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Donald Trump’s Pick To Head The EPA Is "An Existential Threat To The Planet"

by ThelmaPeyser Posted on December 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump’s transition team has announced that the next head of the EPA will be Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. This is very bad news!

As my colleague Jeremy Shulman noted earlier this year, Pruitt has some very dumb views about climate change.:

Views on climate change: “The EPA does not possess the authority under the Clean Air Act to accomplish what it proposes in the unlawful Clean Power Plan. The EPA is ignoring the authority granted by Congress to states to regulate power plant emissions at their source. The Clean Power Plan is an unlawful attempt to expand federal bureaucrats’ authority over states’ energy economies in order to shutter coal-fired power plants and eventually other sources of fossil-fuel generated electricity.” Pruitt press release, 7/1/15

Writing in National Review year, Pruitt blathered:

Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress.

Think Progress has many more reasons why Pruitt at the EPA is a disaster.

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Donald Trump’s Pick To Head The EPA Is "An Existential Threat To The Planet"

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Look at All the Climate Change Deniers Vying for Jobs in the Trump Administration

by Donnie6686 Posted on November 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is a global warming denier. He wants to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement and repeal the Clean Power Plan—the twin pillars of President Barack Obama’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. He’s even promised to revive the coal industry, against all odds.

But Trump won’t be able to do these things all by himself. To fulfill his campaign promise and reverse the steps of his predecessor in the fight against warming, he’s going to need an entire administration of like-minded people. Environmental officials who reject climate science. National security officials who dismiss concerns that climate change will destabilize the world. Diplomats who oppose international climate agreements. Department heads who want to drill, baby, drill.

Here’s a list of Trump appointees and possible appointees (drawn for the New York Times, Politico, E&E, and elsewhere) who deny climate change or who oppose or want to roll back efforts to deal with it. We’ll update the list as the Trump transition continues. Be afraid.

Donald Trump

Position: President

Views on climate change:

We’re going to rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the US rule.
We’re going to save the coal industry and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton’s extremist agenda.
I’m going to ask Trans Canada to renew its permit application for the Keystone Pipeline.
We’re going to lift moratoriums on energy production in federal areas
We’re going to revoke policies that impose unwarranted restrictions on new drilling technologies. These technologies create millions of jobs with a smaller footprint than ever before.
We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN global warming programs. Trump campaign website, accessed 11/16/16

Mike Pence

Position: Vice president

Views on climate change: “Donald Trump and I have a plan to get this economy moving again…by lowering taxes across the board for working families, small businesses and family farms, ending the war on coal that is hurting jobs and hurting this economy even here in Virginia, repealing Obamacare lock, stock, and barrel, and repealing all of the executive orders that Barack Obama has signed that are stifling economic growth in this economy.” Vice Presidential debate, 10/5/16

Reince Priebus

Position: Chief of staff

Views on climate change: “Democrats tell us they understand the world, but then they call climate change, not radical Islamic terrorism, the greatest threat to national security. Look, I think we all care about our planet, but melting icebergs aren’t beheading Christians in the Middle East.” CPAC speech, 2/27/15

Stephen Bannon

Position: Chief strategist and senior counselor

Views on climate change: “Do you agree with the pope and President Obama that climate change is absolutely a path to global suicide, if specific deals are not cut in Paris at the international climate negotiations, versus focusing on radical Islam?” Breitbart News Daily via the Washington Post, 12/1/15

“The pope…has kind of fallen into this hysteria…Here you have the pope saying the world’s near suicide if something doesn’t happen in Paris.” Breitbart News Daily via Media Matters for America, 12/2/15

Myron Ebell

Position: Head of EPA transition team—possible EPA administrator

Views on climate change: Ebell, a high-profile climate skeptic, is the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a DC think tank that promotes “limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty.” He has accused climate scientists of “manipulating and falsifying the data.” The New York Times describes Ebell as “one of the most vocal opponents” of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)

Position: Attorney general nominee

Views on climate change: “The balloon and satellite data track each other almost exactly, and it shows almost no warming. So what we’re talking about is: The predictions aren’t coming true.” Washington Watch via Right Wing Watch, 11/30/15

Ken Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state

Position: Head of transition team for domestic issues

Views on climate change: “Another false environmentalist narrative is the global warming hoax. A few decades back, environmentalist “scientists” started devising computer models that predicted man-made calamity—Manhattan submerged by rising Atlantic waters—within 10 or 15 years ago. It turns out the models were rigged, the data were falsified and, in fact, there has been no measurable warming for nearly 20 years. Most troubling of all, the lying scientists colluded to ruin the careers of honest scientists who tried to tell the truth.” Washington Times, 4/30/15

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.)

