Region: National

Public Lands Watch: Comment Period on National Monuments

You can share your thoughts on Interior’s review of National Monuments

As we have noted in earlier posts, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the Interior Department to review a range of National Monuments created over the past 16 years through Presidential proclamations.  The Interior Department has recently announced a public comment period for that review.  If you are interested in sharing your comments …

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Finally, some good news from Congress

The Senate voted 51-49 Wednesday morning against considering a resolution to repeal Obama-era regulations targeting methane emissions from oil and gas operations on federal lands. The Senate was considering whether to vote on rolling back the rule under the Congressional Review Act, which allows the Senate to repeal rules within 60 days of enactment. Three …

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Politicians and Commentators Who Criticize Recent National Monuments Are Making Up Their Own Version of History

Republican Presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Herbert Hoover Designated Millions of Acres Under the Antiquities Act

As several colleagues and I noted here recently, President Trump recently issued an executive order that will result in “review” of national monuments created since 1996.  (The Antiquities Act grants Presidents the authority to reserve federal lands as national monuments, protecting them from much new resource extraction and development that would otherwise potentially be available on those …

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Thinking Globally, Acting Transnationally

Despite Trump, Americans are joining the international fight against climate change.

The U.S. government obviously isn’t going to be taking a global leadership role regarding climate change, not for the next four years. At one time, that would have been the end of the story: the only way to accomplish anything internationally was through national governments.  But we live in a different world today and there …

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Environmental Budget Update

Trump’s brutal attack on environmental spending seems mired in Congress.

It was clear early on that the stop-gap funding measure rejected Trump’s budget priorities.  Emerging details about the bill demonstrate how starkly Trump lost. Environmental and energy programs survived with very little damage. Let’s begin with the EPA budget.  Trump sought an immediate cut, followed by a 33% cut in the next budget.  Instead, EPA …

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Climate “Skeptic” Bret Stephens Cherrypicks Bad Climate Policies In The New York Times

Another misleading op-ed from the new columnist

Bret Stephens, the New York Times’ new columnist, got the climate change world into an outrage with his first column last week, which compared climate science to Hillary Clinton’s pre-election polling and argued for restraint from climate advocates. In his follow up column yesterday, he took a more measured tone, noting that he believes the …

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Public Lands Watch: Omnibus Appropriations

No significant new policy riders in the Omnibus Appropriations bill

Late last night, a bipartisan agreement was reached for funding the federal government through the rest of Fiscal Year 2017.  These omnibus appropriations bills often are a tool for inserting riders that impose significant restrictions on how agencies manage the public lands.  However, this year there are no new significant policy riders inserted in the …

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Thinking Globally, Acting Soldierly

Looking for people who care about climate change? Try the Pentagon.

Sometimes, it seems like the world is upside down: the head of EPA is a climate skeptic; the head of DOD takes climate change very seriously. But the view of the Secretary of Defense isn’t a fluke. There’s a liong list of Pentagon documents about the risks of climate change, going back over twenty years. …

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National Monuments: Presidents Can Create Them, But Only Congress Can Undo Them

Authored by Nicholas Bryner, Eric Biber, Mark Squillace, and Sean B. Hecht

Bears Ears National Monument, Utah. Bob Wick, BLM/Flickr, CC BY This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. On April 26 President Trump issued an executive order calling for a review of national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act. This law authorizes presidents to set aside federal lands in order to …

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Thinking Globally, Acting Corporately

The corporate world hasn’t been blind to the dangers of climate change — not even the oil industry.

With the White House and Congress MIA in the war against climate change, we need to look for other options. States like California are one answer, and I recently posted about the role cities could play. But these do not exhaust the options. Major corporations are taking climate change seriously and beginning to address the issues. In …

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