The White House marked Earth Day by celebrating Trump’s commitment to the environment. The brief article did not have space for all his achievements.

Earth Day is an opportunity for people to appreciate the condition of the environment, our impact on it and to call for action where needed. With such worthy goals it is not something to be used for a cheap publicity stunt. Trump has been making a great impact on reducing environmental pollution.

Reduced car emissions

When Trump and his performing chimp with the exploding space rockets sacked over 300, 000 federal employees their main concern was for the environment. With each of those ex employees no longer doing their 30 mile commutes, that’s nearly a million less car miles per day. That is a significant reduction of carbon dioxide going in to the atmosphere.

Less hurricane damage

As Trump demonstrated during his first term, he has the power to control hurricanes with his magic marker pen. He managed to change the course of hurricane Dorian by drawing a different route for it. Unfortunately hurricane Dorian was a leftist weather event and refused to cooperate.

Less severe weather and no more sea level rising

By getting rid of most of the staff in the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration there will be no more weather warnings to frighten people and no more reports about changes in sea level.

No more wildfires

In a visionary moment Trump proposed that if the wild forested areas were tidied up like golf courses are there would be no more wildfires. That would of course require a massive increase in the number of people employed by the National Park Service. He has made good progress on this by blocking recruitment. Unfortunately this recruitment block does mean that new staff required to deal with the coming fire season will not be in place and trained. Presumably they will think of something.

Reduced pollution from shipping

His visionary use of import tariffs to reduce the amount of goods and raw materials has stunned environmental activists. With imports falling the number of ships travelling to US ports is dropping off significantly. This is a big win for the environment. Shipping uses the dirtiest fuel creating significant pollution.

Reduced airline travel

In another move that has stunned environmental activists he has managed to significantly reduce air travel to the USA. European carriers are reporting reductions in people travelling to the USA. Airlines are also announcing cancellations on domestic flight routes. With his ICE personnel encouraged to be hostile to everyone, nobody fancies the threat of being locked up for a few weeks.

Hard core eco warriors are in awe of what he has achieved.

No more environmental pollution

By eviscerating the Environmental Protection Agency there will be no more investigations of pollution so none will be reported. Everybody will be happy that there are no more reports to worry them.

Carbon Capture and Storage

His other measures include tax breaks to oil companies to chase the fantasy of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). These tax breaks to companies like ExxonMobil, Dakota Gasification Company and Shell allow them to sustain the fantasy that there will be a technological fix to the rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This enables them to assure everyone that they can keep polluting as normal because they are going to fix it. Unfortunately they will not be able to fix it with CCS, at least not for a very long time.

This basic technique has been used in the oil industry since the 1970s to extract more oil gas by a process called enhanced oil recovery. The carbon dioxide recovered from oil and gas production was injected into depleted oil and gas reservoirs to re-pressurize them to increase extraction. The idea of air extraction CCS was first suggested around 1999. The oil companies lept at it. It was technology they knew and understood. They also knew its capabilities and limitations. Even the amount of energy required to extract the 340 million metric tons emitted by US oil and gas companies in 2019 would require a massive amount of energy. The best figure at the moment is 8.8GJ to capture a tonne of CO2. At a cost of about $24 per tonne, that is going to be expensive. $8.16 trillion per year. That is just for the CO2 emitted by the US oil and gas industry.

There are only 13 of these flagship CCS facilities that have been established. Of these 13, ten failed or underperformed against their designed capacities, mostly by large margins.

More geothermal energy

This actually makes sense, although it obviously only works in places where there is geothermal activity. Place such as this already have geothermal energy production, although it is limited as such areas tend to be seismically active areas which do not attract large amounts of industrial activity. The Yosemite National Park has areas of geothermal activity which can be used for this purpose.