A clear and present danger - to the world

Donald Trump - climate change plans "go dark".

On January 20, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. Minutes later, the White House website switched hands — and previous pages detailing President Obama’s climate change plans went dark.

The new website features, instead, a page dedicated to “An American First Energy Plan,” which details the new administration’s stance towards energy and (a lack of) climate policy. The plan tracks almost exactly with promises made by Trump during the campaign — to unleash more fossil fuel extraction, especially on federal lands, cancel Obama-era climate policies like the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the United States rule, and invest in “clean coal” technology.

Trump has yet to explain how his plan would succeed in both supporting the natural gas fracking boom and bringing back coal jobs. Energy policy experts largely agree that the increased availability of cheap natural gas has contributed to much of the recent downturn in coal’s prospects — which would make Trump’s promise to “embrace the shale oil and gas revolution” antithetical to its promise to revive America’s coal industry.

Read the ThinkProgress story - “Minutes after Trump becomes president, White House website deletes all mention of climate change.”