By Shannon Osaka and Kate Yoder
When President Donald Trump moved into the White House in early 2017, those worried about the quickening pace of climate change had every right to be terrified. After all, on the campaign trail, Trump had hollered about pulling out of the Paris climate agreement and reviving the coal industry, as well as banning Muslims from entering the United States and “locking up” Hillary Clinton.
It wasn’t just bluster. Trump tried to do all of that, and much more. The former reality TV star and real estate mogul, with his thumb hovering over the “Tweet” button, presided over a frenetic presidential term marked by impeachments, walls, and travel bans — four years that were as poisonous for the country as they were for the climate.
Under Trump and his polluter-friendly appointees, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled back hundreds of rules intended to clean up the country’s air and water and curtail greenhouse gas emissions — which could result in almost 1.8 billion metric tons of extra carbon dioxide flowing into the atmosphere over the next 15 years. (That’s equivalent to one year’s worth of emissions from the…
