The Trump administration has a clear economic objective: deregulate. Loosening regulations on industries, the White House believes, will lead to faster growth and more jobs. This is the stated reason for pulling the U.S. from the international climate accord, and the economic justification for seeking to rescind the EPA Clean Power Plan that limits carbon emissions from plants. By Jeremi […]
We have big news to close out a remarkable week of highs (Michael Bloomberg re-investing in the Beyond Coal campaign) and lows (Scott Pruitt’s announcement of a Clean Power Plan repeal): half the coal plants in the US are now announced to retire. Today, Luminant Energy announced it will close two of the nation’s largest and dirtiest coal […]
Trump’s refusal to recertify the nuclear agreement with Iran does exactly the opposite of what Trump and Sen. Tom Bomb-bomb-bomb Cotton pretend. It does not weaken any chances of Iran building a Bomb, something the leaders there have said for more than a decade that they are not pursuing. It does the opposite. By Meteor Blades While […]
The Trump administration is slowly filling positions below the cabinet officer level in the “mission agencies” of the federal government (e.g., EPA, NOAA , Interior, DOE, etc. whose job it is to implement a specific set of statutory mandates). The appointed individuals are leading day-to-day decision-making on policies from public health and safety to environmental protection to […]
The wild and unspoiled northeastern corner of Alaska known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been protected from development for more than half a century, but that’s never stopped oil and gas companies from wanting to drill there. On several occasions, they’ve come dangerously close to succeeding. But now, thanks to the chaos of […]
A nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just been announced and follows the pattern of putting conflicted business leaders in charge of agencies. As a former NOAA scientist and manager, it was particularly troubling to me that two nominees this week to lead my former agency fit this disturbing pattern. President Trump nominated Barry […]
Yesterday, the EPA took a first formal step in repealing the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), a regulation designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by approximately 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is a terribly irresponsible decision. Recent ferocious storms, intensified by warming oceans and air, remind us of […]
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a proposal today to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan—continuing its pattern of putting ideology over science, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The purported rationale for this proposal is that the Clean Power Plan is unlawful, a position that is directly contrary to what the […]
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and President Trump have made no secret about their intent to stop and reverse progress on addressing climate change, so there’s every reason to expect that their revised Clean Power Plan will be fatally flawed and compromised. Here’s how we’ll be evaluating it. By Rachel Cleetus Lead economist and climate policy manager, Union […]
We are intimately familiar with all the politicians who feed at the trough of Koch Brothers’ money, yet are always carrying on about how government shouldn’t pick winners and losers. That is just so much eyewash designed to bamboozle the weak-minded. In reality, they insist government pick winners (them) and losers (everyone else). Pruitt’s trashing […]
Ignoring the future of the planet, the health of the people, and the job growth potential of renewable energy, Environmental Protection Agency-hating EPA chief Scott Pruitt will sign a draft rule Tuesday repealing the Clean Power Plan (CPP) that was designed by the Obama administration to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s power plants. Pruitt, a climate-science […]
Scott Pruitt recently announced the repeal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), a landmark climate change rule which would have dramatically cleaned up the way we produce energy. To understand why Reform Judaism opposes the repeal and the impact of the decision, it is important to know some of the history behind the CPP. The Clean Power Plan is […]
We are profoundly disappointed in the announcement today by Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that the agency would formally begin the roll-back of the Clean Power Plan, which required utilities to reduce their carbon pollution. The Clean Power Plan had strong support from pro-life Christians; nearly 230,000 pro-life Christians signed our […]
As storms and wildfires besiege our nation, Donald Trump and his EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will announce Tuesday their intention to repeal the Clean Power Plan, the critical climate action plan set in motion during the Obama administration that will save lives and money. As yet another hurricane slammed into our country, the spectacle of […]
President Donald Trump’s nominee as deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency lobbied for the biggest U.S. coal mining company, whose employees were the president’s biggest source of campaign contributions. By Jonathan Salant (Displayed with Permission from NJ.com) Andrew Wheeler, a principal with Faegre Baker Daniels Consulting, was registered to lobby for Murray Energy until August, Senate records show. […]