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Trump's Interior Department Ripped Up Climate and Conservation Policies Because They Felt Like It
Just before Christmas, some terrible policy decisions were enacted which have just started to come to light. This is another upsetting, inexplicable, and indefensible one.
The Interior Department.... issued a secretarial order just before Christmas rescinding several climate change and conservation policies issued under the Obama administration, saying they were “inconsistent” with Trump’s quest....
.... the move underscores the extent to which Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his deputies are uprooting policies and procedures aimed at factoring climate and environmental effects into the department’s decision-making.
This action is intended to undo years of progress in learning how to conserve our Earth.
....wipes away four separate directives and policy manuals aimed at showing departmental employees how to minimize the environmental impact of activities on federal land and in federal waters.
The manuals and handbooks include detailed instructions on how officials at the Bureau of Land Management, for example, should minimize activities on the agency’s land that could harm certain species or accelerate climate change.
Officials spent years compiling a list of “best practices” in this area....and the Trump administration “just ripped them up.”
This action makes no sense except to screw our planet and our people for the short term benefit of a few unbelievably wealthy individuals and corporations seeking to use up the earth for profit as if they own it.
Mark Wenzler, senior vice president for conservation programs at the National Parks Conservation Association, noted that one of the department-wide manuals that was revoked includes several guidelines for how to minimize the impacts of climate change, including “monitoring, preventing, and slowing the spread of invasive species,” preventing the fragmentation of habitat and “protecting and restoring habitats and ecosystems that store carbon. It doesn’t make sense to not manage our lands to protect them from things that we know are going to happen,” Wenzler said, adding that Interior started developing the guidelines during Bush’s second term in office.