Brief #46---Environment Policy Summary Scandals are swirling again for DOI Secretary Ryan Zinke, who just days ago compared Civil Rights Leader, Martin Luther King Jr. to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Now, however, the Department of Justice is considering the...
Brief #45---Environment Summary The official death toll from Hurricane Michael is at 26 and counting as of last week, as rescuers continue to find bodies, and reports say many are still missing. The future looks tenuous for the Florida area that was devastated by the...
Brief #44---Environment Policy Summary The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is changing shape. In the last week, the EPA has decided to change its rules on how it uses scientific studies, effectively deregulating public exposure to harmful toxins. Meanwhile, the...
Policy Summary The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met this past week in order to discuss the global effects of climate change. According to the new reports, gathered from over 6,000 scientific papers with almost 100 authors from 40 different...
Rollbacks appear to be the defining characteristic of the Trump administration, particularly with relation to environmental oversight. Last week, the Department of the Interior in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management decided to ease restrictions on leaking, venting and flaring methane from fossil fuel drilling on public lands, ostensibly saving the fossil fuel industry approximately $1.01 billion over the next 10 years. By contrast, the Obama era regulations, which have since been nixed, would have reduced methane emissions by 35%.
Summer in the northern hemisphere was brutal this year, and the indian summer continues to be so. Deadly heat waves struck Quebec, Sacramento and Tokyo between June to August of this year, all of which combined killed nearly 80 people and hospitalized thousands.
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Northern California is on fire. Throughout the summer, over 500,000 acres of Northern California has been up in flames, and has so far amounted in at least eight fatalities. One of the three massive fires has since been contained, but two are still burning, and the smoke generated is looming even as far as Oregon and Ohio. Many homes, schools and other structures are also reported to have been destroyed and it is unclear when the fires will die down.
The Trump administration has rolled back the Endangered Species Act, a policy that has been in place for the last 45 years having been put in place by Richard Nixon
On June 27th Justice Anthony Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court announced his retirement, and on July 9th President Donald Trump announced his candidate for replacement. Trump’s pick, former Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Brett Kavanaugh, has an unkind track record towards environmental regulations.
Amid months of investigation for as many as 19 scandals, Scott Pruitt resigned his post as the Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, July 5th. Many rejoiced that this enabler of deregulation had finally given up his position, but the administration has a very different story. Trump announced Pruitt’s resignation in a tweet where he thanked Pruitt for his service and congratulated him on an “outstanding job
In 2010, after the deadliest and most expensive offshore oil spill in U.S. history, the “Deepwater Horizon” spill, former U.S. president, Barack Obama, implemented a policy to ensure that a conservation council would advocate conservation and sustainable use of US waters. The Bureau of Ocean management called Obama’s policy,