The outright environmental nightmare that is the Trump Presidency will accelerate tomorrow when Trump will issue executive orders demanding the government (these steps had been waiting until Scott Pruitt was confirmed, which unfortunately occurred tomorrow). The executive orders will require Executive Branch agencies to reconsider programs that were the centerpieces of President Obama’s policies to address climate change — the Clean Power Plan, which reduces emissions from fossil-fuel-burning power plants — and the Clean Water Rule, which is designed to limit pollution into the nation’s waterways.
As today’s Washington Post explains:
One executive order, aimed at bolstering American energy independence, will instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to begin rewriting the 2015 regulation that limits greenhouse-gas emissions from existing electric utilities.
A second order will instruct the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to revamp a 2015 rule, known as the Waters of the United States rule, that applies to 60 percent of the water bodies in the country. That regulation — issued under the 1972 Clean Water Act, which gives the federal government authority over not only major water bodies but also the wetlands, rivers and streams that feed into them — restricts development as well as some farming operations on the grounds that these activities could pollute the smaller or intermittent bodies of water or choke them off altogether.
There will be litigation over these orders — and over the subsequent EPA agency actions that implement them. It’s possible the courts will limit or slow down the massive retrogression. But the bottom line is we have outright enemies of environmental protection in the Oval Office and controlling both Houses of Congress. The damage will be severe and the only hope is a massive pushback from We the People.