Tag Archives: president-trump

Trump’s ‘Salute to America’ will cost the National Parks Service $2.5 million

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Trump’s ‘Salute to America’ will cost the National Parks Service $2.5 million

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You need to see how this teen greeted Trump’s U.K. visit

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You need to see how this teen greeted Trump’s U.K. visit

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The Trump administration escalates its fight against climate science

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The Trump administration escalates its fight against climate science

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Bill Nye: Climate change is here, and it’s coming for our assets

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The polar vortex is chilling the Midwest, and cable news is using the occasion to talk at length about climate change. CNN’s Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo had a field day tearing down President Trump’s tweet saying the Midwest could use some “Global Waming” — yes, that’s warming with no R — right about now. (F- on science, F+ on spelling.) MSNBC’s Ali Velshi busted out some snazzy graphics to illustrate the rise in CO2 levels in our atmosphere over the long haul, noting the sharp increase in global temperatures as industrialization took off.

Then, Chris Matthews of Hardball brought on a special guest — the Science Guy himself. Bill Nye told him what many of us already know. Climate change is real, and it’s coming for our assets.

Rural, conservative voters are in fact more vulnerable to economic losses from climate change than city dwellers, Nye pointed out. He called out a few agricultural costs of climate change: Food prices will likely go up as farmers struggle to keep up with seasonal pest management, and some U.S. agricultural production may need to shift north “into what would nominally be Canada.” (Well, oops. As Canadians have been quick to point out, Canada is, in fact, Canada.)

The Science Guy definitely got one thing right, though: “The longer we mess around and not address this problem, the more difficult it’s going to be.”

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Bill Nye: Climate change is here, and it’s coming for our assets

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Lisa Murkowski’s new plan for the Arctic gets a little help from … Santa Claus?

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Ho ho ho! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas … for industries that stand to benefit from a melting Arctic. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, introduced something called the Arctic Policy Act last week, and she’s getting a boost from Old Saint Nick.

The bill is a new and improved version of the Arctic Research and Policy Act of 1984, which the senator says needs updating to keep up with the changing Arctic. It’s not lost on anyone that vanishing ice means more economic opportunities for Alaska. And Murkowski has been fighting hard to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Thanks to President Trump, that dream could soon become reality.

As part of the senator’s new bill, the president would appoint nine members to the Arctic Research Commission. Seven of those members would be indigenous residents and researchers, and two would be industry representatives. (Looks like this is one list you can get on whether you’re naughty or nice.)

Speaking of Christmas, Murkowski tried to highlight the opportunities for Arctic commerce by invoking the holiday spirit. “I think Santa had this figured out a long time ago,” she said during a Senate floor speech. “Even Santa understood the geo-strategic position of the Arctic.”

Baby, it’s warm outside! Especially in the Arctic, which is warming at a rate double the rest of the planet.

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Lisa Murkowski’s new plan for the Arctic gets a little help from … Santa Claus?

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Trump doesn’t ‘believe’ his own administration’s climate report

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President Trump has read “some” of the Fourth National Climate Assessment — a comprehensive report released by his own administration that looks at the effects of climate change on the U.S. — and he says he doesn’t “believe it.” As in he can’t believe how bad the impacts are going to be? No, he simply doesn’t believe it.

Putting our differences aside for a second, this is actually kind of a baller move. Not only did Trump move up the date of the report’s release from December to the day after Thanksgiving (climate change vs. Black Friday mall sale stupor, anyone?) he made zero apologies about choosing to live in his own version of reality. Life’s a beach when you choose not to believe in inconvenient things! Check it out: You tell me I have to go into work the Monday after Thanksgiving? I don’t believe it. They did surgery on a grape? I don’t believe it.

The Commander in Chief didn’t give us many more details (like, you know, why), but the gist of the situation is that he thinks the climate assessment is a bunch of baloney. (Let the record again show that the report was composed by his own administration.) And it wasn’t even the only climate report his administration released on November 23. Another report, this one from the U.S. Geological Survey, found that nearly a quarter of the country’s carbon emissions come from fossil fuels produced on federal lands.

