Environmentalists reeling from stunning reversals under US President Trump

The Donald Trump administration is reportedly set to rescind rules put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, meant to prevent a repetition of the largest oil spill in American waters. It will be only the latest in what may be one of Mr Trump's most far reaching legacies and one that he has achieved very quickly - the dismantling of federal environmental regulations. Some of this has been in the name of states' rights, and for the primary benefit of the fossil fuel industry, with the aim of transforming America into a global energy powerhouse. "Trump has rolled out the most corporatist… administration since at least the age of the robber barons," Mr Bob Deans, author and director of strategic engagement at the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), wrote in a memo last week. "He has raided, or signaled plans to raid, public waters and lands - from the oceans and coasts of the Eastern Seaboard to the teeming Arctic wilds of Alaska - and exposed them to industrial ruin for the sake of big oil, coal and gas," he wrote. "This has happened at lightning speed, with powerful input from lobbies and corporate interests," Ms Sharon Guynup, a Global Fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington told The Straits Times. Within days of taking office in January 2017, Mr Trump signed off on two multibillion dollar oil pipelines, Keystone XL and Dakota Access, which had been stalled on environmental concerns and objections from Native American tribes...more