"They have literally put the foxes in charge of the henhouses," Fred Magdoff told Loud & Clear on Radio Sputnik. Magdoff is emeritus professor of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is the archetypal "fox" running the henhouse, hiring staffers of Senator James Inhofe to run the EPA, according to the Environmental Integrity Project.
Inhofe is well-remembered as the Oklahoma lawmaker who held up a snowball in the US Congress to prove climate change wasn't a real.
Approving the completion of oil pipelines in the Dakotas, reducing the size of national parks in Utah, exiting the Paris Climate Accords and attempting to give the coal industry a $10 billion subsidy are just a few of the environmental accomplishments US President Donald Trump has overseen in his first year in office.
In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017
The Trump administration also sought eliminate a ban on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon, one of the seven wonders of the natural world, but a court rejected lifting the ban on mining December 14.
Pruitt was, however, able to reverse a 2015 ban on the controversial pesticide glyphosate in March.
"We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment," Pruitt said in March.
Some of the crops it is used on are for human consumption, which is what Obama's EPA attempted to ban outright. The pesticide was first used in 1965, but most uses for it ended around 2001, according to the Hill. The World Health Organization classifies glyphosate as a "probable carcinogen."
"With glyphosate, and other chemicals, it's not just the active ingredient killing the plants. There's also so-called ‘inert' materials that are added… It turns out these other chemicals can be harmful too," Magdoff told Sputnik.
Proponents of the pesticide have dismissed safety concerns and said the compound is perfectly safe — until pressed to put their views into practice. "You can drink a whole quart of it, it won't hurt you," genetically modified crop proponent Dr. Patrick Moore said in a 2015 interview. "Do you want to drink some?" the French interviewer replied.
"I'd be happy to, actually. Not really, but, I know it wouldn't hurt me," Moore said.
"If you say so, I have some glyphosate —" the interviewer said, before Moore cut him off, saying "I'm not stupid… but it's not dangerous to humans."
"So are you ready to drink one glass of glyphosate?" the interviewer continued. "No, I'm not an idiot," Moore said abruptly.
