The Climate Reality Project / EcoWatch & RootsAction.org – 2017-04-20 00:48:24
http://www.ecowatch.com/epa-chiefs-speak-out-pruitt-2359082031.html
Four Former EPA Chiefs Speak Out Against Trump Administration
The Climate Reality Project / EcoWatch
(April 17, 2017) — It’s simple. Clear air, drinkable water and a livable climate should not be partisan issues.
Four former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrators were appointed by four different presidents — two Democrats and two Republicans. So, what could they have in common?
All of them have spoken out against the current administration’s environmental policies — as new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt repeats fossil fuel talking points, the president signs extreme executive orders that roll back environmental progress and a new federal budget proposes to cut EPA funding by 31 percent.
But here’s just some of what these former administrators had to say:
1. William K. Reilly
EPA administrator under President George H. W. Bush (1989 – 1993)
“For a prospective EPA administrator to doubt or even contest a conclusion that 11 national academies of science have embraced is willful political obstruction.”
2. Carol Browner
EPA administrator under President Bill Clinton (1993 – 2001)
“This budget makes significant cuts to programs that protect our air, our water, our land, which is not an American value. Eviscerating resources for scientific research on climate change and pollution is not an American value.”
3. Christine Todd Whitman
EPA administrator under President George W. Bush (2001-2003)
“I don’t recall ever having seen an appointment of someone who is so disdainful of the agency and the science behind what the agency does . . . [Scott Pruitt] obviously doesn’t care much for the agency or any of the regulations it has promulgated. He doesn’t believe in climate change; he wants to roll back the Clean Power Plan.”
4. Gina McCarthy
EPA administrator under President Barack Obama (2013 – 2017)
“This budget . . . really represents an all-out assault on clean air, water and land. You just can’t put America first when you put the health of its people and its country last and that’s what this budget really represents.”
Science Has No Party Affiliation
It’s clear from the words of these former EPA chiefs — Democrats and Republicans alike — that climate science and the mission of the EPA shouldn’t be political footballs. But while what’s going on in Washington, DC is discouraging at best, we don’t have time to waste on despair and cynicism.
As Climate Reality founder, former US Vice President Al Gore, has said, “We must, we can and we will solve the climate crisis. No one man or group can stop the encouraging and escalating momentum we are experiencing in the fight to protect our planet.” No matter what’s going on in DC, you can take action.
Here are four things you can do right now to be part of the movement to solve the climate crisis:
1. Join us at the People’s Climate March on April 29 (in DC and around the country). Like we saw at the Women’s March in January, regular people like us can send a powerful message to policymakers when we come together in massive numbers and speak with one voice. On April 29, we’re coming together again and marching to demand climate action.
2. Subscribe to email alerts to be notified when the next Climate Reality Leadership Corps training will take place. You’ll be the first to know when and where you can attend our next event with hundreds of other committed activists.
3. Take one action every day to stop climate change, organized by our friends at Years of Living Dangerously. Because every action you take can make a difference.
4. Pledge to #StandWithReality. According to a recent Gallup poll, seven in 10 Americans want to emphasize alternative energy over oil, gas and coal. Existing renewable technologies like wind and solar are creating millions of jobs around the world and will help us solve the climate crisis. But we have to make sure our leaders insist on truth, accept reality and listen to science.
ACTION ALERT: UnTrump the Budget
RootsAction.org
(April 12, 2017) — A wide-ranging collection of leading activists from a variety of movements has come together to sign the following powerful statement to the US Congress:
Our environmental and human needs are desperate and urgent. We need to transform our economy, our politics, our policies and our priorities to reflect that reality. That means reversing the flow of our tax dollars, away from war and militarism, and towards funding human and environmental needs, and demanding support for that reversal from all our political leaders at the local, state and national levels.
We and the movements we are part of face multiple crises. Military and climate wars are destroying lives and environments, threatening the planet and creating enormous flows of desperate refugees. Violent racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia and other hatreds are rising, encouraged by the most powerful voices in Washington DC.
