This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday his intention to nominate Jeffrey Bossert Clark—who defended BP in lawsuits surrounding the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and challenged the Obama administration over greenhouse gas rules on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—to head the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.
Clark is a partner in the Washington, DC office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP and once served in George W. Bush's administration from 2001 to 2005 as a deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.
"He is a complex trial and appellate litigator with especially deep experience in administrative law, cutting across dozens of statutes and numerous agencies," the White House announced.
However, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. commented, "Clark's appointment is a doubling down on the administration's strategy of retreating from the future and branding America as a petrostate while China steals our global energy, economic and moral leadership, and the rest of the world moves forward."
InsideClimate News described Clark as a "climate policy foe" who has "repeatedly argued that it is inappropriate to base government policymaking on the scientific consensus presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]."
According to the publication, "One of the legal briefs he signed is such a comprehensive compendium of thoroughly debunked denial of the scientific consensus that it stands as a classic of the genre, replete with condemnations not just of the EPA but of the IPCC, whose work the petitioners tried to persuade the court to rule out of bounds. A series of podcasts and papers he has written on The Federalist Society website continue his arguments against the endangerment finding and climate science more broadly."
Clark has also criticized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for concluding in late 2009 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threatens the public health and the environment and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. As Clark wrote in a 2010 blog post over the EPA's endangerment finding, "When did America risk coming to be ruled by foreign scientists and apparatchiks at the United Nations?"
"He has a long history of opposing climate action for corporate and ideological clients," David Doniger, who heads the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, told InsideClimate News about Clark. "I would expect that history would require him to recuse himself from such cases as over the Clean Power Plan, where he filed an amicus brief against the rule."
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Adam Vaughan
Two-thirds of people in the UK think the amount people fly should be reined in to tackle climate change, polling has found.
On Monday, Sept. 23, the Climate Group will kick off its 11th annual Climate Week NYC, a chance for governments, non-profits, businesses, communities and individuals to share possible solutions to the climate crisis while world leaders gather in the city for the UN Climate Action Summit.
By Pam Radtke Russell in New Orleans
Local TV weather forecasters have become foot soldiers in the war against climate misinformation. Over the past decade, a growing number of meteorologists and weathercasters have begun addressing the climate crisis either as part of their weather forecasts, or in separate, independent news reports to help their viewers understand what is happening and why it is important.
While airlines only serve bottled drinking water directly to customers, they use the plane's water for coffee and tea, and passengers can drink the tap water. Aitor Diago / Getty Images
You might want to think twice before washing your hands in an airplane bathroom.
Trending
By Allegra Kirkland, Jeremy Deaton, Molly Taft, Mina Lee and Josh Landis
Climate change is already here. It's not something that can simply be ignored by cable news or dismissed by sitting U.S. senators in a Twitter joke. Nor is it a fantastical scenario like The Day After Tomorrow or 2012 that starts with a single crack in the Arctic ice shelf or earthquake tearing through Los Angeles, and results, a few weeks or years later, in the end of life on Earth as we know it.
Air pollution particles that a pregnant woman inhales have the potential to travel through the lungs and breach the fetal side of the placenta, indicating that unborn babies are exposed to black carbon from motor vehicles and fuel burning, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
Trending
Teen activist Greta Thunberg delivered a talking-to to members of Congress Tuesday during a meeting of the Senate Climate Change Task Force after politicians praised her and other youth activists for their efforts and asked their advice on how to fight climate change.
By Jared Brey
When Hurricane Michael tore through the Florida panhandle last October, it killed at least 43 people, caused an estimated $25 billion in damage and destroyed thousands of homes.