Tag Archives: agency

Trump moved to push through the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, but it’s not a done deal.

by ToneyMarra Posted on January 24, 2017

That’s how new news site Axios described it Monday morning, and the news has just gotten worse since then.

A leaked copy of the Trump team’s plan for the EPA calls for slashing its budget, “terminating climate programs,” ending auto fuel-economy standards, and executing “major reforms of the agency’s use of science and economics.”

The Trump administration has frozen EPA grants and contracts, cutting off funding for everything from cleanup of toxic sites to testing of air quality.

EPA employees have been ordered not to share information via social media, press releases, or new website content, Huffington Post reports.

It’s unclear which of these changes are temporary — just in place until Trump’s nominee to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, gets confirmed — and which might be put in place more permanently.

More bad news for the EPA will be coming: A new team that Trump has put in place to shift the agency’s direction includes three former researchers from Koch-funded think tanks, one former mining lobbyist, and a number of people who have argued against climate action, according to Reuters. And Trump is poised to issue executive orders to weaken pollution rules and cut agency budgets, Vox reports.

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Trump moved to push through the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, but it’s not a done deal.

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Trump Says Climate Change Is a Hoax. Rex Tillerson Just Disagreed.

by NamMcPheegzzqy Posted on January 11, 2017

Mother Jones

At his confirmation hearing Wednesday to become secretary of state, Rex Tillerson contradicted President-elect Donald Trump’s positions on climate change and his promise to withdraw the United States from global climate action.

Although Exxon Mobil, where Tillerson served as CEO, has been accused of impeding efforts to address global warming, Tillerson has acknowledged the threat posed by climate change. When Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked Tillerson whether the United States should lead international efforts to address climate change, Tillerson responded, “I think it’s important that the United States maintain its seat at the table on the conversations around how to address the threats of climate change, which do require a global response. No one country is going to solve this alone.”

One of the most important places where this conversation took place was during negotiations for the United Nations’ 2015 Paris climate agreement, which Trump disparaged on the campaign trail. Trump promised in a May campaign energy speech to “cancel the Paris Climate Agreement.” After winning the election, he told the New York Times that he’s “looking at it very closely” and said, “I have an open mind to it.” But his appointment of climate change deniers to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy indicates that Trump is unlikely to reconsider his views.

“The president-elect has invited my views on climate change,” Tillerson said. “He knows I am on the public record with my views. I look forward to providing those, if confirmed, to him and policies around how the United States should carry it out in these areas.”

Trump has also pledged to “stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN global warming programs.” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) asked Tillerson if he would suspend State Department funding to the Green Climate Fund, a major feature of the Paris agreement. Tillerson replied only that he would conduct a thorough review from the “bottom up.”

Tillerson hedged in his assessment of the threat of climate change, but his stance clearly differed from Trump’s claims that climate change is a “hoax.”

“I came to the decision a few years ago that the risk of climate change does exist and the consequences could be serious enough that it warrants action,” Tillerson said. “The increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are having an effect. Our ability to predict that effect are very limited.”

Pressed on his past statements in favor of a carbon tax, Tillerson, who at first suggested that the issue would be outside his purview at the State Department, said it would be better to replace “the hodgepodge of approaches we have today” on climate policy.

Compare Tillerson’s stance with the one taken by Trump three years ago:

In a debate with Hillary Clinton last year, Trump denied ever calling climate change a hoax.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) asked Tillerson about reporting from the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News that Exxon Mobil had internally acknowledged climate science while publicly waging a campaign to undermine it. Tillerson demurred. “Since I’m no longer CEO of Exxon Mobil, I can’t speak on their behalf,” he said. “You’ll have to ask them.” Asked if he was refusing to answer or simply lacked the knowledge to do so, Tillerson quipped, “A little of both.”

