Tag Archives: agency

Secret recording reveals who’s first on Trump’s government purge list

by YCPLucioxtqk Posted on July 21, 2016

Secret recording reveals who’s first on Trump’s government purge list

By on Jul 21, 2016Share

If Donald Trump wins in November, his first act may as well be to paint the White House gold. His second act, according to a secret recording obtained by Reuters, could be ridding the government of Obama appointees.

One of his top targets would be the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump’s ally/hostage Chris Christie, who is leading the candidate’s White House transition team, told donors in a private meeting at the Republican National Convention that they’re drawing up a list of government employees to fire. He hopes for congressional legislation to make it easier to fire public workers.

“One of the things I have suggested to Donald is that we have to immediately ask the Republican Congress to change the civil service laws. Because if they do, it will make it a lot easier to fire those people,” Christie told donors at a closed-door meeting at the RNC. “As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people,” he added.

Trump has promised to eliminate the EPA entirely, while also rolling back environmental legislation and pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord.

Since its creation by Richard Nixon in 1970, the EPA’s enforcement of environmental regulations has led to cleaner air, water, and land across America. So while Trump may not make America great again, he will certainly make it polluted again.

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Secret recording reveals who’s first on Trump’s government purge list

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Obama tries to revive a grassroots solar program

by Micheli0919 Posted on July 19, 2016

bright spot

Obama tries to revive a grassroots solar program

By on Jul 19, 2016Share

Can the Obama administration Frankenstein a celebrated solar program back to life? The administration announced a new plan on Tuesday to bring solar power to more neighborhoods — but it’s actually an old plan, long-stymied.

The Property Assessed Clean Energy program, known as PACE, was created in 2007 when Berkeley, California, realized the same tools used by neighborhoods to pay for big projects like street paving could also be used to pay for installing solar panels. People in homes with panels had to pay more in property taxes, but they saved money through lower energy bills.

PACE was a hit, and the idea spread across the country. But in 2010, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee roughly 60 percent of mortgages, freaked out and warned lenders to stay away from communities using the PACE program.

They started “acting like East-Coast bankers,” said Gov. Jerry Brown of California, on a White House call to announce the plan. “After the mortgage meltdown, they’re so fearful they won’t step up to the plate.” PACE didn’t go away, but it was frozen, like Han Solo in carbonite.

So, how to fix this? As part of its “Clean Energy Savings for All” initiative, the Obama administration persuaded the Housing and Urban Development Agency and the Department of Veterans Affairs to support the program. As a result, the pool of people who can get a mortgage to buy a house with PACE-funded solar panels has widened to veterans and anyone with a HUD-backed mortgage.

“They’re doing what Fannie and Freddie say you can’t do,” said Brown. “Someday Fannie and Freddie will get on board.”

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Obama tries to revive a grassroots solar program

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The Republican vision for the environment is not a pretty sight

by Peter02Jgulyfk Posted on July 15, 2016

Dirty dealing

The Republican vision for the environment is not a pretty sight

By on Jul 15, 2016 5:16 amShare

With their party’s national convention just days away, Republicans in the House of Representatives have given us a detailed vision of their environmental agenda. You may be shocked to hear that it would further pollute our air and water and worsen climate change. On Thursday, the House passed its budget bill for the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Interior on a mostly party-line vote.

The bill would spend $1 billion less on the agencies next year than President Obama requested. That comes on top of severe cuts over the last six years, since Republicans gained control of Congress. “EPA’s budget, not including inflation, is already 20 percent below what it was in 2010,” says Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “When the budget agreement was done last year for 2016 and they found more money for domestic [programs and defense], the only agency that did not get an increase was EPA.”

Environmentalists are even more upset, though, about the “policy riders” — that’s D.C.-ese for unrelated amendments attached to a spending bill. The most extreme ones would:

Block implementation of the Clean Power Plan, the EPA’s program for cutting carbon emissions from power plants.
Stop Interior from completing rules to crack down on mountaintop-removal coal mining.
Halt Bureau of Land Management rules governing fracking on public land.
Prevent EPA from implementing its new rule to limit exposure to lead paint.
Kill the Obama administration’s new rules intended to avert disastrous offshore oil spills.
Axe the just-released Arctic-specific drilling regulations, meant to address the unusual risks of offshore oil and gas drilling there.

On the bright side, Republicans actually dropped some of the most absurd amendments — such as one that would have prevented EPA employees from flying for work.

Obama threatened to veto this bill before it even passed the full House, so there’s no risk of it actually becoming law. But it’s a handy guide to what Republicans want to do, even if they avoid saying so in prime time this coming week.

