A few weeks ago, President Trump  approved the largest rollback of federal land protection in our country’s history. Trump’s announcement to drastically slash the size of two national monuments in Utah - Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante  among additional changes to other national monuments - was not a surprise. But it has been controversial. The day after Trump signed the order, the outdoor recreation company Patagonia posted a message on its website under the headline, “The President Stole Your Land.” Patagonia has joined a flurry of lawsuits challenging whether President Trump has the authority to undo or change monuments created by past presidents. So does the Antiquities Act allow presidents to roll back national monuments? On this episode, we hear from John Ruple, associate professor of law at the Wallace Stegner Center for Land Resources and the Environment at the University of Utah. He’s also a member of Friends of Cedar Mesa, one of the groups that is suing President Trump over his revisions to Bears Ears.

Ep 31: The Incredible Shrinking Monuments

Tracking the latest environment-related shenanigans from Trump & his allies.

News

Politics

When he first ran for President, Donald Trump was called the “chaos candidate”. And to bitter end, that has been borne out. But another kind of radical change has happened over the last four years, often out of the headlines.  So, for our last episode, we take stock of the past four years. 

Series Finale

There have been a number of changes in how the EPA, under President Trump, uses science. It has come with much criticism, including from former EPA officials. On this episode, we hear from a veteran EPA scientist on what drove him to leave the Trump Administration. Chris Zarba worked at the EPA for close to four decades. He was an official in the administrator's office of the agency and also directed the Agency’s Science Advisory Board Staff Office.  

"Sound science is not leading the decisions made by this nation."

The outgoing president has a few orders of business he’d like to take care of before January 20.  Among them is a controversial plan to drill for oil in the country’s largest stretch of untouched wilderness. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 20 million acres of mountains, tundra and coast lands. Underneath it, there are billions of barrels of oil. Similar plans have sparked fights for decades, so why the Trump administration push to drill there now?  Our guest for this episode is Tegan Hanlon, a public radio reporter for Alaska’s Energy Desk in Anchorage. 

Trump’s Last Act: Drilling in the Arctic Refuge

President-Elect Biden ran as a moderate Democrat, but he also campaigned on an aggressive climate platform. How much of that agenda he can pursue could rest on who controls the US Senate, pending results of two runoff elections in Georgia.  We unpack what's coming next with Jody Freeman, law professor and director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School. Before that she worked in the Obama White House as counselor for climate and energy where she was the architect of the fuel-efficiency regulations for cars, which were later rolled back under President Trump. 

What does Biden's win mean for the environment and the fight to rein in climate change?

On this episode, we're looking at what role climate change and other environmental issues could play in deciding the election. We check in with reporters in three major battleground states--Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida--to find out. Our guests are Alex Harris, a climate reporter with the Miami Herald; Lester Graham, a reporter with the Environment Report at Michigan Radio; and Susan Phillips who covers energy for WHYY and StateImpact Pennsylvania.            

Ep 31: The Incredible Shrinking Monuments

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