Stephan: One of the nastiest Trump actions is gutting the environmental protections so painstakingly passed by both prior Democratic (mostly) and Republican administrations. Trump sees the earth as exploitable assets to be used to enrich himself and his friends. He has no sense of the Matrix of Life, nor any respect for the biosphere.
Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, FEMA Director Brock Long, President Donald Trump, Paradise Mayor Jody Jones, and Gov. Jerry Brown tour the Skyway Villa Mobile Home and RV Park in Paradise, Calif., on Nov. 17, 2018. Credit: Paul Kitagaki Jr.-Pool/Getty
As wildfires destroy millions of acres in California, Oregon, and Washington, and an unprecedented series of hurricanes cause historic flooding in the South, leaving parts of the region uninhabitable, the Trump administration has been racing to reverse rules designed to prevent exactly these kinds of climate disasters.
Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has presided over the rollback of more environmental rules and regulations than any other president. The result has been that, even as climate change is on track to soon force millions of Americans from their homes and eventually heat the Earth to temperatures not seen for 34 million years, the leader of the country that bears more responsibility for the climate change than any other has doubled down on the decimation of efforts meant to combat both pollution and the climate crisis.
“The Trump administration is the first in the history of the agency to devote […]
Stephan: It is in the environmental issues that the true vileness of Donald Trump is most evident. He is a truly disgusting human being, and your children and their children will curse his name for the damage he is permitting to be done to the earth and the Matrix of Life.
A bay in the Tongass National Forest, Alaska. Credit: Eleanor Scriven/Getty/
More than half of the Tongass national forest – a 16.7m-acre old-growth temperate rainforest in south-east Alaska – has been protected for the last two decades by the so-called “roadless area conservation rule”, which prohibits development in designated wild areas. The US Forest Service is expected to release a final environmental impact statement on Friday which would allow for the Tongass to be exempt from the rule, moving one step closer to ending the protections entirely.
Supporters of the exemption see it as increasing access to federal lands for such things as timber harvests and development of minerals and energy projects. Republican leaders in Alaska have lobbied the federal government to reverse the rule over the last two years. In a Washington […]
Juliet Eilperin, Senior National Affairs Correspondent - The Washington Post
Stephan: And here, via these formerly secret recordings, we see bragging by coal executives describing the naked corruption of Trump and his administration.
Ronald Thiessen President and Ceo of Northern Dynasty Minerals
A direct line to the White House, but routed through a third party to hide it from public view. Easy access to Alaska’s governor, as well as the state’s two U.S. senators. A successful push to unseat nine Republican state lawmakers who opposed their plan to build a massive gold and copper mine — the biggest in North America — near Bristol Bay in Alaska.
Those were some of the boasts made by two top executives of a company trying to build the Pebble Mine in videotapes secretly recorded by an environmental group and made public Monday. It was a rare glimpse into the private discussions surrounding the company’s heated campaign to win federal permits for the project, which environmentalists say will destroy a pristine part of Alaska and decimate its world-famous sockeye salmon fishery.
The conversations were secretly recorded over the past month and a half by the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency. Posing as potential investors in the mine, EIA investigators conducted Zoom calls in which the mine’s sponsors […]
Stephan: Here, finally, is some good news, augmenting the story I published the other day about California moving out of the carbon era. Even as the Republicans led by Trump try to do everything they can to preserve carbon energy to protect the profits of their friends and supporters, the world is moving away from carbon powered energy.
Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios
Gasoline-powered carsmay be going the way of the woolly mammoth, even if it will take decades to replace them and seems hard to fathom today.
The big picture: Internal combustion engines (ICEs) have powered automobiles for more than 100 years. But the shift to electric vehicles, slow to materialize at first, is now accelerating due to tightening government policies, falling costs and a societal reckoning about climate change.
Driving the news: California said this week it plans to phase out sales of conventional new cars by 2035 in favor of zero-emission vehicles that run on electricity.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order no doubt faces a giant legal fight and could depend heavily on the election outcome and the shape of the Supreme Court, Axios’ Ben Geman explains.
The rest of the world is far ahead, with at least 15 countries already banning new gasoline cars and others adopting strict policies to spur EV adoption.
“Europe and China have woken up to the fact that [the combustion engine] is dead,” Arndt Ellinghorst, automotive analyst at Bernstein Research, […]
Stephan: The United States is presently undergoing a kind of slow-motion coup that will strangle democracy. Trump and the Republicans in Congress and, certainly, the Department of Justice under Barr are actively supportive and complicit in Trump's effort. The main effort is to call the election into doubt and force the decision into the Supreme Court which will have a new ninth justice who has committed to supporting Trump, and we will see a repeat of Bush-Gore, only worse.
Poll(s) of the week
The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opened up a rare vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, and Republicans are moving quickly to fill the seat. President Trump says he will nominate a replacement for Ginsburg on Saturday, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged a vote on the nominee this year. (And it looks as if he might have the votes to confirm her.) But polling conducted in the wake of Ginsburg’s death shows that this may be an unpopular decision.
We’ve identified 12 polls so far that have asked some version of the question, “Should Ginsburg’s seat be filled this year by Trump, or next year by the winner of the 2020 presidential election?” And on average, 52 percent of respondents have said to wait, while only 39 percent have said Trump should fill the seat now.
Americans want the election winner to choose a new justice
Polls conducted since Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death asking whether the Supreme Court vacancy should be filled by President Trump now or by the winner of the 2020 […]