President Trump plans to strip $54 billion from human and environmental spending so as to increase already massive spending on the military. The plan raises Pentagon spending to well over 60 cents of every discretionary dollar in the US budget — even as Trump himself admits that enormous military spending has left the Middle East “far worse than it was 16, 17 years ago.” The wars have not made any of us safer.
Washington’s militarized foreign policy comes home as domestic law enforcement agencies acquire military equipment and training from the Pentagon and from military allies abroad. Impoverished communities of color see and face the power of this equipment regularly, in the ongoing domestic wars on drugs and immigrants. This military-grade equipment is distributed and used by many of the same private companies that profit from mass incarceration and mass deportation.
Using just a fraction of the proposed military budget, the US could provide free, top-quality, culturally competent and equitable education from pre-school through college and ensure affordable comprehensive healthcare for all.
We could provide wrap-around services for survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence; replace mass incarceration with mass employment, assure clean energy and water for all residents and link our cities by new fast trains. We could double non-military US foreign aid, wipe out hunger worldwide. The list of possibilities is long.
Instead, the Trump administration plans to take much of their $54 billion gift for the Pentagon from the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency (even threatening to shut down its already under-funded environmental justice office), the Department of Health and Human Services (slashing family planning and anti-violence-against-women programs), from the State Department (thus privileging war over diplomacy), and foreign aid (so that the wealthiest country in human history turns its back on the world’s most desperate).
ACTION: Add your name.
Among those most desperate are the 24 million refugees who have been forced out of their homes and countries, more than at any time since World War II. Instead of cruel Muslim bans and cuts to the already meager number of refugees allowed into the US, we should be welcoming far more.
Alleviating the refugee crisis also means working to end, rather than escalate, the wars that create refugees, and supporting human rights defenders in their home communities. That means more diplomacy and foreign aid, not more military spending.
With its hundreds of billions of un-audited dollars, the military remains the greatest consumer of petroleum in the United States, and one of the world’s worst polluters.
The US needs new green, sustainable jobs across our economy targeted to people facing the highest rates of unemployment and low wages. Military spending results in an economic drain. Clean energy production creates 50% more jobs than the same investment in military spending.
The US military also serves as a security force protecting the extraction and transport of fossil fuels domestically and from the Middle East and other parts of the world. US military force thus enables the continued assault on the planet and some of its most impoverished inhabitants by ensuring the supply of cheap fossil fuels, all while subsidizing some of the largest corporations in the world.
A December 2014 Gallup poll showed people in 65 nations considered the United States far and away the largest threat to peace in the world. If the United States was known for providing clean drinking water, schools, medicine, and solar panels to others, instead of attacking and invading other countries, we would be far more secure and face far less global hostility.
We can do this.
Reverse the flow.
No Walls, No War, No Warming!
After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends. This work is only possible with your financial support.
RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former US Senator James Abourezk, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.
Declaration of Peace
World Beyond War Petition
I understand that wars and militarism make us less safe rather than protect us, that they kill, injure and traumatize adults, children and infants, severely damage the natural environment, erode civil liberties, and drain our economies, siphoning resources from life-affirming activities. I commit to engage in and support nonviolent efforts to end all war and preparations for war and to create a sustainable and just peace.
Our focus as a nation should be on the survival of our people and our planet, not on the destruction of an endless list of “enemies” that are, most often than not, consequences of Washington’s armed, global meddling.
— EAW.
A POEM FOR SCOTT PRUITT
By Gar Smith / EAW
No surprise here, we all knew it
EPA-pick Scotty Pruitt
is bad news, bears, so let’s review it:
Climate change? “There’s nothing to it.”
The Clean Air Act? “We must undo it.”
Clean Water law? “We can’t renew it.”
Lead in water? “Learn to chew it.”
On wilderness? “I’ll drive right through it.”
Oil and coal? “I’ll get right to it.”
Polar bears? “I won’t rescue it.”
Atomic waste? “I don’t intuit.”
Stewardship? “I shall eschew it.”
Sierra Club? “I plan to sue it.”
Your legacy? “I think I blew it.”
Our planet’s future? “Don’t care! Screw it!”
