Obama hits again after Trump scraps local weather change regulation: ‘We will be less safe’
Former President Barack Obama has hit out at the Trump administration for axing a landmark climate change regulation from his time in office.
The Democrat claims Trump is making Americans “less safe” by reversing the ruling, which stated that greenhouse gases were responsible for heating the Earth and endangering public welfare.
Trump announced plans to scrap the regulation, known as the 2009 Endangerment Finding, in the Oval Office Thursday, despite the legislation underpinning many laws designed to counter climate change.
“Today, the Trump administration repealed the endangerment finding: the ruling that served as the basis for limits on tailpipe emissions and power plant rules,” Obama wrote on X. “Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”
While announcing plans to repeal the 2009 ruling, Trump described it as a “disastrous Obama-era policy” and claimed that it had driven up prices and severely damaged the auto industry.
The Environmental Protection Agency has since claimed in a press release that the move will save consumers an estimate $1.3 trillion.
But fears have already been raised that relieving fossil fuel companies from needing to report their emissions and lifting emission standards for vehicles could futher destabilize an already turbulent climate.
Manish Bapna, the president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, warned reporters at a press conference last month that repealing the landmark legislation would be tantamount to denying the existence of climate change.
“More and more people are suffering from man-made disasters, from heartbreaking flooding in Texas and North Carolina, to the horrific fire around Los Angeles, to the record heat waves that now hit every summer,” Bapna said.
“Eliminating the endangerment finding is denying these events and the existence of climate change writ large.”
Climate change has long been suggested to worsen natural disasters, with the U.S. National Science Foundation warning that extreme rainfall events could become three times more likely by 2079, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise according.
The agency also suggested that climate change could make extreme rainfall 20 percent more severe.
Meanwhile, NASA has claimed that human-caused climate change has been a key factor in the rise of so-called “fire weather” in the American West. A reduction in rainfall in that part of the country has led to drier conditions, making it easier for wildfires to spread.
But, Trump has long been a critic of policies designed to combat the effects of climate change.
Reversing the landmark Endangerment Finding is just the latest in his attempts to turbocharge the United States’ oil and gas industries.
During his campaign, Trump infamously promised to “drill, baby, drill” and regularly raged about the Green New Deal, a policy proposal suggesting a transition to 100 percent clean energy.
He has regularly described it as “the Green New Scam,” and has since slammed wind turbines as “stupid” and claimed that coal was both “beautiful” and “clean.”
While announcing his plan to overturn the Endangerment Ruling, Trump bragged about how far he was going.
He branded move as “the single largest deregulatory action in American history.”
“This is a big one if you’re into environment,” Trump continued. “This is about as big as it gets.”
Source: independent.co.uk
