If the above headline seems overwrought, read the following, and then you decide:
Following Trump pledge, EPA rolls back coal rules
Chicago Tribune, 6/19/19
By Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press
The Trump administration on Wednesday completed one of its biggest rollbacks of environmental rules, replacing a landmark Obama-era effort that sought to wean the nation’s electrical grid off coal-fired power plants and their climate-damaging pollution.
Coal is the dirtiest energy source
Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler said coal-fired power plants remained essential to the power grid, something that opponents deny. “Americans want reliable energy that they can afford.”
President Donald Trump campaigned partly on a pledge to bring back the coal industry, which has been hit hard by competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. Environmental groups pledge court challenges.
“The Trump administration’s outrageous Dirty Power Scam is a stunning giveaway to big polluters, giving dirty special interests the greenlight to choke our skies, poison our waters and worsen the climate crisis,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.
Joseph Goffman, an EPA official under President Barack Obama, said he feared that the Trump administration was trying to set a legal precedent that the Clean Air Act gives the federal government “next to no authority to do anything” about climate-changing emissions from the country’s power grid.
The Obama rule, adopted in 2015, sought to reshape the country’s power system by encouraging utilities to rely less on dirtier-burning coal-fired power plants and more on electricity from natural gas, solar, wind and other lower or no-carbon sources.
The new Trump rule eliminates the Obama EPA’s targets that would have required states to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
Of course, Trump’s climate change deniers will tell you that:
CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, or
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but not enough to cause climate change, or
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it helps plants grow, which remove CO2, or
CO2 increases and decreases naturally, or
Climate change is a good thing, because everyone likes warm weather or
Climate change is a Chinese hoax, or
Whatever other nonsense Trump can dream up to get the vote of coal miners (who now represent only .0012 of the total U.S. labor force) and the contributions of coal mining companies.
Here is what National Geographic tells you:
Effects of global warming
The signs of global warming are everywhere, and are more complex than just climbing temperatures.
Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising seas, and a range of other impacts.
All of these changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere:
Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s poles.
Much of this melting ice contributes to sea-level rise. Global sea levels are rising 0.13 inches a year, and is occurring at a faster rate in recent years.
Rising temperatures are affecting wildlife and their habitats.
Rain and snowfall have increased across the globe. Yet some regions are experiencing more severe drought, increasing the risk of wildfires, lost crops, and drinking water shortages.
Some species—including mosquitoes, ticks, jellyfish, and crop pests—are thriving. Booming populations of bark beetles that feed on spruce and pine trees, for example, have devastated millions of forested acres in the U.S.
Other effects could take place later this century if warming continues. These include:
Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent.
Large parts of the U.S., for example, face a higher risk of decades-long “megadroughts” by 2100.
Less freshwater will be available since glaciers store about 3/4 of the world’s fresh water.
Some diseases will spread, such as mosquito-borne malaria and the 2016 resurgence of the Zika virus.
Ecosystems will continue to change: Some species will move farther north or won’t be able to adapt and could become extinct.
This is the world Trump and the GOP are creating for your children. He and his followers don’t seem to care about your children– or presumably even theirs.
But it gets even worse:
Coal and Air Pollution
Air pollution from coal-fired power plants is linked with asthma, cancer, heart and lung ailments, neurological problems, acid rain, global warming, and other severe environmental and public health impacts.
Some of the ways Trump is killing your kids (but he, his followers and the GOP don’t care):
Human health and environmental impacts of coal combustion and post-combustion wastes
The burning of coal leads to the emission of poisonous gases with underlying health impacts and environmental problems.
“Daddy, why am I sick?”
In coal combustion, the carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen react with oxygen and produce their respective oxides: carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and sulfur trioxide (SO3), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and nitric oxide (NO), respectively.
The emission of these gases has been correlated with many health problems directly and indirectly, including skin, cardiovascular, brain, blood and lung diseases, and different cancers.
For example, CO enters into the bloodstream and reacts with hemoglobin and reduces the formation of oxy-hemoglobin complex by decreasing its ability for O2 transformation
Hence, the CO can alter biological functions at the cellular level and cause many abnormalities including slow reflexes, and coagulation confusion or disorders.
The CO2 emission from coal combustion, during power generation, also leads to the interaction of CO2 with particulate matter (PM 2.5), which thereby changes the air quality and leads to increased asthma attacks and other respiratory and cardiovascular diseases with underlying poor life expectancy rates.
