Environmental Politics

As Hurricane Harvey dumped record rains on the Houston area, nature ruled and man reacte. Harvey was Houston's reckoning.

"The Trump administration’s proposal to allow offshore oil and natural-gas drilling in federal waters off the Atlantic Coast could make 2018 an even tougher election year for Republicans in coastal states."

"The Interior Department has approved a land swap deal that will allow a remote Alaskan village to construct a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, according to local officials. The action effectively overrules wilderness protections that have kept the area off limits to vehicles for decades."

"Infrastructure was supposed to be an arena of bipartisan comity in Donald Trump’s first year as president. Instead, it became an afterthought as the administration tussled with Congress over health care, border security, and tax cuts while jettisoning waves of advisers and staff."

"Congressional Republicans allowed a tax on oil companies that generated hundreds of millions of dollars annually for federal oil-spill response efforts to expire this week — a move that amounts to another corporate break in the wake of lawmakers’ sweeping tax overhaul late last month."

"A former top National Park Service official implicated more than a decade ago for improperly paving the way for the owner of the Washington Redskins to cut down trees on a 2-acre scenic easement along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park is expected to become the agency's next acting director, possibly as soon as next week, National Parks Traveler has learned."

"The Trump administration said Thursday it would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all United States coastal waters, giving energy companies access to leases off California for the first time in decades and opening more than a billion acres in the Arctic and along the Eastern Seaboard."

"While visions of sugarplums danced in some of our heads, the Trump administration had a different vision—of a country unbound by rules that protect people, places, wildlife and the climate. Over the past two weeks, the administration has proposed or finalized changes to how the government and the industries it regulates respond to climate change, migratory birds, clean energy, pesticides and toxic chemicals."

"Seeking to cut its workforce in the new year, the National Park Service is offering its employees voluntary buyout packages as an incentive to get some of them to retire early."

"'There is a real war going on and it’s a war against health, against the environment and against human rights.'"