Trump Administration
Trump’s War on Environmental Protection: A Chronology
Yes, there were over 100 environmental rollbacks. Here are the biggest.
From when he took office to the day he left, Trump lead a steady drumbeat of environmental rollback after environmental rollback. His goals: eliminate limits on pollution from fossil fuels and end protection of public lands.
CONTINUE READINGNEPA in the Ninth
Can an agency just shortcut the whole process? The 9th Circuit says no.
On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit decided a NEPA case that discusses two interesting issues. But what’s most striking isn’t what the court did discuss but what it didn’t mention : the fact that last year’s NEPA amendments speaks directly to one of those issues. Apparently the word that NEPA was extensively amended a year ago …
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CONTINUE READINGPouring Gas on a Five Alarm Fire
That’s Trump’s climate policy in a nutshell. His campaign slogan should be, “Burn, Baby, Burn.”
At a dinner for oil industry CEOs last week, Trump promised to fulfill the industry’s every dream in return for a billion dollars in donations. We urgently need now is more federal climate action, not less. Yet the reelection of Donald Trump would wipe out years of federal climate action. It’s important to understand fully …
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CONTINUE READINGCould Trump Cancel the IRA?
Probably not. But also possibly yes.
The Inflation Reduction Act is Biden’s signature climate initiative. Trump has already called for repealing it, and so have some Republicans in Congress. Given the IRA’s huge cuts in carbon emissions, that would be a tragedy. Can he do that? He would certainly face some very significant barriers. Trump would need Republican majorities in the …
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CONTINUE READINGShanahan, Kennedy and Climate Change: Unanswered Questions
It’s clear that RFK Jr.’s running mate has good intentions and an interest in climate issues. But not much is clear beyond that.
Nicole Shanahan seems to care about climate change. But neither she nor RFK Jr. have told us their climate plan. And they haven’t explained why we should take the risk of another four years of Trump rollbacks.
CONTINUE READINGThe Changing Politics of Coal
Coal has gone from a national conservative rallying cry to a niche state concern.
The “War Against Coal” was a major conservative theme eight years ago. Now it seems almost forgotten even by Donald Trump, who was once coal’s caped crusader. But although protecting coal production is no longer much of a national issue, keeping coal-fired power plants open has percolated as an issue at the state level. It …
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CONTINUE READINGRanking Presidents on Climate Change
Seven presidents, seven very different legacies.
Although a 1977 memo alerted Jimmy Carter to the problem of climate change, the first tentative responses to climate change didn’t emerge until he left the White House. Since then, there have been seven very different men in the White House. You may find the rankings surprising. Here’s how I would rank them, from best …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Election 2024: “Drill, Baby, Drill” but Then What?
Conservatives have a Trump 2.0 energy policy built on outright lies, some surprising ideas, and risky reversals of America’s clean energy transformation.
If you’ve missed the sound of a crowd shouting “Drill, Baby, Drill” you’re in luck. That chant is back in vogue, as the general election heats up. The 2008-era slogan is shorthand for the Trump campaign’s energy policy, but we know much more about current conservative thinking on the subject thanks to Project 2025, the …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Long Life and Sudden Demise of Federal Wetlands Protection
Here’s a timeline of events.
It’s no wonder that one EPA staffer’s reaction to the Supreme Court ruling was a single word: “Heartbroken.” In 2023, the Supreme Court ended fifty years of broad federal protection to wetlands in Sackett v. United States. It is only when you look back at the history of federal wetland regulation that you realize just …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change and “The Chosen One”
The plan of this messianic figure is clear — expanding fossil fuels and eliminating climate action.
A leading presidential candidate recently reposted a video that called him the “Chosen One,” echoing the view of many of his followers that God has chosen him to lead the country. “And on June 14, 1946,” the video tells us, “God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God …
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