Essay by Eric Worrall
I could read this stuff for hours.
‘In a word, horrific’: Trump’s extreme anti-environment blueprint
Allies and advisers have hinted at a more methodical second term: driving forward fossil fuel production, sidelining scientists and overturning rules
Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor Tue 6 Feb 2024 22.00 AEDT
The United States’s first major climate legislation dismantled, a crackdown on government scientists, a frenzy of oil and gas drilling, the Paris climate deal not only dead but buried.
A blueprint is emerging for a second Donald Trump term that is even more extreme for the environment than his first, according to interviews with multiple Trump allies and advisers.
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“Trump will undo everything [Joe] Biden has done, he will move more quickly and go further than he did before,” said Myron Ebell, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team for Trump’s first term. “He will act much more expeditiously to impose his agenda.”
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He would, his allies say, also scrap government considerations of the damage caused by carbon emissions; compel a diminished EPA to squash pollution rules for cars, trucks and power plants; and symbolically nullify the Paris climate agreement by not only withdrawing the US again but sending it to the Senate for ratification as a treaty, knowing it would fail.
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“A return of Trump would be, in a word, horrific,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official, now fellow at the University of New Hampshire.
“It would also be incredibly stupid. It would roll back progress made over decades to protect public health and safety, there is no logic to it other than to destroy everything. People who support him may not realize it’s their lives at stake, too.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/06/trump-climate-change-fossil-fuels-second-term
I must admit, a part of me feels a little sorry for people suffering such extreme fear of climate change and the coming Trump presidency, despite the harm their ideas have inflicted on the rest of us.
It’s like watching a mistreated pet rabbit which has been stuck in a cramped cage so long, instead of leaping for freedom when the door to the cage is opened, it just sits there crying. But there is very little we can do to help them escape the psychological cage of their own making, they have to take the first step.