Trump proposal nixes review of long-term climate impacts

The White House on Friday proposed reversing an Obama-era policy that directs agencies to consider the climate impact from various projects.

The draft guidance would change the way agencies evaluate the environmental effect of things like pipelines and oil and gas drilling.

“Agencies should analyze reasonably foreseeable environmental consequences of major Federal actions, but should not consider those that are remote or speculative,” the guidance said in a section about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The document added that agencies “need not give greater consideration to potential effects from GHG emissions than to other potential effects on the human environment.”

The guidance from the White House Council on Environmental Quality comes just days after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a rollback of Obama-era regulation on emissions from power plants.

The guidance directs agencies to consider greenhouse gas emissions when “substantial enough to warrant quantification.” Agencies do not have to consider how a project might impact greenhouse emissions if doing so would be “overly speculative.”

It reverses a 2016 rule from the same council that directed agencies to analyze how the projects they approve will contribute to climate change. Trump withdrew the Obama-era guidance in April 2017.

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/449790-trump-proposal-nixes-review-of-long-term-climate-impacts

If it was a Hussein policy, the intent was to disrupt not protect…