Thursday, January 9, 2020

Trump to nix climate change in major projects' plans

[Updated from, 1/2/20 with more details as well as biographical material about the former corporate attorney and oil industry lobbyist whom Trump appointed to oversee and enforce these widespread anti-environmental rule and process changes.]
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Australia is on fire, the US West hasn't been far behind, and the Midwest and South saw record flooding months ago which did major damage to farmland, budgets, bridges and roads.

The whole world knows the climate is worsening.

Yet Trump continues his imperious assault on wildlife, fresh air, clean water and across-the-board sustainability with yet another move which will leave our children and grandchildren in peril.
Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning
According to one government official who has seen the proposed regulation but was not authorized to speak about it publicly, the administration will also narrow the range of projects that require environmental review. That could make it likely that more projects will sail through the approval process without having to disclose plans to do things like discharge waste, cut trees or increase air pollution.
The new rule would no longer require agencies to consider the “cumulative” consequences of new infrastructure. In recent years courts have interpreted that requirement as a mandate to study the effects of allowing more planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. It also has meant understanding the impacts of rising sea levels and other results of climate change on a given project. 
The federal government has been urging municipalities for nearly a generation to strengthen their infrastructure because a changing climate was going to wreak havoc. 

Which Wisconsin has repeatedly seen and suffered.
June, 2018: 
WisDOT NW Region on Twitter: Flash Flooding Closes, Washes Out Roads In Northern Wisconsin - photo is US 2 in Bayfield County, North Fish Creek, approx. 1 mile east of the intersection with C
What the heck is Trump's end game, anyway? To end everything?

Perhaps we could direct these questions to a) Scott Walker, Trump's Wisconsin 2020 re-election co-chair, b) Cathy Stepp, Walker's long-time, chamber-of-commerce-mentality DNR Secretary and now director of Trump's US EPA Great Lakes regional office, and c) Ron Johnson, our Senior GOP US Senator and a key Trump apologist.

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