One Thing You Can Do: Vote - The New York Times - 0 views
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The United States is the world’s second-largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gasses and the presidential election next week will have a big impact on the extent to which those emissions are curbed
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Troy Moon, the director of sustainability for Portland, Maine, described local government as “where the rubber meets the road” on decisions about schools, health services and, yes, sustainability policies.
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Every city’s government operates differently, but by-and-large, elected officials and their appointees are responsible for a wide range of important environmental decisions: How to manage local flooding, building-efficiency targets and whether or not residents have access to recycling and curbside composting, to list just a few.
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Before you vote, take a few minutes to research the environmental positions of the candidates running for local offices. Use reputable sources to avoid falling for fake voting guides,
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For the first three and a half years of Donald Trump’s presidency, a period defined by near-constant attacks on climate policy across the federal government, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration remained mostly unscathed — a bastion of objective climate research, carrying out its mission largely without fear or favor toward the ideological preferences of the White House.
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The objective, according to people with ties to the administration, is to undermine the National Climate Assessment, the country’s premier contribution to knowledge about climate risks — and the foundation for federal regulations to combat global warming.
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Then, last month, a set of new political hires installed by the White House began arriving at NOAA, their roles unclear and their backgrounds surprising, i
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There have been threats to NOAA’s independence before — most famously last year, when Mr. Trump, angry that the agency’s meteorologists had contradicted his statement that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama, told his top aide to have the agency “clarify” its position. NOAA’s then-acting administrator, Neil Jacob
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a series of changes have sparked growing concern within the agency. First, in August, political staff at the Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, issued instructions that any communication, internal or external, must first be cleared from above. Suddenly, the agency’s leaders couldn’t even send an all-hands message to their own employees without getting it approved outside NOAA.
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That strategy depends on Mr. Trump winning a second term next week. If he loses, Joseph R. Biden Jr. could reverse those changes.