Russ Vernon-Jones

There always seems to be some bad news about how fast the planet is warming and about the catastrophic effects that warming is having. The bad news I’m focused on at the moment, however, is about deliberate actions being taken by President Trump and his administration that will accelerate the warming of the planet and increase the deadly effects of climate change. I hope you will read to the end of this post, though, because there is some quite hopeful news on the global stage that can help balance our perspective.

President Trump has declared an “energy emergency” giving himself the authority to fast-track the construction of oil and gas projects. He also has launched an assault on regulations designed to curb pollution–often ignoring the well–established legal processes for making and revising regulations. He has frozen funds appropriated by Congress for clean energy projects. He has stopped approvals for wind power projects on public lands and in federal waters, and threatened those on private lands, despite the fact that wind energy is the country’s largest source of renewable energy.