Tag: Trump attack on environment

Trump picks former Monsanto executive to lead U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Conservation groups describe Aurelia Skipwith’s nomination as “business as usual” for Trump administration.

Pres. Trump nominated Aurelia Skipwith to be Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildllife Service. Credit: DOI

President Donald Trump announced late Monday that he intends to nominate a former agrochemical industry official to lead the Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

The selection of Aurelia Skipwith, who worked at Monsanto for six years, to head FWS carries on a Trump administration trend of filling top environmental regulatory positions with officials from companies regulated by the agency. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Skipwith’s duties will include enforcing federal wildlife laws, protecting endangered species, managing migratory birds, and conserving and restoring wildlife habitat.

Environmental and conservation groups largely condemned Skipwith’s nomination, noting that she spent the past year and a half at the Interior Department helping to oversee the administration’s dismantling of wildlife and national monument protections.

View the complete October 23 article by Mark Hand on the ThinkProgress.org website here.

Courts Thwart Administration’s Effort to Rescind Obama-Era Environmental Regulations

The following article by Eric Lipton was posted on the New York Times website October 6, 2017:

Flaring is a technique oil and gas companies use to burn off leaking methane but is blamed for its contributions to climate change. Credit Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The rapid-fire push by the Trump administration to wipe out significant chunks of the Obama environmental legacy is running into a not-so-minor complication: Judges keep ruling that the Trump team is violating federal law.

The latest such ruling came late Wednesday, when a federal magistrate judge in Northern California vacated a move by the Department of Interior to delay compliance with rules curbing so-called flaring, a technique oil and gas companies use to burn off leaking methane. Flaring is blamed for contributing to climate change as well as lost tax revenues because the drilling is being done on federal land. Continue reading “Courts Thwart Administration’s Effort to Rescind Obama-Era Environmental Regulations”

Climate March draws massive crowd to D.C. in sweltering heat

The following article by Chris Mooney, Joe Heim and Brady Dennis was posted on the Washington Post website April 29, 2017:

On a sweltering April day, tens of thousands of demonstrators assembled in Washington on Saturday for the latest installment of the regular protests that punctuate the Trump era. This large-scale climate march marked President Trump’s first 100 days in office, which have already seen multiple rollbacks of environmental protections and Obama climate policies.

The Peoples Climate March, which originated with a massive demonstration in New York in September 2014, picked a symbolically striking day for its 2017 event. The temperature reached 91 degrees at D.C.’s National Airport at 2:59 p.m., tying a heat record for April 29 in the district set in 1974 — which only amplified the movement’s message. Continue reading “Climate March draws massive crowd to D.C. in sweltering heat”