Position: CIA director nominee

Views on climate change: “President Obama has called climate change the biggest national security threat of our lifetime, but he is horribly wrong. His unwillingness to acknowledge the true threat posed by Islamic extremism will get Americans killed. His perverse fixation on achieving his economically harmful environmental agenda instead of defeating the true threats facing the world shows just how out of sync his priorities are with Kansans and the American people.” Pompeo press release, 11/30/15

John Bolton, former UN ambassador

Possible position: Secretary of State

Views on climate change: “Obama can achieve his climate change legacy only through delicate negotiations with Congress. His poor relations with the House and Senate, especially on foreign policy, appear to render success unlikely. Obama may rely on his unilateral authority to join a world climate pact in Paris, but without Congress his most important promises will be empty ones whose fate will be left to his successor.” Los Angeles Times, 12/1/15

Jan Brewer, former governor of Arizona

Possible positions: Secretary of Interior

Views on climate change: “Everybody has an opinion on climate change, you know, and I probably don’t believe that it’s man made. I believe that, you know, that weather and certain elements are controlled maybe by different things.” Think Progress, 12/3/13

Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas)

Possible positions: US Supreme Court justice

Views on climate change: “If you are a…liberal politician who wants government power, if that is your driving urge—government power over the American citizenry—then climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory. Why is that? Because it can never be disproven…The climate is always changing. It has been changing from the beginning of time.” Cruz campaign event via the Washington Post, 2/3/16

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.)

Possible position: National security adviser

Views on climate change: “And here we have the President of the United States up in Canada talking about climate change. I mean, God, we just had the largest attack…on our own soil in Orlando. Why aren’t we talking about that? Who is talking about that? I mean, Fort Hood, Chattanooga, Boston, people forget about 9/11!” Fox News, 6/29/16

Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the house

Possible position: “I want to be the senior planner for the entire federal government, and I want a letter from you that says Newt Gingrich is authorized to go to any program in any department, examine it and report directly to the president.” Hill, 7/20/16

Views on climate change: Gingrich used to be in favor of taking action on climate change, even appearing in an ad on the subject with Nancy Pelosi and voicing support for a cap-and-trade carbon pricing system. He later called his participation in the ad “dumb” and opposed the cap-and-trade bill backed by Obama in 2009. Last year, Politico reported that Gingrich “said it should not be a given for politicians to assume that climate change is man-made. ‘I don’t think it should be a given. The truth is, I think we don’t know. There’s a difference between political science and science,’ he said.”

Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor

Possible positions: Secretary of State, secretary of Homeland Security

Views on climate change: “The president’s wrong in linking somehow by fixing climate change if he’s gonna fix it, he’s gonna fix terrorism. That’s absurd. There’s no connection between the two things. Where it’s like two different things. It’s like saying I’m gonna fix terrorism by curing cancer.” Fox News via CNS News, 12/2/15

Gov. Nikki Haley (S.C.)

Possible positions: Secretary of State

Views on climate change: “‘The Clean Power Plan is exactly what we don’t need,’ the governor said after addressing a gathering of the SC Electric Cooperatives at Wild Dunes Resort on the Isle of Palms. ‘This is exactly what hurts us. You can’t mandate utility companies which, in turn, raises the cost of power. That’s what’s going to keep jobs away. That’s what’s going to keep companies away.’ She added that officials in Washington ‘stay out of the way.’…’We need to be able to do our jobs and continue to recruit companies and recruit jobs without additional mandates,’ Haley said.” The Post and Courier, 6/3/14

Harold Hamm, oil and gas executive

Possible positions: Secretary of Interior, secretary of Energy

Views on climate change: “Obama imposed punitive regulations to stop this oil and gas renaissance, and in his administration’s very own words, they want to crucify America’s oil and natural gas producers…President Trump will release America’s pent-up energy potential, get rid of foreign oil, trash punitive regulations, create millions of jobs, and develop our most strategic geopolitical weapon: crude oil…Every time we can’t drill a well in America, terrorism is being funded…Climate change isn’t our biggest problem; it’s Islamic terrorism. Every onerous regulation puts American lives at risk.” Republican National Convention, 7/20/16

