A Climate Institute Publication
After a grueling ongoing conflict between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Pebble Limited Partnership over a Clean Water Act (CWA) permit, a settlement was finally agreed upon by both parties on Friday, May 12, 2017.
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Last Wednesday May 3, 2017, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) provided a statement regarding the beginning of the withdrawal of the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. Several scientific societies collaborated in writing a letter to President Trump explaining the importance of the WOTUS rule and protecting the country’s wetlands. The EPA has delivered a draft to the Office of Management and Budget for withdrawing the WOTUS rule.
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Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced Wednesday that the Obama-era methane emissions rule will be reconsidered, a regulation aimed at reducing the US’s impact on climate change by curbing oil and gas well emissions.
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Tom Steyer, president of NextGen Climate, said in a statement that Trump’s actions are “an assault on American values and they endanger the health, safety and prosperity of every American.” Concluding “Trump is deliberately destroying programs that create jobs and safeguards that protect our air and water, all for the sake of allowing corporate polluters to profit at our expense.”
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On Friday February 17, 2017 the senate confirmed President Trump’s nomination, Scott Pruitt, as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Born in Kentucky, Edward Scott Pruitt began his career in 1998 as a member of the Oklahoma Senate. During his time he held the position as majority whip from 2001-2003. He also served as Republican assistant floor leader until his departure in 2006 to run an unsuccessful lieutenant governor campaign. Then in 2010 he was elected attorney general of Oklahoma. But it was during his tenure as Oklahoma’s AG that has received the most scrutiny.
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Before his nomination for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson was the head of Exxon Mobil, “the largest publicly traded international oil and gas company,” according to its website. In the past, Exxon Mobil has been accused of covering up data that showed the risks of climate change, which has raised concerns among environmentalists who believe that Secretary Tillerson will not work towards mitigating the effects of climate change. Exxon Mobil has denied the allegations.
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Despite a strong emphasis on future deregulation and rollbacks on environmental protection there remained a general consensus of extreme uncertainty amongst panelists. While touching upon Trump’s conundrum of simultaneous promotion of coal and fracking, Kurtz summarized by saying, “Trump has no fixed ideology besides self-regard.”
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“I think that the environmental movement has been proclaiming doom right around the corner since it was founded in the late 1960s,” he said during and appearance on C-SPAN last year. “It’s how they fund the environmental movement. It’s how they attract political support, by saying we have this crisis.”
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Photo by AgnosticPreachersKid/CC BY-SA 3.0 Article by Sally Yi With many of its impacts now visible, climate change
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By placing a value on the Earth’s goods and services that we would otherwise access for free, these become integrated into the market such that we are forced to think the cost of our impact on the environment.
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