Inhaling particulate matters may cause some dangerous diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.
The sulfur, in coal, oxidizes upon combustion and pollutes the air, water, and landby releasing SOx (SO2, SO3, SO32- and H2SO4).
The formation of the poisonous SO2 gas, a major pollutant in air, may accelerate the rate of diseases and decrease life expectancy.
In addition to SO2, other SOx like sulfate (SO32-) and sulfuric acid (H2SO4), damages the environment in the form of acid rain.
High exposure to SO2 causes suffocation, wheezing, coughing, and reductions in lung function by affecting mucous and cellular mucins.
SO2 gas also damages nearby flora and crops, leading to leaf injury, affecting plant growth and reducing the diversity of plant species
Moreover, acid rain (H2SO4), a hydrated product of SO3, potentially damages skin cells, destroys building material, and pervasively affects vegetation and food chain by contaminating the flora and fauna through the leaching of heavy metals.
Nitric oxide (NO2), another major pollutant with highly corrosive properties and a strong oxidizing ability, is formed as a result of coal combustion in power plants and contaminates the air.
NO2 forms the most important part of acid rain, as nitrous acid HNO2 and nitric acid HNO3, which causes a large number of skin diseases.
The entrance of SOx and NOx air pollutants into the bloodstream and cells destabilizes normal heartbeats (rhythms) and culminates in heart attacks and other heart related problems.
In addition, high levels of NO2 in the air causes a reduction in the pulmonary function in humans, asthma attacks and genetic mutations.
The ozone gas formed as a result of NO2 reaction with the volatile organic compounds in the air causes ozone-related asthma exacerbations in infants.
–I wasn’t born like this.
Particulate matter increases the concentration of free radical based reactive oxygen species (ROS) and contributes to DNA mutation, and damage of protein and lipids which may constitutively activate membrane proteins which leads to the development of some serious diseases, including lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases and reproductive disorders. T
The interaction of PM with DNA leads to the formation of DNA adducts impairing neurodevelopment, intelligence quotient (IQ) levels and intelligence in children.
So there it is folks. Trump and the GOP are killing America’s children (and you), just so he can gather a few votes and stay in power. It’s that simple.
Do you care? Are you happy to put their lives into the hands of Donald Trump and the GOP?
The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the richer and the poorer.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
2 thoughts on “Why Trump and his followers don’t mind him killing their children”
Speaking of Trump/GOP killing children, the following article should make you proud to be an American. MAGA!
===============================================
TRUMP ADMIN ARGUES DETAINED MIGRANT CHILDREN DON’T NEED TOOTHBRUSHES, SOAP
The Trump administration went to court this week to argue that migrant children detained at the U.S.-Mexico border do not require basic hygiene products like soap and toothbrushes in order to be in held in “safe and sanitary” conditions. Trump’s team also argued that requiring minors to sleep on cold concrete floors in crowded cells with low temperatures similarly fulfilled that requirement.
Arguing in a 9th district San Francisco court about the conditions that they must hold migrant children in, the administration said that they did not violate a precedent set by a landmark 1985 class action lawsuit which established guidelines for the way minors held in federal immigration detention must be treated. The case, Jenny Lisette Flores v. Edwin Meese, created rules around the timely release of migrant minors to their parents, and said that those not released must be kept in facilities that are “safe and sanitary.”
But on Tuesday, the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian claimed that the ruling did not list specific requirements like “toothbrushes” or “towels,” to establish a sanitary condition.
“One has to assume it was left that way and not enumerated by the parties because either the parties couldn’t reach agreement on how to enumerate that or it was left to the agencies to determine,” Fabian said to the three Clinton-appointed federal judges on the court.
“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?’ U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked Fabian.
Other judges also expressed outrage.
“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”
Still, Fabian said that the Trump administration plans to apply for a motion of reconsideration and continue to appeal the ruling.
“Have you considered whether you might go back and consider whether you really want to continue this appeal?” replied Berzon. “There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot left of it, considering that life has moved on now.
I just feel like we’re litigating ancient history at this point.”
At least seven migrant children have died in U.S. custody since late 2018 when the president began his policy of detaining them separately from their families. John Sanders, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection warned today that his agency would need at least another $4.6 billion in emergency funding to prevent more deaths.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Sanders said that, “The death of a child is always a terrible thing, but here is a situation where, because there is not enough funding … they can’t move the people out of our custody.”
