Trump On Earth

For months on end, Pruitt seemed to defy the laws of gravity at the EPA, maintaining his job through more than a dozen scandals. But Pruitt’s term has ended after it was reported that President Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly--presumably at the president’s behest--asked Pruitt for his resignation.  So the big question is--why now? And, importantly, what happens next? On this episode Reid Frazier talks with Zack Colman, a reporter with E&E News. 

When Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act on December 28, 1973, it made the United States the only nation on Earth to declare a basic right of existence for species other than our own. Currently, the Act protects more than 1,600 species across the country. Now, the landmark legislation is being targeted by industry, with support from the GOP. What happens next could determine the fate of hundreds of endangered species.  On this episode, we talk about the future of the Endangered Species Act with Jennifer Kahn. She wrote an article published in The New York Times magazine earlier this year titled, Should Some Species be Allowed to Die Out?

Earlier this month, Scott Pruitt gave a big gift to the chemical industry in the form of narrowing how the EPA will determine the health risks posed by chemicals. Is it a policy change that could prove deadly?

Before he was EPA administrator, before he was Oklahoma's attorney general, before he was even a state senator, Scott Pruitt was an unknown attorney in the suburbs of Tulsa, Oklahoma. What do Scott Pruitt's early days in public life tell us about his beliefs and motivations as he sets about dismantling EPA regulations? On this episode, we talk to two reporters who dug into this question to find out more about the man President Donald Trump picked to lead the EPA. Joe Wertz is a reporter for State Impact Oklahoma and Tom Dreisbach is a producer for the NPR podcast Embedded.

From its inception, science has been at the core of the EPA’s mission. It’s used science about the health effects of industrial pollution to make our air and water cleaner. But EPA administrator Scott Pruitt wants to limit what kinds of research the agency can use when making regulations. To that end, he has introduced the Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science rule. Transparency--sounds pretty good, right? But with this new rule, the agency would limit what kinds of research it can use when making regulations. EPA scientists would no longer be allowed to use studies that don’t make their raw data available to the public. That includes most public health studies because these often use confidential patient information that is generally shielded from public view. On top of that, the rule would exempt certain types of industry-funded science. This has many scientists furious. Nearly 1,000 of them signed a letter calling the proposal a way to run “political interference in science-based decision maki

First class flights, pricey office furniture, a soundproof booth and a security detail the size of a small police department. And don’t forget a rented room inside a condo owned by a lobbyist’s wife. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is embroiled in a series of concentric ethics scandals, and it’s led to speculation about his future there. Today we ask how Scott Pruitt got into his current situation, why he still has a job at EPA, and whether the scandals will impede his attempts to dismantle environmental regulations. Our guests are NPR’S Rebecca Hersher and Jennifer Ludden, and the New Republic's Emily Atkin.

The Trump administration says it wants to open up nearly all of the country’s oceans to oil and gas drilling. So what will this mean for communities around the country that depend on our coasts for their livelihood? What will this mean for our oceans?  

More than 60 percent of Alaska is owned by the federal government. That's 225 million acres; a plot of land bigger than Texas. So if any state is going to be impacted by environmental decisions made in Washington D.C., it's Alaska. On this episode, we talk about those decisions being made in D.C. and their impacts on the 49th state with two of its experts. Elizabeth Harball is a public radio reporter with Alaska's energy desk in Anchorage, and Liz Ruskin is the D.C. correspondent for Alaska Public Media.

There have been lots of presidential orders and proclamations, and many proposals are in the works. But just how effective has Trump been in changing environmental policy during his first year in office?  To answer that we spoke with Dan Farber, an environmental law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He also blogs about these issues at legal-planet.org.

Rolling back regulations is fundamental to the philosophy of the Trump administration. And a lot of the action has been directed towards environmental regulations. According to a review done by the Washington Post, 63 environmental rules have been targeted across all agencies. That’s more than other policy area. So what’s the case for environmental regulations? Do they work? Do they make our lives better in any measurable way? We hear a lot from the Trump administration about how regulations are job-killers, but aren’t they also life-savers?

The Trump administration has rolled back 60 environmental policies at last count. ProPublica reporter Talia Buford dug into the overturning of one of EPA rules that took the agency a decade to craft and the Trump administration just months to undo. The rule was meant to keep toxic waste out of rivers and streams. Now it's in limbo as the EPA has decided to open it back up for review. The story of what happened with this rule is a case study in how the EPA operates under the Trump administration.   

