More Comings and Goings

Environmental Destruction Agency chief Scott Pruitt is out, the victim of his own lavish spending and influence peddling.  But those who think they can literally breathe easier ought to remember that Andrew Wheeler, the acting EDA administrator, is a former coal lobbyist.  Pruitt's departure treated a symptom.  The disease goes merrily on.

And Brett Kavanaugh, the new Supreme Court nominee?  I think his record says all you need to know about him, so I won't do more than cite it . . . and mention his opinion that sitting U.S. Presidents can't be indicted while in office.

Ironically, he worked for Ken Starr on the Whitewater investigation.

Please note that I didn't mention the current President's name.  I'm taking Martin O'Malley's advice and not talking about him. 

Oh yeah, Kavanaugh's another Catholic . . . are we ever going to see a Protestant on the High Court again??     

Pruitt Out Of Gas

While the rest of the world is maximizing fuel economy in their cars and continuing to invest in the technologies that can make cars even more efficient, Environmental Destruction Agency administrator Scott (where are all the rhymes-with-glass-poles in this country named Scott?) Pruitt is rolling back gas mileage standards from the Obama administration that would have doubled corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) numbers in the automakers' lineup by 2025.  He says it's impractical to expect that from automobile manufacturers.

Ahem . . . sure, if you want to keep selling SUVs and pickup trucks.  The government is just pandering to American car manufacturers who don't want to take the time or the money to invest in smaller, leaner cars, the sort of cars Europeans have bought for decades - some of which have been made by General Motors, before it sold Opel and Vauxhall to PSA, and Ford.  And despite some decent fuel-sipping cars, along with electric cars and hybrids, the two manufacturers really don't have their hearts in more ethical vehicles, when gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs bring in higher profits because it takes so much raw material to make them. And a nation of consumers brainwashed by clever advertising, folks who love the power and feel of a big vehicle, keep buying them.  I've only known one person who ever needed an SUV, and she grows her own food and keeps a coop of chickens.  She needs a big vehicle to transport her feed and seed. 

Gone are the days when automakers could make the size of a subcompact an asset in These States.  Even Volkswagen, who once urged car buyers to think small and consider a Beetle, is pushing big SUVs in America now.  We are told that the automakers who do business in this country are merely responding to consumer demands, but much of that demand is fueled, no pun intended, by government activity - not just lower CAFE standards but subsidized gasoline, which is why it's so inexpensive and why oil companies are so highly profitable.  And Scott Pruitt, a fossil-fuel energy producer's wet dream with eyes, is happy to keep the system rigged against small cars.

Pruitt's time as America's chief environmental outlaw maybe over, though, as a lobbyist for a liquefied natural gas producer has given the EDA (formerly EPA) chief a sweetheart deal in the form of low rent on a condominium apartment in Washington even as he's been racking up expensive travel bills at the taxpayers' expense.  Trump is happy with the job Pruitt has been doing to enable private industry to run roughshod over a land, air and water, but he may have to let him go for his bad press and for casting the White House in a negative light.  Don't start doing backflips if Pruitt leaves the administration soon; Trump will simply find someone worse to run the environmental office.

Who could be worse?  I don't let myself think about it.

In a very related story, General Motors announced it's discontinuing the Chevrolet Sonic subcompact while Ford is considering discontinuing the Fiesta in the U.S. market.  Could this be because they don't have to offer smaller cars to meet the now-discarded fuel economy standards Obama issued?  Gee, ya think? >:-(   

A Lump of Coal For John Yang

On the PBS NewsHour, reporter John Yang interviewed two individuals about Environmental Destruction Agency administrator Scott Pruitt's decision to cancel Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which would have regulated emissions from coal-powered electricity-generating stations - one against the decision, one for it.  Opposing the move was Pruitt's predecessor as Environmental Destruction Agency (formerly Environmental Protection Agency) administrator, Gina McCarthy, and in favor of it was coal baron Robert Murray.  While Yang tried to play devil's advocate with McCarthy by pointing out that the energy market is moving away from coal anyway irrespective of whether or not the Clean Power Plan is implemented (it never was, due to court challenges), he pretty much let Murray get away with baseless claims that global warming is a hoax.  Murray claimed, and not for the first time, that four thousand scientists have told him that there is no global warming,  though he never explained who these four thousand scientists are.  He also insisted that the earth is cooling based on surface land temperatures (ignoring the far more relevant concern of warming surface sea temperatures).

Murray could have stopped there, but he also kept defending coal-based electrical power as "low-cost reliable energy" and dismissed regulations as illegal power grabs by the "Democrat Party" (referring to the Democratic Party by its demonym, which does not correspond to the party's actual name, an epithetical trick by the GOP to show disrespect for their opponents - not that the Democrats don't ever deserve disrespect, of course).  Yang simply thanked Murray for his time, and that was that - as if McCarthy's own comments in the debate were sufficient enough to rebuke him.  Except that McCarthy and Murray took turns stating their cases rather than debating each other directly, McCarthy went first and thus gave Murray the last word, and she was more on the defensive than the offensive.  What was offensive is how Yang (below) handled the issue.