Bonus—Views on earthquake science: “Oil tycoon Harold Hamm told a University of Oklahoma dean last year that he wanted certain scientists there dismissed who were studying links between oil and gas activity and the state’s nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes, according to the dean’s e-mail recounting the conversation. Hamm, the billionaire founder and chief executive officer of Oklahoma City-based Continental Resources, is a major donor to the university, which is the home of the Oklahoma Geological Survey. He has vigorously disputed the notion that he tried to pressure the survey’s scientists. ‘I’m very approachable, and don’t think I’m intimidating,’ Hamm was quoted as saying in an interview with EnergyWire, an industry publication, that was published on May 11. ‘I don’t try to push anybody around.'” Bloomberg, 5/15/15

Jeffrey Holmstead, energy industry lobbyist

Possible position: EPA administrator

Views on climate change: Holmstead, an assistant EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, told a Senate committee in 2015: “Given the implementation schedule that EPA has proposed for the Clean Power Plan, it will be implemented almost entirely by the next administration. And when the next administration takes office in January 2017, it is virtually certain that the litigation over the legality of the CPP will still be going on, so that the new administration will need to decide whether to defend and implement the CPP as finalized under the Obama Administration…For legal, practical, and political reasons, it would be relatively easy for a new administration to modify or simply revoke the CPP altogether and start from scratch with a more legally defensive approach…The process that led to the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act is instructive. It shows what an administration can do—even when both Houses of Congress are controlled by the opposing party—to get legislation through Congress when such legislation is a priority for the President. In my view, it is a shame that the Obama Administration has not made this type of effort when it comes to climate change legislation and has instead pursued an ill-advised and almost certainly illegal regulatory approach.”

Laura Ingraham, radio host

Possible position: Press secretary

Views on climate change: “This entire effort the Paris climate negotiations is about setting up global rules of governance. Rules that will, if instituted—which we know they won’t be—but if ever instituted would mean that we have less control over our own destiny as a country than we do today. Because Congress will have limited ability to change any treaty. Again, I don’t think it’s going to happen. But if these rules should go into place, we should expect the same compliance from countries like China that we get from China in deals like the World Trade Organization and the World Trade Organization Treaty. So, if people want less sovereignty in the United States, less independence, less oversight, our congressional authority to be meaningful, then we should all be excited about what’s going on with 150 leaders in Paris. But this has nothing to do with terrorism. It has everything to do with bringing America’s economy down, hurting the fossil fuel industry, etc., etc.—one of the few sectors that’s actually growing jobs and still paying people decent wages in the United States. So forgive me if I’m not all hot and bothered by the Paris events.” Fox News via Media Matters, 12/1/15

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas)

Possible position: Secretary of Homeland Security

Views on climate change: “‘Within the Department of Homeland Security, more money, in fact, millions of dollars, are dedicated to climate change rather than combating what I consider to be one of the biggest threats to the homeland, and that’s the violent extremists radicalizing Islamist terrorists radicalizing over the Internet in the United States of America,’ McCaul said.…That is a very narrow comparison. It concerns only the Homeland Security Department and only programs designed to prevent Islamic extremists’ use of the Internet. Within that limited frame, McCaul’s comparison holds up. However, any complete analysis would show that federal departments and agencies spend significantly more money targeting terrorists than they do targeting climate change.” Politifact, 5/14/15

Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia attorney general

Possible position: EPA administrator

Views on climate change: “Morrisey has become one of the leading Attorneys General in the fight against President Obama’s overreaching, illegal EPA regulations. In February 2016, under Morrisey’s leadership, the Supreme Court halted implementation of Obama’s signature climate change initiative, the Clean Power Plan, in an unprecedented win for AG Morrisey and the 28 other state Attorneys General.” Morrisey campaign website, accessed 11/16/16

Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska

Possible positions: Secretary of Interior

Views on climate change: “I want people to be empowered to ask questions about what is being fed them from the scientific community, that something’s not making a whole lot of sense when it comes to inconsistent data that is being produced and being fed, especially to our children, when it comes to global warming or climate change—whatever they’re calling it today…It’s a problem right from the start when you’re led to believe that 97 percent of scientists all agree that there is a consensus on global warming.” Guardian, 4/15/16

Rick Perry, former governor of Texas

Possible positions: Secretary of Energy

Views on climate change: “I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think that there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that manmade global warming is what is causing the climate to change…The cost to the country and to the world of implementing these anti-carbon programs is in the billions, if not trillions, of dollars at the end of the day. And I don’t think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven and, from my perspective, is more and more being put into question.” Perry campaign speech via CBS News, 8/17/11

Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general

Possible position: EPA administrator, secretary of Interior

Views on climate change: “The EPA does not possess the authority under the Clean Air Act to accomplish what it proposes in the unlawful Clean Power Plan. The EPA is ignoring the authority granted by Congress to states to regulate power plant emissions at their source. The Clean Power Plan is an unlawful attempt to expand federal bureaucrats’ authority over states’ energy economies in order to shutter coal-fired power plants and eventually other sources of fossil-fuel generated electricity.” Pruitt press release, 7/1/15

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Look at All the Climate Change Deniers Vying for Jobs in the Trump Administration

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Court hears attacks on Obama’s big climate initiative

by LavadaMarsden Posted on September 28, 2016

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

President Obama’s signature climate change initiative had its day in court Tuesday, as lawyers for 27 states, nonprofit groups, and utility companies argued that it is unconstitutional.

The rule, known as the Clean Power Plan, would enforce a 32 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants by 2030 (compared with 2005 levels). As part of the implementation, the Environmental Protection Agency would require states with at least two coal-fired power plants to submit plans for emissions reductions. If a state chose not to submit an acceptable plan, the EPA would impose one on it. The plan was a critical piece of the Obama administration’s successful efforts to forge the landmark Paris climate agreement last year.

The administration is relying on a section of the Clean Air Act as justification for the regulations, arguing that the law, originally passed by Congress in 1970 and later amended, empowers the EPA to “protect public health and welfare” from pollutants — in this case, carbon emissions that are driving global warming.

But the Clean Power Plan’s path has not been an easy one. Even before the regulations had been finalized, opponents sued to block it — a move that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected last year. Opponents had more success once the final version of the rule was adopted. In a 5-4 decision in February, the Supreme Court issued an unusual stay, which prevented the rule from being implemented before it made its way through the courts. Yesterday’s arguments were the latest episode in the legal drama.

A panel of 10 federal judges heard the case in a marathon session that pitted the administration’s lawyers and environmental groups against a slate of opponents who argued the regulations exceed the EPA’s authority. West Virginia Solicitor General Elbert Lin charged that the rule would create a complex “new energy economy.” Others, such as attorney David Rivkin, who represents the state of Oklahoma, argued the Clean Power Plan intrudes on states’ rights to regulate their own electric grids. There were also several hours of highly technical arguments relating to inconsistent language in the House and Senate versions of a 1990 amendment to the Clean Air Act.

At a panel discussion on Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose state is part of the coalition suing to block the rule, said the Clean Power Plan “represents an unprecedented expansion of federal authority.”

Others, such as attorney Allison Wood, who represents utility industry groups, told the court that the EPA can’t regulate emissions from sources like power plants under one section of the Clean Air Act when it already does so under a different section.

But Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, questioned this “double regulation” argument, pointing to laws that require motorists to drive on the right side of the road while also following the speed limit.

On constitutional grounds, the plan has one unlikely critic: Laurence Tribe, a liberal Harvard lawyer and former mentor to Obama who is participating in the case on behalf of the opponents to the rule. During Tuesday’s hearing, Tribe argued the Clean Power Plan violates the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. If the Obama administration wants to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, he told the judges, “the solution is to go to Congress.”

But advocates say the Supreme Court has already determined that the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide. In the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA case, they note, the court found that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.

After a long day of arguments, supporters of the plan were optimistic. “I think it was a remarkable day,” said Howard Fox, counsel for Earthjustice, an environmental law organization that signed on to a motion in support of the Clean Power Plan, on a conference call with reporters.

Where will the fight over the Clean Power Plan end up, and what does it mean for Obama’s legacy on climate issues?

If the D.C. Circuit were to find that the EPA exceeded its authority, it would remand the case to a lower court and the “EPA would essentially redo the rule,” Joanne Spalding of the Sierra Club told Mother Jones at a briefing. That would leave the country’s climate regulations in the hands of an administration led by either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

Another pathway is to the Supreme Court. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who has led the charge against the Clean Power Plan, speculated at a panel discussion that if the current case doesn’t go his way, it could wind up at the Supreme Court in the fall of 2017. This time around, the result could be very different; Justice Antonin Scalia died in February shortly after casting one the deciding votes to put the regulations on hold. With the court now potentially split 4-4 on the issue, the fate of the Clean Power Plan could be tied to the ongoing fight over Scalia’s replacement.

The D.C. Circuit Court’s opinion in the case is expected to come out near the end of this year or early next year, according to David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports the plan.