The whole concept of "clean coal" is wonky. Real technical, real complicated. Not as simple as President Trump would have you believe. But what does the term actually mean? In truth, it can mean a lot of different things. When many people talk about clean coal, they are talking about cleaning up carbon dioxide out of coal emissions. In Wyoming, where the majority of this country’s coal is still mined, clean coal is looked at as a possible economic savior. It’s a big deal for a lot of other people, too. Forty percent of the world still depends on coal for electricity, and it’s still one of the cheapest and most abundant fuels. But CO2 from coal and other fossil fuels is causing global warming. So it would be nice if we didn’t produce so much of it from burning coal. On this episode, Inside Energy’s Madelyn Beck takes us on a 360 degree view of clean coal to answer some of our questions. 

We all remember the financial and auto bailouts during the Great Recession. They arguably saved significant parts of the economy from even further damage. The Trump administration says the federal government now needs to step in to save the coal and nuclear industries. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has proposed a rule that will force the electric grids in some parts of the country to basically guarantee profits for coal and nuclear plants. But who will pay for that guarantee? Anyone who gets an electric bill. On this episode, we pick through this plan with someone who's been following it closely. Ben Storrow is a reporter for E&E News and he says the most important thing to understand is that the grid, like so many aspects of our economy, is changing because of new technology.

A few weeks ago, President Trump approved the largest rollback of federal land protection in our country’s history. Trump’s announcement to drastically slash the size of two national monuments in Utah - Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante among additional changes to other national monuments - was not a surprise. But it has been controversial. The day after Trump signed the order, the outdoor recreation company Patagonia posted a message on its website under the headline, “The President Stole Your Land.” Patagonia has joined a flurry of lawsuits challenging whether President Trump has the authority to undo or change monuments created by past presidents. So does the Antiquities Act allow presidents to roll back national monuments? On this episode, we hear from John Ruple, associate professor of law at the Wallace Stegner Center for Land Resources and the Environment at the University of Utah. He’s also a member of Friends of Cedar Mesa, one of the groups that is suing President Trump over his revisions t

Can scientists who get grant money from the Environmental protection agency be objective enough to serve on its advisory boards? According to Administrator Scott Pruitt, the answer is “no.” Today’s episode examines one aspect of the sweeping changes taking place at EPA: Scott Pruitt’s bar on scientists who’ve taken money from the agency also serving on its scientific advisory boards. These are the scientists who help EPA evaluate the science behind its regulations. Some people who weren’t included in this new policy: people who’ve taken money from industries the EPA regulates. But scientists who receive grant money from the agency had to choose between keeping their funding or serving as advisors. We talk Robyn Wilson, a researcher from Ohio State University, who says it’s a false choice and is refusing to step down.      

The Trump administration has been pulling back federal environmental regulations as fast as it can. The legal argument is that states should be the ones to decide what level of environmental protection and regulation is right for them. In practice, many regulations related to oil and gas development are already in the hands of states, and even local governments. On this episode, we look at how one state is handling one of those regulations, a pretty basic-sounding rule that says how far oil and gas wells must be from someone’s house. What should this number be? What is a safe distance? That is a big, contentious question in places where oil and gas drilling is happening near people. With help from our friends at Inside Energy, we find out how that issue is playing out on the ground.

In October, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt ordered scientists who receive EPA grants to either end their grants or get off EPA scientific advisory boards.  What about industry-backed scientists? They can stay In this episode of Trump on Earth, we talk with Washington Post Environmental Reporter Brady Dennis about industry influence at EPA as well as latest climate-denying nominees to top environmental posts and the U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany.

About three quarters of the 640 million acres of land that the federal government owns is managed by the Department of the Interior. And under the leadership of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, the Department of Interior is poised to shrink the borders of at least four national monuments, potentially opening up hundreds of thousands of acres to development. On this episode, we try to find out who Ryan Zinke is by learning about the man Zinke calls his biggest inspiration. Teddy Roosevelt basically invented the national parks system, and has arguably done more for conservation than anyone else in U.S. history. So if the top steward of public lands is modeling himself after a conservationist, why is he making headlines for rolling back land protections? Opening up federal land for more oil and gas development? We find out with the help from our friends at Inside Energy.   

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 this direction. He signed an executive order requiring infrastructure like roads and bridges be designed to survive flooding and other consequences of climate change. But President Trump issued an executive order that pretty much undid it. Our guest is Daniel Kreeger. He's the executive director of the Association of Climate Change Officers. which helps businesses and others plan for climate change. Kreeger says we built infrastructure - like highways and sewers - based on the weather we’ve had over the last century. But that’s changing.

The NY Magazine article "The Uninhabitable Earth" presents a portrait of a worst case scenario of climate change in which the planet gets so hot, humans can no longer live there. It imagines a future so grim, it spawned response articles like “Are we as doomed as that New York Magazine Article Says?” In this episode, we talk to the author of the article, David Wallace-Wells, to find out -- is it really as bad as all that? And does fear motivate people to action or acceptance?