The Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly calling on the Trump administration to strike down a landmark climate finding that cleared the way for regulating planet-warming and polluting greenhouse gas emissions. A report from The Washington Post cited three people briefed on the matter, who said former Trump staff members had been advising the administration on repealing the finding. "President Trump's day one Executive Order, 'Unleashing American Energy,' gave the EPA Administrator a 30-day deadline to submit joint recommendations to the Director of [Office of Emergency Management], in collaboration with the heads of any other relevant agencies, on the legality and continuing applicability of the 2009 Endangerment Finding," a spokesperson for the agency told The Independent in an emailed statement on Wednesday. "EPA is in compliance with this aspect of the President's Executive Order," they said. The order had asked the EPA to review the "legality and continuing applicability" of the finding, giving them 30 days to do so. The endangerment finding under the Clean Air Act was signed by then-administrator Lisa Jackson, who was nominated by Barack Obama ahead of his first term in 2009. "The administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) — in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations," the agency's finding said. |
While newly-appointed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin previously recognized the importance of tackling climate change during his confirmation hearings, his actions since taking office have been contradictory. The EPA has warned hundreds of employees who work on climate change that they could be terminated at any time (Getty Images) | Repealing it would undercut the agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, according to Ben Cahill, the director for Energy Markets and Policy at the Center for Energy and Environmental Systems Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin. "All kinds of implications for various regulations since 2009. This is 'kill the administrative state' territory," he wrote on social media earlier this year. It would mark one of the Trump administration's most significant moves to undermine federal climate efforts. Despite the fact that the EPA's mission is to protect human health and the environment, the agency and the White House have already taken several steps toward derailing federal climate efforts, deleting information from agency websites, canceling grants and telling employees who work on climate that they could be terminated. Read more More climate news: |
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An aerial view of the sinkhole in the Ospedale del Mare car park in Naples (EPA) |
Sinkholes are no longer rare – it's time to ask what's making them worse. For most of us, sinkholes are the stuff of science fiction movies – terrifying, but infrequent. That illusion collapsed in Godstone, Surrey, when two five-metre-deep holes suddenly opened up in a residential street, forcing the evacuation of 30 homes. Experts suspect a water main burst beneath the road and eroded the soil, in combination with the fact that the region's underground soils were once the home to the town's sand quarry. Dr Philip Collins, deputy dean of the College of Engineering at Brunel University of London, explained quite simply that the underlying sand likely became very "weak when it becomes wet" and that, combined with some clay-rich layers in the Godstone sand, that likely would "heave and shrink over time". The reason behind the formation then may be very localised. But as scientists investigate, the incident serves as a reminder that sudden ground collapses are not as rare now as they once seemed. Around the world, sinkholes are appearing more frequently, and there is a budding understanding of how climate change might be driving these formations, with changing rainfall conditions, both when the underlying soil is too wet and too dry. |
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There is no possible world in which greenhouse gases are not a threat to public health |
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Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb said as President Trump's administration looks to reverse a cornerstone finding that climate change endangers human health and welfare. Read more |
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