The Trump administration’s retreat from global climate leadership

   As climate disasters grow in frequency and intensity, from devastating wildfires to relentless hurricanes to record-breaking heat waves, the Trump administration has once again taken a step that threatens to deepen the climate crisis: formally announcing the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. In the midst of an escalating climate crisis that’s upending livelihoods and lives, this decision raises urgent questions about the future of national and global progress. Namely, what does it mean for the international climate effort to combat climate change when the world’s largest historical emitter steps away from the table? And what are the implications for Americans already grappling with the mounting costs of a warming planet?

Michael Conathan: Trump’s war on oceans

  In 2008, when President George W. Bush issued the traditional proclamation declaring June to be National Ocean Month, it was peppered with platitudes about America’s “precious waters” and included a shout out to the newly minted Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument he had established two years earlier.

  The proclamation President Donald J. Trump issued on May 31 of this year—as Toronto Star Washington correspondent Daniel Dale pointed out on Twitter—took rather a different tone. Trump’s language kicks off by mentioning the “mighty oceans and their extraordinary resources.” It then bemoans how “underutilized” these resources are and how much more money the ocean could generate from energy extraction and increased fisheries production.

The People have spoken: Consistent support for the Clean Power Plan

  August 2016 marked the first anniversary of the finalization of the Clean Power Plan, or CPP, which provides a regulatory framework for states to cut carbon pollution from existing power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. It is a central tenet of the U.S. plan to achieve the climate goals established in last year’s Paris Agreement.

  Over the past year, opponents of the CPP—including coal companies, many electric utilities, and their elected allies—have left no stone unturned in their bid to undo these carbon pollution standards.