The EPA will try to repeal the Clean Power Plan, the United States' leading vehicle for reducing carbon emissions. 

Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump's nominee to lead the White House Council of Environmental Quality, calls carbon dioxide "the gas of life." 

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt calls for the elimination of tax incentives for producers of wind and solar energy. 

Pruitt bars scientists who receive EPA grants from the agency's advisory boards, making room for more industry-funded scientists. 

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Pruitt will not reimburse their agencies for the private charter flights they took that cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

In the name of "grid resiliency," the Department of Energy wants a higher value to be placed on energy from coal and nuclear plants, a move that could cost taxpayers $10.6 billion a year. 

Due in part to lawsuits by the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program, Texas utility Luminant announces the January 2018 retirement of its massive Monticello coal-fired power plant. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denies endangered-species status to 25 imperiled creatures, including the Pacific walrus and the Northern Rocky Mountains fisher. 

The Interior Department halts a study of the public-health effects of mountaintop-removal coal mining. It also offers 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, the largest such lease sale in the department's history. 

The National Park Service wants to double the price of admission to the most popular national parks, raising it to $70.  

This article appeared in the January/February 2018 edition with the headline "Trump Watch: Deconstruction."