President-elect Donald Trump settled on notorious climate change denier Myron Ebell. The decision rattled climate activists—see Julia Lurie's interview with Bill McKibben and David Roberts and Brad Plumer on Vox. But it isn't just greenhouse gas emissions that are likely to get a free ride under an Ebell-influenced EPA. Farm chemicals, too, would likely flow unabated if Ebell's agenda comes to dominate Trump's
Now, we have President Trump, who wants to put a known coal lobbyist, Andrew Wheeler, into an executive position at the EPA. Even though, he signed an executive order to limit lobbying influence in government and “drain the swamp”, but puts people in power who favor energy industries and want to sacrifice environmental regulations (Chow, 2017). Wheeler has worked in government before, as an EPA staffer and a Republican staff member, and worked on every major piece of environmental and energy-related legislation over the last decade. If Wheeler and others like him are put into these executive positions, they will use their power to regulate policies, so it will look more favorably at reducing environmental regulations, and supporting energy
The political climate at this time, and remains, turbulent. Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, and his campaign was built upon making America great again. The long and short of this idea is that 20th century industry was suffering in our 21st century world, and Trump would deregulate the government and promote industry. One of Trump’s most pivotal decisions, despite growing international movements to prioritize climate change, was to select Scott Pruitt as the 14th administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The timing of “Scott Pruitt And The Environment” was likely to diffuse any center-right concerns that the current administration was marching towards far-right ideologies; in other words, Epstein sought to console Hoover Institute readership.
Christine Todd Whitman chose to write this op-ed months into the Trump presidency at a time when many natural disasters plague the country. In it she addresses both the administration and her fellow Republicans, many of whom do not view climate change as a threat. Whitman’s principal grievance with Scott Pruitt, the current director of the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.), is his creation of a “red team” to research an opposing view to the scientific consensus on climate change. In her op-ed, Christine Todd Whitman condemns the way Scott Pruitt runs the E.P.A. and tries to convince the reader that climate change is a tangible threat. Whitman makes it clear that her criticism is not that of a lay person or a contrarian but comes from experience and a common worldview.
My great-grandfather mined in coal mines in Nitro, West Virginia for years. My great uncle currently works at a factory where he is only limited to do certain aspects of his job due to recent EPA regulations restricting what the factory can do due to the factory producing chemicals within the air that is harmful to the environment. Presidential candidate Donald Trump has a plan to combat these unnecessary EPA regulations stated within the following quote “The current Administration, and particularly its EPA, seems not to care. Its Clean Power Plan — the centerpiece of the President’s war on coal — has been stayed by the Supreme Court. We will do away with it altogether.” Donald Trump and the Republican Party understands that the effort to protect the environment has gone too far with extreme measures as he states in this quote “We will end the war on coal and the war on miners.” The idea of preserving my great-grandfather’s hard work, along with my great uncle’s career drives me to the polls because the government is attempting to help them in theory, but just as recently stated, have gone too far in their efforts to protect the environment and thus I must stand up and go to the polls this November to save coal along with my family’s hard
In Jan. 2011, the EPA decided to veto the dumping of waste from the Spruce No. 1 Mine. But the agency’s efforts have so far been rebuffed by the courts as an overreach: Under the weird legal regime that governs mining, it’s the Army Corps of Engineers, not the EPA, which has the ultimate say-so over those permits. In 2012, the D.C. district court ruled that EPA lacked authority to veto the permit after the Corps had issued it. However, in fact EPA's decision is based on evidence from scientific research on serious environmental harm from mining. In May 2013, a coalition of Appalachian and environmental groups petitioned the EPA to set a numeric water quality standard under the Clean Water Act to protect streams from pollution caused by mountaintop removal mining . They claimed that “State politics and industry pressure have so far failed to end this pollution without such a standard and more and more streams and communities who rely on those waters are left vulnerable. We need EPA to act now.” The EPA’s authority over the Clean Water Act in respect to Spruce Mine No. 1 was finally affirmed by the Supreme Court in March 2014.
The election of 2000 took place during a time that was mostly peaceful, unemployment rates were historically low, but however, there were a record number of terrorist threats (Muhlhausen). Despite all of these headlining topics presidential candidate Al Gore and Vice President Joe Lieberman were far more concerned about global climate change (“Al”). Gore was, and still, is very passionate about this topic (“Al”, 9). He has challenged the two biggest polluters in the world, China and The United States to, “Make the boldest move in climate change.” Figure 5
Recently, a contractor working for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unintentionally released 3 million gallons of toxic mine waste into the Animas River in the Mountain West state of Colorado. Right now, people in the US are debating the efficacy of the EPA (the right-wing is using the spill as anti-government propaganda) and the noxious aftermath the spill will undoubtedly have on local economies, communities and ecosystems.
