In Trump’s last days, a spree of environmental rollbacks

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Sat, 2021-01-16 20:03 — mike kraft

In Trump’s last days, a spree of environmental rollbacks The Trump administration went on a final spree of environmental rollbacks with just days left in office, scaling back standards for equipment Americans use to heat their homes, habitat for the northern spotted owl, and protections for conservation lands in California and Utah. Juliet Eilperin, Dino Grandoni Washington Post

The Trump administration has gone on a spree of environmental rollbacks in its final days, loosening standards for equipment Americans use to heat their homes, reducing protected habitat for the northern spotted owl and opening conservation lands in California and Utah to development.

The flurry of new rules — several of which will help the fossil fuel, logging and mining industries — sets up a clash with the incoming Biden administration. As the president-elect gears up to cut greenhouse gas emissions and put more land off limits to development, his aides will have to spend months unwinding these policies unless congressional Democrats or federal judges overturn them.

Every president rushes to lock in his agenda before leaving office: Bill Clinton protected tens of millions of acres of national forest from logging just before stepping down, and Barack Obama finalized a slew of rules on everything from energy efficiency to the disposal of toxic waste by dental offices.

But Trump has managed to usher through an unusually large number of energy and environmental policies in just a single term, according to a Washington Post analysis, and has finalized more than two dozen since he lost the election in November.

“Trump is the most anti-nature president in U.S. history, so it comes as no surprise that his administration is doubling down by selling off anything and everything before they leave office,” said Jenny Rowland-Shea, a senior policy analyst for public lands at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “What we’re seeing right now is a last-ditch, desperate effort by the Trump administration to rubber-stamp as many permits, sign as many contracts and cut as many protected areas as it can to make a mess for the incoming Biden administration.”

In the past week, for example, the Interior Department overturned an Obama-era measure that increased royalties that oil, gas and coal companies pay the federal government; cut 3.4 million acres in critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, which faces extinction; expedited approvals to lease more than 550,000 acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for energy development; and approved a four-lane highway through Utah’s Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, which had been permanently protected as a wildlife reserve 25 years ago.

Interior also adopted language in its instructional manual on Monday requiring employees to use climate models that predict less-severe impacts from global warming, emphasizing “uncertainty” in the science.

In an email, Interior Department spokesman Nicholas Goodwin said, “The Department continues to implement its mission and statutory obligations for the American people.”

Trump leases more than half-a-million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling

The oil, gas and mining industries stand to gain the most from these final rule changes. ...

ALSO SEE: Trump administration delays increase in fines for automakers who fail to meet climate change standards

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