The president Trump notified the Monday before the UN, its decision to abandon the Paris Agreement, milestone international in the fight against the climate crisis, as he had announced two years ago, and as promised during his campaign. The decision is the latest turn of the roller antiecológico that has been applied to a president who, faced with all the scientific evidence, has called repeatedly for climate change “farce”.
Since he came to the White House on January 20, 2017, encouraged by the sectors more right-wing and desreguladores, the 45th president has turned to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a pickaxe of demolition of the federal regulations for the protection of the environment, much of it launched by his predecessor, democrat Barack Obama. In some cases it has been successful; in others, their actions are entangled in legal proceedings that will force the Supreme Court, now more conservative when it came to Trump to decide. In total, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on research of the Law schools of Harvard and Columbia, the Administration, Trump has removed or attempted to remove, in its less than three years of mandate, a total of 85 standards. These are some of its measures antiecológicas most significant:
MORE INFORMATION
Trump reported its slam to the Paris Agreement to combat climate change, The Paris Agreement resisting (for the moment) to Trump The UN gives the green light to Madrid to celebrate in Ifema the climate summit in a month
Pipelines resurrected
Just took four days in the White House, when Donald Trump signed two executive orders that resucitaban the projects of construction of two controversial oil pipeline that the Obama Administration had stopped with arguments in defense of the environment. It comes to the Keystone XL (whose future is still entangled in the courts) and the Dakota Access. Her stoppage had been a victory for the environmental movement: in addition to have an impact on the dependence of fossil fuels, such pipelines pass through protected areas and transporting oil highly polluting. Shortly before signing the order, in a meeting with executives of the automotive industry, the president said that “environmentalism is out of control”.
check Out of federal territories
In April 2017, the president signed an executive order that allows the veto to the operations of energy pollutants on federal lands declared as national monument. Obama had sought to expand these protections beyond what I had done none of his predecessors. Eight months after the executive order, Trump will put hands to the work, and approved in the State of Utah, the highest reduction of federal lands in the history of the country, enabling for the development of private activities, almost one million hectares (85% of the National Reserve Bears Ears and the half of Grand Staircase-Escalante).
Paris Agreement
Just five months after his arrival to the White House, June 1, 2017, the president announced his intention to break with the Paris Agreement to combat climate change, calling it “debilitating, crippling and unfair”. Notified officially this Monday, the decision to withdraw from the pact, signed in April 2016 by 195 countries, was sending an early and loud signal that the united States, the most powerful country in the world and the second emitter of global greenhouse gas emissions, abandoned the fight before one of the biggest challenges of the humanity. The agreement, in addition to force the signatories to reduce emissions, requires developed country contributions of funds to help the poor in the fight green. A climate finance that the united States has also closed the faucet.
offshore Drilling
In their struggle to preserve the strategic position of the united STATES in the global power market, Trump announced in January 2018 that would allow drilling to extract oil and natural gas in 90% of the coastal waters of the united States. The new plan, which amendment protections that authorized Obama, has the rejection of environmental organizations, and was a new transfer to the lobby of the oil industry. Also lowered the safety regulations for drilling in the sea, which were imposed after the disaster produced by the explosion on the platform Deepwater Horizon in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico.
coal Industry
The presidential campaign, Trump put a harsh spotlight on the regions engaged in the coal, who seduced her with promises of revitalizing an industry that is dying. That’s why, when it came to the White House, it was clear that the policy of Obama to reduce emissions from coal plants would be the object of his pickaxe desreguladora. In June of this year, the Administration Trump completed one of its most significant rollbacks in environmental regulation with a new regulation to replace the one passed by Obama, which never came into force. The new plan, called the policy of Clean Energy that is Affordable, basically denies the authority of the federal Government to impose limits on national emissions of pollutants, and delivery to the States the competence to determine whether the existing plants will require improvements in efficiency. So, it would help the plants to modernize and become more efficient, achieving a reduction of emissions in the short term. But scientific organizations consider that it fails in the long term: to help the coal-fired plants to be modernized, prolongs its useful life, instead of promoting the progressive substitution of energy pollutants by more clean.
Fauna unprotected
In August of this year, the Administration Trump announced a weakening of the protection of the wild fauna of the multiple threats that suffers as a result of climate change. The new legislation makes it easier to remove a species from the list of animals in danger of extinction and lowers the protection of the animals belonging to the following ranks of safeguarding the endangered species. In addition, for the first time, to take account of economic criteria to decide whether a species deserves protection, considering, for example, the economic cost that would prohibit the felling of trees in a determined habitat to protect the animals. The measure, in sum, opens the door to new mining operations or oil and gas extraction in areas inhabited by protected species.
Emissions-methane
The Government also presented this summer a plan to eliminate controls of methane emissions from los oil and gas wells, introduced during the Obama presidency. The measure will mean the end of federal restrictions that require the industry to install technological tools to inspect and repair the leaks of methane from wells, pipelines and storage facilities. Methane is, next to carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxide, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases. Although it does not stay so long in the atmosphere, their ability to trap heat is much higher than that of CO2.
Consumption of cars
The implementation in 2012 of standards of anti-pollution and energy efficiency of the cars was one of the leading measures of Obama to combat climate change. A measure that also, the past 2 of August, his successor in the White House decided to freeze. The plan of Obama required the car manufacturers to reduce by almost half the consumption of the cars until 2025, encouraging the production of hybrid and electric vehicles. Trump announced in September that it will be terminated by the authority that has California to set its own limits on greenhouse gas emissions, unleashing again a complex court battle.
contaminated Water
on The 12th of September, the Administration Trump announced the repeal of the regulations, approved in 2015, which established limits on chemical pollutants that could be used near rivers, swamps or other bodies of water. The chemical industries, the farmers, the builders, or the extractors of oil and gas, which are opposed to the rules of Obama, will now become easier to get rid of pollutants in the water. But, in addition, what underlies it is a battle over the definition of public waters. Obama, supported by a resolution of the Supreme Court, wanted to extend it to small rivers, streams or wetlands that flow into channels larger (on which the federal jurisdiction is not discussed). The initiative of Trump, who believes that the federal jurisdiction is a burden to private agents, is intended to drastically reduce the definition of public waters. And now, with a conservative majority consolidated in the Supreme, has everything to his favor.
States and cities take the initiative abandoned by Trump
With the arrival of Donald Trump to the White House, the great global power and a second emitter of greenhouse gases, he was not going to play a leadership role in the fight against climate change. But many cities and States in the country decided to take the initiative abandoned by the president and sought his place in the forefront of this fight. The announcement of Trump that would come out of the Paris Agreement caused in its day, an immediate revolt of mayors and democratic governors who are committed to fulfill and promote, to the extent of its competence, the objectives of the agreement. Last year, the Summit of Global Action for Climate, held in San Francisco, was a sample of that thrust. This summer, a coalition of 29 cities and States have sued Trump for its measures for the coal industry. After announcing Trump his intention to terminate the authority of California to set its own limits of gaseous pollutants, competition that the State of the west coast has since half a century ago, California and 13 other States responded with a lawsuit. But today California is sears in devastating fires, which scientists related to climate change, and the territory which embodied the counterweight to the cross-desreguladora of the Administration to Trump assists tied his hands to the destruction.
