There's no question that
air pollution is bad for your body, from lung cancer to heart disease. Even President Trump's coal-friendly U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admits that dirty air can increase adverse health effects and cause death.
Now, researchers from Arizona State University have determined another air pollution risk: dementia.
Coal-fired power plant near Becker, Minnesota. Tony Webster / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled on Tuesday its long-anticipated replacement of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The new coal pollution rules will increase planet-warming carbon pollution and could cost more than a thousand American lives each year, according to the EPA's own estimates.
EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler released the "Affordable Clean Energy Rule" today under
President Trump's directive. The new plan encourages efficiency improvements at existing coal plants to ensure they operate longer and allows states to weaken, or even eliminate, coal emissions standards. That's a clear difference from former President Obama's plan, which was aimed at phasing out coal and transitioning to cleaner power sources to avoid dangerous climate change.
People's Climate March in New York City on Sept. 21, 2014. Elizabeth Stilwell / Flickr
Whether or not the Trump administration knows or cares, a majority of Americans wants government action on climate change.
For the past ten years, the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College have asked Americans their opinions on energy and climate policies in biannual National Surveys on Energy and Environment (NSEE).
The EPA demolished a building at the Garfield Ground Water Contamination Superfund site in New Jersey in 2012.
By AnaChristina Arana
President Trump has released his 2019 budget proposal, and when it comes to environmental policy, it's full of bad ideas.
The proposal he sent to Congress on Feb. 12 threatens our health, safety and economic future through major cuts to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), essential environmental programs and our judicial rights. It would rob future generations of the chance to experience our nation's outdoors, gut clean air and water protections, and undermine toxic pollution cleanup programs that keep our children from being harmed by life-threatening pollution.
Over the last several years, study after study has documented why burning trees to produce electricity, known as "biomass," will accelerate climate change. More than 800 scientists from around the world recently signed a letter to the EU government warning that burning trees for electricity releases more carbon into the atmosphere than coal per unit of electricity generated, increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at a critical time when we must be doing everything we can to reduce it.
In the absence of federal leadership on climate change, America's cities have become the vanguard of the country's efforts to create a sustainable future. Recently, 233 mayors from 46 states and territories, representing 51 million residents across the country, have signed an open letter opposing the repeal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the nation's most comprehensive strategy to combat climate change.
For those who are happy about President Trump's attacks on climate science and policy, this will come as bad news. By shining a spotlight on the issue, Trump drove media coverage of climate change last year.
Scott Pruitt, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), suggested in an interview Tuesday that humans "flourished" during warm periods and climate change might not be so bad.
"We know that humans have most flourished during times of what? Warming trends," Pruitt told Nevada news station
News 3. "So I think there's assumptions made that because the climate is warming that that necessarily is a bad thing."
