The Common Denominator of All Donald Trump’s Environment Policies
Warning sign, Salinas Valley, California, USA.
As the basis for the chapter on the use of litigation to protect our natural resources in my first book (Renewable Energy–Facts and Fantasies), I was lucky enough to interview Johanna Wald at the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) shortly before she retired. Johanna had been successfully using the court system for more than 35 years to force public and private entities to conform to laws that are in place to protect the people and the planet we call home.
Here’s a short yet powerful video featuring the NRDC’s current president, Rhea Suh, who says something that I’ve written in various forms dozens of times: “There is one common denominator of all Donald Trump’s environment policies: the total and blatant disregard for the health and well-being of all Americans.”
The video happens to focus on what Trump and his EPA administrator are doing to legalize the use of a nerve gas used by the Nazis in WW II called chlorpyrifos. It’s now used as a pesticide, manufactured by Dow Chemical, that has found its way into the umbilical cords of 87% of pregnant women who live and work near where it’s deployed. Does it seem OK that almost nine out of ten of these children have a poison in their system before they’re even born?
This particular video was about chlorpyrifos, but let’s be honest: it could have equally been about hundreds of other atrocities being committed every day by this team of monsters.
Craig,
If you want to be taken seriously, by serious people, you must stop using the language of hysterical undergraduates and fringe groups of cranks.
Irrelevant references to Nazi’s and “monsters” immediately alienates a mass audience.The US EPA and more than 60 co-operating national agencies are gathering data on the use, effectiveness, and instances of detrimental human side effects in a long term study.
The study began in 2014 and will conclude in 2022.
Chlorpyrifos was first registered as an insecticide in 1965 and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) re-registered it in 2006. Long before President Trump.
Don’t you do any research except parroting some hysterical article ?
Between 2014 and 2017 (before Trump) the EPA conducted a series of revised Human Health Risk Assessments into various pesticides including chlorpyrifos.
After receiving public comments on the 2014 risk assessment and feedback from the FIFRA Scientific Advisory Panel, EPA revised its human health risk assessment for chlorpyrifos in 2016.
( I suggest you read the 46 page report, ‘Human Health Risk Assessment for Chlorpyrifos’ published in 2016).
In March 2017, EPA denied a petition that asked us to revoke all pesticide tolerances (maximum residue levels in food) for chlorpyrifos and cancel all chlorpyrifos registrations.
The Agency concluded that despite several years of study, the science addressing neurodevelopmental effects remains unresolved and further evaluation of the science during the remaining time for completion of registration review is warranted. As a part of the ongoing registration review, we will continue to review the science addressing neurodevelopmental effects of chlorpyrifos.
Obviously this decision has nothing to do with the new Trump administration ! The decision proves the exact opposite, it prove the EPA review process is proceeding using exactly the same protocols as the previous administration.