In recent years, I’ve greeted friends with Happy Earth Day. We were beginning to recognize the importance of climate change and take steps to minimize the damage. But that was before less than 1/4 of American eligible voters got away with installing Donald Trump in the White House and giving the Republican Reich control of both branches of Congress. God help us!
[3/31/2017] In the past few weeks, the Trump administration has ramped up its efforts to make good on campaign promises to dismantle President Obama’s environmental legacy.
Congressional Republicans have enthusiastically hopped on board, seizing the opportunity to repeal any environmental rules vulnerable under the Congressional Review Act and gunning to slash funding for critical environmental and scientific agencies and programs. The Trump Administration appointed Scott Pruitt, a man with well-established ties to the fossil fuel industry and a history of suing the Environmental Protection Agency, to chair the Environmental Protection Agency. On Wednesday morning, the Republican leadership of the House Science Committee convened a hearing for the sole purpose of challenging widely accepted climate science.
And this past Tuesday, surrounded by coal miners and bosses, Trump issued an executive order on “energy independence” which, among other things, places President Obama’s landmark Clean Power Plan directly in the line of fire and temporarily lifts the moratorium on new coal leasing on federal public lands.
Most of these developments have been months in the making. Trump and Congressional Republicans have never been quiet about their environmental agenda — namely, doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry and making grandiose but ultimately empty gestures to prop up coal.
Bottom line: it’s been a discouraging few months. This week alone has been bruising, and we’re in for a tough fight going forward.
But the persistently negative headlines, emphasizing only the administration’s determination to wreak havoc on our environment, are misleading and can be counterproductive. Not because they misstate the priorities of Trump’s White House and Congressional Republicans; those are well established. But we can’t lose sight of D.C.’s real influence, or lack thereof, over energy markets and international environmental commitments — or of the power our towns, cities, and states can wield in this fight…
From <ExtraNewsFeed>
We must all do every thing we can fo at every level, because Trump and his Reich won’t quit.
Donald Trump Is F***ing Our Planet, Happy Earth Day!
The time is now!
RESIST!!
24 Responses to “Earth Day – A National Day of Mourning”
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People are being very creative at the March for Science, and that is a good thing, and some of the creativity is quite amusing, and that is an even better thing. But it certainly is not a laughing matter. You are right on.
But we can’t lose sight of D.C.’s real influence, or lack thereof, over energy markets and international environmental commitments
This is the key point. Countries as diverse as China, India, and Germany are pushing ahead with the conversion from fossil-fuel to renewable energy. Trump can abandon US leadership in the fight, and leave us lagging behind other countries in the development of clean-energy technology (and thus disadvantaged in the growing markets for such technology), but he can't stop the change going on all over the world. Even in the US, solar power is becoming price-competitive even with subsidized and privileged fossil fuels. Trump can't bring that dinosaur back from extinction.
And thank God they are. One of my greatest fears is that the world will refuse to trade with us.
We need green technology to spawn jobs in the US, and not give it away to China.
So, I went out and participated in a "Stream Clean-up" at the Millstone River in New Jersey. There needs to be a law that would punish corporate entities, and their laders, who push, support, or in any other way aid the production of wait for it……what is really "Fake News." The tobacco industry, the sugar industry have been doing it for many decades, and, of course, the fossil fuel boys continue to pour it on!
Kudos!
I went and saw the March for Science, it was packed.
I enjoyed Mad Science activities.
The cartoon(s) are so apropos this day too.
Thanks, Tom.
More Kudos!
They can now throw coal waste in our streams again, polluting the water we drink. Eastern Kentucky has the highest rate of cancer in the USA>
I am so very sorry. I expect we all are. Thought and prayers to you.
Drumpf and the Republicans should be drinking the water from these streams along with the water in Flint! I wonder if they would whistle a different tune after that experience.
I'd be using bottled water.
Tearful Hugs!
The Fraser Institute (a Canadian public policy think tank and registered charity described as politically conservative and libertarian). put out a report on 21 April 2017 stating that the air quality in Canada is the best it has been in decades and further regulations would only hurt the economy. Sounds suspiciously like US Republicans' environmental policy.
Whether it is the US or Canada or anywhere else, we owe it to future generations to protect the planet. Mind, with Drumpf and Republicans trying very hard to start WWIII, there may not be any future generations nor a planet to protect.
Resist and Persist!!!
Who funds them?
As I understand, private donations, Real room for "bought and paid for".
In 2012, Alexis Stoymenoff of the Vancouver Observer reported that The Fraser Institute accepted $500,000 from the Koch Brothers in a four year period.
In August 2011, Dr. Gerry Angevine, Senior Economist in the Institute's Global Resource Center, spoke at the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force meeting at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 2011 annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.[5]
Source Watch
Wish the rest of the world could just close the curtains on America and say that Americans have made their own bed and they should now lie in it. Wish it was that simple. Wish the efforts of the rest of the world, however nominal, but efforts none the less, would save the rest of the world from further deterioration. But Americans do not live under a big dome, not even the 10% live under a dome, and because it is the largest of the western developed countries everything it does impacts the world many times over. If Americans do not wake up and see what the 10% are doing to them and doing to the rest of the world in their name, the whole planet is going to hell in a hand basket, with the seas and the poorer countries going down first. Starvation is already looming for 80 million in Africa.
So
RESIST, PERSIST & DO IT FOR
THE WHOLE PLANET, NOT
AMERICA FIRST
Excellent point!
Excellent short and straight forward video of Hannah Cranston above. (CC)
This was presented in C2's Daily Action the other day. This article presents a few additional points for TC's Earth Day article. Have a read. "10 Ways the Trump Administration is Waging War on the Planet".
http://www.care2.com/causes/10-ways-the-trump-administration-is-waging-war-on-the-planet.html
WATCH: Democracy Now! Special Broadcast from the March for Science
Special BroadcastApril 22, 2017. Videos. Take your pick of the many video topics presented in listening & watching to the commentators for Earth Day & March for Science.
https://www.democracynow.org/live/coming_up_on_april_22nd_democracy
.
LIke many of you – and this kinesin protein – I also joined the March for Science yesterday.
(Ain't Science cool?)
KCMO's was at Washington Square Park across from the Hallmark Crown Center Complex (When you care enough to send the very best)
This gal posted a neat time-lapse of people just COMING to the park from just the south on her Twitter account. They stop when the light changed to cross the street. So it wasn't the March – it was just people COMING to the March.. They estimate we had 3,000 to 5,000 – a lot more than the 1,000 they had anticipated.
https://twitter.com/ecbrooke/status/855795614310944770
Kudos again!
Love that protein strut!
It is pretty amazing.
Never seen it before the "March for Science" – but will undoubtedly use it again!
Thanks all! Hugs!
EXCELLENT, TC!