McCarthy accomplished plentiful, as she encouraged new rules for cleaner fuels and cars, and desired to cut carbon pollution from existing power plants, (EPA, 2017). This makes logical sense given her background and desire to make a change in air pollution. "On February 17, 2017, the United States Senate confirmed Scott Pruitt as the 14th Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [under President Donald Trump]," (EPA, 2017). Pruitt is a controversial administrator. According to CBS news, "Pruitt has embarked on record-setting rollbacks," (2017). Many individuals view this poorly because he is changing concepts that are incredibly important in environmental safety. In conclusion, the history of the EPA expresses how much the agency has achieved in a whole.
The facts of this article is that a man named Myron Ebell was the leader of a foundation that persuaded Trump to pull out of the Accord. For nearly two decades, he worked for the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group centered around the purpose to put doubt into people’s minds about the dangers of global warming. From coal and oil companies, the group received $11 million in donations. Edell and several other members of the coalition were
Recently, a contractor working for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unintentionally released 3 million gallons of toxic mine waste into the Animas River in the Mountain West state of Colorado. Today, people in the US are debating the efficacy of the EPA (the right-wing is using the spill as anti-government propaganda) and the toxic aftermath the spill will undoubtedly have on local economies, communities and ecosystems. So far, the spill has "contaminated the Animas River, San Juan River, and the Colorado River in Utah."
Bush campaigned for the 2000 election, he explicitly opposed Kyoto as it “would cause serious harm to the US economy” (Borger, 2001). The international issue of global warming was thusly labeled as something that could be ignored in favor of local economic profit, and emission reduction was assumed to be impossibly expensive.
I agree. Over the next four years we will have to take environmental protection into our own hands, especially mitigating climate change. There have already been reports that the climate change webpage on Whitehouse.gov has been taken down and replaced with the Trump Administration’s “America First” energy plan.
By coming into the 2016 election race as both an environmentalist and activist Jill Stein tears apart the normal expectations, we hold in a candidate and gives voters a new side to consider as the representative of the Green party.Her fight for the environment began when her job as a Practicing Physician made her aware of “the links between toxic exposures and illness emerging in the 1990s”(Jill2016 Exploratory Committee). Since then Stein has been an unquestionable advocate for the protection of our environment. Her dedications to her beliefs and willingness to fight for them gives her supporters a feeling of hope in a greener future and makes those who are uninterested in environmental issues to wonder what the fuss is all about.
In the aughts, as a director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, he worked to kill a cap-and-trade bill proposed by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman; in 2012, when the conservative American Enterprise Institute held a meeting about the economics of a possible carbon tax, he asked donors to defund it. It’s possible, of course, to oppose cap-and-trade or carbon taxes in good faith—and yet, in recent years, Ebell’s work has come to center on lies about science and scientists. Today, as the leader of the Cooler Heads Coalition, an anti-climate-science group, Ebell denies the veracity and methodology of science itself. He dismisses complex computer models that have been developed by hundreds of researchers by saying that they “don’t even pass the laugh test.” If Ebell’s methods seem similar to those used by the tobacco industry to deny the adverse health effects of smoking in the nineteen-nineties, that’s because he worked as a lobbyist for the tobacco
Look around. Every day, everyone will witness some sort of carbonic emission in some form dispersing into the atmosphere. You hear enough about it on the news, whether you care or not. However, the question lingers: is it even that big of a deal? Most likely, if you are a Republican, you will say that Democrats are blowing the whole climate change situation out of the water, or that the warming of our earth is completely natural. Notice how they switched it from global warming to climate change; that is because their previous assumptions and models have not been completely accurate, right? On the other hand, if you are a Democrat, you are most likely seething over the statements you just read and want to do anything you can to prevent this possible catastrophic disaster. 97% percent of climate scientists agree that Climate Change is here and now, caused by all of us… right? Democrats are also more likely to target and blame carbon emissions on the rising temperatures. Nevertheless, William McDonough, a famous urban planner, says that targeting carbon is a purely political move. Further, carbon should be a useful resource for humans, and an imbalanced carbon cycle is to blame. In fact, McDonough claims this imbalance is the result of poor and inadequate urban designing. Are any climate change believers right? Or are Donald Trump and friends correct in pointing the finger at the problem and saying, “wrong!” First and foremost, let us explore the partisan views on the issue.