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Trump on Earth

Tracking the latest environment-related shenanigans from Trump & his allies.
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Now displaying: Page 3
Dec 14, 2018

When President Trump started his tenure he promised to repeal something called the ‘Waters of the U.S.’ rule. And this week he made good on that promise.

The revised definition of “Waters of the United States” eliminates protections for half of the nations wetlands and nearly a fifth of streams.

On this episode, we spoke with Ariel Wittenberg, who covers the Clean Water Act for E&E News, about the major changes to the Obama-era rule and their implications.

Nov 9, 2018

President Donald Trump’s performance and policies were front and center in many races across the country--whether candidates were for or against them--and the environment was on the ballot, too...in some cases, literally. A least nine states had ballot initiatives focused on environmental issues from banning offshore drilling to ramping up renewals. To get a post-election take on how the environment played into the midterm elections--and what’s next--we talked to George Cahlink, congressional reporter for E&E News.

Oct 31, 2018

Historically, polls have shown that environmentalists are terrible at voting. In the 2014 midterm election, more than 15 million environmentalists didn't show up on Election Day. And to be clear, all of them were already registered and already committed to environmental issues. So why are they so bad at voting? And will they turn out in the midterm elections?

We dig into the topic with Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the non-partisan organization, Environmental Voter Project. He has a plan for getting environmentalists to the polls on November 6th.

Oct 17, 2018

President Trump says he'll look into a recent UN Climate Change report that predicted we have 12 years to drastically lower our carbon footprint or else the world will witness catastrophic impacts of climate change. He did this as his EPA is actively scaling back Obama-era regulations that would have cut back on America's carbon pollution. A lot of that work has been done in concert with lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry, including some who now work at the EPA. We know this in part thanks to the work of Eric Lipton an investigative reporter for The New York Times. We caught up with Lipton at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference in Flint, Michigan.

Oct 10, 2018

You’ve probably heard by now that, according to a new UN report, the world has just over a decade to get climate change under control before it’s too late. And the report says we need a profound transformation to get there.

The report has got us thinking about an episode we aired last year about what life on Earth could look like with the worst case scenario. 

David Wallace-Wells wrote an article last summer entitled “The Uninhabitable Earth.” It was the most widely read article in the online history of New York Magazine. Its imagined future was so grim, it spawned response articles like “Are we as doomed as that New York Magazine Article Says?” in the Atlantic Magazine.

On this episode, we talk to Wallace-Wells, to find out -- is it really as bad as all that?

Oct 4, 2018

Today we're bring you an episode of a podcast we've been enjoying lately. Democracy Works, produced by Penn State's McCourtney Institute for Democracy, aims to rise above the daily news grind and take a broader look at issues impacting democracy — which can be just about anything. If you’re looking for partisan bickering or hot takes on the news, this is not the podcast for you.

This episode is an interview with one of the most famous and vocal climate scientists. Michael Mann was on one of our earliest Trump on Earth episodes, but this conversation with him is a different take. We hope you enjoy it.

You can learn more about their podcast at democracyworkspodcast.com or search "Democracy Works" wherever you get your podcasts. 

 

 

Sep 19, 2018

This administration is hell bent on dismantling environmental and human health protections, but judges are pushing back on Trump's deregulatory agenda in sometimes rapid fire succession.

Sep 6, 2018

People of faith are joining the ranks of the People Climate Movement, which takes to the streets this weekend demanding action. One religious leader tells us why climate change is becoming a top priority.

Fletcher Harper is an Episcopal priest and the executive director of GreenFaith, a member organization of the People's Climate Movement. 

 

Aug 9, 2018

Coal was the engine of the Industrial Revolution and employed nearly 1.2 million people in Britain at its height. But the UK has gone more than 1,000 hours without using coal to generate electricity this year - the longest streak since Thomas Edison opened the country’s first coal power station in 1882. How did they do it? Our guest is Carolyn Beeler who covered this story for PRI's The World. 