The exact number of children who had died under the care of the federal government is unknown because of a law that does not require various agencies to report deaths.
This week, the ACLU found a migrant teenager in the care of Texas border control nursing her prematurely-born baby without any proper medical care.
Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek. You can reach her on Twitter @NicoleGoodkind or by email, N.Goodkind@newsweek.com.
MOSCOW — Russian officials have launched an operation to release nearly 100 illegally captured whales whose confinement in Russia’s far east has become a rallying cry for environmentalists.
A state TV reporter made the announcement during President Vladimir Putin’s live Q&A show on Thursday, saying that by “coincidence” the operation began just before the start of the show.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Gordeyev said during the show that the operation to fully re-introduce the mammals back into the wild would take at least four months.
The condition of whales kept in cramped conditions in Russia’s far east has drawn international concern, and Putin personally ordered authorities to investigate the case and release the animals.
Russian prosecutors have brought criminal charges against four companies keeping the whales.
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A 2-year-old boy locked in detention wants to be held all the time. A few girls, ages 10 to 15, say they’ve been doing their best to feed and soothe the clingy toddler who was handed to them by a guard days ago. Lawyers warn that kids are taking care of kids, and there’s inadequate food, water and sanitation for the 250 infants, children and teens at the Border Patrol station.
The bleak portrait emerged Thursday after a legal team interviewed 60 children at the facility near El Paso that has become the latest place where attorneys say young migrants are describing neglect and mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. government.
Data obtained by The Associated Press showed that on Wednesday there were three infants in the station, all with their teen mothers, along with a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds and a 3-year-old. There are dozens more under 12. Fifteen have the flu, and 10 more are quarantined.
Three girls told attorneys they were trying to take care of the 2-year-old boy, who had wet his pants and had no diaper and was wearing a mucus-smeared shirt when the legal team encountered him.
“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one of the girls said in an interview with attorneys.
Law professor Warren Binford, who is helping interview the children, said she couldn’t learn anything about the toddler, not even where he’s from or who his family is. He is not speaking.
Binford described that during interviews with children in a conference room at the facility, “little kids are so tired they have been falling asleep on chairs and at the conference table.”
She said an 8-year-old taking care of a very small 4-year-old with matted hair couldn’t convince the little one to take a shower.
“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, who co-directs University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic and represents detained youth.
The lawyers inspected the facilities because they are involved in the Flores settlement, a Clinton-era legal agreement that governs detention conditions for migrant children and families. The lawyers negotiated access to the facility with officials, and say Border Patrol knew the dates of their visit three weeks in advance.
Many children interviewed had arrived alone at the U.S.-Mexico border, but some had been separated from their parents or other adult caregivers including aunts and uncles, the attorneys said.
Government rules call for the children to be held by the Border Patrol for no longer than 72 hours before they are transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services, which houses migrant youth in facilities around the country.
Government facilities are overcrowded and five immigrant children have died since late last year after being detained by Customs and Border Protection. A teenage mother with a premature baby was found last week in a Texas Border Patrol processing center after being held for nine days by the government.
In an interview this week with the AP, acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders acknowledged that children need better medical care and a place to recover from their illnesses. He urged Congress to pass a $4.6 billion emergency funding package includes nearly $3 billion to care for unaccompanied migrant children.
He said that the Border Patrol is holding 15,000 people, and the agency considers 4,000 to be at capacity.
“The death of a child is always a terrible thing, but here is a situation where, because there is not enough funding … they can’t move the people out of our custody,” Sanders said.
The arrival of thousands of families and children at the border each month has not only strained resources but thrust Border Patrol agents into the role of caregivers, especially for the many migrant youth who are coming without parents.
But children at the facility in Clint, which sits amid the desert scrubland some 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of El Paso, say they have had to pick up some of the duties in watching over the younger kids.
A 14-year-old girl from Guatemala said she had been holding two little girls in her lap. “I need comfort, too. I am bigger than they are, but I am a child, too,” she said.
Children told lawyers that they were fed oatmeal, a cookie and a sweetened drink in the morning, instant noodles for lunch and a burrito and cookie for dinner. There are no fruits or vegetables. They said they’d gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes.
A migrant father, speaking on condition of anonymity because of his immigration status, told AP Thursday that authorities separated his daughter from her aunt when they entered the country. The girl would be a second grader in a U.S. school.
