100 days of Trump. How the president tackled climate change, “the big scam” that helped “a lot of people get a lot of money”

Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been rather controversial especially regarding his changes in the United States climate change policies. 

From his very first days in office, Trump has called climate change a hoax. His administration is mulling withdrawing from the so-called Paris Agreement aimed at reducing global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Also, Trump’s proposed 2018 budget calls for deep spending cuts by government science agencies, including a 31 percent reduction for the Environmental Protection Agency, according to Reuters.

More than a dozen state prosecutors urged President Donald Trump in a letter not to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which commits the United States, along with 200 other countries, to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions in an attempt to slow global warming.

With the letter, attorneys general from 12 states as well as the District of Columbia and American Samoa have joined a chorus of voices, including major fossil fuel energy companies as well as environmental advocates, condemning the idea of exiting the agreement, which the Republican president has criticized in the past.

“Climate change, if left unchecked, will lead to global environmental dislocation and disaster on a scale we likely cannot imagine,” the prosecutors wrote, urging the president to “maintain and reconfirm the United States’ commitment to this groundbreaking agreement.”

The Paris accord, reached by nearly 200 countries in 2015, seeks to limit global warming by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from burning fossil fuels. As part of the deal, the United States committed to reducing its emissions by between 26 percent and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Trump’s energy policy advocates domestic industrial support for fossil and renewable energy sources so as to not rely on Middle-Eastern oil in future and possibly turn the U.S. into a net energy exporter. His appointed advisers favor a less regulated energy market and do not consider climate change a threat. As such, they see no need for immediate action in terms of climate change.

In  fact, Trump does not accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Even before he was elected president, he said that global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese. This was in 2012, he later said that he was joking.

Looking back at what Trump has done so far regarding climate change:

On the 28th of March, he signed a long-promised executive order to nullify President Barack Obama’s climate change efforts and revive the coal industry.

Trump has cut the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s budget (EPA) by a third from $8.1 billion to $5.7 billion. He’s also reportedly refused to hire anyone at EPA whose research or title includes the word “climate.”

The president also gave an executive order that cleared a path for the controversial North Dakota Access Pipeline to be completed. In the summer of 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, along with Native Americans from 280 other tribes, attempted to block construction on the pipeline because it might contaminate the Sioux’s drinking water.

In February, Trump ordered EPA to disassemble another Obama administration policy protecting waterways and wetlands. The Waters of the United States rule attempted to stipulate anti-pollution regulations. Now, with the dismantling of the law, millions of Americans’ safe drinking water is at risk.