Unique Quality Products
Tell Our Federal Agencies to Protect Natural Resources!
Final signature count: 0
0 signatures toward our 50,000 goal
Sponsor: The Rainforest Site
Risk mitigation should be an innate part of environmental decision-making. Demand the president restore this responsibility!
In 2015, our environment was given some well-needed protections under the “Presidential Memorandum: Mitigating Impacts on Natural Resources from Development and Encouraging Related Private Investment1.”
The executive order made it the policy of the Departments of Defense, the Interior, and Agriculture; the Environmental Protection Agency; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; to avoid and then minimize harmful effects to land, water, wildlife, and other ecological resources caused by land- or water-disturbing activities, and to ensure that any remaining harmful effects are effectively addressed, consistent with existing mission and legal authorities1.
Among other things, the memorandum established a mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimize, then compensate); set a “net benefit goal” or, at a minimum, a no net loss goal for natural resources; emphasized large-scale or landscape-level planning and mitigation; and directed a number of agencies to take certain, specified actions to strengthen mitigation policies2.
In short, it guided new development toward outcomes resulting in fewer natural resource impacts.
President Trump repealed President Obama’s Memorandum in 2017 and issued his own order, directing a review of all actions taken pursuant to that order and the revoked Presidential Memorandum for possible reconsideration, including mitigation policies for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Endangered Species Act3.
Trump’s order focused on encouraging domestic energy production by “unraveling the red tape” and initiating rollbacks on more than 30 Obama-era environmental documents and regulations, including the Clean Power Plan4.
But Trump’s action ignored the EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions cause air pollution which endangers public health and welfare. This finding serves as the necessary factual and legal predicate authorizing EPA to adopt greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act3.
It is well within the executive power to depart from prior administrations’ policy preferences. But in implementing those policy changes, agencies must provide reasonable explanations for the changes that are consistent with their “enabling statutes” and missions5.
Climate change is backed by an overwhelming scientific consensus. Federal agencies should be doing everything they can to mitigate the effects of climate change, not ignore it, putting the environment, our plants and animals, and millions of Americans at risk.
Sign the petition below and demand the President restore the Presidential Memorandum: Mitigating Impacts on Natural Resources from Development and Encouraging Related Private Investment.