Jul 12, 2018

Less than a week after the announcement that Justice Anthony Kennedy would retire, President Trump nominated DC Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh as Kennedy’s replacement. In this episode, we learn more about Kavanaugh's environmental record and what cases he'd be weighing in on if confirmed. Our guest is Melissa Powers, a law professor and director of the Green Energy Institute at Lewis & Clark Law School in Oregon.

Professor Powers also talks about Justice Kennedy’s environmental legacy.Kennedy was the swing vote in Massachusetts v. EPA, considered the most consequential ruling on climate change. Without his vote, we might still be fighting to have CO2 recognized as a pollutant at all. 

 

Jul 11, 2018

For months on end, Pruitt seemed to defy the laws of gravity at the EPA, maintaining his job through more than a dozen scandals. But Pruitt’s term has ended after it was reported that President Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly--presumably at the president’s behest--asked Pruitt for his resignation. 

So the big question is--why now? And, importantly, what happens next?

On this episode Reid Frazier talks with Zack Colman, a reporter with E&E News

Jun 28, 2018

When Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act on December 28, 1973, it made the United States the only nation on Earth to declare a basic right of existence for species other than our own. Currently, the Act protects more than 1,600 species across the country. Now, the landmark legislation is being targeted by industry, with support from the GOP. What happens next could determine the fate of hundreds of endangered species. 


On this episode, we talk about the future of the Endangered Species Act with Jennifer Kahn. She wrote an article published in The New York Times magazine earlier this year titled, Should Some Species be Allowed to Die Out?

Jun 14, 2018

Earlier this month, Scott Pruitt gave a big gift to the chemical industry in the form of narrowing how the EPA will determine the health risks posed by chemicals. Is it a policy change that could prove deadly?

May 30, 2018

Before he was EPA administrator, before he was Oklahoma's attorney general, before he was even a state senator, Scott Pruitt was an unknown attorney in the suburbs of Tulsa, Oklahoma. What do Scott Pruitt's early days in public life tell us about his beliefs and motivations as he sets about dismantling EPA regulations?

On this episode, we talk to two reporters who dug into this question to find out more about the man President Donald Trump picked to lead the EPA. Joe Wertz is a reporter for State Impact Oklahoma and Tom Dreisbach is a producer for the NPR podcast Embedded.

May 10, 2018

From its inception, science has been at the core of the EPA’s mission. It’s used science about the health effects of industrial pollution to make our air and water cleaner. But EPA administrator Scott Pruitt wants to limit what kinds of research the agency can use when making regulations. To that end, he has introduced the Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science rule. Transparency--sounds pretty good, right? But with this new rule, the agency would limit what kinds of research it can use when making regulations. EPA scientists would no longer be allowed to use studies that don’t make their raw data available to the public. That includes most public health studies because these often use confidential patient information that is generally shielded from public view.

On top of that, the rule would exempt certain types of industry-funded science. This has many scientists furious. Nearly 1,000 of them signed a letter calling the proposal a way to run “political interference in science-based decision making.”

To learn more about this issue, we turned to someone who ran a big science program at the EPA. Bernard Goldstein was assistant administrator for research and development at the agency during the Reagan administration. He’s now a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health.

Apr 11, 2018

First class flights, pricey office furniture, a soundproof booth and a security detail the size of a small police department. And don’t forget a rented room inside a condo owned by a lobbyist’s wife. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is embroiled in a series of concentric ethics scandals, and it’s led to speculation about his future there.

Today we ask how Scott Pruitt got into his current situation, why he still has a job at EPA, and whether the scandals will impede his attempts to dismantle environmental regulations.

Our guests are NPR’S Rebecca Hersher and Jennifer Ludden, and the New Republic's Emily Atkin.

Apr 4, 2018

The Trump administration says it wants to open up nearly all of the country’s oceans to oil and gas drilling. So what will this mean for communities around the country that depend on our coasts for their livelihood? What will this mean for our oceans?

 

Mar 21, 2018

More than 60 percent of Alaska is owned by the federal government. That's 225 million acres; a plot of land bigger than Texas. So if any state is going to be impacted by environmental decisions made in Washington D.C., it's Alaska. On this episode, we talk about those decisions being made in D.C. and their impacts on the 49th state with two of its experts. Elizabeth Harball is a public radio reporter with Alaska's energy desk in Anchorage, and Liz Ruskin is the D.C. correspondent for Alaska Public Media.

