Climate Organizations: Trump’s Actions Will Cost Lives, Jobs

Today, President Trump began his second term in office undermining key environmental protections and undercutting clean energy investments. In a statement of his administration’s priorities, President Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, vowed to halt wind power leases, and instructed federal agencies to begin the process of undoing the historic climate, energy, and pollution reduction policies that are saving lives, creating jobs, and cutting climate and air pollution.

The member organizations of the Climate Action Campaign (CAC) – Center for American Progress, Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and WEACT for Environmental Justice, together representing more than 15 million people across the U.S. – issued the following joint statement:

“President Trump’s actions on the first day of his new administration will compromise the health and safety of communities, increase costs for Americans and leave our families more vulnerable to increasingly severe and more frequent extreme weather events. Our organizations and the millions of members we represent across the United States stand united in opposition to these actions.

“People across the political spectrum voted to improve their lives and their communities, to afford everyday goods and services, to have good paying jobs, and to keep their families safe and healthy. The energy actions President Trump has taken today will deliver none of those things for the American people, while moving our country in the wrong direction on fighting the climate crisis and its impacts that are already responsible for higher prices of groceries and energy, catastrophic storms and deadly heat waves, and health harms from fossil fuel pollution.

“People don’t want dirtier air, more asthma attacks, and sicker kids. But President Trump’s announcements attacking rules requiring automakers to reduce tailpipe pollution would mean just that.

“People across this country don’t want more superstorms, deadly wildfires, droughts and floods, and the hundreds of billions of dollars that these extreme weather events have cost Americans in communities across the country. Yet President Trump’s plan to dismantle pollution protections and his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement would do just that.

“And they don’t want higher energy bills or to throw the brakes on the historic pace of clean energy job growth while the oil and gas industry maximizes its profits, but that’s exactly what President Trump’s promise to “drill, baby, drill” and his administration’s effort to undermine new offshore wind and appliance efficiency measures would do.

“Our organizations will continue to stand strong for climate protections and will fight President Trump’s plans that would harm our environment, our health, our economy, and our climate.”