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The Republican vision for the environment is not a pretty sight

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Wave goodbye to California’s last nuclear plant

by Elida531785 Posted on June 22, 2016

nuclear’s unclear

Wave goodbye to California’s last nuclear plant

By on Jun 22, 2016Share

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

California’s biggest electric utility announced a plan on Tuesday to shut down the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant within the next decade. The plant, Diablo Canyon, has been controversial for decades and resurfaced in the news over the last few months as Pacific Gas & Electric approached a deadline to renew, or not, the plant’s operating license.

“California’s new energy policies will significantly reduce the need for Diablo Canyon’s electricity output,” PG&E said in a statement, pointing to the state’s massive gains in energy efficiency and renewable energy from solar and wind.

The most significant part of the plan is that it promises to replace Diablo Canyon with a “cost-effective, greenhouse gas-free portfolio of energy efficiency, renewables, and energy storage.” As I reported in February, some environmentalists were concerned that closing the plant could actually increase the state’s carbon footprint, if it were replaced by natural gas plants, as has happened elsewhere in the country when nuclear plants were shut down:

As the global campaign against climate change has gathered steam in recent years, old controversies surrounding nuclear energy have been re-ignited. For all their supposed faults — radioactive waste, links to the Cold War arms race, the specter of a catastrophic meltdown — nuclear plants have the benefit of producing huge amounts of electricity with zero greenhouse gas emissions…

A recent analysis by the International Energy Agency found that in order for the world to meet the global warming limit enshrined in the Paris climate agreement in December, nuclear’s share of global energy production will need to grow from around 11 percent in 2013 to 16 percent by 2030. (The share from coal, meanwhile, needs to shrink from 41 percent to 19 percent, and wind needs to grow from 3 percent to 11 percent.)

Michael Shellenberger, a leading voice in California’s pro-nuclear movement, estimated in February that closing Diablo Canyon “would not only shave off one-fifth of the state’s zero-carbon energy, but potentially increase the state’s emissions by an amount equivalent to putting 2 million cars on the road per year.” That estimate presupposed that the plant would be replaced by natural gas. The plan announced today — assuming it’s actually feasible — appears to remedy that concern. In a statement, Shellenberger’s group, Environmental Progress, said the plan is destined to “fail” because the notion that the plant can be replaced without increasing greenhouse gas emissions is “a big lie.”

In any case, the plant won’t be closing overnight. Over the next few years we should be able to watch an interesting case testing whether it’s possible to take nuclear power offline without worsening climate change.

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Wave goodbye to California’s last nuclear plant

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Sanders may not win but he’s about to do something yuge

by CooperMerewethe Posted on June 1, 2016

Yuge!

Sanders may not win but he’s about to do something yuge

By on Jun 1, 2016 2:20 pmShare

Despite the long odds of taking the Democratic nomination this July, Bernie Sanders is fighting on — raising money and giving speeches, even though, barring an astroid, Hillary Clinton will be running against Donald Trump.

And yet, when Sanders sat down with Rolling Stone after a rally in Oregon recently, he acknowledged that his greatest contribution to the race won’t be his victory; it will be pulling the Democratic Party to the left. The candidate told reporter Tim Dickinson that one of his priorities is to see strong language on climate change and a carbon tax in the Democratic platform:

Number one, we want the strongest progressive platform that we can [get]. That would incorporate many of the ideas that we’ve fought for: from Medicare for all; paid family and medical leave; 15-bucks-an-hour minimum wage; very strong language on climate change and a carbon tax; stopping fracking; public colleges and universities tuition-free, et cetera, et cetera.

Now that Sanders has been allotted five out of 15 slots on the Democratic Party’s Platform Drafting Committee, he’s in a better position to make that happen. Sanders announced Monday that his five candidates include academic and political activist Cornel West, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, Arab American Institute head James Zogby, Native American activist Deborah Parker, and climate activist Bill McKibben (a Grist board member). Hillary Clinton has named former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner as one of her picks.

Sanders may not be able to claim victory in the race, but he’ll be able to claim something momentous all the same: bringing in new and needed voices to the very inner workings of the party he hoped to lead.

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Mass Transit Ridership Is Down. How Can We Fix This?

by AndrewLoewentha Posted on May 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Tyler Cowen point us to Wendell Cox, who says that aside from New York City, mass transit ridership in the US is looking grim:

If New York City Subway ridership had remained at its 2005 level, overall transit ridership would have decreased from 9.8 billion in 2005 to 9.6 billion in 2015. The modern record of 10.7 billion rides would never have been approached.

Despite spending billions of dollars on new rail lines in LA, mass transit in Southern California certainly fits this bill:

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region’s largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating….In Orange County, bus ridership plummeted 30% in the last seven years….Southern California certainly isn’t alone. Public transportation use in many U.S. cities, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., has slumped in the last few years.

