Donald Trump

  • 'Revenge of the Electric Car' premiere: Elon Musk arrives in a Tesla Roadster

    Fulfilling a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump said yesterday that he will set in motion plans to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Pact that it joined last fall. In turn, Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded that he will have to pull out of Trump's business advisory councils of CEOs and executives, which he had joined in January. Musk was just one of dozens of CEOs and business executives lobbying Trump to stay in the Paris agreement. Before Trump's announcement, Musk had tweeted on May 22 that he was "cautiously optimistic" about "a positive decision" by the president to remain. I spoke...

  • President Donald Trump (Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
    Two words the Trump Administration can't say: climate change

    During President Donald J. Trump's half-hour meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican yesterday, the pope gave the president a copy of his 2015 encyclical calling for urgent, drastic cuts in fossil-fuel emissions. It is unclear whether the U.S. president will peruse the document. Back at home...

  • The White House, Washington, D.C.  [Creative Commons license by dcjohn]
    Trump names vocal renewable-energy critic to oversee...renewable energy

    While the news headlines on President Donald Trump mostly address potential scandals, his administration has also lagged significantly in appointing top-level officials to run government agencies. Those that have been appointed often have an adversarial relationship to the missions of the agencies...

  • Smog obscures George Washington Bridge, 1973 [From EPA Documerica series]
    EPA gets 29,000 comments on proposed elimination of environmental rules

    Much of the news out of Washington, D.C., these days has to do with the possibility of political scandal. But the wheels of government keep turning, and significant changes are happening at numerous agencies charged with missions as diverse as collecting intelligence, supporting education, and...

  • The White House, Washington, D.C.  [Creative Commons license by dcjohn]
    EPA's Ann Arbor test lab threatened; emission tests in the balance

    The 436 scientists who spend their days testing new vehicles and enforcing environmental rules at the National Fuel Emissions Lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan, face a very uncertain future. The lab sits in the crosshairs of President Trump's proposed budget, which eliminates 99 percent of its funding, as...

  • Golden Gate Bridge, connecting San Francisco and Marin County, California
    Will Trump EPA target CA electric-car, emissions rules? Not yet, maybe; here's why

    California began regulating vehicle emissions within its boundaries before the Environmental Protection Agency was even a gleam in President Richard Nixon's eye. Since that agency was founded in 1971 with an executive order by Nixon, the state has retained the right to set its own—more...

  • 2016 Nissan Leaf SL and 2016 Toyota Prius Three, Hudson Valley, NY, Dec 2015

    If you're a journalist, it's almost impossible to ignore political news these days. So if readers can resolutely avoid national and local coverage of politics, consider yourselves lucky. That said, sometimes a new political angle can make a dry story on car-buyer data more interesting than expected. DON'T MISS: Sales of 'green' cars remain low; is it a problem of fear? Hence the headline of this story, based on a study of new-car sales data by the car-buying site CarJojo. In a blog post on its analysis, the site suggests that any marketing messages automakers are using to promote more...

  • Natural gas flaring from oil well [licensed under Creative Commons from Flickr user Sirdle]
    EPA science advisers axed; execs from regulated industries to replace them (updated)

    While much of the nation's capital is preoccupied with the unpredictable Trump administration and its possible ties to Russia, the fate of the Environmental Protection Agency generates less news coverage. That's not to say there hasn't been news. Administrator Scott Pruitt is proceeding swiftly...

  • EPA website redirect page replaces scientific information on climate change, April 30, 2017
    EPA website removes climate-change pages, because science contradicts Pruitt policy goals

    On Saturday, tens of thousands of people joined a Science March in Washington, D.C., to support use of data-based science to set government policy on climate change. The day before, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency removed detailed climate data and scientific information because it appeared...

  • Coal, by Flicker user oatsy40 (Used Under CC License)
    Did EPA head ask coal lobby to fight Paris climate pact? Claim disputed

    The Trump administration is either having a robust internal debate on its climate positions or floundering incoherently as various interests vie for the president's attention. Its intentions for the Paris Climate Agreement that the U.S. signed last year remain entirely unclear. On Monday, Trump's...

  • EPA administrator Scott Pruitt  [photo from 2014]
    Pruitt won't kill EPA 'endangerment' finding on climate change

    The current EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, does not accept the scientific consensus on human contribution to climate change, though he has given some contradictory statements on that matter. His views correspond closely to those of his boss, President Donald Trump, who notoriously compared the...