Whichever way it goes, the stakes are high. As Brett Kavanaugh, one of the D.C. court’s most outspoken judges during the arguments, said, “This is a huge case.”

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Court hears attacks on Obama’s big climate initiative

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Trump gives his classic right-wing energy plan a scary historical name

by KatheriIVGI Posted on September 23, 2016

What’s in a name?

Trump gives his classic right-wing energy plan a scary historical name

By on Sep 23, 2016 12:51 pmShare

Donald Trump gave another speech on Thursday promoting his old energy ideas — not just the same ones he’s been talking about for months, but the same ones Republicans have been talking about for years. While the substance might be standard GOP fare, he’s given it a name that harkens back to a reactionary movement most Republicans would rather forget: the America First Energy Plan.

The phrase “America First” has a chilling history. It was a rallying cry in the 1930s for fascists, isolationists, and anti-Semites who didn’t want the United States to join World War II. Whether Trump intends it as a dog whistle to the far-right or not, the label is accurate: Trump is disregarding the needs of everyone outside of America (not to mention everyone inside America who isn’t in the fossil fuel business). Climate change is a global problem, and Trump wants to make sure the U.S. is not part of the global solution. On top of his plan to dramatically increase dirty energy production, he wants to pull the U.S. out of the international Paris climate agreement.

Lying about Clinton’s energy agenda

Trump added another new bit to his shtick on Thursday, while speaking at a fracking conference in Pittsburgh: He totally misrepresented Hillary Clinton’s energy agenda.

“She plans … the aggressive restriction of American energy production,” Trump said. “Her plan will help only her wealthy donors, and global special interests, who benefit from the rigged system. Hillary Clinton wants to put the coal miners out of work, ban hydraulic fracturing in most places, and extensively restrict and ban energy production on public lands and in most offshore areas.”

Does Clinton really want to make America as unenergetic as Jeb Bush? No. Trump’s caricature is filled with falsehoods.

Clinton does not propose to restrict American energy production. She plans to restrict American dirty energy production while increasing solar energy capacity by 700 percent — adding jobs to an industry that already employs more people than oil and gas.

She does not propose to ban fracking in most places — much to the consternation of many environmentalists. Rather, she proposes to regulate fracking to better protect public health and safety.

She does not propose to end energy production on public lands or offshore areas. She has pledged to reform fossil fuel leasing policies so companies have to pay a more fair price to taxpayers for what they extract from federal property. And she plans to increase wind and solar energy production on public land tenfold.

Whatever one thinks of Clinton’s energy agenda — climate activists think it doesn’t go far enough, conservatives think it’s bad for the economy — it’s just bizarre and nonsensical to claim it will only benefit “her wealthy donors.” Who are these titans of wind and solar energy Trump is talking about? Whoever they are, their ability to donate to campaigns and influence politics is much smaller than the oil, gas, and coal executives that Trump is sucking up to — like fracking magnate Harold Hamm, who even got a shout-out in Trump’s speech.

Changing his mind about the EPA

Trump made one more tweak to his agenda in his speech yesterday: He no longer wants to abolish the EPA. That’s a marked shift from his previous campaign rhetoric. “I will refocus the EPA on its core mission of ensuring clean air, and clean, safe drinking water for all Americans,” he said.

That might sound good, but Trump is still proposing to get rid of key regulations that make it possible for EPA to achieve that core mission. He pledged yet again to “eliminate” the Waters of the U.S. rule, which protects water supplies, and the Clean Power Plan, which would rein in not just climate pollution but the air pollution that directly harms people’s health. Essentially, he’s come around to the standard Republican position: keep the EPA, but don’t let it inconvenience business interests.

Despite the conventional wisdom that Trump represents a new, populist kind of Republican, his energy plans are the same old fossil fuel industry giveaways.

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Trump gives his classic right-wing energy plan a scary historical name

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Monsanto Just Made a Massive Mistake

by LeanneMeehan Posted on August 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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A couple of weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it had gotten an “unusually high number of reports of crop damage that appear related to misuse of herbicides containing the active ingredient dicamba.” Complaints of drooping and often dead crops appeared in no fewer than 10 states, the EPA reports. In Missouri alone, the agency says it has gotten 117 complaints “alleging misuse of pesticide products containing dicamba,” affecting more than 42,000 acres of crops, including peaches, tomatoes, cantaloupes, watermelons, rice, peas, peanuts, alfalfa, cotton, and soybeans.

