Earth Matters: It's been a rotten week for the environment thanks to wholly expected Trump moves

If there were remaining doubts still lurking in some people’s minds about just how serious the Trump administration and Republicans in general are about trashing the environment and shrugging off climate chaos, the past week or so ought to make it unambiguously clear.

The Department of Justice reversed long-standing precedent and issued a ruling saying presidents can unilaterally abolish or shrink any of the 129 national monuments that have been designated since Congress passed the 1906 Antiquities Act.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed to stop regulating carbon emissions from power plants at least until the 2030s, arguing against reason that these make too “insignificant” a contribution to global warming to be concerned about and, besides regulations overburden the public goes the claim. The agency also proposes to relax the mercury emissions rule for those plants.

As part of the make-the-rich-richer spending and tax megabill, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee proposes to require the Interior Department to sell up to 3.3 million acres of public land over the next five years. Such sales are something the founders of what came to be called the Sagebrush Rebellion have been hankering for over the past half century. Such sales were proposed by the first Trump administration in 2017.

The Interior Department has proposed to reverse Biden’s banning of drilling in the remote 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. An executive order calling for such drilling was issued on the first day of Trump’s second term, but the proposal now makes more drilling a more solid possibility.

Meanwhile, the National Energy Dominance Council, which includes EPA chief Lee Zeldin and Energy chief Chris Wright, hailed new, 20-year liquefied natural gas deals with Japan.

None of this should surprise anyone. It’s not as if the ideologues behind these moves have been hiding their plans. The Project 2025 blueprint, for instance, has 1,961 mentions of the Environmental Protection Agency in its 922 pages. As with the rest of that document, it doesn’t make for pleasant reading.

AES generating station, Petersburg, Indiana — The coal-fired AES Petersburg Generating Station in Indiana.

Trump, the Project 2025 ideologues, and rank-and-file MAGAs hold a special animus for environmental advocates and climate researchers. Consequently, spending on climate research is being obliterated, government websites are being erased or diluted into worthlessness, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress are determined to gut the climate spending in the Inflation Reduction Act, and new rules are being designed specifically to roll back policies that address lethal pollution and seek to lessen the chances that global warming will take us into a hellhole from which there is no near-term recovery.

As Pam Radtke at Floodlight reports:

Republicans and Democrats alike are less likely to support renewable energy than they were five years ago, according to a survey released last week by the Pew Research Center.

The results mirror growing pockets of opposition to solar farms, reignited political support for coal plants, and moves by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to kill federally funded clean energy projects.

The only obstacle to this myopic agenda as long as Congress remains in Republican hands is litigation. You can expect that the administration will ignore public comments objecting to the proposed rule changes. So the outcome will have to await the pleasure of the courts, almost certainly including a Supreme Court where environmental cases have not fared well of late.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be resistance. Julie McNamara, associate director of policy for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, objected to the proposed power plant rule:

“Yet another day when the Trump administration proves it can somehow go lower still in its disregard for people’s health and well-being. These are astoundingly shameful proposals. It’s galling to watch the U.S. government so thoroughly debase itself as it sacrifices the public good to boost the bottom line of fossil fuel executives.

“In repealing the carbon standards, Administrator Zeldin is flagrantly disregarding incontrovertible evidence and long-standing precedent, intentionally sidelining EPA from the climate fight and letting fossil fuel companies freely pollute. There’s no meaningful path to meet U.S. climate goals without addressing carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants—and there’s no meaningful path to meet global climate goals without the United States. This repeal would condemn people across the country and around the world to a future of worsening climate impacts and devastating costs.

“Mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired power plants are actively damaging people’s health. By walking back protections that address these harms, despite solutions being readily available, Administrator Zeldin is going out of his way to benefit the worst-of-the-worst polluters while forcing the public to bear the costs.

“People across the country—and around the world—unequivocally deserve better than this. These actions can, should, and will be challenged in court.”

Let’s take a brief look at the long-awaited retreat on the power plant put in place by President Joe Biden.

In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that, under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to regulate carbon emissions if it determined that these endanger the public. In 2009, EPA administrator Lisa Perez Jackson declared they do so. Corporate foes of the endangerment finding and their various elected puppets would like to overturn it, but that would be a tall order. So they’ve instead focused on what “significantly” means.

