Fantastic Interview With Pioneering Environmental Journalist Phillip Shabecoff
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How do you think Trump has influenced environmental journalism?
I think he's prodded it; I think he's energized it. I think it was sort of fading for a while. I think there's a lot of good reporting coming out of what he's doing. Unfortunately, most of the journalism about the environment is horror stories.
Are you paying attention to Trump's environmental officials, like Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke?
Of course. How not? It's amazing how corrupt they are.
How would you compare them to the Gorsuch years that you covered?
Gorsuch and Watt seemed almost benevolent compared to these creeps. They did terrible things, but this guy is not only dismantling the Obama efforts, he's sort of dismantling everything back through the Teddy Roosevelt era. ... Why is Zinke still in office? He should be in jail, shouldn't he? You'll forgive me, I'm just furious. I covered environmental issues because I cared about them, and to see everything I wrote about being destroyed in front of my eyes.
What's surprised you the most about Trump's environmental policies?
I don't understand how he can just walk away from an international treaty like that. He called it a scrap of paper; that's very close to what Hitler said about his neutrality treaty with Belgium and the Netherlands. What surprises me most is that if there's any bad thing that can be done, he's doing it.
You've seen administrations come and go. Do you think that the Trump administration's environmental policies will be long-lasting?
They can certainly restore a lot of regulations, but the damage that is being done to the climate now, it cannot be reversed. The dumping of toxins into waterways cannot be reversed. I don't think the selling off of public lands can be reversed. The damage by oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge cannot be reversed. One could go on and on. I hope that — and God willing, there will be a next administration in 2020 — they can go back to having a sane environmental policy, but the damage will have been done.
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060109689
