As Congress pays out more than 36 billion dollars in disaster relief, the General Accounting Office recommends that the federal government find ways to minimize the economic impacts of climate change. President Obama started moving in that direction when he signed an executive order requiring infrastructure be designed to survive flooding and other consequences of climate change. Obama's order was never finalized, and President Trump issued an executive order of his own that pretty much undid it. So what's the danger if infrastructure policies do not consider the risks that are coming with climate change?
I think Trump’s regulatory rolling back of cumulative impact in NEPA will be devastating. 🌎
Some of the things proposed by Trump are bad but this is devastatingly bad for our country. Looking at cumulative impacts of government policy is at the heart of the National Environmental Policy Act, ignoring it basically guts the law. We need to fully understand the impacts of government policies before moving forward, especially with large complicated projects. It’s always better to avoid impacts then try to fix them after the fact.
A key part of the administration's proposal centers on whether agencies must consider the cumulative environmental effects of things like pipelines, which have attracted protests by climate activists across the country.
Under the new limits, federal agencies would only need to consider effects that are "reasonably foreseeable" and have a "close causal relationship" to the project. That could mean simply the impact of building thepipeline.
From the department of don’t poke the bear 🐻 in the the eye 👀…
I am thinking maybe I should gas up my truck ⛽ tonight when I go out and wash it and buy groceries. 🏪 While the experts see gas prices actually trending lower, we know the president hasn’t been on his best behavior in the Middle East lately. That’s what you get when you elect a professional con artist to the White House.
"No president ever wants to be impeached. And whether Donald Trump leaves in one month, one year or five years, this impeachment is permanent," Lieu said. "It will follow him around for the rest of his life and history books will record it. People will know why we impeached."
Whether or not you stick your penis into the mouth of your intern and lie about it to Congress, or you spin up a deal with a foreign power to get intelligence on your revival, the truth is to be impeached is a let down to the country. Sure, it's a partisan affair and the Democrats were looking for something to impeach the president for but it's no different than the Republicans 21 years ago. But in both cases it was the loyal opposition publicly doing the definition of impeachment "to call into question the integrity or validity of (a practice)."
President Trump's actions have been a let down for the country and the Senate will have the opportunity to decide whether to remove him - but everybody knows they probably won't. But there is no undoing an impeachment, it will be forever recorded and only fully judged by historians in later generations. I am disappointed with the president's actions but I'm willing to keep an open mind towards 2020. They're may or may not be better candidates than, I'll carefully look at the issues and the totality of the impeachment and what is beyond it.
For Americans who value the environment, public land protections and science, the past couple of years have been difficult to take, to say the least. This is no accident, of course, because those values stand in the way of industry profit, and the Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to boost industry profits at the expense of American well-being.
It’s hard to believe that the executive branch would act against the needs and values of everyday Americans and intentionally reduce penalties for those who seek to pollute our air and water. And yet, this is exactly what the current administration is doing. In fact, there has been no effort to hide the anti-environment wish lists behind recent executive actions. To the contrary, federal agencies seem to be competing with one another to be the biggest boosters of big industry.