Your average second-grader knows that 1,300 is not the same as 50,000…..and that 400 is not the same as 7,000. But the man who heads the US EPA evidently does not know this. EPA chief Scott Pruitt was all over the airwaves the last few days, defending the United States’…
President Trump’s decision to abandon America’s commitment to the Paris Climate Change Accord is just the latest horrible environmental decision that he has made. Here are just some of the others: Trump named as head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, a lackey for the petroleum industry who has spent his…
Get ready for a lot more of this. Last September, the Obama EPA issued a new rule limiting the levels of air pollution that would be allowed in the states. The idea was to save lives and health, because industrial air pollution is well-documented to threaten both. Wisely, the rule…
This blog is dedicated primarily to environmental issues, and so over the last four months, I have blogged with alarm and sadness and sometimes even anger as our new President has done everything within his power to dismantle the EPA–which is the primary federal agency for the protection of public…
The other shoe is dropping. We learned last week that EPA chief Scott Pruitt was firing his agency’s scientists—the ones who review scientific evidence and determine whether, for example, humans can tolerate less contamination in their drinking water than previously thought, or certain pesticides do damage to children’s developing brains,…
Who is Donald Trump trying to impress with his demands to slash spending on scientists and scientific research, and his twitter-blizzard attacks on established science (climate change, as but one of many examples)? In the environmental field in which I work, the results of research studies done by federally-funded scientists…
The politicians that we send to Washington enjoy the greatest healthcare in the world. If they or their spouses or kids get sick, they have immediate access to the finest doctors and hospitals, and the best and most advanced medicines, treatments, and therapies. They will never have to worry that…
A recent article titled “Righting Civil Wrongs” sadly describes how the poor, minority residents of communities throughout the United States have been left with no choice but to sue their government (the US EPA, specifically). Years ago, these residents formally claimed that they were the victims of environmental racism because…
More than perhaps anything else he does, a president’s budget proposal tells us what he thinks is important. By that measure, President Trump’s just proposed massive budget cuts for the EPA tell us that Trump does not value the EPA mission of ensuring clean air and water for Americans, and…
This week, the U.S. Senate votes on whether to approve President Trump’s choice, Scott Pruitt, to head the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”). Why should every Senator in the building vote “No”? Let me ask you this: Would it be OK with you if a lawyer for the world’s largest oil…