Trump wages war on Environment: kILLS JOBS

The Job Killimng Fiction Behind Trump's Retreat om Fuel Economy Standards 
yale 360
http://e360.yale.edu/features/trump-fuel-economy-cafe-standards-decicco

when President Trump traveled to Michigan last week to announce that his administration will reevaluate (and almost certainly weaken) a key environmental achievement of the past decade — new fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for cars and light trucks — he alleged that “industry-killing regulations” had contributed to a loss of jobs in the U.S. automobile sector. The truth is, however, that there is no factual basis for the claim that stricter standards have killed jobs. There is, however, abundant evidence that these regulations have saved Americans billions of dollars at the pump, bolstered U.S. energy independence, fostered automotive innovation, and led to major reductions in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
In taking this step, President Trump is following a prompt from the auto industry, whose two major trade associations have been angling to weaken the standards. Their complaints are among a slew of special pleadings sent to a new White House clearly sympathetic to big-league moneyed interests. In fact, when the EPA posted a notice on its web site last week announcing that it was reviewing the greenhouse gas emission standards, it prominently placed a link to the Auto Alliance’s request to reconsider the regulations. I, for one, can’t recall when a public agency prominently featured the opinions of lobbyists for an industry it regulates on an official federal webpage.

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Emmission Stamdards Dom't kill Jobs

DENISE ROBBINS

"Myths and facts about EPA's Carbon emission standards" May 30, 2014 11:32 AM EDT ››› 

https://mediamatters.org/research/2014/05/30/myths-and-facts-about-epas-carbon-pollution-sta/199516#jobs

• Fox News' Doug McElway touted a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report on Happening Now which claimed that the regulations "will result in an average loss of 224,000 jobs every year and a sustained lower standard of living." [Fox News, Happening Now, 5/28/14]

• Bloomberg News hyped the Chamber's report, headlining an article: "Chamber Study Predicts Obama Climate Rule Will Kill Jobs." [Bloomberg, 5/28/14]

• Mike Tobin led a segment on Happening Now warning of the impacts of EPA regulations, saying: "Some 6,000 miners here in Kentucky have lost relatively high paying jobs ... this is happening particularly as environmental policy targets the coal industry particularly here in Appalachia." [Fox News, Happening Now, 1/16/14]

