Trump To Planet: F*** YOU!

Okay, everybody, resist this!

Donald Trump took his biggest swing yet at stopping environmental progress last week, reversing Barack Obama's clean-power plan to reduce carbon emissions from coal-powered electricity-generating plants, regulations on curbs of emissions from oil production, restrictions on hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking"), and a ban on coal leasing on federal lands.  "We're going to go in a different direction," a senior White House official told reporters ahead of last Tuesday's order. "The previous administration devalued workers with their policies. We can protect the environment while providing people with work."

Ah yes, work in the energy sector . . . opportunities for work in every part of it - oil, coal, gas - except solar, wind and other renewables.

I feel like a cannibal who's overeaten - I want to throw up my hands.  Although the Paris agreement, which Trump wants to cancel, was not mentioned, this policy reversal means that the U.S. Government won't be doing its part to curb greenhouse-gas emissions at least for the next four years - and by 2021, it may be too late.   I sure would like to know how we can protect the environment and provide all of these jobs in a fossil-fuel economy.  Maybe Trump has a secret plan, like the one Nixon had to end the war in Vietnam (which the North Vietnamese did by winning it).

The good news in this - and I know I'm grasping at straws here - is that environmental groups are already planning to sue to prevent this rollback from taking place, and there are all sorts of legal hurdles to keep Trump's actions from taking effect immediately.  Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson - a former oilman, no less - supports the Paris agreement, meaning we still need to find a a way to honor it it if Trump takes Tillerson's advice and stays in.  Several businesses that use a lot of energy - including General Electric and Wal-Mart! - are going ahead with their own plans to reduce fossil-fuel dependency.  Also, several states, like California, are pursuing their own environmental agendas and pushing for greenhouse-gas reductions.

State-level action.  And isn't that what EPA chief Scott Pruitt wants? ;-)

Oh yeah, where I live, we've had a couple of inches of rain in the past week, and we may get a couple more this week.  I know this is a rainy time of year, but that much rain in under two weeks?  The line is, "April showers bring May flowers," not "April downpours bring May flowers!"  Climate change is making weather more extreme.

Did I happen to mention that my area is under a flood watch as I type this?

P.S.  Don't start acting smug about all this, Hill-bots; Hillary Clinton promoted fracking in other countries as Secretary of State and said that anti-fracking activists should "get a life."