Associated Press: “Over the last two years the nation had more polluted air days than just a few years earlier, federal data shows. While it remains unclear whether this is the beginning of a trend, health experts say it’s troubling to see air quality progress stagnate.”
“There were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before than there were on average from 2013 through 2016, the four years when America had its fewest number of those days since at least 1980.”
“The Trump administration finalized a package of new rules to replace the Clean Power Plan, former President Obama’s signature effort to reduce planet-warming emissions from coal plants,” the New York Times reports.
“The new measure, known as the Affordable Clean Energy rule, will very likely prompt a flurry of legal challenges from environmental groups that could have far-reaching implications for global warming. If the Supreme Court ultimately upholds the rule’s approach to the regulation of pollution, it would be difficult or impossible for future presidents to tackle climate change through the Environmental Protection Agency.”
“A Trump administration national security official has sought help from advisers to a think tank that disavows climate change to challenge widely accepted scientific findings on global warming, according to his emails,” the AP reports.
“The request from William Happer, a member of the National Security Council, is included in emails from 2018 and 2019 that were obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund under the federal Freedom of Information Act… That request was made this past March to policy advisers with the Heartland Institute, one of the most vocal challengers of mainstream scientific findings that emissions from burning coal, oil and gas are damaging the Earth’s atmosphere.”
“Interior Secretary and native Coloradan David Bernhardt said Monday in a brief, if unintentional, interview with the Colorado Independent that he’s not worried about climate change posing an imminent threat to national parks, nor to the outdoor recreation industry.”
“Bernhardt held no general press availability, but agreed to a one-on-one conversation with The Colorado Independent following his Q&A with the governors. It quickly became clear he had mistaken The Independent for the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, his hometown paper, because Bernhardt’s first question to the Indy reporter was how long he had lived in Glenwood Springs. Bernhardt, upon realizing he was talking to the wrong news organization, agreed to an abbreviated interview.”
David Weigel: “Biden has been at pains to emphasize his devotion to climate action, especially since an aide was quoted as saying Biden would take a ‘middle road’ to fighting climate change — a characterization he strongly disputes.”
“Canada on Monday joined a growing global movement with a plan to ban single-use plastics blighting the environment,” the New York Times reports.
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wanted his children to be able to play on the beach or swim in a lake without having their memories interrupted by dead birds or fish killed by pollution.”
Related: There’s a growing movement to stop the use of plastic straws.
Three Republican former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency — William Reilly, Lee Thomas and Christine Whitman — accused the agency’s current leadership of supporting the “undermining of science” and a potentially “catastrophic” approach to climate change in an ABC News interview.
Said Reilly: “If we continue business as usual, it’s catastrophic.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “downplayed climate change as a longstanding trend, suggesting that that modern societies could adapt to a changing environment, possibly with people moving to different places,” CNN reports.
Said Pompeo: “The climate’s been changing a long time. There’s always changes that take place.”
He added: “Societies reorganize, we move to different places, we develop technology and innovation. I am convinced, I am convinced that we will do the things necessary as the climate changes.”
White House officials barred a State Department intelligence staffer from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change could be “possibly catastrophic” after State officials refused to excise the document’s references to the scientific consensus on climate change, the Washington Post reports.
Business Insider reports that multiple sentences in Joe Biden’s new climate change proposal “appear to lift passages from letters and websites for different organizations.”
“The copied sentences are particularly notable due to Biden’s past history of plagiarism, which played a major role in tanking his 1988 presidential campaign.”
“Joe Biden unveiled a wide-ranging climate and energy platform for his 2020 campaign Tuesday, vowing to go ‘well beyond’ President Obama’s policies at a time when he’s facing skepticism on the left,” Axios reports.
“It calls for achieving net-zero U.S. greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050. That top-level goal is within range of Jay Inslee’s detailed plan, which calls for net-zero ‘as fast as possible’ and by 2045 at the latest.”
Associated Press: “Biden’s plan calls for $1.7 trillion in federal spending over 10 years, with the rest of the investments coming from the private sector. Biden proposes covering the taxpayer costs by repealing the corporate tax cuts that President Donald Trump signed in 2017, while eliminating existing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.”
New York Times: “Parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.”
New York Times: “The EPA plans to adopt a new method for projecting the future health risks of air pollution, one that experts said has never been peer-reviewed and is not scientifically sound.”
“The immediate effect of the change would be to drastically lower an estimate last year by the Trump administration that projected as many as 1,400 additional premature deaths per year from a proposed new rule on emissions from coal plants. That, in turn, would make it easier to defend the new regulation.”
The EPA’s inspector general recommended recovering nearly $124,000 in improper travel expenses by former EPA chief Scott Pruitt, the Washington Post reports.
“The findings, issued nearly a year after Pruitt resigned amid controversy over his spending, travel and ties to lobbyists and outside groups, highlight the fiscal impact of his penchant for high-end travel and accommodations.”
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told a panel of U.S. lawmakers that he has “not lost any sleep” over record amounts of carbon dioxide recorded in the Earth’s atmosphere, which scientists warn are altering the global climate, Reuters reports.
New from Sara Goddard: 7 ways to inspire others to take action with you.
“Joe Biden is crafting a climate change policy he hopes will appeal to both environmentalists and the blue-collar voters that elected Donald Trump, according to two sources, carving out a middle ground approach that will likely face heavy resistance from green activists,” Reuters reports.
NBC News: “Climate change has recently shot to the top of polls of issues that Democratic voters care about in the presidential primary, rivaling for the first time longstanding bread-and-butter topics like health care — and a leading environmental group has plans to keep it that way.”
“That’s a big shift from the last presidential election in 2016, when climate change did not get a single question during the debates between Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump, and just 15 percent of Democratic primary voters named it as their top priority.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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