In his opening statement, Tillerson made no mention of the climate change, despite military experts’ view that climate change is a threat to national security. Russia was the main focus at the hearing’s morning session, but protesters occasionally interrupted the questioning to bring up climate change. “My home was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy,” one said as she was escorted out of the room. “Rex Tillerson, I reject you.”

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Trump Says Climate Change Is a Hoax. Rex Tillerson Just Disagreed.

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Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.

by FannieCrabtree Posted on January 8, 2017

Mother Jones

Did Russian hacking during the 2016 campaign tip the election to Donald Trump? In the LA Times today, Noah Bierman and Brian Bennett have this to say:

The truth is no one knows for sure because the election was so close in so many states that no one factor can be credited or blamed, especially in last year’s highly combustible campaign.

This is exactly backward. The fact that the election was so close means that lots of things might have tipped the election all by themselves. The Russian hacking is one of them. Consider Bierman and Bennett’s own case:

Extensive news coverage of the how the leaked emails showed political machinations by Democratic Party operatives often drowned out Clinton’s agenda….English-language news channel Russia Today…posted a video on YouTube in early November, for example. Called “Trump Will Not Be Permitted to Win,” it featured Julian Assange, the fugitive founder of WikiLeaks, and was watched 2.2 million times….U.S. intelligence officials say anti-Clinton stories and posts flooded social media from the Internet Research Agency near St. Petersburg, which the report described as a network of “professional trolls” led by a Putin ally.

Putin’s most tangible victory may have come last summer. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in July, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) was forced to quit her post as Democratic National Committee chairwoman after emails posted on Wikileaks showed that supposedly neutral DNC officials had backed Clinton over her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in the primaries.

….In October, Trump similarly seized on leaked emails from Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. They showed that Donna Brazile, a former CNN commentator who replaced Wasserman Schultz at the DNC, had shared a pair of questions with Clinton’s team before a televised candidates’ forum and debate….The leak showed nothing illegal. But it bolstered the idea that Clinton was a Washington insider who benefited from fellow elites.

….The most damaging leaks for Clinton may have been transcripts of excerpts of her highly paid speeches to Wall Street bankers, released in October….There were no smoking guns in the leaks. But they included her admission that her growing wealth since she and Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001 had made her “kind of far removed” from the anger and frustration many Americans felt after the 2008 recession. She also called for “a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future, with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it.”

That’s a lot of stuff! Does it seem likely that all of this, plus the fact that it kept Clinton’s email woes front and center, made a difference of 1 percent in a few swing states? Sure, I’d say so. Did other things make a difference too? Yes indeed. But given how close the election was, there’s a pretty good chance that Putin’s campaign of cyber-chaos had enough oomph to swing things all by itself.

I’m a little surprised this hasn’t produced more panic. In the United States I understand why it hasn’t: Democrats don’t want to sound like sore losers and Republicans don’t care as long as their guy won. But what about the rest of the world? It’s been common knowledge for a while that Russia does this kind of stuff, but their actions in the US election represent a quantum leap in how far they’re willing to go. And there’s not much doubt that Putin will keep at it.

After all, it worked a treat. And thanks to a gullible press and normal partisan politics, it’ll keep working. The next leak will get as much attention as these did, and the one after that too. We have no societal defense against this stuff.

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Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.

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China Is Pumping Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Into New Renewable Energy Projects by 2020

by TeodoroAAQ Posted on January 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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President-elect Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax created by the Chinese. The Chinese disagree—and are pumping billions of dollars’ worth of investments into green energy over the next three years.

On Thursday, Reuters published details of the latest installment of China’s plans to break its deadly use of coal, an addiction that makes it the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitter.

The funds—$361 billion by 2020—are designed to create 13 million green jobs, according to the country’s National Energy Administration. New projects such as solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power will form half of all new electricity generation by 2020 and will create the energy equivalent to 580 metric tons of coal.

