Completely on- brand for this malicious, nihilistic regime:
The Trump administration has gone on a spree of environmental rollbacks in its final days, loosening
standards for equipment Americans use to heat their homes, reducing
protected habitat for the northern spotted owl and opening conservation
lands in California and Utah to development.
The
flurry of new rules — several of which will help the fossil fuel,
logging and mining industries — sets up a clash with the incoming Biden
administration. As the president-elect gears up to cut greenhouse gas
emissions and put more land off limits to development, his aides will
have to spend months unwinding these policies unless congressional
Democrats or federal judges overturn them. [snip]
In the past week, for example, the Interior Department overturned an Obama-era measure that increased royalties
that oil, gas and coal companies pay the federal government; cut 3.4
million acres in critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, which
faces extinction; expedited approvals to lease more than 550,000 acres
of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for energy development; and
approved a four-lane highway through Utah’s Red Cliffs National
Conservation Area, which had been permanently protected as a wildlife
reserve 25 years ago.
Interior also adopted language in its instructional manual
on Monday requiring employees to use climate models that predict
less-severe impacts from global warming, emphasizing “uncertainty” in
the science. [snip]
On Friday, the Energy Department granted
the natural gas industry’s petition to ensure less energy-efficient
furnaces and water heaters remain on the market. The American Gas
Association cheered the move for giving consumers more choices.
But
Andrew deLaski, executive director of the energy-efficiency advocacy
group Appliance Standards Awareness Project, said it could lock in
pollution for years to come from home heating, a big if underappreciated
source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Even though Democrats have options for overturning these actions through legislation or the courts (at least until they arrive at the Republican Supreme Court), it may take years for the damage done just in the past few weeks to be undone, if it can be undone at all.
We'll say it one last time as the clock ticks down the last hours of the Trump regime: "But her emails!"
(Photo: Wonder which Republican crony gets paid to put the highway through Utah's Red Cliffs National Conservation Area)
