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Trump Environment Policy Tag

While much of the media and the American public was focused in the Iran attack this week, President Donald Trump announced significant changes to the nation’s landmark environmental law. The changes would make it easier for federal agencies to approve infrastructure projects without jumping through needless hoops set by green justice bureaucrats.

California and a coalition of 21 other states have sued the Trump administration over the decision to rescind restrictions on coal-burning power plants. These restrictions played a crucial part in Obama’s climate change policy.
State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said Trump’s effort to dismantle 2015’s Clean Power Plan undercuts efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and allows the Environmental Protection Agency to abandon its legal responsibility to crack down on air pollution.

President Donald Trump has promised to roll back business-killing regulations to create a healthier economic climate. Some of the most difficult of those regulations came from the "Endangered Species Act." The government implemented the rules initially to protect whales, eagles, and other wildlife. It eventually devolved into a green dictatorship in which small fish and insects could be used to prohibit land and business development.

My son and I often have dinner together and watch FNC's "The Five." This week, one discussion that caught my attention was the response to panelist Juan Williams' assertion that the Republicans do not have any response to climate change. When fellow pundit Greg Gutfeld responded, "Gen. IV Nuclear," Williams went on as if he never heard the remark.

Erik Solheim, the head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), has been forced to resign after an internal audit report questioning his huge travel expense surfaced in the media. Solheim, a green politician and former Norwegian Environment Minister, had spent almost half a million dollars jet-setting around the world. Solheim stepped down after cerain UN member states threatened to withhold funding over the latest revelations. According to a UK media report: "Countries unhappy with Solheim’s conduct were holding back tens of millions of dollars, threatening a financial crisis at the body."

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris has just ordered a halt to the construction of the $8 billion Keystone XL Pipeline, the next phase of the massive pipeline system, until further environmental analysis is conducted.
The decision comes as TransCanada is preparing to build the oil pipeline beginning in northern Montana, with pipe being shipped to the state by train and trucked to locations along the line.

President Donald Trump has signed into law an eco-friendly bill that may have been the most bipartisan measure created on Capitol Hill since 2016.
The Ketchikan Daily News reports the Save our Seas Act, which Trump signed Thursday, reauthorizes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program through 2022. The program works to reduce debris through research, prevention and reduction. The Save our Seas legislation keeps the program going by continuing to authorize $10 million per year for the next five years.

The last time we visited the Environmental Protection Agency, its regulation-slaying head Scott Pruitt had resigned over “the unrelenting attacks” on him and his family, which “are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of” them. As I suspected, the left's victory over Pruitt was hollow. Acting EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler has directed the agency to ease Obama-era standards on the disposal of coal ash, a move expected to be the agency’s first revision of the standards.