text: December 12 2016, 8:32 p.m.
  "Our waterways are already in serious peril, according to an EPA evaluation of U.S. lakes released Friday. According to the report, 30 percent of lakes now contain the pesticide atrazine."
  So why isn't the EPA going after Big Agriculture?.. instead of taking the property rights away from people who have lakes and streams and rivers on their property. People who gather and store rainwater. This is what Pruitt's lawsuits is against…the EPA determination to have Orwellian control and change water into a commodity. To be bent under the Agenda 21, and the global warming and the hoax of CO2 being a pollutant.
  The determination for the UN through organizations like the EPA, to control water on my property, that is what Pruitt fights. But you find him guilty before he enters office.
  "As Attorney General of Oklahoma, Pruitt repeatedly (and often unsuccessfully) sued the EPA to stop the agency from doing its job."
  No…your are wrong and are a liar…slanting facts to your own petty agenda Ms Clintonista…
  again the EPA does not have the power to take constitution property rights, and water rights away from US citizens…again I stress, their "JOB" is to find and prosecute "polluters"… that is their only mandate, and the reason they were created in the first place.
  They are not, a climate organization. They are not in the climate business, even though they have jumped on the backwagon with the rest of the CAGW witch hunt.
  The EPA has failed countless numbers of times, in their prosecutions of the likes of Dow and Monsanto, Bayer. In pesticides litigation Why? Because these corporations are their real masters. Who happen to have the EPA in their back pocket. Ridiculous fines for these polluters who make billions from Atrazine. But pay nothing when they dump it in to waterways.
  This incessant climate propaganda you pump out is ridiculous…educate yourself for god's sakes.
  The EPA's job is to go after polluters only, not to infinge on and take away the constitutional property and water rights of all citizens. In fact the UN recognized that water is a human right in July of 2010.
  December 11 2016, 10:57 p.m.
  The Federal government murdered the coal industry over a bogey man.
  Here's why. Fossil fuels emit only 3% of total CO2 emissions. 95% comes from rotting vegetation. All the ambient CO2 in the atmosphere is promptly converted in the oceans to calcite (limestone) and other carbonates, mostly through biological paths. CO2 + CaO => CaCO3. The conversion rate increases with increasing CO2 partial pressure. A dynamic equilibrium-seeking mechanism.
  A modern coal power plant emits few air effluents except water vapor and carbon dioxide. Coal remains the lowest cost and most reliable source of electric energy, along with natural gas. Coal has always competed effectively with natural gas. Illinois Basin coal now costs less than 1/3 the equivalent cost of natural gas at their respective sources. Natural gas is less competitive with coal today than it was in 1995.
  December 12 2016, 11:50 a.m.
  Your lies are very out of date. Very few people will be convinced. But I congratulate you on your lies/words ratio. You are better than nearly all others hired to perform in this way. You should ask of a raise.
  December 12 2016, 7:55 p.m.
  Ad hominem …Prove he is a liar….Sulzer?
  The truth is that Global Average Temperature has plummeted 1 degree, that is all the GAT rise in the last 18 years.
  We are cooling, and there is no clear evidence of CAGW.
  There is according to the Vostok ice cores a 600 – 1000 years lag in CO2. In fact the highest core temperature of the past are at the lowest CO2 levels and the modern rise in temperature is the lowest CO2 levels.
  CO2 follows temperature rise.
  Coal in America has been a orchestrated campaign by Soros to acquire all American coal for his surefire metanol extraction which is subsidized through the clean air act as an exceptable fuel. In the process of extraction vast amount of CO2 is gained furthering George Soros fortunes.
  In fact the atmosphere is low CO2, and there isn't enough fossel fuel available to gain the doom and gloom Al Gore and ilk.
  600 ppm of CO2 is not an unreasonable amount, and would greatly benefit all life on earth.
  December 11 2016, 9:51 p.m.
  Well, it's not like things are good to begin with, as mentioned in the article. The reason that Atrazine, a horrible chemical that along with all petrochemical pesticides should be completely banned, is that both Democratic and Republican administrations have given the chemical industry the green light to do whatever they want by EPA registration of these pesticides. So yeah, Trump looks like he's going to make things worse, but if the Democrats were worth a crap we wouldn't be in this position to begin with.
  December 11 2016, 8:39 p.m.
  https://thedistributist.com/2016/12/11/dismantling-the-epa/
  December 11 2016, 7:14 p.m.
  The author misses the obvious. That is that if we want to protect our resources to a greater degree than the federal government does, we can, by way of the 10th amendment. States can enact their own stronger protections in any area that matters as California has done in the past. All this fear mongering is just that. It is shameful that the Intercept is participating with articles like this one.
  vicky Terence Conklin
  December 11 2016, 9:29 p.m.
