Environment

When you put lobbyists in positions to make the rules in OUR government, this is what happened.  These are people who spent their career working to find loopholes, create new ones, and re-write the rules to help private companies to make money.  They paid off congress, cabinet, and others to get their way.  Now they are the government employees making the rules.

The Trump administration has completed a detailed legal proposal to dramatically weaken a major environmental regulation covering mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants....

It was nearly a year ago Smart Dissent wrote about the announced repeal of the Clean Power Plan which sought to push states to move away from coal in favor of sources of electricity that produce fewer carbon emissions. 

The original post included below is from April 4, 2017 when Scott Pruitt was just getting started with his destruction.  Please re-read to remind yourself on the topic of chlorpyrifos but then see this major update from earlier in August.

A federal court on Thursday [August 9, 2018] ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to ban a pesticide used widely in farming.

The 2-1 ruling on a lawsuit brought by public health groups and state attorneys general ordered the agency "to revoke all tolerances and cancel all registrations for chlorpyrifos within 60 days."

As we've noted several times in recent weeks, Andrew Wheeler, the new head of our EPA, is picking up right where Scott Pruitt left off.  He works on behalf of private industry without regard for our environment or public health.  Wheeler, unlike Pruitt, will stay out of the headlines while destroying us.

We are rid of Scott Pruitt being employed by our government spending every day enriching himself and destorying our country to benefit his donors.  But so much damage as been done as shown on our Environment page, including something on his LAST day.

Trump's Environmental Protection Agency is assigning public-records requests from environmental groups to a "special internal review process" that can take months or longer.   This is an attempt to shield their devious actions from the public and is illegal.

Intelligence officials and security analysts say Russian hackers are devoting much more effort toward implanting malicious software in the U.S. power grid than attempting to breach electoral systems.

In March the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a joint alert that Russian government hackers had staged malware and gained access to U.S. critical infrastructure, including energy networks, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors.

Andrew Wheeler, the EPA's acting director following the resignation of Scott Pruitt, is an efficient anti-environment bureaucrat who is getting right to work helping corporations at the expense of public health and our environment.

While the headlines are filled with terrible things, others like this never see the light of day.  This is disgusting and I refuse to believe more than 5% of the country agrees with it.

The Interior Department on Thursday [July 19, 2018] proposed the most sweeping set of changes in decades to the Endangered Species Act, the law that brought the bald eagle and the Yellowstone grizzly bear back from the edge of extinction....

There was a time not very long ago when Executive Orders were issue by President Obama to improve our society.  They protected our people and our environment from harm.  They were frequently necessitated by the porudly obstructionist Republican Congress who said no to everything.