Saturday, March 3, 2018

The Growing Danger of Ecosystem Collapse and Trump's War on Nature

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43471-the-growing-danger-of-ecosystem-collapse-and-trump-s-war-on-nature
"At the very moment of frightening decline of planetary ecosystems and accelerating climate change, Trump, his regime and cohorts in Congress, have launched a scorched-earth campaign against the environment -- a war on nature. Trump and his ilk aren't like Nero fiddling as Rome burned; they're stoking the inferno with whole forests. They have purged climate change from government websites, while denying its existence. They've chastised scientists for raising the connections of last summer's hurricanes to warming oceans. Trump has ordered the Clean Power Plan scrapped, is moving to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement and has called for drastic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget, especially targeting programs to deal with climate change. This administration loves fossil fuels and hates renewable energy so much it announced a plan on February 1 to cut research on renewables 72 percent. The EPA and Interior Department have been turned into shameless instruments of environmental destruction. Scientists and officials in the EPA, the Interior Department and the National Park Service have been forced out, let go, blocked from advising or have resigned in protest. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last remaining truly pristine wilderness areas left on the planet, is now open for drilling, a provision snuck through in the Republican tax bill. Bears Ears and Grand-Escalante National Monuments -- with all their archaeological and cultural treasures, and particularly precious to Indigenous people -- have been gutted and eviscerated. Now Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, Trump and Republicans in Congress have their sights set on more monuments and national lands to pry open for extractive interests. In January, the regime declared almost all US coastal regions open for drilling. There is no regulation to protect land, water, air, wildlife or people's health that these eco-destroyers are bound to respect."

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