  • Donald J. Trump in November 2016       [photo: The Trump Organization]
    U.S. exit from Paris Climate Agreement unclear; Trump team clashes on policy

    As the Trump Administration nears its 100th day, it seems fair to say that it is still emitting mixed messages on multiple issues, from foreign policy to climate change. On that latter, it's important to reiterate that the president and many of his appointed agency and department heads deny the...

  • Chrome exhaust pipe

    It's mixed news these days for those concerned about continuing manmade climate change. On the one hand, global carbon emissions were flat for the third year in a row, increasing numbers of global corporations have lined up to support climate-change reduction efforts, and electric power is getting cleaner as coal slowly ebbs as a fuel despite the administration's promises to coal miners. On the other hand ... Donald Trump. DON'T MISS: How to curb climate change yourself: drive a more efficient car Diametrically contrary to his predecessor, the current U.S. president has denied the accepted...

  • wind farm
    Trump DoE to critique renewables against coal for grid reliability

    It is widely accepted in the energy industry that U.S. coal production will fall as a percentage of the total electric grid mix. That has little to do with its high carbon footprint per kilowatt-hour generated; it is largely due to far greater supplies of much cheaper fracked natural gas. It is...

  • Photovoltaic solar power field at Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee
    Clean Power Plan carbon cuts may survive, even if Trump EPA kills rule

    The Clean Power Plan’s future looks uncertain at best under President Donald Trump. The commander-in-chief appears to be urging American utility companies to pivot back towards burning coal to produce electricity. Ending the so-called “war on coal” is intended to create jobs in...

  • 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor strapped to a dyno
    Trump budget slashes EPA emission testing, hits makers with higher fees

    The prospect of ongoing operations as usual continues to darken for the Environmental Protection Agency. According to a detailed internal budget document published in the The Washington Post, the Trump administration wants to eliminate virtually all federal funding for the agency’s vehicle...

  • The White House, Washington, D.C.  [Creative Commons license by dcjohn]
    Green groups gird for battle with White House: is it 'war'?

    Last Wednesday, a broad coalition of environmental groups sued the Trump Administration over an executive order that lifted a moratorium on issuing new leases for coal mining on federal lands. That order would have eliminated the requirement for an environmental impact study on the impacts of any...

  • Walmart store sign (via Wikimedia)
    Large corporations, manufacturers stick with climate pledges despite Trump

    The new U.S. president, Donald Trump, is working to eradicate every Obama policy to limit the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Having variously called the science behind climate change a "Chinese plot" to hurt the U.S. and referred to it using an expletive for bovine excrement...

  • The White House, Washington, D.C.  [Creative Commons license by dcjohn]

    These do not appear to be the best of times for President Donald J. Trump, but his agenda of eliminating regulations and promoting fossil fuels continues to roll out. This week, Trump appeared at the EPA to sign an executive order that directed the agency to reopen and reassess its Clean Power Plan for reducing carbon emissions from generating electricity in each state. The event was sparsely attended and, as reported by The Washington Post, some agency employees wore buttons saying "Scientific Integrity" as a silent protest. DON'T MISS: Trump Administration goal: undo every climate-change...

  • Photovoltaic solar power field at Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee
    Clean energy provides far more U.S. jobs than fossil fuels: analysis

    Yesterday, U.S. president Donald J. Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of rolling back pretty much every vestige of U.S. efforts to address climate change. In both his campaigning and since his inauguration, Trump has claimed that his government and its actions focus on creating...

  • President Donald Trump (Photo courtesy DoD)
    Trump Administration goal: undo every climate-change effort

    It was clear well before November's election that candidate Donald Trump did not believe in the accepted science of climate change. He referred to it using an excremental epithet, and also claimed that it was a Chinese hoax created to hurt the U.S. Scientists around the world and the majority of...

  • Gas pump
    Costs to meet fuel-economy standards even lower than EPA says: analysis

    The auto industry tends to oppose, viscerally and viciously, all attempts to regulate any aspect of its products or business operations for any reason. With President Trump in the White House, the industry has succeeded in getting the comment period reopened for the EPA emission standards finalized...

  • President Donald Trump (Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
    What Trump did and didn't say in Detroit on EPA emission rules

    One of the challenges of today's uber-polarized political environment is that fear and alarmism increasingly overtake the factual realities of an issue. This appears to be the case with President Donald Trump's Wednesday appearance in Detroit to announce the reopening of the comment period for EPA...

  • wind farm
    Bipartisan governors' group urges Trump to back solar, wind power

    The new presidential administration seems poised to take a radically different approach to energy policy than its predecessor. That approach is founded on denial of accepted climate science, and an expressed desire to promote the fossil-fuel industry, including the so-called revival of coal. But...

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