FACT: Experts Expect Jobs Created To Balance Out Jobs LostEconomist Paul Krugman: Even Chamber Of Commerce Report Found "Saving The Planet Would Be Remarkably Cheap." Nobel Prize-winning economist and Princeton University Professor Paul Krugman explained in a New York Times op-ed that even the Chamber of Commerce's report found "[s]aving the planet would be remarkably cheap":
[T]he Chamber of Commerce report considers a carbon-reduction program that's probably considerably more ambitious than we're actually going to see, and it concludes that between now and 2030 the program would cost $50.2 billion in constant dollars per year. That's supposed to sound like a big deal. Instead, if you know anything about the U.S. economy, it sounds like Dr. Evil intoning "one million dollars." These days, it's just not a lot of money.
Remember, we have a $17 trillion economy right now, and it's going to grow over time. So what the Chamber of Commerce is actually saying is that we can take dramatic steps on climate -- steps that would transform international negotiations, setting the stage for global action -- while reducing our incomes by only one-fifth of 1 percent. That's cheap!
Alternatively, consider the chamber's estimate of costs per household: $200 per year. Since the average American household has an income of more than $70,000 a year, and that's going to rise over time, we're again looking at costs that amount to no more than a small fraction of 1 percent.
One more useful comparison: The Pentagon has warned that global warming and its consequences pose a significant threat to national security. (Republicans in the House responded with a legislative amendment that would forbid the military from even thinking about the issue.) Currently, we're spending $600 billion a year on defense. Is it really extravagant to spend another 8 percent of that budget to reduce a serious threat?
[...]
Now, we haven't yet seen the details of the new climate action proposal, and a full analysis -- both economic and environmental -- will have to wait. We can be reasonably sure, however, that the economic costs of the proposal will be small, because that's what the research -- even research paid for by anti-environmentalists, who clearly wanted to find the opposite -- tells us. Saving the planet would be remarkably cheap. [New York Times, 5/30/14]
Krugman: Chamber Report Is Flawed, Serves Special Interests. Economist Paul Krugman also detailed the flawed assumptions of the Chamber of Commerce report in the New York Times op-ed, explaining that the report, for instance, "neglects the dramatic technological progress" in clean energy, and ignores how building new, low-emissions power plants "would, if anything, give the U.S. economy a boost." He argued that the Chamber is fighting the regulations so fiercely because it is serving "special interests" including the Koch-influenced coal industry:
The real costs would almost surely be smaller [than the Chamber of Commerce estimates], for three reasons.
First, the Chamber of Commerce study assumes that economic growth, and the associated growth in emissions, will be at its historic norm of 2.5 percent a year. But we should expect slower growth in the future as baby boomers retire, making emissions targets easier to hit.
Second, in the chamber's analysis, the bulk of the reduction in emissions comes from replacing coal with natural gas. This neglects the dramatic technological progress taking place in renewables, especially solar power, which should make cutting back on carbon even easier.
Third, the U.S. economy is still depressed -- and in a depressed economy many of the supposed costs of compliance with energy regulations aren't costs at all. In particular, building new, low-emission power plants would employ both workers and capital that would otherwise be sitting idle, and would, if anything, give the U.S. economy a boost.
You might ask why the Chamber of Commerce is so fiercely opposed to action against global warming, if the cost of action is so small. The answer, of course, is that the chamber is serving special interests, notably the coal industry -- what's good for America isn't good for the Koch brothers, and vice versa -- and also catering to the ever more powerful anti-science sentiments of the Republican Party. [New York Times, 5/30/14]
NRDC: Carbon Standards Could Add More Than 274,000 Jobs. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released an analysis finding that the standards could create more than 274,000 jobs for electricians, carpenters and others and "deliver more than $50 billion in health and environmental benefits."  From the NRDC press release:
The first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants can save American households and business customers $37.4 billion on their electric bills in 2020 while creating more than 274,000 jobs, a Natural Resources Defense Council analysis shows.
[...]
In the study released today, NRDC said the federal carbon pollution standard could fuel a surge in energy efficiency investments, creating new jobs filled by electricians, roofers, carpenters, insulation workers, heating/air conditioning installers and heavy equipment operators, among others.
[...]
If the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopts a similar approach, the nation would slash carbon pollution by 531 million tons per year, nearly 25 percent by 2020 from 2012 levels (nearly 950 million tons and 35 percent below 2005 levels), helping deliver more than $50 billion in health and environmental benefits, NRDC's analysis shows. [NRDC, 5/29/14]
NYU Professor: Industry "Just As Likely To Hire More Workers As They Are To Lay Workers Off." Professor Michael Livermore, from New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, stated that "most serious economists will argue that our best estimate of the net effect is zero," because any negative employment effects will be made up for by jobs added in the clean energy economy. From a phone interview with Media Matters:
[M]odels which are more empirically grounded find that when you impose regulatory requirements on firms they're just as likely to hire more workers as they are to lay workers off -- and these are in the most highly regulated industries -- because you have to hire workers to comply with environmental statutes. So for example, yes, it might be the case that some coal miners might need to be laid off and need to transition to other forms of employment, but there's also going to be work building new gas fired power plants and energy efficiency retrofits.
[...]
So those two countervailing effects, for the most part, most serious economists will argue that our best estimate of the net effect is zero. That any of the employment effects are going to wash out. Because we don't know if there's going to be negative employment effects, but if there are, they're usually going to be associated with countervailing employment effects that are positive. [Phone conversation, Media Matters, 3/7/14]
Economic Policy Institute: "Fears Of Job Loss Are Overblown." A report by the Economic Policy Institute, which analyzed regulations from the EPA and other government agencies, found that environmental regulations have "multidimensional" effects on employment butcan create more jobs than they kill:
The direct cost of complying with regulations translates into increased employment. For example, an environmental regulation will mean more jobs for those engaged in pollution abatement. Further, it is possible that regulations may produce more labor-intensive production processes. A true accounting of the direct employment effects of a regulation thus considers both jobs lost and jobs gained.
[...]
The direct cost of complying with regulations translates into increased employment. For example, an environmental regulation will mean more jobs for those engaged in pollution abatement. Further, it is possible that regulations may produce more labor-intensive production processes. A true accounting of the direct employment effects of a regulation thus considers both jobs lost and jobs gained.
Regulations can be designed to explicitly benefit the economy and particular industries, and they can lead to investments that create jobs, improve worker health and thus productivity, and spur important technological innovations, among other positive effects. [EPI, 12/4/14]