The state’s largest peach farm, which lies near soybean-and-cotton country, has suffered massive and potentially permanent damage this year—and suspects dicamba drift as the culprit, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

What gives?

The trouble appears to stem from decisions made by the Missouri-based seed and pesticide giant Monsanto. Back in April, the company bet big on dicamba, announcing a $975 million expansion of its production facility in Luling, Louisiana. The chemical is the reason the company launched its new Roundup Ready Xtend soybean and cotton seeds, genetically engineered to withstand both dicamba and Monsanto’s old flagship herbicide, glyphosate (brand name: Roundup). Within a decade, the company wrote, the new GM crops will proliferate from the US Midwest all the way to Brazil and points south, covering as much as 250 million acres of farmland (a combined land mass equal to about two and a half times the acreage of California)—and moving lots of dicamba.

The plan is off to a rough start—which brings us back to those drooping crops in soybean and cotton country. The company elected to release Roundup Ready Xtend soybean and cotton seeds this spring, even though the EPA has not yet signed off on a new herbicide product that combines glyphosate and a new dicamba formulation. That was a momentous decision, because the dicamba products currently on the market are highly volatile—that is, they have a well-documented tendency to vaporize in the air and drift far away from the land they’re applied on, killing other crops. Monsanto’s new dicamba, tweaked with what the company calls “VaporGrip” technology, is supposedly much less volatile.

The trouble is that farmers have been planting glyphosate-tolerant cotton and soybeans for years, and as a result, are dealing with a mounting tide of weeds that have evolved to resist that ubiquitous weed killer. So they jumped at the new seeds, and evidently began dousing crops with old dicamba formulations as a way to knock out those glyphosate-tolerant weeds. Oops.

For its part, Monsanto says it expects the EPA to approve the new, improved dicamba formulation in time for the 2017 growing season, and that it never expected farmers to use old dicamba formulations on the dicamba-tolerant crops it released this year. If the VaporGrip formulation does indeed control volatization as promised, the drift incidents of 2016 will likely soon just be a painful memory for affected farmers. If not, they portend yet more trouble ahead for the PR-challenged ag giant.

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Monsanto Just Made a Massive Mistake

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EPA’s new rules are good for tech, and trucking

by SamZ114408 Posted on August 16, 2016

Trim Riggins

EPA’s new rules are good for tech, and trucking

By on Aug 16, 2016Share

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration just finalized new standards for the biggest busters out on the road. We’re talking about trucks: the gassy behemoths that, despite making up 5 percent of overall road traffic, push out 20 percent of automotive emissions.

This is a big deal — both for the troposphere and for the lungs of anyone who lives near a popular truck hangout, like a freeway or a port. (That includes lots of people of color and low-income communities.)

It’s also a win for companies working on energy efficiency tech. The science to improve trucks’ fuel efficiency with features like hydraulic hybrid brakes and more aerodynamic cab styling already exists. But because fuel is currently cheap, the trucking industry has been slow to adopt changes like these.

The new rules also close a widely-used loophole that truckers used to evade earlier air quality standards by taking old engines — that emit 20 to 40 times more nitrogen oxides and particulate matter than modern diesel engines — and building new trucks around them. Truckers have until 2021 to get their rigs into compliance with the rest of the new regulations, but any sneaky switcheroo’ed engines have to be out earlier — by January 1, 2018.

Buying trucks that comply with the new standards will cost more upfront but, writes EPA, will save money in the long haul — about $170 billion worth. So, dry your tears, Teddy Bear: If all goes according to plan, you’ll be swimming in cash instead of particulate emissions.

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EPA’s new rules are good for tech, and trucking

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Gold King Mine still leaking one year after spill

by TamaraN45j Posted on August 5, 2016

Yellow mine waste water from the Gold King Mine is seen in San Juan County, Colorado. August 7, 2015. REUTERS/EPA

gold rush

Gold King Mine still leaking one year after spill

By on Aug 5, 2016Share

One year ago, Environmental Protection Agency contractors inadvertently leached wastewater from an abandoned gold mine into the Colorado’s Animas River — turning it a lovely shade of brown.

It caused a shutdown of the popular recreational river for eight days and flowed as far as Lake Powell, which supplies much of the region’s water for drinking. Two thousand Navajo farmers and ranchers were unable to water or irrigate their crops after the accident, and officials with Navajo Nation declared an emergency in the wake of the accident.

Today, metal-laden water is still contaminating the river at 500 gallons a minute, Colorado Public Radio reports. The only improvement is that the polluted water is now getting filtered at a temporary treatment plant.