  States run by GOP governors will simply follow the GOP's example.
  December 11 2016, 9:49 p.m.
  While technically true, your comment is still BS. States won't do this — California is a rare exception. It takes far less money to bribe a state government than to bribe the federal one, and the corporations that run this country are more in control of state legislatures than of the federal government.
  Mike Sulzer Terence Conklin
  December 12 2016, 11:52 a.m.
  As you know, there is only so much states can do on their own with large problems such as these. But nice try.
  Rick Terence Conklin
  December 12 2016, 5:37 p.m.
  As you know, or should know, state protection of rivers, or lakes end at their border. Why should residents of states downstream, or across a lake, from a non-regulating state suffer because of non-regulating states' inaction?
  December 10 2016, 7:24 p.m.
  "Drink the tap!" Drink government water!
  December 10 2016, 1:49 p.m.
  As Flint and this timeline of pipeline accidents from 1986 – 2014, as well as the Obama administration's responses to things like the Deepwater Horizon accident amply show water policy, like everything else on the political plate we get served, is a choice between the lesser of two (or more) evils.
  Just as we get Goldman Sachs no matter who assumes the mantle of the Presidency, we will continue to get corporate rule as well, unless and until all of the corporate/bank-owned legislators are purged at all levels of government.
  December 10 2016, 1:20 p.m.
  I bet y'all are just loving your Jill Stein vote right about now…
  Just hang on, though… it's going to get even better…maybe even "Cuyahoga River/Love Canal" better!
  But go ahead & keep telling yourself how Obama is just as bad…
  December 11 2016, 9:46 p.m.
  I'm proud of my Jill Stein vote, and in fact of all my Green Party votes over the decades. The Democrats might not be quite as bad, but they're nowhere near good enough to support or vote for.
  cognoscenti Jeff D
  December 17 2016, 1:51 p.m.
  thank you for gifting us with Trump because that was the end result of your futile "protest" vote. Hope you enjoy the next four years. I bet you voted for Ralph Nader's ego-driven campaign in 2000, which foisted W upon the world for 8 miserable, damaging years. Isis owes you thanks.
  December 10 2016, 5:55 a.m.
  > "'We're really concerned about lead and copper,….'"
  Ditch the bottle. Drink the tap!
  December 10 2016, 2:07 a.m.
  Poisoning the water supply is a good way to take people's minds off the problem of global warming.
  December 10 2016, 1:21 a.m.
  Actually your policy to reduce co2 emissions drastically increases water use and reduces plant growth
  December 10 2016, 11:44 a.m.
  How does stopping further increases in CO2, or even reducing them back to their levels a few centuries ago, reduce plant growth from whatever reasonable level it once had?
  Also, I do not see why reducing the burning of carbon based fuels has to increase water use.
  December 11 2016, 9:45 p.m.
  Plants inhale CO2, so increasing emissions of it is beneficial to them. Problem is, that benefit comes at the price of unnaturally fast climate change and heating of our atmosphere that will cause many species to become extinct and will cause major problems for humans too.
  December 12 2016, 8:49 p.m.
  Because plants use CO2 as food, the more available the greater the size and stability of the plants. The more CO2 available the greater the crop yield. Why? Because plant life is a carbon sink.
  Strange how everyone yaks about humans and CO2.
  When in fact the greatest amount of CO2 is produce in the ocean, brought to the surface from great depths, along with all that sea life, somewhere in the range of 70%. And its realise is dependant on PDO and ENSO, the oscillations.
  Human barely put anything in the mix…forest rot and decay and bacteria account for greater amounts of land CO2.
  The only reason CO2 is labeled a pollutant is because it is traceable to humans and can be taxed, which is the real reason, for CO2 scare. Trillions in carbon taxes.
  December 13 2016, 8:53 a.m.
  All of your important points are wrong. The natural level of CO2 in our atmosphere — what it was before industrial society — is 280 parts per million. It's now over 400 parts per million because of human emissions. So you're either a liar or an ignorant fool, which is it?
  December 10 2016, 1:10 a.m.
  Who would you rather have, someone like Obama who covertly sabotages pollution standards with unregulated offshore oil leasing and an EPA that refused to respond the BP Deepwater blowout – or someone who is honest about that policy, as Trump is?
  In either case, as the DAPL protests showed, the only thing that really works is political activism and direct action when it comes to protecting water supplies from pollution by politically connected corporate interests.
  December 10 2016, 11:38 a.m.
