“The White House, Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency have dovetailed to engineer a dizzying reversal of clean air and water regulations implemented by Barack Obama’s administration.”—Oliver Milman, July 4, 2017

The photos above are a composite  from Associated Press, Getty Images and Rex Features—not exactly something that Donald Trump can blithely dismiss as “fake news.” They were with an article last month in The Guardian by Milman titled “Trump’s alarming environmental rollback: what’s seen scrapped so far.” He observed that the Environmental Protection Agency’s supposed mission is to protect pubic health and the environment, not really to protect corporate earnings. (The EPA earlier this year, by the way, scrubbed the word “science” from its mission statement. The new language instead emphasizes “economically and technologically achievable performance standards.”)

I also ran across a tweet by Donald Trump posted at 5;30 a.m. Dec. 28, 2013: “We should be focused on clean and beautiful air—not expensive and business closing GLOBAL WARMING—a total hoax!" (That seems pretty self-contradictory on the face of it. How do we get that beautiful air without cutting the discharging of all that carbon into it?). The photos, meanwhile show the the reality of Trump’s world. The article with the above illustrations is https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/04/trump-emvironmental-rollback-epa-scrap-regulations

We now have old lying Donald Trump and his allies as a developing plutocracy with little concern for the common man/woman or the future of the planet that sustains us all. I am overwhelmed with research results from merely Googling “Trump environment.” For those interested I would suggest pasting this National Geographic link into your browser: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/

It’s too long to reproduce here, but it covers such things as the coal industry, the Paris Accords on global warming, the Dakota pipelines, canceling rules to protect wildlife, EPA dismissals from its Board of Scientific Counselors, loosened restrictions on harmful pesticides, etc. 

Puget Sound takes a hit—The above is one of many sources that reported: “President Trump’s 2018 budget, sent to Congress . . . calls for massive cuts in scientific research and in a slew of environmental programs that protect air and water. The proposed budget, titled 'A New Foundation for American Greatness,' slashes the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31 percent—a steeper cut than any other agency. Those cuts could translate into a $2.7 billion spending reduction and the loss of 3,200 jobs, according to an analysis by the World Resources Institute. The proposed budget eliminates major programs to restore the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, and Puget Sound. It ends the EPA’s lead-risk reduction and radon detection programs and cuts funding for the Superfund cleanup program.

As for that clean water, just before his election, at a rally in Atkinson, N. H., Trump boasted: “I've won many environmental awards” and promised to end international climate change agreements while protecting "crystal, clear, clean water.” And earlier this year, by executive order, he allowed mines to discharge waste into streams.

On April 28, The EPA discarded its longtime website devoted to explaining climate change. The new page says it’s being updated “to reflect EPA’s priorities under the leadership of President Trump and Administrator Pruitt.”

On March 31, Environmental scientist Michael Cox retired after more than 25 years with the agency, penning a scorching farewell letter to agency administrator Scott Pruitt. The letter lambasted the Trump administration for “working to dismantle EPA and its staff as quickly as possible.”

On April 28, President Trump signed an executive order ordering a review of Obama-era bans on offshore oil and gas drilling in parts of the Arctic, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans. The Obama policies include a five-year oil leasing roadmap that excluded Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas and a December 2016 attempt to permanently ban drilling on wide swaths of Arctic and Atlantic waters. NPR reported that the Trump order also halts the designation or expansion of National Marine Sanctuaries, unless the move includes an Interior Department estimate of the area’s “energy or mineral resource potential.”

Trump touted his alleged environmental accolades as early as 2011, when he said during a “Fox and Friends” interview, “I’ve received many, many environmental awards.” He repeatedly claimed this during the 2016 presidential campaign: “I’ve won many environmental awards, by the way. I’ve actually been called an environmentalist, if you can believe that.”—Washington Post Fact Checker

“I’ve won awards on environmental protection,” he said at a business town hall event in April. “I’m a big believer, believe it or not.” PolitiFact and The Washington Post looked for the awards and came up with just one personal award: local recognition from a Westchester County group for land he donated to New York State as part of a golf course deal that went bad. Which is not none, but also not many, or “many, many.”

Other federal departments have fallen into line in many ways. The Interior Department  updated its climate change website, deleting much of its content in the process. Interior, of course, has considerable control over federal lands. The Department of Agriculture’s employees have been told to avoid using the term “climate change” and refer instead to “weather extremes.” And “reduce greenhouse gases” now is “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency.” (For more detail, Google “USDA clamps down on staffers using the term ‘climate change’.”)

In an article printed in The Seattle Times Aug. 14, Nobel Prize winning economist and syndicated columnist for the New York Times  Paul Krugman pointed out the GOP, despite its apparent wide disarray, remains united in seeking the destruction of civilization with its stubborn denial of Global Warming and Climate Change. “Republicans can’t seem to repeal Obamacare, and recriminations between Senate leaders and the tweeter in chief are making headlines. But the G.O.P. is completely united behind its project of destroying civilization, and it’s making good progress toward that goal.” He cites underlying motivations as economic greed, Republican ideology and ego-driven contrariness in search of recognition among a handful of scientists. See entire column at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/opinion/climate-science-denial.html

Under Barack Obama the EPA during his first seven months of his presidency pursued 34 civil cases for violation of laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, collecting $36 million. Under Trump, prosecution has dropped to 26 cases and collection of $12 million.

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BREAKING NEWS—In what flood-control experts call “a disaster for taxpayers and the environment,” Donald Trump Tuesday unraveled another piece of President Barack Obama’s climate-change agenda. He signed an executive order that rolls back standards demanding the federal government account for climate change and sea-level rise when building new infrastructure.

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