The announcement matches China’s past pledges to kick its coal habit—the fuel that dominates its electricity production and creates heartburn for the country’s leaders, as the public’s angry reaction to foul air becomes a major political threat. Despite China’s so-called “war on pollution,” this week brought yet another toxic “airpolcalypse” to Beijing’s skies. Watch this incredible time-lapse video of the smog rolling into town:

China has been pulling out all stops to create a clean-tech revolution. Last year, a Chinese firm topped a reputable global ranking for wind energy production for the first time, beating America’s General Electric. China already leads the world in solar. (Go inside a massive Chinese solar factory with me, here.) China is also on track to peak and then begin to taper its greenhouse gas emissions around 2025—five years ahead of a promise made by its leader, Xi Jinping, in November 2014, as part of China’s historic deal with the United States. This year, China will launch the world’s biggest national carbon trading market.

But China is on the verge of losing its major global partner in these endeavors. Trump has promised to end America’s role in the Paris climate agreement and cancel contributions to UN climate programs. He has also tapped pro-fossil-fuel and anti-regulation types, including some unapologetic climate change deniers, for top positions in the new administration. For example, as Oklahoma attorney general, Scott Pruitt has repeatedly sued the Environmental Protection Agency—which Trump wants him to lead.

There are also Trump’s new anti-China trade hawks, including outspoken China critic Peter Navarro, who advocates a much more adversarial approach, including a controversial 40-plus percent tariff on Chinese imports, potentially ratcheting up tension between the two global giants even before Inauguration Day on January 20.

China has issued unusually blunt warnings to Trump and US leaders if they abandon international efforts to combat climate change—while saying they’ll act alone if necessary. “If they resist this trend, I don’t think they’ll win the support of their people,” said China’s longtime climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua before the November election. “And their country’s economic and social progress will also be affected.”

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China Is Pumping Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Into New Renewable Energy Projects by 2020

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Washington state has blocked plans for the nation’s biggest coal export terminal.

by WendyCrutcher Posted on January 4, 2017

That’s according to a new study in Science Advances, the latest installment in a debate that has refused to die.

The controversy started in 2013 with a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggesting that global warming had stalled. Researchers scrambled to explain what looked like a “warming hiatus,” while skeptics seized on those weird numbers to attack climate science.

The confusion should have been cleared up in 2015, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that a shift from ship-based measurements to ocean buoys could explain the low values. There was no “hiatus” at all. Republican Rep. Lamar Smith from Texas had a conniption and subpoenaed the agency (remember that?).

This latest study “shows that NOAA got it right,” says Zeke Hausfather, a data scientist at UC Berkeley. His team reviewed ocean temperature data from buoys, diving robots, and satellites, and confirmed NOAA’s warming estimates.

Researchers had long measured ocean temperatures from the warm bellies of ships, Hausfather says. Then, in the 1990s, scientists switched to using floating buoys. Buoys are relatively colder, so temperature measurements also took a dip. Correcting the buoy bias doubled estimates of ocean warming, accounting for most of the “hiatus.”

This latest study should put an end to the debate, Hausfather says. But considering the last three years were the hottest on record, shouldn’t it have been dead already?

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Washington state has blocked plans for the nation’s biggest coal export terminal.

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The Obama administration pushed out an environmental rule just in time for Trump to reverse ’em.

by DenaUGEfcsg Posted on December 19, 2016

That’s according to a Reuters investigation that analyzed blood tests from state health departments and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over 1,100 of those communities have lead levels four times as high as those observed in Flint.

Nationwide, the exposure could be much higher: Data was only available for 21 states, accounting for 61 percent of the U.S. population.

The CDC estimates that 2.5 percent of children across in the United States have at least slightly elevated levels of lead, which can lead to lowered IQs, developmental delays, and learning difficulties, as well as miscarriage and premature birth. The local water supply is frequently the source of lead, but some communities are additionally plagued by industrial waste, lead paint, and lead pipes.

On the campaign trail, President-elect Trump vowed to address the nation’s crumbling infrastructure — including the lead crisis — but many of his cabinet picks have a history of combating legislation that protect public health.

Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, sued that very agency for using the Clean Water Act to prosecute waterway polluters. According to Pruitt, the Act threatens the “property rights of the average American.” He didn’t mention their brains.

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The Obama administration pushed out an environmental rule just in time for Trump to reverse ’em.

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The United States Just Canceled an Arms Deal With Saudi Arabia

by NormanCombs79 Posted on December 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Obama administration has canceled an arms deal with Saudi Arabia amid growing concerns about the high civilian death toll from the kingdom’s air campaign in Yemen. “We continue to have concerns about the conflict in Yemen and how it has been waged, most especially the air campaign,” a State Department official told Mother Jones in an email. The blocked sale reportedly involves precision-guided munitions built by the American defense contractor Raytheon.

Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly criticized for committing potential war crimes in its war against the Houthi rebels who ousted the Saudi-backed government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi in January 2015. Throughout the nearly two-year-long conflict, the Saudis have used American and British weapons, including banned cluster bombs. The United States has also provided refueling missions and intelligence. Saudi airstrikes have hit weddings, funerals, hospitals, schools, markets, and places of worship, killing hundreds of civilians.

Between 2009 and 2015, the Obama administration inked more than $100 billion worth of arms deals with Riyadh. Just last week, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced the approval of yet another deal, worth $3.5 billion, for Chinook helicopters and related equipment, training, and support.

Yet today’s announcement may be a sign of the Obama administration’s growing discomfort with the war. In May, it canceled the sale of US-made cluster bombs. In September, the Senate held its first debate to question the decision to continue supplying the Saudis. “There is a US imprint on every civilian death inside Yemen, which is radicalizing the people of Yemen against the United States,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said at the time. “There really is no way this bombing campaign could happen without United States participation.”

The State Department official, who asked not to be named, said the United States is exploring how to refocus training the Saudi air force to address its targeting practices. The official also stated that the State Department, the Pentagon, and other agencies are reviewing current policy “to ensure that our limited support for the Saudi-led Coalition is consistent with our foreign policy goals and values.” A senior administration official told AFP that “US security cooperation is not a blank check.”

President-elect Donald Trump has not outlined his policy on Yemen. However, during a January campaign rally with Sarah Palin, he suggested that Iran is destabilizing Yemen and seeks to take over Saudi Arabia:

Now they’re going into Yemen. And if you look at Yemen, take a look, they’re going to get Syria, they’re going to get Yemen, unless—trust me, a lot of good things are going to happen if I get in, but let’s leave it the way it is. They get Syria. They get Yemen. Now, they didn’t want Yemen, but did you ever see the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia? They want Saudi Arabia.

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The United States Just Canceled an Arms Deal With Saudi Arabia

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Carl Icahn, a billionaire critic of the EPA, is helping Trump shape it.

by GracielClanton Posted on December 6, 2016

The well-known investor is reportedly one of the most influential advisers to President-elect Donald Trump as he considers candidates to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

Icahn has interviewed several candidates for the job in the last week, according to the Wall Street Journal. Icahn confirmed that one top contender is Jeff Holmstead, an assistant EPA administrator during the George W. Bush administration and who was, until a few weeks ago, a registered lobbyist for fossil-fuel companies. Other top candidates reportedly include Kathleen Hartnett White, former chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general.

Icahn has more than a passing interest in the EPA. He has a controlling interest in CVR Energy, whose CEO has said that EPA regulations could cost the company an estimated $200 million this year, according to the WSJ. CVR is in the business of refining petroleum and manufacturing nitrogen fertilizer.

Trump campaigned on promises to “drain the swamp” of special interests surrounding the White House. So far, he’s shown a knack for surrounding himself with Wall Street insiders, super-wealthy investors like Icahn, and other Masters of the Universe.

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Carl Icahn, a billionaire critic of the EPA, is helping Trump shape it.