  Obviously we would rather have Obama. Trump will do far more damage. Oh, you were joking, right?
  December 10 2016, 11:39 a.m.
  Quote ends at the space. Sorry.
  Quote ends at the blank line. Sorry.
  December 10 2016, 12:39 p.m.
  look, BP swore to Obama, ON A STACK OF BIBLES, that it wouldnt happen again. Obama then asked, "Is that stack of bibles high enough to be reliable?" and BP answered, "Trust me".
  December 9 2016, 11:51 p.m.
  I think one recourse we have – in some instances, and it's going to take people paying attention and pointing it out to us is: when an agency posts changes and opens the comments to the public, we are going to have to campaign like never before.
  I stumbled into a website that I highly recommend. http://www.governing.com/about There is a writer there named Liz Farmer. She wrote about state subsidies, which states track them, and other interesting info. She said that she pays particular attention to regs. She might be a great resource.
  Are you game, Sharon Lerner?
  December 11 2016, 9:41 p.m.
  What you propose definitely needs to be done, but far more important is people making major lifestyle changes. Unless people are willing to give up their environmentally harmful lifestyles (driving, overconsumption, more than two kids, etc.), neither Trump nor any other U.S. president has no reason to do positive things for the environment.
  December 9 2016, 11:41 p.m.
  Please, the epa has gone off the deep end and needlessly reproduces efforts better managed at the state level. The only country to meet the target's of Kyoto was the one that didn't ratify it, us. We need to keep the environment out of the hands of the feds or it will end up like everything else they control, a mess. Have you self professed "environmentalists" learned nothing from history?
  Mike Sulzer antiDave
  December 10 2016, 11:47 a.m.
  Right, AD, let's go back to the days when the Federal government had no say over air and water pollution. What a mess!
  December 9 2016, 11:02 p.m.
  It's too late. The threat was issued decades okay and was followed through on it. With all the radiation going into the Pacific from Fukushima we are living in the last days of a happy planet. Time to migrate to an alternative universe.
  Jeff D William St. George
  December 11 2016, 9:37 p.m.
  Actually, it was at least millennia ago. Even hunter-gatherer humanoids and humans caused great harm when they left Africa (massive loss of species and some extinctions from overhunting wherever humans went). Agriculture and civilization are war against the Earth, and industrial society is that war squared. Nukes are just a more direct and faster way to snuff out life.
  Humans chose the wrong path very long ago (measured in human terms), and we're seeing the fruits of that bad decision about to be realized. The only positive use for humans is consciousness expansion. Gross overpopulation and use of very environmentally and ecologically technologies are not what humans should have been doing for thousands of years, but they are.
  If I recall correctly, the EPA was formed to protect the environment against people like this. Maybe I'm being naive, but this appointment represents such a clear conflict of interest that I don't see how it can possibly go through.
  Joshua88 br'er rabbit
  December 9 2016, 11:55 p.m.
  Short history lesson: GWB put people who don't/didn't believe in much government or government at all (I suppose) and appointed or selected people to roll back regs. Both parties do it – see WJC.
  br'er rabbit Joshua88
  December 10 2016, 2:08 a.m.
  Yes, well, I've been around a while . . . long enough to remember Ronald "trees cause more pollution than automobiles" Reagan and James "I have a black, two jews and a cripple" Watt. But I think this is even more clear cut than Watt was (no pun intended).
  More Reagan quotes here :
  Jeff D br'er rabbit
  December 11 2016, 9:31 p.m.
  Are you kidding? Ronald Reagan nominated anti-public lands/anti-nature James Watt for Secretary of the Interior, and the DEMOCRATIC senate confirmed him. Only a small minority in Congress are pro-environment; the rest of these assholes don't give a damn about it. THAT's how it can and will "go through."
  December 9 2016, 10:47 p.m.
  Back in November 2013 when Harry Reid evoked the nuclear option for presidential appointments he was short sided at best.
  This will be an 8 lane freeway for every single Trump appointee, with no possible way to stop them.
  I wish he would have had a longer view approach, and as he rides off into the sunset , his party is left "powerless" to effect meaningful dissent.
  Career politicians from both sides are a major part of the systemic problems, perhaps a "term limited" senator would think more short term, who knows.
  December 9 2016, 10:42 p.m.
  I think the author should breathe deeply here.
  Just because someone votes to NOT expand an government office's current powers, does not mean: "OMG! we're all gonna be poisoned!".
  I get it – they're not your ideal choice. That's normal when the "the other team" gets elected. What is true though, is that they haven't done anything yet.
  So everyone, just relax.
  December 10 2016, 12:17 a.m.
