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An Open Letter From Pittsburgh to the President on Paris Climate Pullout

Last week, President Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Here’s what Pittsburgh had to say about it: “Mr. President, when you took our country out of the global agreement to stop climate change, you said you  “represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” As a proud native of western Pennsylvania, I strongly disagree. You do not represent Pittsburgh. Our people overwhelmingly rejected you at the ballot box, and we have seen your brand of charlatanism before. For generations, glorified highwaymen like you have come to

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June 8, 2017

Climate Scientists to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt: Not so Fast

Climate scientists are fighting back. They had heard enough when EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt claimed in written Senate comments following his confirmation hearing as administrator of EPA that “over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming.” They decided to respond, not with reactionary rhetoric, but with science, with facts. A team of scientists led by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA and from MIT in Cambridge, MA examined temperature data from three satellite data sets going back to

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June 1, 2017

Superfund Task Force Headed by Bank Chairman – Cuts in Budget- Appointing Lawyer Who Represented Polluters to EPA Enforcement

What a nightmare. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt promised to restore Superfund and the EPA’ s land and water cleanup efforts “to their rightful place at the center of the agency’s core mission.”  He made this announcement in April while visiting a site in Indiana where hundreds of families must relocate because it is unsafe to live there. When I heard the announcement, I was excited. Unfortunately, soon afterwards his action spoke louder. Pruitt is not being honest. But judge for yourself. On May 12th Susan Bodine was nominated to be

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May 24, 2017

Small Victory for North Carolina Residents Fighting CAFOs: Governor Vetoes House Bill 467

The Bill: “Elise Herring has been fighting for decades against the industrial hog farm that moved in beside her family’s Eastern North Carolina property in 1986 and began spraying the fecal material of +2,000 hogs onto the field that ends eight feet outside her kitchen window. But last Friday, when the state’s newly elected Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed a bill that would protect the hog industry from lawsuits like the one Herring and about 500 others have filed against a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, she breathed a sigh of

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May 9, 2017

Increases in Infant Mortality Linked to Fracking

A new study published last week in the Journal of Environmental Protection provides new evidence that the gas extraction process of hydrofracturing, known as fracking, is harming the health of people who live near these wells. This study found that counties in Pennsylvania with higher numbers of fracking wells had higher rates of infant mortality. The authors compared early infant mortality for the years 2007-2010 in ten Pennsylvania counties that were heavily fracked to the rates for the rest of the Pennsylvania (excluding the 10 heavily fracked counties) for the

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May 2, 2017

Tax Reform Should Begin With Making Polluters Pay

As we begin our national conversation about tax reform, why don’t we start with low-hanging fruit – the things we can all agree are right? Why not reinstate the Superfund tax, which used to make polluters pay to clean up their own mess? By reinstating this “Polluter Pays” tax, American citizens will save literally billions of dollars. There is no need for a new law, big debates or much else. All Congress needs to do is simply reinstate this law, which lapsed at the end of 1995. Everything is already in

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April 20, 2017
Blog Roll
Greenpeace’s The Witness
Grist
Groovy Green
Healthy Child Healthy World
Inside Prevention
It’s Getting Hot in Here
Moms Rising
Pharos
Safe Mama
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families
The Soft Landing
Treehugger
Zero Waste World