But all is not lost. If you take a longer look at Los Angeles transit, it turns out there are things you can do to increase ridership. It’s complicated, though, so you’ll need to read carefully:

Thirty years ago, Metro handled almost 500 million annual bus boardings in Los Angeles County. In the decade that followed…Metro raised fares and cut bus service hours. Ridership during this period declined from 497 million to 362 million. –ed.

In 1994, an organization that represented bus riders sued Metro in federal court….Metro agreed to stop raising fares for 10 years and relieve overcrowding by adding more than 1 million hours of bus service. Ridership soared. Metro buses and trains recorded about 492 million boardings in 2006, the most since 1985.

But from 2009 to 2011, several years after federal oversight ended and during the Great Recession, the agency raised fares and cut bus service by 900,000 hours. By the end of 2015, ridership had fallen 10% from 2006, with the steepest declines coming in the last two years.

Hmmm. There’s an answer in there somewhere. We just need to tease it out. Here’s an annotated version of the full chart that I excerpted above. Maybe that will help.

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Mass Transit Ridership Is Down. How Can We Fix This?

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Secret Service Shoots Armed Man Outside the White House

by DeborahESSM Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Secret Service officers shot and arrested a man who brandished a gun outside the White House on Friday afternoon, according to a statement from the agency.

“Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers gave numerous verbal commands for the subject to stop and drop the firearm,” said Secret Service spokesman David A. Iacovetti. “When the subject failed to comply with the verbal commands, he was shot once by a Secret Service agent and taken into custody.”

The shooting took place at 2 p.m. on West Executive Drive, a closed street that runs next to the White House and leads to the West Wing. Neither President Barack Obama nor Vice President Joe Biden were in the White House during the incident, and the Secret Service confirmed that no one under its protection had been harmed.

The White House confirmed after the incident that no one else in the building was harmed. “”No one within or associated with the White House was injured, and everyone in the White House is safe and accounted for,” a White House official told CNN.

The Secret Service has yet to release a name or any other information on the man who was shot. The White House lockdown that went into effect after the shooting has been lifted.

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Secret Service Shoots Armed Man Outside the White House

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Earth Week Daily Action: Go Paperless

by MaureenMahler Posted on April 20, 2016

Paper is the bane of the planet’s existence. Mine, too.

Paper is pretty cheap in the scheme of things, so most people don’t think twice about how they use it. But every aspect of producing paper takes a significant environmental toll:

* Forests may be clear cut for the pulp used to make paper fibers.

* Water is polluted when the fibers are bleached and washed.

* A variety of toxic chemicals, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide are emitted by paper plants, polluting the air.

* Burning energy to power paper processing operations creates more air and water pollution and contributes to climate change.

* Throwing away paper adds to the huge piles of waste and trash we’re already trying to contend with.

The numbers back up these statements. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, discarded paper accounts for about 35 percent by weight of municipal solid waste (before recycling).

Pulp and paper are the third largest industrial polluters of air, water and land both in Canada and the U.S., says Environment Canada. Over 6.5 million trees were cut down to make 16 billion paper cups used by U.S. consumers only for coffee in 2006, using 4 billion U.S. gallons of water and generating 253 million pounds of waste.

Paper in all its forms is the biggest source of trash and clutter in my home. Unwanted junk mail piles up. Paper wrapping when I get a package. Food and consumer goods packaging when I shop. Receipts. Even though I’ve sworn to live paper-free, it’s almost impossible to do.

Still, I have cut down my paper use significantly. One day during Earth Week, turn your attention to getting rid of as much new paper coming into your home as you can.

Here’s How

* Cancel newspaper and magazine subscriptions and read online: I reduced my overall paper consumption probably by 20 pounds a weekan entire recycling bin’s worthwhen I started reading publications online. It saved me a lot of hassle, too, since dragging a recycling bin full of paper down to the street could be quite a chore. If you love reading the Sunday news on paper, make an exception for that one day’s delivery. Otherwise, go digital.

* Pay bills online: Most companies prefer to bill their customers digitally, since it saves them money and resources, too. Another advantage of online bill paying is that you can tie it directly to your checking account. You’ll see exactly how much money you have in your account before you pay each bill, which will reduce the likelihood that you’ll overdraw the account. Many businesses will offer a bonuslike increased airline miles, so some cash back transactionswhen you make the switch.

* Get off junk mail lists: Drop by this earlier post I wrote about “best ways to stop junk mail and control catalog clutter.” It offers everything you need to know to stop the onslaught of unwanted paper from coming to your mail box.

* Refuse receipts: Do you really need a receipt when you buy your groceries or get a tube of toothpaste from the drug store? Probably not. I’ve stopped accepting receipts when I shop unless it’s for a durable good, clothing or some other item I might want to return. This has been a great way to reduce paper clutter not just in my home, but in my purse, as well. Some stores and many banks now let you elect to have an electronic receipt sent to your email address if you really need the record of what you’ve bought.