  There was nothing normal about 2016 and there is even less normal about the upcoming President and his administration. This isn't just "the other team" – and let me state that I am not a Democrat and I didn't support their nominee. This is a party led by a con man, who is a pathological liar, who has done the things he accused his opponent of doing (destroying evidence, etc.) who has no impulse control, no interest in governing, whose tendencies and behavior are juvenile, full of vengeance, and who is obviously incapable of the job to which he was unfortunately elected. Since he's keeping up his rallies (not reading briefing books or helping to fill other important positions) and is going to executive produce at the new NBC show – it sounds like he isn't that much into the job and will let VP decide. That sounds swell. Normal, too.
  Don't know if you've noticed that when you give corporations the ability to regulate themselves or make "suggestions," they act abominably – illegally – and in their own self-interest . The problems in our times is that nobody is ever punished by being investigated, prosecuted, found guilty, and sent to jail, so paying a fine isn't a deterrent, but a couple of operating hours worth of chump change. Nobody is severely punished, no one loses, not even their reputations or their jobs, as stocks climb on great news (phew) and CEOs continue to fail upwards. That is the new normal which most of us find disgusting, unjust, and very dangerous.
  I wouldn't relax.
  Dear Anon, love your condescending idiocy.
  Reminds me of the scene in Saving Private Ryan
  [scene in building] a German soldier presses on top of helpless American GI while he jams and shoves his knife into the GI's heart, while shushing his victim with, "Shhh!"
  'cuz it's all under control.
  ice Ka tar Ra RMD
  December 11 2016, 9:40 p.m.
  December 10 2016, 12:48 p.m.
  relax? wallstreet thieves who set valuation traps to rob Americans, ceo predators who ship jobs out, governors who take shortcuts with their eyes closed, and a president who insists on being trusted while signing the NDAA allowing the kidnapping torture and murder of Americans, and an operating environment that considers mainstreeters expendable, RELAX?
  Timothy Anderson Anon
  December 10 2016, 5:09 p.m.
  Actually, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, whom those of us who live in her district refer to as Katrina Cathy has a long distance of inaction, incompetence, and collussion with extraction industry. She actually sponsored legislation to keep Cities like Spokane, and the State of WA from bringing suit against Monsanto, she's legislated and brokered sweetheart deals between the US Forest Service and Vaagen Lumber to harvest timber at below market rates, and after back-to-back fire seasons in which much of eastern WA burned, now clings to this idea that if there are no unharvested forests, well heck–we won't have to worry about forest fires now will we?
  Cathy McMorris Roger's is of limited intelligence, she can barely form a sentence, and she obtained her undergrad from an unaccredited (at the time) Florida Fundamentalist bride matching institution. Her masters, from the University of Washington might as well be an honorary degree she obtained while serving in the Washington State legislature–and how she gained admission to the program is an ongoing mystery as her undergrad "degree" hardly met the respected schools strict admissions requirement.
  Oh yeah, and McMorris Rodgers still has an open ethics investigation hanging over her head.
  Joshua88 Timothy Anderson
  December 12 2016, 1:31 a.m.
  This is a very funny post. I did not know this about Ms McMorris Rodgers.
  DJT is picking winners. You are going to get so sick of winning, you are going to scream STOP! STOP!
  December 9 2016, 10:05 p.m.
  This article isn't nearly pessimistic enough. The issue isn't going to be just one of loosening recent standards. The reason for that is that, as we know, these people are crooks, and they're going to do whatever they can get away with. Turning back environmental standards to 1991 will not have people rioting in the streets – and that means they can get away with doing much more than that. The people are going to be expected to give till it hurts, in honor of the blessed of Moloch.
  So what can we expect? We can expect entire rivers being handed over to effective private ownership – water supplies being taken away and privatized, and the residents of the area being forced to do business with whatever monopoly has the best connections to get them. We can expect public lands being clear-cut, the logging trucks running over little Pet Sematary kids on their way to the sea, the beautiful sea over which all Third World countries, including (for a long time) the U.S., send away their lumber to be worked into expensive goods for them to import. We can expect big property concessions, sacred lands stolen like Rio Tinto's John McCain worked out even when the Democrats had the White House. We can expect to see trillions of dollars of minerals handed over for a $5 fee, and if any future generation tries to take them back they'll be called thieves and roundly dismissed for violating the Constitution by trying to seize private property. And yes, of course, we can expect pollution, but 1991 is the beginning of the negotiation, not the end of it.
  December 9 2016, 9:42 p.m.
  the problem with BRICK WALL ECONOMICS is that this time there will be no turn-around in time as measures for reversing the disaster will be worse than the fix.