I feared Trump would go after Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and that is exactly what he is going to do next after withdrawing 2 million acres from federal protection of some of the most spectacular lands in this country. The national monuments in Utah are beautiful and sacred and he handed them over to the coal industry. But which of his cronies benefit from the destruction of Papahānaumokuākea? It can't be the fishing factory ship industry, as these waters contain primarily reef fish. Maybe it's just simple spite, just another FU to the world.
Is there no place on this planet that tRump does not want to destroy, not one species that he will not condemn to extinction? And all for what? The almighty dollar, which is really all he worships. Trump is criminally insane and he needs to be removed from office as soon as possible for the safety of the planet. The GOP congress is complicit in his crimes. Shame on every last one of them.
NY Times Editorial Board:
But none of these annoying facts can erode Mr. Trump’s belief that, in the continuing tug-of-war between commercial development and environmental protection, the environment has too often gotten the best of it, and the time has come to rebalance the scales. This mind-set is shared by all of Mr. Trump’s appointees who have anything to do with the environment, and it is a virtual copy of the thinking that prevailed among George W. Bush’s policymakers 15 years ago, many of whom have emerged like creatures from the crypt to occupy key positions in the Trump administration.
A sizable portion of the editorial focuses on Interior Secretary Zinke and his give away of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase National monuments in Utah to the energy industry. The national treasures in Utah have received some publicity. What has not, is the slipping of a “provision into the Senate tax bill that would open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the oil companies”.
In any other week, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska, would have been public enemy No. 1 among conservationists. She deserves dishonorable mention nonetheless, for slipping a provision into the Senate tax bill that would open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the oil companies. The passage of that bill, which now goes to conference with the House, puts Ms. Murkowski on the cusp of winning a 40-year battle joined by her father, Senator Frank Murkowski, to allow drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain, a 1.5 million acre ribbon that was not protected as wilderness under the original laws establishing the refuge and that can be opened only by Congress.
snip
Members of Alaska’s small congressional delegation (the ineffable Don Young, who detests environmentalists, is the state’s only current member of the House) have always been extraordinarily resourceful in looking out for their constituents. It is not surprising, then, that Ms. Murkowski promises mischief elsewhere in the legislative landscape. Buried deep in the Senate’s Interior Department appropriation bill, and ready for inclusion in any endgame budget negotiations with the House, is a provision that would threaten rare and valuable old-growth forests in the Tongass National Forest. It would do so by exempting 9.6 million acres of the Tongass from the Roadless Rule, enacted by the Forest Service in 2001 under President Clinton. The rule, which has survived seemingly endless court challenges, effectively barred logging on 58 million acres of largely undisturbed forest land across the nation, including the Tongass. It remains one of Mr. Clinton’s finest environmental achievements, and putting Alaska’s old-growth trees back in the hands of the loggers would be a disgrace.
So it goes for the environment these days in Mr. Trump’s Washington. The Obama administration nixes a huge and potentially destructive gold mine in Alaska because it would threaten the world’s richest salmon fishery in Bristol Bay. Scott Pruitt, Mr. Trump’s administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, meets with mining company officials and tells them they can go ahead and file for a new permit. The Obama administration works for two years to save an endangered bird, the sage grouse, and after lengthy negotiations with state governments, conservationists and energy companies, develops an innovative plan to protect millions of acres of sage grouse habitat across 10 states. But as soon as Mr. Trump is elected, the oil and gas companies complain to Mr. Zinke, who orders a review of the plan and is likely to weaken it.
I am very thankful for the Times editorial. It is forceful in pointing out Trump’s and the GOP’s despicability on a front that we don’t hear to much about in this insane news cycle. And it reinvigorated my resistance to them. That is a positive change, I have felt so beat up lately. I needed to read this and get back up.
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