Since his election, President Trump has systematically set out to undo just about every consequential achievement by the man he hates, Barack Obama, and the world will be forced to live with the consequences for decades to come.
As this CNN article by Drew Kann reports, Trump's rollback of regulations designed to limit global warming is one of the clearest ways he has sought to erase a cornerstone of Obama's legacy.
But it's not just Obama's actions that Trump attacks. He's also used environmental law to attack California, home state of his Congressional nemesis House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment hearings by the House Intelligence Committee.
Trump's actions, from withdrawing from the Paris climate accord to relaxing power plant emission controls, come as the earth experienced record heat in July, as Greenland's massive ice sheet melts at an alarming rate, and as warming sea waters deplete fish populations and threatens the very livelihood of people as far away as Angola.
The Washington Post reports today that The gradual disappearance of fish is a death knell for Tombwa, an Angola town of 50,000 that has little else. Fish are suffocating in oxygen-depleted waters, huge foreign trawlers are grabbing what’s left, and the water is heating up far more rapidly here than almost anywhere else on the planet.
Kann's CNN report noted that last fall the world's top climate scientists warned that global carbon emissions must be cut within a decade if the earth is to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis droughts wildfires and food shortages that will affect millions of people around the globe.
What has Trump done so far?
Replaced the Clean Power Plan with the much weaker Affordable Clean Energy rule.
Opened public lands and offshore waters to oil and gas drilling.
Pulled out of the Paris climate agreement.
"He is locking in permanent, irreversible damage to our environment through his irresponsible environmental policies, including his efforts to block progress on climate change," Dr. Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and the director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, told CNN.. "Once we go beyond key tipping points -- the melting of the major ice sheets -- there is no going back."
Regardless of what happens to Trump, impeachment or defeat in the 2020 election, the earth will suffer the consequences of his actions, born of hate, vindictiveness and stupidity. Heaven forbid he is reelected. The consequences of his destructiveness would be unimaginable.