31 percent increase in forest service logging since
2017.
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/01/14/trump-executive-order-logging-wildfires/
February 28: 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.
But Wheeler has brought a level of stability to the agency that didn't exist
under Pruitt, keeping a relatively low profile while continuing to make progress
towards meeting the Trump administration's policy goals for the agency.
March 15: The Environmental Protection
Agency will ban consumer sales of
paint strippers that contain an ingredient that has caused dozens of
accidental deaths.
Families of people who have died after inhaling paint strippers that contain
methylene chloride and
chemical safety advocates have called for the products to be banned because
of the risks.
While the rule announced today responds to some of advocates' concerns, it's a
step back from a full ban proposed under the Obama administration. The EPA will
ban the products from being sold to the public in stores or online but will
still allow contractors and other professionals to use it. Critics say that
still puts workers at risk of inhaling a dangerous amount of fumes if they're
working in an unventilated area.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/epa-bans-public-sale-paint-stripper-connected-accidental/story?id=61715315
March 15: Trump’s Methylene Chloride Rule
Leaves Workers Exposed To Deadly Chemical
EPA abandons proposed ban on commercial uses of paint-stripping chemical linked
to dozens of workers’ deaths
n January 2017, EPA acknowledged those risks and proposed a ban on commercial
and consumer uses of methylene chloride paint strippers. Since then, at least
four people — including two workers — have died from methylene chloride
exposure. However, despite repeated promises to finalize that proposal, the
Trump administration reversed course and excluded workers from its final
methylene chloride rule.
May 16:
Colorado is on the leading edge of technology to fight wildfires and is
testing new and potentially life-saving tools.
The Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control Center of Excellence is
partnering with Honda to test an autonomous ATV.
"(It) is essentially an ATV with advanced sensors and different attachments,"
said the Center's Garrett Seddon.
Firefighters battling wildfires can typically carry up to 50 pounds of gear,
plus hoses and more equipment with them in hot, steep and dangerous terrain. The
goal is for the ATV to carry a lot of that equipment, plus medical supplies, to
keep firefighters safe.
https://kdvr.com/2019/05/16/colorado-tests-new-technology-to-battle-wildfires/
