Trump Signs Executive Order to Eliminate Our Climate Change Progress

As discussed one week ago on Smart Dissent, on Tuesday an Executive Order was signed which spits in the face of every human or other living organism in the world including billions of future ones.  The order seeks to nullify President Barack Obama’s climate change efforts and directed the Environmental Protection Agency to start the process of the Clean Power Plan, which sought to close hundreds of heavy polluting coal-fired power plants and replaced them with vast new wind and solar farms.  The U.S. is the second largest polluter to China and has now effectively ceded leadership of the global campaign to ensure the Earth exists for generations to come.  

At the heart of the Paris accord was a breakthrough 2014 agreement between Mr. Obama and China’s president, Xi Jinping, in which the leaders of the world’s two largest polluting countries agreed to enact policies to cut their emissions. At the time, Mr. Obama offered the Clean Power Plan as evidence that the United States would meet its target.

Over all, the goal of the Paris deal is to keep the planet from warming more than 3.6 degrees, the point at which scientists say the earth will be irrevocably locked into a future of severe droughts, floods, rising sea levels and food shortages.  “This is not the time for any country to change course on the very serious and very real threat of climate change,” said Erik Solheim, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program. “The science tells us that we need bolder, more ambitious commitments.”

There will be a fight to protect our World and we must strong support organizations and politicans who fight for our future over the short term interests of corporations who lobby for their own profitability.

...it remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump’s orders will fully vanquish Mr. Obama’s climate change legacy. Legal experts say it could take years for the E.P.A. administrator to carry out the process of withdrawing and revising the climate change regulations, and the process will be hit by legal challenges at every turn. A coalition of states, including New York and California, has already vowed to fight Mr. Trump.

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York said he was preparing to challenge any effort to do away with regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. Such a move, he argued, violated the Clean Air Act, as well as established case law.

ACTION: Organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Coucil, 350.org, the Sierra Club will be fighting hard against this administration.  Read up on their work at their web sites, follow them on Twitter, and give a donation to them or similar groups.  We need environmental groups to be well funded to fight this fight.  Their web sites have concrete ways you can get involved beyond giving them money if this fighting for this cause drives you.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/climate/trump-executive-order-climate-change.html