Trump On Earth

If you've been following climate change, the coronavirus pandemic might feel oddly familiar these days. Many countries have implemented radical policies that would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago to slow the spread of the virus. Is this what it will take to solve the climate crisis? On this episode, climate journalist Emily Atkin on the intersection of climate change and coronavirus.     

How does doubt about science play out in a moment like we’re experiencing now where public health and millions of lives depend on good science and trusting scientists? Our guest is David Michaels, an epidemiologist and author of “The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception.”

Industry is struggling during the coronavirus crisis and one way the Trump administration has responded is by suspending enforcement of some environmental regulations. The EPA made the announcement on Thursday. Companies are usually required to report when they discharge certain levels of pollution into the air or water. But EPA is now telling them to monitor themselves for an undetermined period of time during the outbreak. Our guest is Rachel Franzin, energy and environment reporter for The Hill. 

Yes, Trump has cozied up to oil companies. He’s said we should have taken the oil from Iraq. And it does seem like we are cozying up to petro-state strongmen in Russia and Saudi Arabia. But is this any different from how the United States and other western powers have operated over the last 150 years? Our guest is Matthieu Auzanneau, author of the book Oil, Power, and War which looks at the deep history of big oil’s influence over the affairs of the U.S. and other Western powers.

At more than 100 years old, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was among the first environmental laws in the United States. Until recently, power companies and other industries could be prosecuted by the federal government for causing egregious bird deaths, even accidentally. Not anymore.  The Trump administration is proposing that only the intentional killing of birds would be prohibited under the act. This despite recent research that finds a nearly 30% decline in birds from North America - that’s a loss of nearly 3 billion birds - over the past 50 years. Our guest is Brad Bortner, one of 17 former directors and high-level appointees from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who co-signed a letter denouncing the move. 

Did the Trump administration manipulate wildfire science to promote the logging industry? An investigation in the Guardian newspaper says yes.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is often called the Magna Carta of environmental law. President Nixon signed it into law 50 years ago this month. And President Trump honored the anniversary by announcing plans to drastically scale back the law.  On this episode, we dig into what many are calling Trump’s biggest environmental rollback yet with Sharon Buccino from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). 

Word leaked a few weeks ago that the EPA is poised to finalize a rule to limit the types of scientific studies that can be used to create new regulations. The proposal -- named “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” -- would require public health researchers to release their raw scientific data in order for their work to be considered when the EPA sets regulations. These regulations dictate things like how much pollution companies can release into the air and water. When the rule was first proposed, the agency received nearly 600,000 comments, the vast majority of them in opposition.  One of those came from Dr. Mary Rice, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.  She also studies the effects of air pollution on lung health. On November 14th, Dr. Rice was one of 5 scientists to testify before the House Science Committee on the proposed rule.

The Paris Climate Agreement was put in place to prevent catastrophic and runaway global warming. And since taking office, President Trump has been threatening to pull the U.S. out of it. Earlier this month, he made it official.  On this episode we hear from the man who helped put the U.S. in the agreement in the first place. Todd Stern was President Obama’s chief climate negotiator and now he's a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. 

President Trump came into office promising to save coal and coal jobs. Instead, the industry has continued to slide. The question now is--how far will it go? The coal industry once employed hundreds of thousands of workers. Now, it's just about 50,000. And eight coal companies have declared bankruptcies in the last year. The latest is Murray Energy, the biggest privately held coal mining company in the country.  We check in on the state of the coal in the Trump era with Taylor Kuykendall who covers the industry for S&P Global Market Intelligence. 

Wildfires have once again spread across California...and millions of residents have been living without power for weeks. The deliberate blackouts by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, or PG&E, are an attempt to prevent power lines from starting new fires, a real possibility in dry and windy conditions.  Hundreds of the fires that started last year in California are believed to have been sparked by equipment from power companies — including the state’s deadliest fire.  The Camp Fire was caused by a faulty electric transmission line. 85 people died and the town of Paradise was leveled.  Some have called for nationalizing PG&E to keep it accountable for the safety and maintenance of its equipment and the reliability of its service.  Across the country there's a patchwork of grids providing power to Americans, and *they* still mostly rely on fossil fuels to keep a steady flow of electricity. A couple of years ago, President Trump signed an executive order to speed up environmental reviews and approval

President Trump says a key phone call at the center of the Ukraine scandal was Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s idea. But Perry asserts that in his conversations with Trump, “not once, as God as my witness, not once was a Biden name ever mentioned."  On this episode we connect the dots between Perry and Ukraine with Jeff Brady, energy reporter for NPR. Get your whiteboards out. There are a lot of names. 

Last month, the USDA quietly issued a new rule changing meat inspection standards for pork. Not only would the new rule mean slaughter houses could run their processing lines as fast as they want, it would also change who does the inspecting, giving the pork producers themselves a bigger role in the process. We talk with Tom Philpott, food and agriculture reporter for Mother Jones magazine, about what the changes could mean for the safety of food and workers.

How do you change the minds of climate deniers and people -- say the President -- who doubt the scientific process in general? We ask a philosopher of science for some answers. Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Lecturer in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He has written books about defending science and fighting back against “alternative facts.” Now, McIntyre is out on the road talking to flat earth theorists and people who don’t accept current climate science. 

Last time round, climate change got a measly five minutes and 27 seconds of airtime in the debates. During this primary season, it got seven hours in one night alone. CNN’s recent town hall provided each of the 10 candidates an opportunity to lay out their plan to deal with climate change. It was substantive. And it was long. On this episode we talk takeaways with Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She read all the candidates' climate plans, watched all 7 hours, and has a lot to say about it all. 

A top climate scientist resigned from the Agriculture Department this month. Lewis Ziska says the USDA buried his research. He's one in a line of researchers who've left the federal government because they claim the administration is censoring climate science.  

Today, nuclear plants provide 20% of US power generation. But according to a report last year by the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists, of the 99 nuclear reactors nationwide, owners have shut down six in recent years. Seven more are slated for retirement. In the age of climate change, the Union’s director of energy research and analysis, Steve Clemmer, doesn’t want the demise of this carbon-free power source. In this episode, we talk with him about his report, The Nuclear Dilemma.

The Trump administration has rolled back more than 80 environmental regulations but some states are fighting back. No state has been more active in the resistance against Trump's environmental deregulations than California. Case in point: last week, news broke that four of the world’s biggest automakers brokered a secret deal with the state to make more fuel-efficient cars in coming years, directly undermining the Trump administration.  On this episode we talk with Jared Blumenfeld, chief of the California EPA about how and why the state stands up to Trump. 

Surrounding by several members of his cabinet, President Trump recently gave a speech at the White House touting his own environmental record. Even though he’s tried to rolled back environmental regulations at a record pace, Trump painted a picture of a country where economic growth has occurred as the environment has gotten cleaner. On this episode, we fact check the speech with Rebecca Leber of the Mother Jones.  

The Trump administration recently rolled out the affordable clean energy (ACE) rule. Critics say it basically does nothing to prevent climate change at a time when global warming is turning into an existential crisis. Our guest is Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School and founder of the school's environmental and energy law program. She served in the Obama White House as counselor for energy and climate change.