Here’s what Trump did say:

Did he … did he literally shrug? Regardless of how blasé Trump was about a report that basically portends widespread chaos, destruction, and economic distress for the country, his reaction is pretty damn believable. The man has spent a good portion of his tenure as president dismantling what’s left of United States climate policy:

He wants to replace Obama’s landmark Clean Power Plan with a “Dirty Power Plan” that seeks to prop up the dying coal industry.
His administration announced plans in August to freeze fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks for the next eight years, despite findings that those regulations would have reduced emissions and saved lives.
He rolled back an Obama-era rule that curtailed methane leaks on public lands, calling it “unnecessarily burdensome on the private sector.” Methane, by the way, is in the short term many times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Those are just three examples of the Trump administration’s climate policies! There are many more. And as much as I would hope that this climate report or this one or this one might change his mind, at this point, it looks unlikely.

If President Trump believed some of his other rhetoric, then he might see that making America great requires protecting the regions now facing imminent and catastrophic climate change. But alas, the America Trump wants isn’t “America the Beautiful,” it’s America with the most beautiful, “clean” coal. Those spacious skies and amber waves of grain might not look so pretty after 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

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Trump doesn’t ‘believe’ his own administration’s climate report

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Is Sarah Silverman comedy’s new climate champion?

Finding humor in climate change isn’t easy (trust us!). That’s especially true this week, when U.N. scientists handed the world a big, scary report saying we’re on the road to catastrophe and Hurricane Michael carved a path of devastation through the Florida Panhandle. But Sarah Silverman is up for the challenge. The comedian delivered a nine-minute plea for climate action on Thursday in the latest episode of her Hulu show I Love You, America.

“I know climate change is not the most exciting issue, and the media knows it too, which is part of why it’s covered so infrequently,” Silverman said. She pointed to MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes’ controversial tweet in which he said climate change is a “palpable ratings killer” for news shows and so “the incentives are not great.”

“You know what’s a great incentive?” Silverman asked. “We’re all gonna f*#&’ing die.”

“I feel compelled to use my platform to speak out,” Silverman said. “Granted, my platform is on the third largest streaming network of three, so it’s not so much shouting from the rooftops as like complaining from an open mic at Panera Bread.”

Silverman covered a ton of ground in the segment, from scientists’ terrifying climate predictions to the “it’s a hoax” views of President Trump, who she calls a “Fox News grandpa.” Here’s a clip of her explaining how “absurdly rich and powerful people” are ruining the planet for the rest of us (the full thing is on Hulu):

“The only option is that we react to this massive state of emergency with massive action,” Silverman said. She brought up climate change on her show last month, too, explaining the Trump administration’s rollback of methane regulations.

Silverman isn’t the only comedian taking on climate change: Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah also came up with jokes about the scary U.N. report … somehow.

So are comedians good messengers for climate change? Perhaps! A study from earlier this year found that humor, rather than fear or straightforward facts, got young people the most excited about taking action on climate change.

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Is Sarah Silverman comedy’s new climate champion?

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Trump’s coal bailout would mean more pollution — and more deaths

Coal is struggling in the U.S. — we’re using less of it, and plants are shutting down. But President Trump is following through on his campaign promise to bring back coal. Last month, he called for a bailout for the nation’s floundering coal-fired and nuclear power plants.

Keeping these coal plants afloat would have deadly consequences. The sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions could lead to the deaths of more than 800 Americans, according to a paper out Thursday from independent nonprofit research group Resources for the Future. The researchers analyzed what Trump’s bailout policy could mean for emissions, public health, and jobs, given that struggling plants stay open for two more years, as reports have suggested the plan would do.

The plants would churn out some serious emissions in that scenario — over two years, we’d see an additional 22 million tons of CO2. That’s roughly equal to the amount emitted by 4.3 million cars in a year.

The report found that the bailout would “support” an estimated 790 jobs. But for every two to 4.5 coal mining jobs that Trump’s plan sustained, one American would die from air pollution. That’s not exactly an impressive ratio.