He had no idea where she was until Monday, when one of the attorney team members visiting Clint found his phone number written in permanent marker on a bracelet she was wearing. It said “U.S. parent.”
“She’s suffering very much because she’s never been alone. She doesn’t know these other children,” said her father.
Republican Congressman Will Hurd, whose district includes Clint, said “tragic conditions” playing out on the southern border were pushing government agencies, nonprofits and Texas communities to the limit.
“This latest development just further demonstrates the immediate need to reform asylum laws and provide supplemental funding to address the humanitarian crisis at our border,” he said.
Dr. Julie Linton, who co-chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics Immigrant Health Special Interest Group, said CBP stations are not an appropriate place to hold children.
“Those facilities are anything but child-friendly,” said Dr. Julie Linton. “That type of environment is not only unhealthy for children but also unsafe.”
San Francisco psychoanalyst Gilbert Kliman, who has evaluated about 50 children and parents seeking asylum, says the trauma is causing lasting damage.
“The care of children by children constitutes a betrayal of adult responsibility, governmental responsibility,” he said.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Speaking of Trump/GOP killing children, the following article should make you proud to be an American. MAGA!
===============================================
TRUMP ADMIN ARGUES DETAINED MIGRANT CHILDREN DON’T NEED TOOTHBRUSHES, SOAP
The Trump administration went to court this week to argue that migrant children detained at the U.S.-Mexico border do not require basic hygiene products like soap and toothbrushes in order to be in held in “safe and sanitary” conditions. Trump’s team also argued that requiring minors to sleep on cold concrete floors in crowded cells with low temperatures similarly fulfilled that requirement.
Arguing in a 9th district San Francisco court about the conditions that they must hold migrant children in, the administration said that they did not violate a precedent set by a landmark 1985 class action lawsuit which established guidelines for the way minors held in federal immigration detention must be treated. The case, Jenny Lisette Flores v. Edwin Meese, created rules around the timely release of migrant minors to their parents, and said that those not released must be kept in facilities that are “safe and sanitary.”
But on Tuesday, the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian claimed that the ruling did not list specific requirements like “toothbrushes” or “towels,” to establish a sanitary condition.
“One has to assume it was left that way and not enumerated by the parties because either the parties couldn’t reach agreement on how to enumerate that or it was left to the agencies to determine,” Fabian said to the three Clinton-appointed federal judges on the court.
“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?’ U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked Fabian.
Other judges also expressed outrage.
“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”
Still, Fabian said that the Trump administration plans to apply for a motion of reconsideration and continue to appeal the ruling.
“Have you considered whether you might go back and consider whether you really want to continue this appeal?” replied Berzon. “There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot left of it, considering that life has moved on now.
I just feel like we’re litigating ancient history at this point.”
At least seven migrant children have died in U.S. custody since late 2018 when the president began his policy of detaining them separately from their families. John Sanders, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection warned today that his agency would need at least another $4.6 billion in emergency funding to prevent more deaths.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Sanders said that, “The death of a child is always a terrible thing, but here is a situation where, because there is not enough funding … they can’t move the people out of our custody.”
The exact number of children who had died under the care of the federal government is unknown because of a law that does not require various agencies to report deaths.
This week, the ACLU found a migrant teenager in the care of Texas border control nursing her prematurely-born baby without any proper medical care.
Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek. You can reach her on Twitter @NicoleGoodkind or by email, N.Goodkind@newsweek.com.
===================================================
And then there’s this rather ironic article:
Russia to release 100 illegally captured whales
MOSCOW — Russian officials have launched an operation to release nearly 100 illegally captured whales whose confinement in Russia’s far east has become a rallying cry for environmentalists.
A state TV reporter made the announcement during President Vladimir Putin’s live Q&A show on Thursday, saying that by “coincidence” the operation began just before the start of the show.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Gordeyev said during the show that the operation to fully re-introduce the mammals back into the wild would take at least four months.
The condition of whales kept in cramped conditions in Russia’s far east has drawn international concern, and Putin personally ordered authorities to investigate the case and release the animals.
Russian prosecutors have brought criminal charges against four companies keeping the whales.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Apparently, killing children is not a problem for the Trump world:
Attorneys: Texas Border Facility Is Neglecting Migrant Kids
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A 2-year-old boy locked in detention wants to be held all the time. A few girls, ages 10 to 15, say they’ve been doing their best to feed and soothe the clingy toddler who was handed to them by a guard days ago. Lawyers warn that kids are taking care of kids, and there’s inadequate food, water and sanitation for the 250 infants, children and teens at the Border Patrol station.
