Trump's greenlight to Keystone XL and his move against Clean Power Plan renews activist resistance

The glee is palpable among fossil fools over Donald Trump’s actions favoring the Keystone XL pipeline and trashing several Obama-era climate-related initiatives. But it’s premature. Environmental activists say they are determined to fight. Indeed, every anti-environment move Trump makes seems to energize people whose political activism has been dormant or who have since the Nov. 8 election joined protests and other grassroots actions for the first time. 

Says Stephen Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International: 

“Keystone XL has been seen as inevitable before, but nevertheless, we persisted. This isn’t game over, it’s game on. Now we have a President who is deeply beholden to the oil industry and will do anything they ask, so this approval is no surprise. This is a pipeline that was designed for an oil market that no longer exists, that will go through lands where people have never wanted it.

“Donald Trump likes to talk a big game when it comes to laying pipe, but landowners, Native nations, and climate activists aren’t going to let him get away with groping America. Put your tiny hands in the air, Trump, and back away from the climate.“

Many people in Trump’s dwindling camp of supporters, including a few members of the pr*sident’s own cabinet, don’t buy the long-established science behind the greenhouse effect, flat out rejecting the chemistry and physics behind it.