We’ve known for a while that coal is bad for our health. And Trump sure doesn’t seem to be helping with that, especially not for miners. Though the coal industry employed more people during Trump’s first year in office, he didn’t make their jobs any safer: Coal miner deaths nearly doubled over that same period.

The administration has also taken steps to hide coal mining’s impact on people’s health. In August, the Trump administration stopped a National Academy of Sciences study about the risks of living near mountaintop removal coal mining sites in Central Appalachia. Previous research had suggested that the practice was linked to lung cancer. The administration said the study was paused as part of a financial review.

While you’d think protecting people’s health would be a priority, the Trump administration isn’t like any other administration — and it seems like they have other things top of mind.

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Trump’s coal bailout would mean more pollution — and more deaths

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Trump’s new tariffs could make America suck again for coal miners

One of President Trump’s new policies is making America less great for the very people he promised to make it great for: coal miners and fossil fuel executives.

Back in March, Trump decided to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports — 25 percent on the former, 10 percent on the latter. To no one’s surprise, the two industries in question are pretty overjoyed. You know who’s less enthused? Almost everyone else — particularly U.S. coal miners, who say the levies are dousing China’s appetite for American coal with a bucket of lukewarm water.

And coal isn’t the only sector steeling itself against a trade fallout. Trump’s zeal to boost production in steel country is backfiring on the fossil fuel industry, just as people predicted. Let’s take a closer look:

At the 2018 World Gas Conference on Monday, the CEOs of the biggest oil giants in the world, ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods and Chevron’s Michael Wirth, said the tariffs will likely slow oil and gas growth — right smack in the middle of a pretty historic shale oil and gas boom. The tariffs “run the risk of making [energy] projects less competitive,” Woods said. That’s because the tariffs raise the costs of materials for new pipelines and liquified natural gas facilities.
Last year, Trump and China’s president, Xi Jinping, agreed to build something called the Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub — a multi-billion dollar project composed of an enormous network of pipelines, gas processing facilities, and below-ground storage. If built, the hub would sprawl from Pennsylvania all the way to Kentucky, and it would be the biggest infrastructure project in Appalachia to date. But Trump’s new tariffs, and a possible ensuing trade war, have put the project in jeopardy because they could cost China billions of additional dollars.
America’s coal industry isn’t doing so hot domestically, but coal exports are going through something of a boom right now. Guess what Beijing just put on a list of U.S. products that could get hit with Chinese tariffs, thanks to Trump’s dedication to aluminum and steel? Yep — coal. The tariffs also put a major deal between a big Chinese coal importer and two U.S.-based companies on the rocks. The deal concerned 1 million tons of coal exports per year.

Well, there you have it. Who woulda thunk Trump would be the person to get in the way of his own dumb plan?

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Trump’s new tariffs could make America suck again for coal miners

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Oil companies just got a surprise New Years tax break.

On Thursday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke held a press conference to discuss the Department of the Interior’s intentions for drilling rights in American-controlled waters. In brief: The Arctic, Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and possibly parts of the Pacific are pretty much all fair game now. The new policy would encompass “the largest number of lease sales ever proposed,” Zinke said.

It’s a direct take-back of the plan that the Obama administration finalized in November 2016. Those rules, which protected the Arctic and Atlantic seas from new drilling, were supposed to hold until 2022. But President Trump has long claimed the legal authority, and intention, to reverse it.

Conservation groups will almost certainly challenge this new draft plan in court. And a bipartisan group of local and state officials also oppose new drilling in some of these areas. In June, 14 House Republicans issued a joint letter opposing drilling off the Atlantic. Florida Governor Rick Scott joined the opposition Thursday, saying that his “top priority is to ensure that Florida’s natural resources are protected.”

Overall, more than 100 lawmakers — along with plenty of governors, attorneys general, and the U.S. Defense Department — oppose the plan.

Just last week, the Interior Department’s rollback of drilling safety regulations after the 2009 Deepwater Horizon spill cited their “unnecessary … burden” on industry.

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Oil companies just got a surprise New Years tax break.

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