The fossil-fuel-powered shredder in the Trump White House has masticated the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, replacing a sound framework to get states to slash carbon emissions with new rules that let plants pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The president, shilling in West Virginia for coal he calls “clean,” insists the old regulations were killing jobs. They weren’t; coal jobs have been in steep decline for decades.
The new rules, though, will kill people, due to an upsurge in fine particulate matter released into our air— leading to as many as 1,400 premature deaths a year. Trump’s own Environmental Protection Agency says so in its own analysis.
As though on cue, scientists just reported that for the first time in recorded history, some of the Arctic’s thickest sea ice is breaking down, as Earth registers ever-higher temperatures.
This is not a Chinese hoax, or a witch hunt, or fake news. This is our planet.