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Gen. Michael Flynn’s Slow Descent Into Madness

by SanfordTomlinso Posted on November 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Dana Priest tells us today about Donald Trump’s new National Security Advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn:

A lot of reporters and other civilians found Mike, as everyone called him, refreshing. A plucky Irish Catholic kid from Rhode Island, he wasn’t impressed by rank. He told his junior officers to challenge him in briefings. “You’d hear them say, ‘Boss, that’s nuts,’ ” one former colleague said.

….The greatest accomplishment of Flynn’s military career was revolutionizing the way that the clandestine arm of the military, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), undertook the killing and capture of suspected terrorists and insurgents in war zones….Stanley McChrystal, who was appointed to run JSOC in 2003, brought Flynn in as his intelligence chief….He “boxed him in,” someone who had worked with both men told me last week, by encouraging Flynn to keep his outbursts in check and surrounding him with subordinates who would challenge the unsubstantiated theories he tended to indulge.

Sounds like a good guy who just needs a little direction. So, um, what happened?

In 2012, Flynn became director of the Defense Intelligence Agency….“He made a lot of changes,” one close observer of Flynn’s time at the D.I.A. told me. “Not in a strategic way—A to Z—but back and forth.”

Flynn also began to seek the Washington spotlight. But, without loyal junior officers at his side to vet his facts, he found even more trouble. His subordinates started a list of what they called “Flynn facts,” things he would say that weren’t true….Flynn’s temper also flared. He berated people in front of colleagues.

….Flynn had been on the job just eighteen months when James Clapper told him he had to go….Flynn began saying that he had been fired because President Obama disagreed with his views on terrorism and wanted to hide the growth of ISIS. I haven’t found anyone yet who heard him say this while he was still in the military….As Flynn’s public comments became more and more shrill, McChrystal, Mullen, and others called Flynn to urge him to “tone it down,” a person familiar with each attempt told me. But Flynn had found a new boss, Trump, who enlisted him in the fight against the Republican and Democratic Party establishments.

Well, I guess it will all work out. Donald Trump will provide a firm hand at the—wait. What’s this?

President-elect Donald Trump has received two classified intelligence briefings since his surprise election victory earlier this month….A team of intelligence analysts has been prepared to deliver daily briefings on global developments and security threats to Trump in the two weeks since he won.

….Officials involved in the Trump transition team cautioned against assigning any significance to the briefing schedule that the president-elect has set so far, noting that he has been immersed in the work of forming his administration, and has made filling key national security posts his top priority. But others have interpreted Trump’s limited engagement with his briefing team as an additional sign of indifference from a president-elect who has no meaningful experience on national security issues.

So Trump thinks that his work schedule will lighten up after he actually becomes president? And then he’ll have time to get up to speed on all the stuff he doesn’t know? And rein in Flynn at the same time?

We are so screwed.

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Gen. Michael Flynn’s Slow Descent Into Madness

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Dakota Access protesters reminded the nation they won’t be silenced.

by EAPDario0458 Posted on November 16, 2016

And it’s just in the nick of time, since President-elect Trump has promised to repeal all of President Obama’s climate regulations.

This rule, which will be gradually phased in, requires drilling operators to halve the natural gas that is flared off from new and existing wells, limit venting from storage tanks, inspect for leaks, and so on. DOI projects that the rule should cut methane emissions up to 35 percent.

Methane is an extremely powerful heat-trapping gas. With the the increase in natural gas and oil drilling that is the fracking boom, methane leakage from wells and pipelines has also skyrocketed. A crackdown on these leaks was part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.

The new rule doesn’t govern private land, where most drilling takes place. The Environmental Protection Agency developed rules limiting methane leakage from new wells on private land. Hillary Clinton proposed to follow up on that with a rule for existing wells on private land.

Trump will not do that. But, now that the public lands rule is finalized, undoing it would require a new rule-making process, subject to legal challenge.

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Dakota Access protesters reminded the nation they won’t be silenced.

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