* Share documents electronically: Minimize what you need to share with others by filing and emailing digital documents rather than creating paper ones.

* Use mobile apps and email to recordtickets, purchases, and appointments: There’s no need to print out a paper version of a ticket when you can pull it up on your phone.

* Use your own reusable carry out containers: Going to your favorite restaurant, or even the fast food joint up the street? Take your own reusable containersso you won’t need their wrapping and packing.

* Switch to a reusable grocery bag: You’ll have no need for throwaway, single-use bags when you use your own reusable cloth one.

* Take a reusable mug when you get coffee: You’ll avoid the throwaway paper cup, the lid and the cardboard sleeve that protects your hand from the hot cup.

Need More Suggestions? See These Related Posts on Care2:

4 Eco-Friendly Ways to Manage Your Money
11 Ways to Reduce Your Garbage
25 Ways to Reduce Food Waste

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Earth Week Daily Action: Go Paperless

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The EPA met its match: Amateur race car drivers

by ElizabeAlbrecht Posted on April 19, 2016

The EPA met its match: Amateur race car drivers

By on Apr 19, 2016commentsShare

The Environmental Protection Agency is used to hysteria whenever it rolls out a new regulation or clarification to existing law.

Most recently, the EPA caved to protests from an unusual corner: Amateur race car drivers who insisted the EPA was inadvertently outlawing their favorite pastime. Last week, the EPA announced that it would be dropping a part of a 629-page proposal limiting vehicle emissions that related to converted race cars, released last July.  

Would-be Dom Torettos were incensed over a tiny piece of text that clarified that regular street cars converted into racing cars would still have to follow emissions rules:

Certified motor vehicles and motor vehicle engines and their emission control devices must remain in their certified configuration even if they are used solely for competition or if they become non-road vehicles or engines; anyone modifying a certified motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine for any reason is subject to the tampering and defeat device prohibitions of paragraph (a)(3) of this section and 42 U.S.C.

Racers insisted that these pollution controls would outlaw these cars, while the EPA maintained that that wasn’t its intention. The trade association representing a portion of the automobile industry came out strongly against the proposal last February.

The issue quickly caught the attention of members of Congress who regularly use the EPA as a punching bag. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who opposes environmental regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions, responded with a bill to ensure that street cars can be legally converted into race cars. His campaign gained steam as three Republican representatives sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, fearing that amateur racers “may be considered lawbreakers.” There was even a petition to the White House, signed by 168,000 people, demanding that the proposal be withdrawn.

The EPA responded with a clarification that there was a longstanding Clean Air Act prohibition on “tampering with or defeating the emission control systems” of racing vehicles. Now, the agency has reversed its direction entirely, saying in a statement that as its “attempt to clarify led to confusion, the EPA has decided to eliminate the proposed language from the final rule.”

Even after caving, the EPA stresses that protesters missed the point of these regulations in the first place: “EPA’s focus is not on vehicles built or used exclusively for racing, but on companies that don’t play by the rules and that make and sell products that disable pollution controls on motor vehicles used on public roads.”

It isn’t the first time opponents insisted the EPA intended on banning a product or practice it had no intention of banning. But rest easy, and know that the federal environmental regulators have nothing but respect for the sweet, souped-up car.

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The EPA met its match: Amateur race car drivers

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Congress passed around the blame for Flint’s lead crisis. John Oliver gives it right back to them.

by ArethaTrott1085 Posted on April 18, 2016

Congress passed around the blame for Flint’s lead crisis. John Oliver gives it right back to them.

By on 18 Apr 2016commentsShare

America’s best Brit John Oliver took a brief pause from skewering presidential candidates Sunday to skewer Congress’ response to the Flint lead-poisoned water crisis. As Oliver points out, the crisis is hardly Flint’s alone: 2,000 municipal water systems in all 50 states show elevated levels of lead, which can contribute to brain damage, developmental difficulties, and lower IQs in children.

In response to this disaster, Congressional Republicans Rep. Mark Meadows (NC), Rep. Tim Walberg (MI), and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (UT) all have said that is it shocking — just shocking — that federal regulators could let something like this happen in the United States.

How does something like this happen in the United States?

As Oliver explains, it happens in part because of representatives like Meadows, Walberg, and Chaffetz, who voted to cut funding for government programs dedicated to cleaning up lead pollution.“You would think that our members of Congress would be onboard with doing more to fight lead poisoning.” Oliver said. Well, they aren’t, and Congress has only done its best to cut funding to other organizations that protect public health, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Watch Oliver explain above.

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Congress passed around the blame for Flint’s lead crisis. John Oliver gives it right back to them.

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