10 Ways Trump Has Waged War On The Climate, The Environment and Life As We Know It

posted by Ayse Gürsöz

You knew things were bad, but did you know it was *this* bad?

Since the inauguration one year ago, this administration has been a whirlwind of environmental threats –– so let’s take a moment to reflect on what has actually happened. Here are 10 ways Donald Trump and his administration are pushing the world further towards catastrophic climate change

1. Fast-tracking and Greenlighting Pipelines

Trump launched his presidency with a crusade to “unleash” fossil fuels and dismantle the environmental legacy of his predecessor. One of his first executive orders was greenlighting the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline — which President Obama had halted. And last March, Trump revived the Keystone XL pipeline — possibly the most publicly opposed fossil fuel megaproject of our time.

Trump is Fast-tracking and Greenlighting Pipelines

2. Giving Big Oil the Biggest Voice: Secretary of State

One of Donald Trump’s first cabinet appointments was choosing Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State to direct U.S. foreign policy. Exxon is not only one of the companies that is most responsible for causing climate change, but, it is well documented that Exxon funded and spread doubt and misinformation on fossil fuels and global warming. The company knew about the threat of climate change for decades, stretching back at least to the 1970s. Since then, the oil giant has contributed millions of dollars to climate-denying think tanks and politicians.

As Union of Concerned Scientists president Ken Kimmell has said: “You wouldn’t hire the CEO of a tobacco company to serve as surgeon general. So why would you pick the leader of an oil and gas corporation to spearhead a position tasked with national security and global climate action?”

Trump is Giving Big Oil the Biggest Voice: Secretary of State

3. Pulling the U.S. Out of the Paris Climate Agreement

Did you know that 2015, 2016 and 2017 were the planet’s hottest three years on record? In spite of this fact — and in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is one of the biggest threats to the planet – Trump decided to withdraw the United States from the world’s landmark commitment to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5° Celsius, justifying the decision with lies about the negative impacts of the agreement on the US economy.

Trump is Pulling the U.S. Out of the Paris Climate Agreement

4. Opening the Arctic Refuge to Drilling

Instead of pushing for an end to our oil addiction, Trump opened up one of the world’s most pristine and precious ecosystems in the world to oil drilling. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the homeland of the Gwich’in Athabascan people of interior Alaska and the Inupiat people of the north coast, who argue that protecting the refuge is a matter of human rights and that oil drilling puts their lives at stake.

Trump is Opening the Arctic Refuge to Drilling

5. Shrinking National Monuments

In the largest reversal of national monument protections in U.S. history, Trump announced proclamations to shrink the size of Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 46 percent. The extreme shrinking of these national monuments in Utah makes way for extracting gas, oil, coal, and uranium.
“Once again the Trump Administration has shown its affinity for pandering to fossil fuel interests and that it cares very little for the protection of our environment or for Indigenous Peoples,” wrote the Indigenous Environmental Network in a statement.

Trump is Shrinking National Monuments

6. Gutting the EPA from the Inside

Trump appointed avowed EPA nemesis Scott Pruitt — who had sued the EPA 14 times as the Oklahoma attorney general — as the agency’s head with a clear mission: to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency from within. The agency, since its 1970 launch, is tasked with keeping people safe from toxic pollutants, protecting the environment and addressing climate change. Pruitt has already decided to eliminate more than 30 environmental protection rules, has reduced enforcement of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, stopped requiring fossil fuel companies to collect and report emissions data, and he has overruled EPA scientists and refused to ban a dangerous pesticide that is associated with brain and nervous system damage in young children. And that is only a partial list.

Trump is Gutting the EPA from the Inside

7. Dropping Climate Change from List of National Security Threats

In December, Trump took yet another measure to de-prioritize climate change by dropping it from the country’s list of national security threats. Trump, who once famously called climate change a “Chinese hoax”, made this decision despite 2017’s hurricanes walloping Florida and Houston, and wildfires raging out of control in California. Puerto Rico is still devastated in the aftermath of the horrific climate-change-fueled Hurricane Irma.

Trump is Dropping Climate Change from List of National Security Threats

8. Censoring Climate Change

Within one year, the term “climate change” vanished from a staggering number of federal agency website pages. The scrubbing of climate change information from government websites is a deeply disturbing act of state censorship.
According to an investigation by The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, “links have been cut from pages or rendered useless, language has been changed to alter emphasis and drop mentions of climate-change-related topics, and entire climate websites have been removed and made significantly less accessible.”

Turmp is Censoring Climate Change

9. Leasing Offshore Waters to Oil & Gas

Under the Trump administration, the Interior Department said it would make 90 percent of the continental shelf, the submerged offshore area between state coastal waters and the deep ocean, open to drilling. The proposal effectively reverses the Obama administration’s protection of 94 percent of the outer continental shelf.
According to a statement issued by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, “providing the offshore industry access to the maximum amount of opportunities possible” is a “pillar of President Trump’s plan to make the United States energy dominant.”

Trump is Leasing Offshore Waters to Oil & Gas

10. Slashing Funds for Environmental Protection

Trump’s budget proposal set out to slash $2.5B from the EPA — 31% of its budget. Instead, Congress voted for a $528M decrease. Though this cut is less severe, whole programs will be eliminated and the EPA’s ability to enforce environmental standards will be constrained.

Trump is Slashing Funds for Environmental Protection