If you’re anything like me, you’ve been painstakingly watching the train wreck that is 45 and his presidency. It’s felt quite challenging to muster up the energy to write anything because of news cycle fatigue: the constant checking and refreshing of news sites out of fear that something even worse had unfolded during the time I slept or was in the shower or was brushing my teeth or was working out etc etc. There are countless horrors that are unfolding – from the Muslim ban to the ICE raids to efforts to further restrict abortion access and limit people’s reproductive rights. For the purposes of this blog, I’ll focus on the horrors that relate to the land. From Standing Rock in North Dakota to the Trans Pecos Pipeline in West Texas, the land is in even greater danger under 45. I hope you’ll check out the articles I’ve linked to below for the latest in what’s at stake for our blue planet & the future of humanity.
Trump’s EPA Budget Plan: Slash Research and Go Easy On Polluters
“The proposed cuts, which would slash the agency’s budget by 31 percent across the board and eliminate at least 3,000 jobs, shocked onlookers with its scale, but wasn’t exactly surprising. President Trump campaigned on “abolishing” the EPA, after all. His pick to run the agency, Scott Pruitt, recently told an audience that he does not believe greenhouse gases are a “primary contributor” to global warming, something that runs counter to the beliefs of 97 percent of active climate scientists.”
Standing Rock Sioux File Challenge After Trump’s Action on North Dakota Pipeline
“The crucial easement needed to finish the project was granted last week, and the company in charge of it told NBC News that drilling began as soon as the approval came down. The motion for summary judgment asks that the easement be vacated.
The tribe and its supporters believe the pipeline poses a threat to a reservoir that supplies the tribe’s drinking water. The pipeline project, which crosses four states, is estimated to be able to transport 570,000 barrels of oil a day.”
Trump’s Keystone XL pipeline plan faces legal challenge
The 1,180-mile (1,900km) pipeline will carry tar sands oil from Canada to refineries on the Texas coast. A lawsuit filed in Montana by a coalition of groups says more environmental scrutiny is required. They – and some landowners – are concerned about potential contamination of ground and surface water. Supporters of the project say such fears are exaggerated. President Trump, who overturned President Barack Obama’s rejection of the project, has said the pipeline will create jobs and improve US energy independence.
What Will Become of Federal Public Lands Under Trump
There are plenty of grounds for civil disagreement over the management of public lands. But the argument for large-scale federal-land disposal makes little legal, financial, or practical sense. The government’s constitutional right to own and hold property has been upheld by the Supreme Court. The fees that federal agencies charge for grazing, mining, and other extractive activities are heavily subsidized, and would almost certainly rise were the land transferred to states or counties. The job of managing so many millions of acres would also place a heavy burden on state and local governments—two hundred and eighty million dollars a year just in Utah, according to a 2014 study by economists from three of the state’s universities.
Trump’s budget jeopardizes America’s public lands heritage
These lands drive a $646 billion—with a “b”—outdoor recreation economy nationwide, spurring $13.2 billion in spending and supporting 124,600 workers in Colorado including hundreds of jobs in Durango—just like in many other Western communities. The Administration’s budget does not put “America First.”
Instead, it slashes $11.6 billion from the Department of the Interior’s already shoestring budget, threatening the very public lands on which so much of this economic activity depends. Amongst its far-reaching obligations, the Department of Interior is charged with managing our National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and National Conservation Lands and for fulfilling the federal government’s enormous (and legally established) responsibility to our Native American neighbors.
15 lawmakers plotting to privatize America’s public lands
The Center for Biological Diversity issued a report that analyzed 132 bills that were introduced in the past three congressional sessions, between 2011 and 2016, and identified the lawmakers who authored and cosponsored the greatest number of these bills. The list of “Public Lands Enemies” that emerged includes nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives and six U.S. senators from eight western states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming…
With the West already losing to development one football field’s worth of natural areas every two and a half minutes, these shared lands are more important than ever. At the start of the 115th Congress, we want to bring attention to these Public Lands Enemies and their plans to seize and privatize public lands. Everyone who cares about our national forests, wildlife refuges, deserts, national parks, national monuments, wild rivers, wilderness and areas of historic, scientific and cultural significance needs to be watching these elected officials vigilantly and opposing their actions every step of the way.
Trump halts Obama-era rule on fracking on public land
The Trump administration is rolling back an Obama administration rule requiring companies that drill for oil and natural gas on federal lands to disclose chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking.
But the beauty isn’t the only thing that could be lost. “You have a very, very sensitive ecology out there, a cavernous geology, natural fault lines in the area and these pools are home to a number of endangered species,” says Dr. Zacariah Hildenbrand of UT-Arlington’s CLEAR, the Collaborative Laboratories for Environmental Analysis and Remediation. His group studies the environmental impacts of fracking, and Hildenbrand attended that school board meeting at the invitation of Balmorhea school board member Paul Matta. “From the perspective of many Texans, this is the last place you would want to bring this highly industrious anthropogenic process, like why are you guys doing this here?”
Society of Native Nations – Official Two Rivers Camp
The Society of Native Nations (SNN) was asked by the Big Bend Defense Coalition of Alpine, TX and the surrounding communities in West Texas to help stop the Trans Pecos Pipeline. SNN has committed to help by starting a camp, which opened on Dec 30, 2016 to receive Water Protectors. The camp has been named “Two Rivers Camp”, known as “La Junta de los Rios” by the local native communities such as the Jumano Apache and Conchos People.
