An Illustrated Guide to Trump’s Plan for the Environment
Our 45th president's contempt for environmental protections is well documented. So what will his first 100 days look like? Here's our educated guess on what could happen, based on what he's already said and done.
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“Hoax,” “hoax,” and “expensive hoax.” That’s how President Donald J. Trump has most frequently described man-made climate change. While we don’t yet know exactly what a Trump presidency will mean for our planet, the man has given us enough clues that we can begin to cobble together a vision for the future.
It’s pretty bleak. As the oldest man to ever assume the position of President of the United States, it can be reasonably assumed that he won’t have to live with the long-term results of his environmental policies—he won’t see wildfires devastate a drought-stricken Southwest, won’t evacuate Trump Tower when the next hurricane drowns Manhattan, won’t stand at the edge of Mar-A-Lago as the Atlantic laps at its gates.
“Science cannot expect any positive climate action from him,” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said in a statement after Trump’s election.
So what exactly can we expect? There are some likely possibilities, including approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and an end to domestic climate-change research. What follows is our best guess of what the first 100 days could look like, based on what Trump has said, threatened, or intimated since the start of his campaign.
Mark your calendars for Trump’s first 100 days, then get to high ground.
