For anyone who cares about safeguarding our environment, many of President Trump’s past statements have been worrisome, as have the people he put in charge of transitioning to a new administration. This makes it particularly important to have thoughtful, stewardship-minded leaders heading up the Department of Interior and EPA. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Interior, Congressman Ryan Zinke, is worthy of support. He is an advocate for America’s public lands who opposes efforts to turn those lands over to states and special interests. He boycotted the GOP convention because the platform was anti-public land. Zinke clearly meets the threshold of someone who cares about safeguarding our natural heritage. The same is not the case with Trump’s nominee for EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt. As Attorney General of Oklahoma Pruitt amassed a long record of opposing EPA and the environmental laws the agency is responsible for enforcing, including suing the agency 13 times. Moreover, Pruitt always seems to come down on the side of the polluter rather than the environment and the broader public interest. This tendency tracks closely with his ties to regulated industries, including donations to his campaigns and other endeavors. Putting Pruitt in charge of EPA would be akin to putting a fox in charge of a henhouse. For those reasons, Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship supports the Ryan Zinke for Secretary of Interior and strongly opposes the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head EPA. The Pruitt nomination falls short of the standard set by past Republican presidents to nominate EPA heads who believe in the agency’s mission and are committed to its important work. Background EPA is a...
Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS) applauds the designation of Bears Ears and Gold Butte National Monuments. The President’s use of the Antiquities Act was entirely appropriate and in keeping with the Act’s original intent. Affording these public lands extra protection is genuinely conservative, and that is true irrespective of which president makes the designations. “Bears Ears and Gold Butte are both rich in natural and cultural treasures that need to be protected from existing threats, they are exactly the type of places Theodore Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act was designed to protect,” said CRS President David Jenkins. “Whether looting, vandalism, or a host of other illegal activities, the threats to these important parts of America’s heritage are ongoing and serious. Preserving them is, as President Reagan would say, our great moral responsibility,” Jenkins added. It is important to point out that the Antiquities Act, which gives the president authority to proclaim monuments, is a Republican invention. It was crafted by a conservative Republican, passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by Republican, President Theodore Roosevelt. Recognizing that Congress was often incapable of acting quickly enough to protect artifacts or natural areas from threats, those Republicans gave the president authority to safeguard these places through monument designation. “Congressman, and notorious monument opponent, Rob Bishop and his cohorts in the Utah delegation are pitching a fit about these designations—especially Bears Ears—as expected, but these are the same radical folks who want America to give away its public lands, and who are hell-bent on totally upending the Theodore Roosevelt conservation ethic that has served our nation well for more than a century,”...
Republican presidents—including Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan—have a long tradition of contributing to our great natural endowment of parks, forests, wildlife refuges, national monuments, and other public lands. They understood that these lands, your lands, are an essential part of who we are as a people, and that protecting them is both conservative and patriotic. To help make sure that tradition continues, CRS has launched a campaign urging President-elect Donald Trump to also make safeguarding America’s public lands a top priority. To find out more, please visit our campaign...
On the week of its centennial anniversary (August 25) the National Park System, along with the state of Maine and every American, received an 87,500-acre gift of beautiful Northwoods forest that President Obama just proclaimed as Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. The land was generously donated to the American people by Burt’s Bees co-founder Roxanne Quimby and her family foundation, Elliotsville Plantation, Inc. A guarantee to safeguard the land in perpetuity was a condition of the gift, and President Obama relied on his authority under the Antiquities Act–a law established by Theodore Roosevelt–to secure the deal. The gift also includes a $20 million endowment to support planning, infrastructure and maintenance of new monument. This designation is particularly fitting to coincide with the National Park System Centennial. It has a lot in common with another Maine national monument designation that occurred just a month before the National Park Service was established. President Woodrow Wilson, responding to a similar private land donation and local initiative, created Sieur de Monts National Monument, which we all now know and love as Acadia National Park. “Establishing the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument allows the region and its economy to benefit from a remarkable land gift and monetary endowment, and on this 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, it shows the same vision and generosity that made Acadia National Park possible more than a century ago,” said CRS President David Jenkins. The Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is next to Maine’s spectacular 209,644-acre Baxter State Park, home of Maine’s highest peak, Mt. Katahdin (5,267 feet), and the Appalachian Trail’s northern terminus....
Several years ago, 2012 to be exact, when new efficiency standards for light bulbs first kicked in, there was a hue and cry from talk radio hosts. They lamented the death of the “Edison light bulb” and told listeners that the government was forcing everyone to switch to inferior, “mercury-laced,” compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). Some even partnered with retailers to frantically urge their audience to stockpile the old inefficient bulbs. It wasn’t long before some lawmakers jumped on the bandwagon and introduced legislation to block the standards, which were part of a 2007 bi-partisan energy bill signed into law by President George W. Bush. Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX) introduced various measures trying to block the standards or prohibit enforcement, and libertarian Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), citing an Ayn Rand novel, ranted about how consumer choice was being “crushed beneath the boot heel of the collective.” All of this angst was based entirely on talk-radio fiction. The truth was quite different. U.S. light bulb manufacturers, who were behind the push for nationwide efficiency standards, had already retooled their factories to produce improved incandescent bulbs that would meet the new standards, generating light with less waste heat. In fact, those new bulbs—which produced the exact same kind of light as the old versions—were already on store shelves more than six months before the standards went into effect. The lighting manufacturers also knew that CFLs were rapidly being squeezed out of the market. On price, the new improved incandescent bulbs were cheaper, and on quality, LED bulbs were longer lasting and far more efficient. Fast forward to today. Now that these light bulb...
