Trump

Trump/Pruitt War on Science is Going to Hurt Us, Badly

June 8, 2017 | Shawn Collins

Over these last few days since President Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord, he and his aides-most prominently, EPA chief Scott Pruitt-have been unwilling to answer a simple question: “Does the President think that climate change is a hoax?”

However, for as important as this question is, it is unnecessary. Why? Because we already know the answer. And the answer is that Trump and Pruitt do not believe in global warming. In fact, it’s even worse than that. These guys do not believe in science. They do not accept that science has any role to play in environmental decision-making.

We know this because their contempt for science has been at the root of every decision they have made: from pulling out of the Paris deal; to insisting that the EPA’s budget be slashed by a third; to firing EPA scientists and pulling scientific information off the EPA’s website; to wanting to cut almost half the resources currently being used to clean up the country’s most dangerously contaminated (“Superfund”) sites; to putting back on the market a pesticide already proven (by EPA scientists, no less) to damage children’s brains.

Pruitt Lied About Coal Industry Job Creation

June 6, 2017 | Shawn Collins

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’ backing out of the Paris climate change accord by saying that the decision was necessary to support coal industry job creation. As statistical evidence to support this, Pruitt claimed:

Trump’s Abandonment of Pollution Victims is Immoral

June 5, 2017 | Shawn Collins

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 legal career arguing that the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have the power to protect the environment. To witness Pruitt in action is to watch an idiot–who was put in place by Trump, not just because he is an idiot, but because he is the oil industry’s idiot–who will make you believe that he begins each day wondering, “What can I do for oil companies today?”
Trump and Pruitt have both publicly toyed with the idea of eliminating the EPA altogether, and recently proposed to cut its budget by 31%–greater than that for any other federal agency.
They want to cut by almost 50% the already grossly inadequate funds dedicated to cleaning up the country’s most contaminated and dangerous sites (“Superfund” sites)
They cynically defend these cuts by promising that the states’ environmental agencies will “pick up the slack” and “are in a better position to do the work anyway”, even though they know this is a lie. Most of the states do not have the money or competence to do the things that the EPA does, and many of them are on record saying so.
They have pulled down from the EPA’s website truthful scientific information that the petroleum companies did not want there.
They have withdrawn EPA’s previous ban of a pesticide (“chlorpyrifos”), even though years of scientific study proved that it threatens young children’s developing brains.
They fired EPA scientists whose job it was to keep the agency focused on its mission of protecting the public’s health.

These decisions reveal a level of ignorance and cruelty that was unthinkable until Trump came along. Environmental protection is a moral issue, above all else. Because, while in a general sense all of us are the victims of pollution, and of the wars over a lack of water and food that rampaging climate change is already provoking, the truth is that those most acutely threatened are the poor, the politically powerless, and, especially, their children. They are the ones who get sick and die, or have shortened life spans, or must live (if they are so lucky to live at all) with starvation, debilitating cancers and chronic respiratory disease…..because decisions such as Trump’s announce that these human beings are not deserving of the same standard of environmental protection as everyone else.

Trump’s decisions are immoral. Because they are made by our elected leader–and because the rest of the world understandably believes that he speaks for Americans–these decisions declare that, as a country, America is abandoning those who suffer most from pollution, and are least able to defend themselves against it.

Will President Trump Listen to Pope Francis on the Importance of Protecting the Environment?

May 29, 2017 | Shawn Collins

When Pope Francis met with President Trump at the Vatican this past week, Francis gave him a copy of his 2015 Encyclical, which passionately argued that the environment is God’s gift to mankind, to benefit all mankind, and therefore that the powerful must not exploit it for their selfish purposes.

Crafty guy, that Pope.

He no doubt is well aware that the President is the agent of the worst environmental exploiters and despoilers that the world has ever known-oil companies-and accordingly has his administration in overdrive to crush the environmental protections that have saved lives and health, especially those of poor minorities and children.

