Trump vs. the climate

Inside Climate News - With the repeal of the EPA’s scientific finding on the dangers of greenhouse gases, the Trump administration is aiming to take out many federal actions on climate change in one blast.

The first impact of this deregulatory detonation will be on cars. The EPA packaged its withdrawal of the 17-year-old endangerment finding with elimination of the ambitious tailpipe pollution standards adopted by the Biden administration. It’s a move designed to alter the choices consumers are likely to see in showrooms, the kinds of vehicles rolling off assembly lines and the technology evolution unfolding in U.S. manufacturing.

In fact, the change is already underway. Ford announced in December it would stop making its F-150 Lightning pickup truck and would otherwise scale back its electric vehicle plans. General Motors ended plans to build EVs at its Orion plant in Michigan, shifting the facility to production of big gas-powered models like the luxury Cadillac Escalade SUV and the Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck. Stellantis has cancelled plans for a fully electric Ram 1500 truck and has scrapped several plug-in hybrids, including the Chrysler Pacifica and Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe.

There’s little doubt that the auto industry is pivoting—for the time being, anyway—to a future of higher emissions in the United States. EPA’s rescission of tailpipe pollution standards wipes out what the Biden administration had calculated would be a 7.2 billion-metric-ton cut in greenhouse gas emissions, the largest single step that any nation has taken on climate change.

....In the wake of Trump’s announcement to repeal the 2009 endangerment finding, lawyers from environmental groups across the country promised to challenge the repeal.

Scientists say global warming is increasing faster than at any time in at least 3 million years. There is no guide for what comes next.

Planet-warming emissions from China, currently the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, have continued to flatline or fall as cleaner forms of energy outpace coal and gas generation.