This is all completely expected, but it’s still depressing as hell. The Trump administration has already approved two new pipelines and said it will reconsider tougher fuel economy standards that Barack Obama put in place, but that was just the start. The LA Times reports that Trump’s willful destruction of the planet will kick into high gear tomorrow:
President Trump on Tuesday will order the Environmental Protection Agency to dismantle his predecessor’s landmark climate effort, backing away from an aggressive plan to cut emissions at power plants that had been the foundation of America’s leadership on confronting global warming….The directive that administration officials said Trump will issue takes aim at the Clean Power Plan, a far-reaching initiative former President Obama signed in 2015.
….Trump’s plans to curb climate action also reach well beyond power plants. A pioneering EPA rule that sets a “social cost” for carbon, placing a dollar value on the long-term damage caused by each ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, will be eliminated. An Obama-era requirement that all government agencies factor climate effects into their decision making, particularly as they launch new projects, is also targeted. Trump will also lift a moratorium on coal leasing on federal land.
Oh, and apropos of Trump gutting climate change rules because climate change totally isn’t a real thing, a paper published today suggests that climate change is permanently altering the jet stream in a way that produces conditions during the summer that are more favorable to long episodes of extreme weather. That means more extreme droughts, more extreme heat waves, more extreme rain, and so forth. No worries, though. Trump will be sure to take care of everyone affected by this stuff. You can count on it.