As Jean Chemnick at ClimateWire noted last month, industry attorneys think that if the EPA’s proposed rule survives the inevitable lawsuits, then the power sector may not be the only beneficiary of the EPA rollback. Why? Because the Trump administration labels fossil-fueled power plant emissions “insignificant” even though they contribute 24% of total U.S. emissions and 3% of the global total, second in America only to vehicle emissions. Immense, in other words, not insignificant. It should be noted that only a handful of world economies emit more than 3% of total carbon emissions. If the U.S. power sector were its own country, it would be the sixth largest contributor to those emissions:

Declaring that it doesn't contribute "significantly" to pollution could rule out regulation of any source category that emits less pollution — which would be nearly all of them.

“If the courts agree that greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector do not ‘significantly contribute’ to air pollution that endangers public health or welfare, then this would prevent EPA from regulating greenhouse emissions from any industrial sector,” said [Jeff Holmstead, EPA air chief under former President George W. Bush].

Transportation would be a notable exception. It emits more and is regulated under a different section of the law, so the move wouldn’t affect tailpipe emissions rules. [...]

“They may well get a judicial decision on what it means to contribute significantly under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act,” said Jonathan Adler, a conservative legal scholar and founding director of Case Western Reserve University’s environmental law center. “That would potentially lock that in place. Not just for power plants, but arguably for other stationary source categories."

There is one possible and one likely bright spot. First, these lawsuits will take time. Trump and his minions cannot, as they’d like, make the switch instantly. But, as noted, the Supremes have not been what anyone could label “environment friendly.”

But then there is an ongoing trend. The Economist reported May 24:

If the outlook for the IRA seems bleak, what does that mean for energy and carbon emissions in America? Analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research firm, suggests that, under the IRA, America was on track to slash its greenhouse gases by 40% from their 2005 level by 2035. With a de facto repeal it will slow down, but may still manage a reduction of nearly 30% below the same benchmark (see chart 1). Even taking account of oil-friendly provisions in the current budget bill, such as the end of credits for purchasing electric vehicles and a repeal of more stringent fuel-economy standards for petrol vehicles introduced by the Biden administration, America will continue to decarbonise. Clean energy supply will continue to grow, but at a slower pace than it would have with the IRA.

The reason, explains Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm, is that tax credits are only one factor. State-level regulations like “renewable portfolio standards” play an important role. Not only will these not be abandoned with the IRA, they may be strengthened in Democratic states. Such a “rollback rebound” took place in response to the first Trump administration’s attempted assault on green energy.

Price helps, too. The International Energy Agency, an official body, estimates that unsubsidised renewables already compete with, or beat, new fossil-fuel plants in many parts of America. Rhodium projects 342GW of renewable capacity will still be added by 2035, producing as much electricity (after accounting for intermittency) as roughly 100 nuclear plants.

The fossil fuel industry that Trump asked to give his presidential campaign a billion dollars to carry out their agenda only donated 10% as much. But shortchanging Trump hasn’t stopped him from making sure they get their way.

—Meteor Blades

WEEKLY ECO-VIDEO

RESOURCES & ACTION

Which home energy upgrades will save you money? We did the math by the Climate Lab at The Washington Post. Every house is different, and factors like weather, age of construction and duct work can dramatically change the costs and benefits of upgrades.
You might accidentally be killing hummingbirds. Here’s how to help them instead by Vox. If your feeder is dirty, it could be harming, or even killing, the hummers that visit it, turning the feeder from a lifeline into a trap. Unless you’re prepared to regularly clean your feeder, you may be better off not having one.
Rethinking Climate Action: A New Guideline for Planetary Health by Teresa Coady at Wiki Observatory. The framework reveals that our Industrial Age mindset — not human needs — is the real driver of environmental collapse.
6 Ways You Can Control Microplastics From Getting Into Your Food by Beth Krietsch at Huffpost. A big way microplastics get into our food is through contaminated soil, water and air. But it can also happen right in the kitchen, through simple daily habits that you likely have a lot of control over.
Everything You Know About the Dietary Guidelines Is Wrong by Lisa Held at Civil Eats. For one thing, the food pyramid hasn’t been part of them since 2011.
9 myths about electric vehicles have taken hold. Don’t fall for ‘em.

HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)

Humpback whale baby pops up his head to check out the photographer — A humpback calf pops its head up to check out the photographer’s boat.

Tonga Poised to Be the First Country to Recognize Rights of Whales by Katie Surma at Inside Climate News. At the U.N. Ocean Conference, The kingdom’s princess called for recognition of whales’ legal rights. The move is one of several rights of nature initiatives happening at the conference. Melino Maka, chair of Huelo Matamoana Trust, has worked on the initiative with Princess Lātūfuipeka Tukuʻaho and said the trust is engaged with legal experts to propose the “Whales (Legal Personhood and Protection) Act 2025,” building on Tonga’s legacy as a whale sanctuary. Key provisions in the bill include recognition of whales as legal persons and their rights to life, migration, a healthy habitat and cultural protection; establishment of a guardianship framework; and legal enforcement powers, including the right to initiate legal proceedings to protect whales. Once the draft is refined, Maka expects it to be formally introduced into Parliament.

RELATED: • World must move from ‘plunder to protection’ to save oceans, UN chief warns
• Global Leaders Launch High Ambition Coalition for a Quiet Ocean at UN Ocean Conference in Nice

How three years of war have ravaged Ukraine’s forests, and the people who depend on them by Adauris Ai at Grist. The conflict’s long-term costs are becoming more apparent, including the damage to the country’s natural resources. Rocket fire, artillery shelling, and explosive devices, such as land mines, from both militaries have ravaged Ukraine’s landscapes and ecosystems. Over a third of all carbon emissions in Ukraine stem from warfare — the largest share of any sector in the country. Fighting has triggered destructive wildfires in heavily forested and agricultural grassland regions of eastern Ukraine. From February 2022 through September 2024, almost 5 million acres burned, nearly three-quarters of which are in or adjacent to the conflict zone. But not all rockets explode when they’re shot, and mines only go off when they’re tripped, meaning these impacts will linger long after conflict ceases. This is why a collective of forestry scientists in Ukraine and abroad are working together to study war-driven wildfires and other forest destruction, as well as map unexploded ordnance that could spur degradation down the road. The efforts aim to improve deployment of firefighting and other resources to save the forests. It is welcome work, but far from easy during a war, when their efforts come with life-threatening consequence.

Jennifer Allen, a Pima County supervisor who represents the district containing Ironwood Forest National Monument, speaks at a rally to protect the area on June 7.

Across the Country, Locals Rally to Protect National Monuments Threatened by the Trump Administration by Wyatt Myskow at Inside Climate News. Last Saturday Mike Quigley, the Arizona state director for The Wilderness Society, pointed out into the distance to a nearby copper mine. “We can have that,” he said. Then he gestured to the mountain behind him. “Or we can have this.” For 25 years, this stretch of 129,000 acres of the Sonoran desert north of Tucson, Arizona, has been protected as a haven for scientific research, and a buffer against the expansion of existing or new mines to the area. But locals worry the monument’s protections may soon be reduced. Ironwood Forest is one of six national monuments the Trump administration has signaled may be reduced in size to make way for more development and extraction. Local pushback stopped that eight years ago when the Arizona mining industry pushed for Ironwood’s size to be reduced. “We have to win every time,” Quigley said. “The other side only needs to win once” to get what they want, and for an area to lose protections. The rally, hosted by Friends of Ironwood Forest and other conservation groups at the monument named for the tree, was just one of a series of events across the country over the weekend to support the protection of national monuments and the Antiquities Act, the law that allows presidents to create new national monuments, which celebrated its 119th anniversary Sunday.