The Gold King Mine spill exposed an problem endemic to western U.S. There are 161,000 similar abandoned mines across 12 states, with an estimated 20 percent, or 33,000, polluting groundwater and environment.

The federal government has undertaken some actions in response to the spill, but the larger troubles remain. Republicans used the occasion to highlight the incompetence of federal bureaucrats; the Justice Department began a criminal inquiry into the spill; and the EPA delegated $3.7 million (and counting) in emergency response and water quality monitoring.

Little of this addresses the mines that are still there, are still dirty, and still threaten western water supplies — water that is becoming increasingly valuable as climate change and extended droughts dry up the West.

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Gold King Mine still leaking one year after spill

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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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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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Small-Town America Has a Serious Drinking-Water Problem

by GiaLhotsky1 Posted on June 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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On a sweltering day last July, a team of scientists stood before a crowded room of people from the tiny town of Sanders, Arizona, and showed them a photo of a dilapidated wooden shack covered by hole-filled tarps. This, the scientists explained, was the town’s water source.

Tonya Baloo, a longtime resident and mother of two, did a double take. “It looked like a Third World country,” she says. “I was like, ‘Is this Africa?'”

The well serving Sanders residents Chris Shuey

The researchers’ next image—a chart with a flat red line cutting through yellow bars—was even more worrisome. Tommy Rock, a Ph.D. candidate studying water contamination at Northern Arizona University, explained that the red line was the Environmental Protection Agency’s threshold for uranium allowed in public water systems: 30 micrograms per liter. The yellow bars represented uranium levels in Sanders’ water supply dating back to 2003. They hovered around 50 micrograms per liter.

For more than a decade, the chart showed, people in Sanders had been drinking contaminated water.

Residents listened, dumbfounded. Sanders sits on the edge of the Navajo Nation; uranium mines, relics of the Cold War, have long dotted tribal lands across the West. Long-term exposure to the heavy metal can cause kidney disease and cancer. But locals had never been notified of the contamination. Nor were they aware of the nearly 200 drinking-water violations that the local utility had amassed over the previous decade, ranging from uranium and bacterial contamination to failure to test the water.

“The initial betrayal,” Baloo says. “It was shocking.”

The meeting happened two months before researchers in Flint, Michigan, revealed that their city’s water was laced with lead. In both cases, curious scientists exposed years of drinking-water violations that affected predominantly poor, minority communities. (Most Sanders residents are Navajo and live on less than $20,000 per year.) But unlike urban Flint, Sanders is home to just 630 people and consists of a cluster of single-family homes, a gas station, a dollar store, two churches, and a trading post—all surrounded by miles of red rock and sage brush.

An aerial view of Sanders, Arizona Doc Searls/Flickr/Wikimedia Commons

The town is one of thousands of rural communities across the country where water quality has quietly evaded federal health standards for years. Many small utilities simply cannot afford advanced water treatment technology, says Jeff Griffiths, the former head of the EPA’s drinking-water division. (An inspection of the Sanders well in 2012, for example, found that “the owner pours an unapproved bleach product down the casing vent daily as the method of disinfection.”) According to EPA data, roughly 6 million Americans use one of 2,300 public water systems that qualify as “serious violators”—defined as having multiple, continuous, or serious health or reporting problems. Ninety-nine percent of those utilities serve fewer than 50,000 people. Together, they serve a population 25 times the size of Flint.

A week after Rock’s presentation, Sanders residents received a notice in the mail from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) informing them of the high uranium levels in the local water supply—a first since the contamination was reported to the state in 2003. Long-term exposure can increase the risk of kidney disease and cancer, it said, but the situation wasn’t an emergency. “You do NOT need to seek an alternate (for example, bottled or hauled) water supply,” it read. “The water remains safe to use until treatment is put into place.”

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Many residents, wary of the state’s assurances, avoided the water. Baloo brought her kids an hour away to her mom’s house for baths. Genevieve Lee, a 73-year-old retired teacher, resorted to eating canned food and taking sponge baths out of a bucket. She made 40-minute treks to Gallup, New Mexico, for water and often found herself wondering about the uranium’s impact. Did it contribute to her breast cancer in 2008? To her neighbor’s kidney disease?

Lee, Baloo, and others formed a water task force, petitioning for the town to connect to a nearby, well-maintained utility in the Navajo Nation. “All we think about is water,” Baloo told me this spring.