As Pat Moynihan once said, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts - and Yang entitled Murray to his own facts.  But even if Murray's argument had been factually based (yeah right), dig this - while it's usually best to present both sides of an issue, sometimes there's only one side to an issue.  And the one side to the issue of climate change is that climate change is happening.  Yang, a seasoned reporter who's worked for ABC and NBC, should have realized that.

Why does PBS tolerate this?  Two words - "federal funding."  Three more words - "Not the BBC."   

Trump To Planet: F*** YOU!

Okay, everybody, resist this!

Donald Trump took his biggest swing yet at stopping environmental progress last week, reversing Barack Obama's clean-power plan to reduce carbon emissions from coal-powered electricity-generating plants, regulations on curbs of emissions from oil production, restrictions on hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking"), and a ban on coal leasing on federal lands.  "We're going to go in a different direction," a senior White House official told reporters ahead of last Tuesday's order. "The previous administration devalued workers with their policies. We can protect the environment while providing people with work."

Ah yes, work in the energy sector . . . opportunities for work in every part of it - oil, coal, gas - except solar, wind and other renewables.

I feel like a cannibal who's overeaten - I want to throw up my hands.  Although the Paris agreement, which Trump wants to cancel, was not mentioned, this policy reversal means that the U.S. Government won't be doing its part to curb greenhouse-gas emissions at least for the next four years - and by 2021, it may be too late.   I sure would like to know how we can protect the environment and provide all of these jobs in a fossil-fuel economy.  Maybe Trump has a secret plan, like the one Nixon had to end the war in Vietnam (which the North Vietnamese did by winning it).

The good news in this - and I know I'm grasping at straws here - is that environmental groups are already planning to sue to prevent this rollback from taking place, and there are all sorts of legal hurdles to keep Trump's actions from taking effect immediately.  Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson - a former oilman, no less - supports the Paris agreement, meaning we still need to find a a way to honor it it if Trump takes Tillerson's advice and stays in.  Several businesses that use a lot of energy - including General Electric and Wal-Mart! - are going ahead with their own plans to reduce fossil-fuel dependency.  Also, several states, like California, are pursuing their own environmental agendas and pushing for greenhouse-gas reductions.

State-level action.  And isn't that what EPA chief Scott Pruitt wants? ;-)

Oh yeah, where I live, we've had a couple of inches of rain in the past week, and we may get a couple more this week.  I know this is a rainy time of year, but that much rain in under two weeks?  The line is, "April showers bring May flowers," not "April downpours bring May flowers!"  Climate change is making weather more extreme.

Did I happen to mention that my area is under a flood watch as I type this?

P.S.  Don't start acting smug about all this, Hill-bots; Hillary Clinton promoted fracking in other countries as Secretary of State and said that anti-fracking activists should "get a life." 

The Cases For and Against Scott Pruitt

FOR:  Scott Pruitt should be the director of the Environmental Protection Agency because he is eminently qualified to streamline the EPA's bureaucracy and devolve authority to the states, where local control is essential to guaranteeing clean air and water to residents, and he understands that the EPA's responsibility does not reach into the free-market realm of energy production, this interpretation of the EPA's mission being a gross and overly broad misrepresentation of its powers.  He is an independent thinker who will take a balanced approach to protecting our environment.

AGAINST:  Scott Pruitt is a corporate douche-bag who's in bed with Big Oil and Big Coal.  And his e-mail correspondence proves it!

It's settled: "Against" wins!  Unfortunately, Pruitt has already been confirmed as EPA director despite a court order demanding that he release the e-mails between him and the greediest polluters in America when he was Oklahoma Attorney General.  So, even though the argument against him wins, we Americans all lose.

Trump's Politics and Policy

Donald Trump is a masterful politician, though that doesn't make him a good policy guy.  But he's already hit the ground running with some high-profile actions as President-elect.  He helped negotiate  a deal with the air conditioning company Carrier to keep jobs in the United States - specifically, Indiana, where incoming Vice President Mike Pence is the outgoing governor.  So what if Carrier got a sweetheart tax break and will still be allowed to send some jobs abroad?  As long as it looks like he saved some jobs in the United States - and he did, after all, just not as many as people think - that's all that matters.  

Then there's his decision to cancel a Boeing contract to build new Air Force One planes, citing a $4 billion price tag and choosing to try to save the government some money.  So what if the actual contract was $170 million and his misinformation destabilized Boeing stock?  So what indeed, if even Karl Rove thought it was irresponsible for Trump to go after Boeing the way he did?    "The impulse — that we want to save the taxpayers money — that’s admirable. But this was fire, ready, aim in my opinion," Rove said.  But as long as Trump looks like he's saving taxpayers even twenty-five cents, he looks like a hero.

I actually have to give credit to Trump for appointing retried general James Mattis Secretary of Defense.  Yes, he's known as a fighting man - they call him "Mad Dog" - but he's also against torture, he supports a two-state solution to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and he backs the Iran nuclear agreement despite having been opposed to its adoption because he believes it should not be reversed now.   In addition to being a serious scholar of military history, Mattis is known to have compassion for the rank-and-file service personnel. So, yes, I give Trump credit for that.

But his appointment of Oklahoma Attorney General fossil-fuel-industry stooge Scott Pruitt to head - wait for it - the Environmental Protection Agency (!!!) wipes out that credit.  :-(