From Gutting the EPA to His War on Science to Trying to Kill Health Care for Millions to Handing Our Classified Secrets to the Russians: Trump is Not Fit to Be President

May 16, 2017 | Shawn Collins

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 health in this country. Families that I have represented, as well as countless hundreds of thousands of others, are alive and in good health today because the EPA takes seriously its job to warn us as to how dangerous certain industrial chemicals really are; notifies neighborhoods when those chemicals have invaded their air or drinking water, and forces polluters to clean them up.

Trump has also claimed global warming to be a “hoax”, abandoning our role as natural leaders on this important issue, and suddenly consigning the US to the status of a third world back-bencher on the issue perhaps most threatening to the future of mankind. He has appointed to head the EPA a dedicated stooge for the world’s most aggressive polluters (Scott Pruitt), who has joined Trump in discrediting and even firing scientists working for the federal government who have devoted their professional lives to making us all safer.

There has been an almost casual cruelty to Trump’s having done all of this, and so quickly, without even a glancing consideration afforded the millions of Americans–children, first among them–whose health and futures are now endangered because of these blindingly ill-advised actions.

Trump/Pruitt Fire Top EPA Scientists

May 7, 2017 | Shawn Collins

The oil industry hack (Scott Pruitt) who was appointed by President Trump to head the EPA has just quietly fired half the members of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board. This is the group of highly-regarded and dedicated scientists who determine, for example, the dangers to human health threatened by the chemicals that the oil industry and others force into our environment. It is not clear at this moment whether Pruitt plans to not replace the members of the Science Advisory Board at all-which would be logical, since Trump and Pruitt are openly hostile to science-or to replace the scientists with frauds who, for example, deny that pesticides harm children and that petroleum industrial pollution has anything to do with global warming. It’s (yet another) sad day for human health and the environment in America.

Firing scientists who make decisions based on scientific evidence smacks of Galileo being convicted of suspected heresy for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun. The scary thing is that, while Galileo was condemned for telling scientific truths in 1633, Pruitt did the same thing this past weekend. Almost 400 years later. Maybe Pruitt has found some nut in a lab coat who will say that Galileo was wrong, after all, and deserved to be convicted.

Don’t laugh.

Will the Threat of Vapor Intrusion be Ignored by Trump and Pruitt?

March 17, 2017 | Shawn Collins

Will President Trump and the man he appointed to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, rig our system for determining which sites are the most environmentally dangerous in the country by ignoring the threat of vapor intrusion that these sites pose to human beings living near them?

Sadly, there are many thousands of industrial sites around the US that are badly contaminated. These are sites where, years ago, companies dumped, spilled, or buried toxic chemicals. The key question for each of these sites is: does it threaten human health? Can its dangerous chemicals travel in water or air to where people live and work?

For years, the US has evaluated these contaminated sites to determine which pose the greatest threat to Americans, and therefore which deserved the greatest attention and resources for getting cleaned up. The most contaminated sites appear on the “Superfund National Priorities List.” They are often referred to as “Superfund” sites.

Trump’s Massive EPA Budget Cuts Give the ‘OK’ to Pillaging the Environment

March 16, 2017 | Shawn Collins

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 in fact that he believes we have been too harsh on the corporate polluters whose behavior deprives us of those things. Stated bluntly, the President is trying to disband the environmental police. Polluters should be licking their chops.

It is impossible to reach any other conclusion when we review what Trump proposes to do to the EPA’s funding:

How Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt are Going to Hurt Pollution Victims

February 20, 2017 | Shawn Collins

It’s hard to say what’s worst about Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s choice to head the EPA. Among the choices are:

·He’s a paid shill for big oil companies who masqueraded as a public servant, i.e., the Attorney General of Oklahoma.

·He used his public office to do what big oil and other polluters wanted him to do. He sued the EPA 14 times, alleging that the agency didn’t have the right to try to restrict pollution.