The hubbub led Sanders school system superintendent Dan Hute to test the schools’ water supply, which comes from a private well unaffiliated with Sanders’ water system; the water in Sanders elementary and middle schools was also contaminated. Hute tapped into school budgets to provide bottled water to roughly 500 students and 150 teachers. “I’ve gotten no help from anybody,” Hute told me earlier this spring. According to Rock, no local, state, or federal agency provided the town with bottled water or filters.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, utilities are required to notify their customers if water has contaminant levels above the EPA’s threshold. If they fail to do so, the law calls for the “primacy agency”—in Sanders’ case, the state—to intervene. After 30 days, the EPA steps in.

Though the policy sounds simple enough, the reality is far murkier. Dr. Bruce Macler, an EPA toxicologist who helped decide to tell Sanders residents that their water was safe, explains that when it comes to uranium, the feds have a standard in place. “It’s no joke,” he says. “That’s why we go after them if they exceed it. But it isn’t terribly worrisome if they’re a little over the level.” If the contaminant were an “acute toxicant”—say, giardia—being over the standard wouldn’t be tolerated, he explains. But “when you’re looking at something that takes a lifetime of exposure” to produce health effects and the benchmark is already conservative, Macler says, it doesn’t make sense to tell residents to use other water sources: “The stuff isn’t that risky.”

Many disagree. “It’s unbelievable to me that they would have such a cavalier, unconcerned attitude,” says Chris Shuey, a researcher at the Southwest Research and Information Center who studied Sanders’ water with Rock. “These people have been drinking this for years. It’s not a short-term exposure,” says Doug Brugge, a biologist at Tufts University who studies the impact of uranium. “I’m a little baffled by their lack of concern.” (An EPA spokeswoman says the agency was concerned about the contamination of Sanders’ water and was working on establishing an alternative source.)

State records show that over the past two decades, environmental regulators repeatedly approached the local utility’s owners, an elderly couple named Pat and Lillie Paulsell, about the poor water quality. (Pat maintained the well until his death in 2014, when Lillie took over the utility, Arizona Windsong Water Company. Lillie Paulsell declined to be interviewed for this article.) An inspection in 1995 found that Windsong wasn’t testing for bacterial or lead contamination. By 2002, the utility had risen to the top of the EPA’s “Significant Noncompliance” list due to a host of reporting and health problems. Yet, according to an ADEQ representative’s notes from that year, Pat Paulsell “continued to make no effort to comply other than to send me a package of analytical results, which I have not yet received.” In 2012, a state-commissioned water quality report noted live wiring on the floor of the well. Uranium contamination continued to be a “major problem.” In 2014, the utility paid a $1,000 penalty to the EPA for its violations—but the uranium levels continued to exceed federal standards.

The records also show that the Paulsells were struggling financially and unable to keep up with the growing number of required tests and treatment plans. “I don’t know what you mean by emergency operations plan. Also a microbiological sample plan,” Pat wrote to the ADEQ in 2001. “I have tried very hard to keep all samples done that are supposed to be done.” When an ADEQ representative asked if he had a copy of the rules for water utilities, Pat replied, “You people are always changing them!” In 2002, an inspector found that the couple’s “current health is poor.” Pat, 69, was using a wheelchair. In 2009, he faxed a handwritten letter along with water sample results. “It costs between $35 and $45 each month to send this water sample. The power bills have more than tripled in the last 3 years. I have worn out a ¾ ton new pickup just on the water co…I can’t continue to operate this co with this small income.”

“There are Sanders equivalents all over the country,” says Macler, the EPA toxicologist. “Small little communities that have limited ownership, no money, no resources.” Many, adds Griffiths, the former EPA drinking-water head, are unwilling to cooperate with state and federal regulators, which don’t have the financial capacity to force the matter. “We have a foolish system for how we deal with this stuff,” he says.

In early April, eight months after the state distributed a water advisory and more than a decade after the first reported uranium, Sanders residents got some good news: Arizona and the Navajo Nation agreed to let Sanders switch water sources to the nearby Navajo utility. Within the month, water from a new source was flowing through the old pipes, which will be replaced this summer.

“From my standpoint, this is more of a success than a failure,” Macler says. “Could it have been sooner? Yeah. Are we glad that it’s done? Yeah.”

“It’s a really big sigh of relief,” says Tonya Baloo, who’s now watering the trees in the yard and letting her kids bathe at home every once in a while. Her family still drinks from jugs of water she buys from Walmart. Maybe after the pipes are fixed, she says, they’ll once again start drinking from the taps.

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Small-Town America Has a Serious Drinking-Water Problem

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