This op-ed originally ran in The Hill. It was co-authored with Melissa Kelly, the staff director and attorney at the Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources (CLEANR).
The bald eagle, sea otter, timber wolf — these iconic animals and more have been saved by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). But the Trump administration doesn't seem to care about our country's natural heritage. It's using questionable arguments about the popular law in an effort to gut protections and convert our public lands into private assets.
The administration's destructive intent is apparent in the proposed revisions to the ESA by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries. These changes appear to be aimed at providing more opportunities for business interests to influence conservation decisions. Indeed, the administration has proposed to turn the law on its head by allowing consideration of economic impacts in listing decisions, restricting designation of unoccupied critical habitat, and eliminating default protections for threatened species.
The motivations are even clearer when we look at the administration's aggressive exploitation of public lands in favor of the oil and gas industry. The president's myopic fixation on achieving "energy dominance" is poised to undermine what former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell once referred to as an "unprecedented landscape-scale conservation effort" that demonstrated the ESA "is an effective and flexible tool and a critical catalyst for conservation."
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Alejandro Camacho | October 5, 2018
This op-ed originally ran in The Hill. It was co-authored with Melissa Kelly, the staff director and attorney at the Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources (CLEANR). The bald eagle, sea otter, timber wolf — these iconic animals and more have been saved by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). But the Trump administration doesn't […]
Melissa Powers | October 3, 2018
As Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis, and Chris Mooney of The Washington Post reported on September 27, the Trump administration seems to finally be acknowledging that climate change is real. But the motivation for recognizing that reality is cynical, at best, so rather than proposing doing something – anything – about climate change, the administration concludes […]
Robert Verchick, Sidney A. Shapiro | October 2, 2018
Originally published in The Regulatory Review as part of a series on social justice and the green economy. Reprinted with permission. The reactions to our article, Inequality, Social Resilience, and the Green Economy, have a clear message: We, environmentalists, have our work cut out for us. We wrote our article to start an overdue conversation about environmental policy and […]
James Goodwin | October 1, 2018
Sunday marked the 25th anniversary of the issuance of Executive Order 12866, but it was hardly a happy occasion. For all intents and purposes, though, the order, which governs the process by which federal agencies develop regulations under the supervision of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), is dead. Despite all […]
Lisa Heinzerling | September 28, 2018
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US). Editor's note: You can read Professor Heinzerling's follow-up post, which analyzes the oral arguments in this case, on SCOTUSblog. A tiny amphibian takes center stage in the first case of October 2018 term. The dusky gopher […]
John Echeverria | September 28, 2018
On Wednesday, October 3, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Knick v. Township of Scott. The case poses the question of whether property owners suing state or local governments under the Takings Clause are required to pursue their claims in state court (or through other state compensation procedures) rather than in federal […]
Daniel Farber | September 27, 2018
Cross-posted from LegalPlanet. The Trump administration is moving toward the view, long popular in industry, that when it regulates a pollutant, EPA can consider only the health impacts of that particular pollutant – even when the regulation will also reduce other harmful pollutants. This idea is especially important in climate change regulation because cutting carbon emissions […]
Karen Sokol | September 26, 2018
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report. The 450 Inupiat residents of Kivalina, a small village on the frozen tundra of Alaska at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, are among the first communities in the world to lose their ability to survive because of climate change. With temperature increases that double the global average, Alaska is one of the canaries in the coal mine of climate change. As a result, the Arctic’s ice has diminished by half over the last three decades, triggering a series of reactions that are transforming the environment. The people of Kivalina risk plunging into frigid waters whenever they use their snowmobiles — the only viable motorized means of transportation in the region. That, along with the fact that their principal source of food is wildlife whose habitats are being destroyed by rising sea levels, means that the Inupiat of Kivalina are losing their ability to feed themselves.
James Goodwin | September 26, 2018
The confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh offered Americans a contemporary reminder of what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind when it comes to protecting many of our fundamental rights and liberties. When it came to individual access to civil courts, a right guaranteed in the Seventh Amendment, they couldn't have been clearer. No […]