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Friday, January 22, 2021

Biden seeks to overturn dozens of Trump-era environmental rollbacks; Washington Post has a tracker to follow them

Climate change was one of the four main planks in the campaign platform for President Biden, and he's wasting no time acting on it. On his first day in office, he rejoined the Paris climate accord and took aim at more than 100 environment-related actions by the Trump administration.

"Administration officials are suggesting that they will go well beyond reversing Trump’s policies. On Thursday U.S. presidential climate envoy John F. Kerry said the U.S. and other nations must commit to much deeper carbon cuts to avert dire climate impacts, and the Interior Department issued an order requiring signoff from a top political appointee for any new oil and gas lease or drilling activity. The directive, which could slow approval for more than 400 drilling permit applications, prompted an immediate outcry from the oil and gas industry," Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and John Muyskens report for The Washington Post. "Those initial moves are the first in what promises to be a much longer — and more arduous — effort to unwind the Trump administration’s sweeping environmental and energy policies, which were marked by aggressive deregulation, prioritizing the fossil fuels industry and sidelining efforts to combat climate change or protect imperiled animals."

The Trump administration tried to reduce or eliminate more than 200 environmental protections, and succeeded with more than 170, the Post reports. Most related to air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions linked to climate change, some had to do with wildlife, and some were related to infrastructure and planning. Biden can reverse some by executive order, but others will take legislation, and some will be difficult to reverse at all. 

The Post provides a guide to every environment-related rollback from the Trump administration, including an estimation of how difficult it will be for Biden to undo, and a tracker to show how many he has overturned. Read here for more.

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