Sunday June 16th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Keeping Score On Trump Environmental Rollbacks
Many of you are aware that I keep score of surface record temperatures as a climate measure, so I like working with numbers. Some statistics, unfortunately, are necessary to convey awful messages to society as a warning for change. I saw another set today, which really ticked me off, to borrow a pet phrase, from the New York Times. That premiere news source has been keeping track of the number of environmental regulations that the Trump Administration has rolled back with bad climate crisis ramifications:
https://desdemonadespair.net/2019/06/83-environmental-rules-being-rolled-back-under-trump.html
List environmental regulations rolled back by the Trump administration, updated on 7 June 2019. Graphic: The New York Times
Here are some of the details and a link to the report:
83 environmental rules being rolled back under Trump
By Nadja Popovich, Livia Albeck-ripka, and Kendra Pierre-Louis
7 June 2019
(The New York Times) – President Trump has made eliminating federal regulations a priority. His administration, with help from Republicans in Congress, has often targeted environmental rules it sees as burdensome to the fossil fuel industry and other big businesses. [cf. Trump regulation rollbacks will result in more than 200 million tons of additional greenhouse emissions each year – “The Trump administration has taken historically unprecedented actions to roll back years of environmental progress” –Des]
A New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts more than 80 environmental rules and regulations on the way out under Mr. Trump.
Our list represents two types of policy changes: rules that were officially reversed and rollbacks still in progress. The Trump administration has released an aggressive schedule to try to finalize many of these rollbacks this year.
The Trump administration has often used a “one-two punch” when rolling back environmental rules, said Caitlin McCoy, a fellow in the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School who tracks regulatory rollbacks. “First a delay rule to buy some time, and then a final substantive rule.” [more]
Now I will get on my soap box this Father’s Day. It will take much cooperation between government, or central authority, and private industry to stem the climate crisis. Private oil and coal companies won’t police themselves, obviously, so a higher power should take charge. Nowhere in history has private industry that profits off pollution (PPP) been able to change or invest such that business can be conducted pollution free, and I definitely would include carbon here.
So, we will continue to keep score knowing that at some point we may lose the Climate War. Will Trump get blamed for this allowing PPP to go unchecked? Sure. If books are written during the middle and end of the 21st century about this era historians will probably point to Trump and his brown energy cronies for putting a big monkey wrench into the works of the Paris Accords, further delaying worldwide efforts to reign in carbon pollution. Let’s hope and pray that the four year Trump era will be just a small blip on our collective radar for our children’s sake.
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Here is more climate and weather news from Sunday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article.)
Here is a big African ET:
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Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”