How worker-ownership helped California Solar create good jobs by Brooke Larsen at High Country News. Cal Solar has been installing panels on homes and businesses in Grass Valley and surrounding Nevada County for the past 25 years. In 2019, it became a worker-owned cooperative, and Ortegren went from being sole owner to an employee-owner. Today, Cal Solar’s worker-owners spend their days constructing solar systems and managing sales. But they also run a company. They make decisions, share profits and have a financial stake: $5,000 invested up front, or $1,000 down and $4,000 financed through paycheck withdrawals. Any employee may buy in, though currently only 46% are owners. Not everyone wants the additional responsibilities, Ortegren said, but all workers benefit from the cooperative culture. Ortegren has wanted to create well-paying solar jobs and a collective workplace since he first entered the industry over two decades ago. “I had this whole fantasy of creating an anarchist labor union for solar installers,” he told me. Previously, Ortegren and Angel Niblock, Cal Solar’s general manager, were members of the Industrial Workers of the World. They believe in “the dignity of labor, in democratic workplaces and in the idea that those who do the work should have the say and a stake in how it’s done,” as Niblock put it at the company meeting.

The Missing Engineers by Akshat Rathi, Olivia Rudgard and Josh Saul at Bloomberg Green. The US is already unable to fill about a third of its more than 400,000 new engineer roles created each year. The UK will see 20% of its engineers retire by 2030 — leaving a shortfall of 1 million jobs. Japan will see a deficit of 700,000 in that period. These can have big impacts on the economy. In Britain, the shortage of engineers could wipe 5% from its GDP, according to the think tank Stonehaven. In the US, the lack of skilled workers will hold back Donald Trump’s attempts to increase manufacturing, even if the tariff regime stabilizes and businesses get ready to invest. Trump’s attacks on US universities’ international students, who tend to study engineering in a greater proportion than domestic students, will likely further sap the supply of skilled workers. When it doesn’t bankrupt a company or halt a project, skilled worker shortages lead to higher costs and longer timelines to build much-needed infrastructure, such as electricity grids. This is a problem for the US and Europe, which are seeing a surge in demand for power thanks to electric cars, heat pumps and massive data centers

This food bank saved big with solar. GOP cuts could crush similar efforts by Elizabeth Ouzts at Canary Media. North Carolina nonprofit could save $143,000 per year thanks to rooftop solar. House Republicans want to end the federal incentives that made it possible. The federal government has long offered tax credits to incentivize renewable energy projects, from solar farms to rooftop arrays. But before the Inflation Reduction Act, those enticements were of little use to food banks and other entities that don’t pay an income tax. The 2022 landmark climate law allowed organizations like Second Harvest to access the 30% tax credit on their solar investment by essentially transforming it to a rebate.

WEEKLY BLUESKY SKEET

ECOPINION

Science Badly Needs Defending Right Now. It Doesn’t Need Your Belief by Liza Featherstone at The New Republic. Smug assertions of “believing in science” have only contributed to the problem. The implication is that if you don’t believe in it, you’re stupid. Trust the experts. Trust Harvard. It should surprise no one that this was not a winning line of argument. We’ve got to make a better pitch.

War Is Peace, Gas Is Now “Clean Energy” by Emily Sanders at Exxon Knows and The Lever. A wave of bills in state legislatures across the country aim to classify climate-heating methane gas as a source of “green” or “clean” energy to prevent communities from transitioning away from fossil fuels — and secretive dark money groups connected to the gas industry are behind the effort. The legislation could threaten the enforcement of climate policies across the country, allowing gas to stand in for clean energy in states’ renewable energy portfolios or otherwise thwarting local efforts to phase out reliance on fossil fuels. As methane emissions increasingly drive climate change, the bills would disguise the devastating environmental impacts of the powerful greenhouse gas — while the Trump administration caters to fossil fuel-backed donors on federal gas policy.

power lines. utilities, electricity, grid

The Problem with Utility Monopolies by Ingrid Behrsin at the Institute for Local Self Reliance. Government oversight often falls short of protecting ratepayers from the interest of utility shareholders. Utilities frequently overcharge captive customers, and regulators lack the resources to stop them. Utilities often spend too much on big projects we don’t really need, and hesitate to invest in new technologies that could make their current equipment outdated, because they’re worried about losing money. And unlike competitive markets where businesses also serve shareholder interests, monopoly utilities have little incentive to reduce costs, avoid pollution, or improve reliability for customers. Needed is a range of reforms.

