More than 2,000 coal-ash waste dumps across the U.S. are slowly leaking lead, arsenic, mercury, and other toxic metals into our underground water supplies. Under the Obama Administration, in 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imposed the nation’s first-ever federal rules for controlling coal ash pollution. But now, the Trump Administration is trying to gut these rules and exempt old…
Although the Trump Administration's war on Iran was not authorized by Congress, President Trump is using it as a pretext to invoke a wartime law and provide subsidies and support to his allies in the U.S. petroleum industry. The White House recently released a memo saying the President is using the Defense Production Act of 1950 to increase domestic petroleum production. We talk about the…
Wetlands are miracles of nature. They work as the world’s kidneys, filtering and cleaning our water. Wetlands capture carbon dioxide more effectively than even forests and act as cradles of life for biodiversity, sheltering many endangered species. Despite all this, the Trump Administration on November 17 proposed regulations that would strip federal protections from more than 80 percent of…
On this week's podcast we interviewed EIP's visiting scientist, Dr. Kimberly Terrell. Facing a gag order imposed on her by Tulane University leadership because her study on racial discrimination in petrochemical industry jobs reportedly angered Louisiana’s governor, Dr. Terrell faced a new decision - remain silent and sacrifice her scientific integrity, or resign in protest, speaking out publicly…
The $4 trillion Republican spending bill, signed by President Trump on July Fourth, is packed with giveaways to the oil and gas industry. These include tax breaks, opening more public lands and offshore acres to drilling, and a lowering of royalty rates that oil and gas companies must pay for extracting fuel from government lands. Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful” bill is also full of ugly…
State legislatures are seeing a wave of industry-backed bills that would ban or restrict the public’s ability to test for air pollution in local communities. Last year, the Louisiana legislature effectively banned community groups from using their own air monitoring to warn residents about pollution or publicly advocate for cleanups. Violators can face penalties of up to $32,500 per day, plus $1…
President Trump won election to his second term promising an “American Energy Dominance” agenda that would stimulate more oil drilling and cut the price of energy in half for consumers. Despite pledges of dramatic regulatory cuts, after his first quarter in office, neither is happening. Drilling is down compared to the first quarter of 2024 and gasoline prices are up, according to data from the…
Although he did not mention it during his campaign, since taking office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested the U.S. should buy or seize Greenland – the largest island in the world, and part of the Kingdom of Denmark. A U.S. Geological Survey study estimates that there are 31 billion barrels of oil in eastern Greenland, and beneath the ice are also rare earth metals needed for…
When President Trump takes office, one of the first things he is expected to do is to accelerate the approval of permits to drill for oil and gas on federal land. But this is likely to have little to no impact on the production of fuel from federal lands. Why? Because there are already more than 6,000 approved drilling permits and millions of acres of leases owned by oil and gas companies on…
One of President Biden’s signature achievements to combat climate change has been the approval of billions of dollars in federal subsidies to encourage carbon capture and storage. It sounds good: capturing carbon dioxide from industry, then piping it underground so it can’t heat the planet. But most of these projects don’t really help the climate. They provide taxpayer money to oil and gas…