Rust, Suzanne. (2020, February 6). Ousted EPA Official in California Says He Was Pushed Out For Being Too Bipartisan. Retrieved February 23, 2020, from https://www.latimes.com/californi a/story/2020-02-06/dismissed-epa-official-suggests-bipartisanship-killed-his-job

 

Mike Stoker, ex-head of Region 9 for the EPA (which covers California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, the Pacific Island Territories, and 148 American Indian Tribes), as fired from his post with no explanation as to why. His priorities had included cleaning up Hunters Point in San Francisco, transboundary sewage in the San Diego-Tijuana corridor, transuranium waste in Arizona, and, most notably, coral reefs in Hawaii. In order to address these goals, Stoker worked often with Democrats, even though he himself is an avid Trump supporter, leading him and others to speculate that that was the cause for his termination from the EPA. 

 

I think that it’s great that during his job Stoker focused on a lot of issues that are certainly very relevant to climate change, especially with coral reefs, although the article didn’t go into too deep detail of the work he did. I chose this article largely because of that, although I did find it intriguing that it became so political, which makes one wonder how someone can get fired for something rather petty when they were doing work that was legitimately important, like trying to stop, or at least slow, the pollution that enters the ocean through the Tijuana River (which I think would impact coral reef ecosystems, too). If we are to combat climate change, I think that it’s paramount that we put aside political differences in order to do so.