Those climate change fires in Australia were started by about 200 people

It would be very interesting to know how many of the arsonists started the fires to draw attention to their climate change religion.

August 13, 2020 – Trump lifts Obama-era regulations on methane, a potent climate-warming gas

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule, which has been in progress for over a year, would eliminate federal requirements for oil and gas companies to monitor and repair methane leaks from pipelines, storage facilities and wells.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the rollback to the 2016 rule at an event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home to the country’s booming natural gas reservoirs and a key battleground state for the November presidential election.

Wheeler, Trump’s EPA appointee, is a former coal company lobbyist. He famously opined that EPA shouldn’t impose regulations on industry that can’t be demonstrated as beneficial through double-blind studies—a patently nonsensical assertion.

“EPA has been working hard to fulfill President Trump’s promise to cut burdensome and ineffective regulations for our domestic energy industry,” Wheeler said. “Regulatory burdens put into place by the Obama-Biden Administration fell heavily on small and medium-sized energy businesses.”

Environmental groups and lawmakers swiftly condemned the administration’s ruling and the Natural Resources Defense Council said Thursday that it will put up a legal fight.

“The Trump EPA is giving the oil and gas industry a green light to keep leaking enormous amounts of climate pollution into the air,” said David Doniger, head of climate policy at the NRDC. “We will see EPA in court.”

The methane pollution reversal is latest move by the administration to weaken a slew of environmental regulations, a longtime effort that has not been hindered by the coronavirus pandemic.

In July, the administration finalized a rollback to the country’s landmark environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, in order to speed approval for federal projects like pipelines, highways and power plants. The administration has weakened more than 100 environmental rules and regulations since 2016.

Scientists say that rising levels of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide, is a main driver of climate change. Methane accounts for 10% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, 60% of methane emissions are from human activity.

“As with Covid-19, the Trump administration is ignoring science to gut oil and gas methane pollution safeguards,” said Lauren Pagel, policy director at Earthworks, which tracks methane leaks at oil and gas sites. “But as with Americans dying from the Covid crisis, optical gas imaging shows the oil and gas methane pollution that is fueling the climate crisis.”

The sustained increase in methane, combined with other greenhouse gases, could heat up the atmosphere by 3 to 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, well above the Paris climate accord goal to keep global warming below 2 degrees.

“The Trump administration’s rush to wreck even modest methane regulations is a transparent political move, a favor for some of his biggest political backers,” said Charlie Cray, a researcher at Greenpeace U.S.A., an environmental non-profit.
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