TRUMP PLAN TO GUT STREAM PROTECTIONS IMPERILS TAP WATER OF 117 MILLION AMERICANS

http://www.ewg.org/research/trump-plan-gut-stream-protections-imperils-tap-water-117-million-americans

The Trump administration is threatening to remove safeguards that protect the drinking water of more than one-third of Americans.
Some 117 million people get at least some of their drinking water from small streams.^[1] For 72 million people in 1,033 counties, more than half of their drinking water comes from small streams. Ensuring that their water is safe means keeping the water in these streams clean. (See map below. Click here for a more detailed interactive map.)

Right now, the Clean Water Act protects these streams from pollution. But this week President Trump issued an executive order directing Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to rescind or revise the Clean Water Rule, or replace it with a new rule.
This critically important rule determines which streams, rivers and lakes are protected from pollution by the Clean Water Act. The rule also extends protection for millions of acres of wetlands that filter drinking water.
Industry and agribusiness have been pushing for years to roll back the Clean Water Rule and protect only the biggest streams and rivers. Now they’ve found a friend in the Trump administration.
Small streams are where big rivers start, and the best science confirms that dirty streams means even dirtier rivers. Millions of Americans drink water directly connected to 234,000 miles of small, potentially unprotected streams.
In 21 different states, small streams provide drinking water for 1 million or more people. (See chart below.) More than 5 million people in each New York, Texas and Pennsylvania get drinking water from small streams, as do more than 3 million in each California, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio, North Carolina and Arizona. [read more]

The New Administration Aims To Scale Back The Clean Water Act

http://www.savingthewest.org/blog/new-administration-aims-scale-back-clean-water-act/?utm_content=bufferf7db9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

President Donald Trump is moving to scale back which bodies of water are protected under the federal authority of the Clean Water Act. He has signed documents directing the EPA and US Army Corps of Engineers to review the rule.Environmentalists fear that scaling the Clean Water Act back is the first step to eliminating it altogether. It designates major bodies of freshwater within the United States as federal lands and offers protection to these bodies of water from pollution. Some of the debate may be calmed by having the law more clearly define which bodies of water are protected, and which are not:

In Tuesday’s executive order, Trump said that in any future proposed rule, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should consider Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, which focused on the scope of the Clean Water Act.In that case, Scalia stated  that the “waters of the United States” are limited to “only relatively permanent, standing or flowing bodies of water.” He added: “The phrase does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall.”Read More

Hundreds of current, former EPA employees urge Senate to reject Trump’s nominee for the agency

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/06/hundreds-of-current-former-epa-employees-urge-senate-to-reject-trumps-nominee-for-the-agency/?utm_term=.a971672eb567

Nearly 450 former Environmental Protection Agency employees Monday urged Congress to reject
President Trump’s nominee to run the agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, even as current employees in Chicago sent the same message during a noon rally.
“We retirees, we tend to like to lay low. But this has gotten a bunch of us quite concerned,” said Bruce Buckheit, whose three decades in government included working in the EPA’s enforcement division under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. 

Republicans have defended Pruitt as a capable leader who will return the agency to its core mission of protecting the environment while rolling back what they see as years of regulatory overreach that has unnecessarily burdened industry. A coalition of nearly two-dozen conservative advocacy groups has backed his nomination, insisting that Pruitt has “demonstrated his commitment to upholding the Constitution and ensuring the EPA works for American families and consumers.”[read more]