Andrew Wheeler has served as acting EPA Administrator since July of 2018, when things just got too scummy, forcing former administrator Scott Pruitt out of office. Wheeler was confirmed last month, formally replacing Pruitt as EPA Administrator – to the delight of ardent pro-deregulation Republicans and ire of almost everyone else. Acting to the fears expressed by many climate scientists, economists, and policy experts, …
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Climate change is hereby canceled A story published last week in Reuters led with the headline “Pentagon strategy document will not include climate change” Sure, that’s the “official” statement. Gotta keep Mr. Trump and his bumbling buddies happy. Like the president says, “bundle up!” In fact, the military has long understood climate change as a threat multiplier. Like the insurance industry, they take assessing …
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Easier said than done Last week, Taryn Fransen and Kelly Levin of the World Resources Institute published an informative analysis on the “Trump Effect” on the Paris Agreement, signed in Paris at COP21 in December 2015. It was historic in many respects, not least of which was that it was the first time the whole world agreed on anything so ambitious. Even so, it …
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The oblivious president On Tuesday, August 29, as Hurricane Harvey lingered over Houston dumping an “unprecedented” four feet of rain, plus a few inches, the presidential entourage landed in Corpus Christi. Three days earlier Hurricane Harvey came ashore north of Corpus, pounding the small community of Rockport as a Category 4 storm. South Texas took the brunt of what is becoming a new …
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When the Trump administration’s 2018 fiscal budget proposal included 40 percent of funding cut for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), few were surprised. The president doesn’t seem to understand what is at stake with such cuts. If passed, Trump’s proposed budget will impose significant funding cuts from enforcement programs that impose penalties on environmental offenders. With reports of polluted water on the rise, funding …
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“To protect human health and the environment” The following open letter from former EPA employee Michael Cox. After 25 years with the agency, Cox retired last March. Upon his departure from EPA Cox wrote a withering letter to newly appointed EPA chief Scott Pruitt. Among his many criticisms, Cox zeroed in on Pruitt’s confounding statements on EPA’s mission, his outright climate denial of change, and …
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“I’m not a Cassandra, but I am a realist. Time is not on our side.” – John Kerry at COP22 Secretary of State John Kerry pulled no punches in a speech at the COP22 climate talks, now in their second week in Marrakesh, Morocco. A stalwart champion of climate change action throughout his career, Kerry made clear the outgoing Obama administration will do all in …
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