The bleak portrait emerged Thursday after a legal team interviewed 60 children at the facility near El Paso that has become the latest place where attorneys say young migrants are describing neglect and mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. government.
Data obtained by The Associated Press showed that on Wednesday there were three infants in the station, all with their teen mothers, along with a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds and a 3-year-old. There are dozens more under 12. Fifteen have the flu, and 10 more are quarantined.
Three girls told attorneys they were trying to take care of the 2-year-old boy, who had wet his pants and had no diaper and was wearing a mucus-smeared shirt when the legal team encountered him.
“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one of the girls said in an interview with attorneys.
Law professor Warren Binford, who is helping interview the children, said she couldn’t learn anything about the toddler, not even where he’s from or who his family is. He is not speaking.
Binford described that during interviews with children in a conference room at the facility, “little kids are so tired they have been falling asleep on chairs and at the conference table.”
She said an 8-year-old taking care of a very small 4-year-old with matted hair couldn’t convince the little one to take a shower.
“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, who co-directs University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic and represents detained youth.
The lawyers inspected the facilities because they are involved in the Flores settlement, a Clinton-era legal agreement that governs detention conditions for migrant children and families. The lawyers negotiated access to the facility with officials, and say Border Patrol knew the dates of their visit three weeks in advance.
Many children interviewed had arrived alone at the U.S.-Mexico border, but some had been separated from their parents or other adult caregivers including aunts and uncles, the attorneys said.
Government rules call for the children to be held by the Border Patrol for no longer than 72 hours before they are transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services, which houses migrant youth in facilities around the country.
Government facilities are overcrowded and five immigrant children have died since late last year after being detained by Customs and Border Protection. A teenage mother with a premature baby was found last week in a Texas Border Patrol processing center after being held for nine days by the government.
In an interview this week with the AP, acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders acknowledged that children need better medical care and a place to recover from their illnesses. He urged Congress to pass a $4.6 billion emergency funding package includes nearly $3 billion to care for unaccompanied migrant children.
He said that the Border Patrol is holding 15,000 people, and the agency considers 4,000 to be at capacity.
“The death of a child is always a terrible thing, but here is a situation where, because there is not enough funding … they can’t move the people out of our custody,” Sanders said.
The arrival of thousands of families and children at the border each month has not only strained resources but thrust Border Patrol agents into the role of caregivers, especially for the many migrant youth who are coming without parents.
But children at the facility in Clint, which sits amid the desert scrubland some 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of El Paso, say they have had to pick up some of the duties in watching over the younger kids.
A 14-year-old girl from Guatemala said she had been holding two little girls in her lap. “I need comfort, too. I am bigger than they are, but I am a child, too,” she said.
Children told lawyers that they were fed oatmeal, a cookie and a sweetened drink in the morning, instant noodles for lunch and a burrito and cookie for dinner. There are no fruits or vegetables. They said they’d gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes.
A migrant father, speaking on condition of anonymity because of his immigration status, told AP Thursday that authorities separated his daughter from her aunt when they entered the country. The girl would be a second grader in a U.S. school.
He had no idea where she was until Monday, when one of the attorney team members visiting Clint found his phone number written in permanent marker on a bracelet she was wearing. It said “U.S. parent.”
“She’s suffering very much because she’s never been alone. She doesn’t know these other children,” said her father.
Republican Congressman Will Hurd, whose district includes Clint, said “tragic conditions” playing out on the southern border were pushing government agencies, nonprofits and Texas communities to the limit.
“This latest development just further demonstrates the immediate need to reform asylum laws and provide supplemental funding to address the humanitarian crisis at our border,” he said.
Dr. Julie Linton, who co-chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics Immigrant Health Special Interest Group, said CBP stations are not an appropriate place to hold children.
“Those facilities are anything but child-friendly,” said Dr. Julie Linton. “That type of environment is not only unhealthy for children but also unsafe.”
San Francisco psychoanalyst Gilbert Kliman, who has evaluated about 50 children and parents seeking asylum, says the trauma is causing lasting damage.
“The care of children by children constitutes a betrayal of adult responsibility, governmental responsibility,” he said.
====================================================
Make America Great Again. MAGA
LikeLike