How Trump plans to slash environmental support

Inside Climate News - Details of President Donald Trump's 2018 budget proposal, leaked [last] week, reveal that the administration appears determined to wallop environmental programs, including many that tackle climate change. It would cut Environmental Protection Agency funding by nearly one-third, slash spending on renewable energy innovation, and eliminate the Greenhouse Gas Reporting program, among other programs.

This version of the budget proposal reveals that the administration intends to follow through on its commitment to reduce EPA to the size it was in the 1970s, when climate change wasn't on its radar screen.

Research on air and energy would be slashed by 67 percent, and clean air regulatory programs—which include climate change—would be cut 47 percent.

Among the EPA programs that would be eliminated:

• The $8 million Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, under which industrial facilities have been reporting their carbon emissions since 2010.
• The $27 million national estuaries program for protection of coastal waterways.
• $7 million for Environmental Justice.
• $19.9 million in assistance to Alaska villages.
• $427 million in geographic programs focused on environmental issues in the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans and other hot spots.