The Darkening Consensus of Renewable Energy Insiders by Jael Holzman at Heatmap News. Almost everyone I talked to insisted that solar and wind projects further along in construction would be insulated from an IRA repeal. Some even argued that spiking energy demand and other macro tailwinds might buffer the wind and solar industries from the demolition of the law. But between the lines, and beneath the talking points and hopium, executives are fretting that lots of future investments are in jeopardy. And the most pessimistic take: almost all projects will have their balance sheets and time-tables impacted in some way that’ll at minimum increase their budget costs.

Who Will Defend Our Oceans—the Last Global Commons? by Sushma Raman and John Hocevar at Common Dreams. As we commemorate the 23rd annual World Oceans Day, it is critical that we remember just how helpful some of the protective actions we have taken have been. The global moratorium on commercial whaling brought the great whales back from the edge of extinction. Marine sanctuaries have allowed fish populations to recover in once-depleted fisheries. Bans on dumping have prevented millions of tons of toxic waste from poisoning our seas. These wins are proof that when governments commit to science-driven solutions, underpinned by social, economic, and environmental justice, progress is not only possible, it is inevitable. As the US retreats from leadership on ocean protection, the international community is poised to make decisions that could have lasting benefits or far-reaching consequences at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France.

Is There Really a Fiduciary Duty to Destroy the Climate? by Eric W. Orts at the Sabin Center’s Climate Law blog. The younger generations in the world today and those coming after them in the foreseeable future will be radically impoverished and many people will die from direct physical effects. A foundational question posed at the Columbia colloquium is how corporate law and its standards of fiduciary duty relate to what many climate scientists now call the “climate emergency.”

Unfortunately, under what I will call the Maximization Model of fiduciary duty in the United States and many other jurisdictions, the answer is that there really is a fiduciary duty to destroy the climate when doing so will maximize profits for firms and investors. This means that the leaders of U.S. corporations and institutional investors owe a fiduciary duty to maximize profits through economic activities that continue to produce, sell, and use fossil fuels (i.e. coal, gas, and oil) without considering how to contribute to a global economic transition toward more climate-friendly sources of power (such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear). In addition, if profits can be maximized by deforestation or releasing methane or other greenhouse gases as well, then profits must again take precedence.

What Can We Do To Save The Insects? Build Solar Arrays by Caroline Fortuna at CleanTechnica. At a time when the news about insects and their habitats seems dismal, research is being foregrounded that describes how solar arrays — yes, those oft maligned tools of renewable energy — actually often a safe haven for not only insects but birds, mammals, and other creatures. Wide sunny strips between module rows increase the density of species and individuals, as documented in the colonization by insects, reptiles, and breeding birds. It starts with the sheep that chomp on a constantly blooming assortment of wild plants below the array. The sheep poop and attract insects, which thrive and pollinate the plants. Birds learn of the insect bounty, and eventually solar parks provide habitats for endangered animals — better ones than the surrounding agricultural land. That’s so important, as almost a third of US birds — about 3 billion — have disappeared from the skies since the 1970s. The losses, however, were not evenly distributed: those birds that ate insects as their main food had declined by 2.9 billion.

RESEARCH & STUDIES

‘Ticking Time Bomb’ of Ocean Acidification Has Already Crossed Planetary Boundary, Threatening Marine Ecosystems published by Global Change Biology. Ocean acidification has been identified in the Planetary Boundary Framework as a planetary process approaching a boundary that could lead to unacceptable environmental change. Using revised estimates of pre-industrial aragonite saturation state, state-of-the-art data-model products, including uncertainties and assessing impact on ecological indicators, we improve upon the ocean acidification planetary boundary assessment and demonstrate that by 2020, the average global ocean conditions had already crossed into the uncertainty range of the ocean acidification boundary.
Scientists say next few years vital to securing the future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be triggered with very little ocean warming above present-day, leading to a devastating four meters of global sea level rise to play out over hundreds of years according to a new study. However, the authors emphasize that immediate actions to reduce emissions could still avoid a catastrophic outcome.
New study adds to evidence that glyphosate weed killer can cause cancer published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health. The long-term animal scrutiny of the widely used weed killer glyphosate find fresh evidence that the herbicide, introduced by Monsanto in the 1970s, causes multiple types of cancer, and may do so at doses considered safe by regulators.