You may keep up with politics but perhaps not with the environmental aspects of it.
President Barack Obama and leaders of Congress met on May 1, 2013 and they are deadlocked.
The deadlock pertains to a federal budget sequestration best describes as this: “A new fiscal policy procedure originally provided for in the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act of 1985 -- an effort to reform Congressional voting procedures so as to make the size of the Federal government's budget deficit a matter of conscious choice rather than simply the arithmetical outcome of a decentralized appropriations process in which no one ever looked at the cumulative results until it was too late to change them.” source
This may be boring for most but the repercussions are huge. I urge you to read this.
What is most important for this article is that if nothing changes and the cuts are fully implemented on March 27, 2013, sequestration will bring horrible news for the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the natural resources you enjoy.
Reduced services and access will make families planning summer vacations think twice about coming to a national park.
A couple of important areas will be cut.
Sequestration will undermine efforts to ensure that air and water are clean, as well as prevent pollution from pesticides and hazardous waste, the White House Council on Environmental Quality has said. There will be a reduction of 154 million in federal funding for state environmental programs. New York will lose the most federal environmental funding; a reduction of 12.87 million, but all states will likely be impacted.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may shut down for three days next week, and a five percent cut to EPA’s budget is expected this fiscal year, which will translate into fewer regulatory inspections, less money for water quality projects, cuts to air pollution monitoring, and the slashing of research funding that would have helped communities adapt to climate change, then-EPA administrator Lisa Jackson wrote earlier this month.
Source of this article and to read the rest of this article go here.
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