Feb 28, 2018

There have been lots of presidential orders and proclamations, and many proposals are in the works. But just how effective has Trump been in changing environmental policy during his first year in office? 

To answer that we spoke with Dan Farber, an environmental law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He also blogs about these issues at legal-planet.org.

Feb 14, 2018

Rolling back regulations is fundamental to the philosophy of the Trump administration. And a lot of the action has been directed towards environmental regulations. According to a review done by the Washington Post, 63 environmental rules have been targeted across all agencies. That’s more than other policy area. So what’s the case for environmental regulations? Do they work? Do they make our lives better in any measurable way? We hear a lot from the Trump administration about how regulations are job-killers, but aren’t they also life-savers?

Jan 17, 2018

The Trump administration has rolled back 60 environmental policies at last count. ProPublica reporter Talia Buford dug into the overturning of one of EPA rules that took the agency a decade to craft and the Trump administration just months to undo. The rule was meant to keep toxic waste out of rivers and streams. Now it's in limbo as the EPA has decided to open it back up for review. The story of what happened with this rule is a case study in how the EPA operates under the Trump administration. 

 

Jan 11, 2018

The whole concept of "clean coal" is wonky. Real technical, real complicated. Not as simple as President Trump would have you believe. But what does the term actually mean? In truth, it can mean a lot of different things. When many people talk about clean coal, they are talking about cleaning up carbon dioxide out of coal emissions. In Wyoming, where the majority of this country’s coal is still mined, clean coal is looked at as a possible economic savior. It’s a big deal for a lot of other people, too. Forty percent of the world still depends on coal for electricity, and it’s still one of the cheapest and most abundant fuels. But CO2 from coal and other fossil fuels is causing global warming. So it would be nice if we didn’t produce so much of it from burning coal. On this episode, Inside Energy’s Madelyn Beck takes us on a 360 degree view of clean coal to answer some of our questions. 

Jan 3, 2018

We all remember the financial and auto bailouts during the Great Recession. They arguably saved significant parts of the economy from even further damage. The Trump administration says the federal government now needs to step in to save the coal and nuclear industries. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has proposed a rule that will force the electric grids in some parts of the country to basically guarantee profits for coal and nuclear plants. But who will pay for that guarantee? Anyone who gets an electric bill. On this episode, we pick through this plan with someone who's been following it closely. Ben Storrow is a reporter for E&E News and he says the most important thing to understand is that the grid, like so many aspects of our economy, is changing because of new technology.

Dec 21, 2017

A few weeks ago, President Trump approved the largest rollback of federal land protection in our country’s history. Trump’s announcement to drastically slash the size of two national monuments in Utah - Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante among additional changes to other national monuments - was not a surprise. But it has been controversial. The day after Trump signed the order, the outdoor recreation company Patagonia posted a message on its website under the headline, “The President Stole Your Land.” Patagonia has joined a flurry of lawsuits challenging whether President Trump has the authority to undo or change monuments created by past presidents. So does the Antiquities Act allow presidents to roll back national monuments? On this episode, we hear from John Ruple, associate professor of law at the Wallace Stegner Center for Land Resources and the Environment at the University of Utah. He’s also a member of Friends of Cedar Mesa, one of the groups that is suing President Trump over his revisions to Bears Ears.

Dec 6, 2017

Can scientists who get grant money from the Environmental protection agency be objective enough to serve on its advisory boards? According to Administrator Scott Pruitt, the answer is “no.” Today’s episode examines one aspect of the sweeping changes taking place at EPA: Scott Pruitt’s bar on scientists who’ve taken money from the agency also serving on its scientific advisory boards. These are the scientists who help EPA evaluate the science behind its regulations. Some people who weren’t included in this new policy: people who’ve taken money from industries the EPA regulates. But scientists who receive grant money from the agency had to choose between keeping their funding or serving as advisors. We talk Robyn Wilson, a researcher from Ohio State University, who says it’s a false choice and is refusing to step down.

 

 

 

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