In a handout image, a color composite image of Earth, taken from the Osiris-Rex satellite from a distance of 106,000 miles on Sept. 22, 2017. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/University of Arizona via The New York Times) — FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY —Today marks Donald Trump's 268th day as president of our United States.
And he has brought us 268 days of increasing turmoil.
With each passing day of undoing treaties, opting out of trade plans, repealing and dropping environment rules - all under the guise of making America great again - Trump and his administration are restoring our country to its former glory of dirty air, sicker people and higher energy bills.
On the environmental front alone, the administration has undone at least 53 environmental rules - many expressly to ease burdens on the fossil fuel industry.
A particularly painful cut came last Sunday when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced in Kentucky coal country he would begin chopping down the agency's Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era rule aimed at cutting carbon pollution from power plants.
To borrow a line from the liberal ThinkProgress news site, "Irony alert: EPA chief announces repeal of climate action in a town called Hazard."
Anyone who lived in Chattanooga before the age of air pollution scrubbers recalls the wheeze caused by the brown haze and acrid smell of coal-fired power - whether it burned to make electricity or burned to melt iron for machinery.
Pruitt's announcement claimed that undoing the rule would create jobs and preserve a livable climate.
It's just another lie. Or two.
According to a 2015 analysis by EPA - Pruitt's own agency - the direct health hazards alone from this action by 2030 could mean up to 3,600 more premature deaths, 17,000 more hospitalizations, 90,000 more asthma attacks in children, and 300,000 missed days of school and work.
But undoing the Clean Power Plan also is a cornerstone of the Trump administration's plan to undermine both domestic and global climate action. Because, you know, climate change is a hoax. The liberal media made up all of the misery of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate. And we all know better than to believe all of that footage of burned homes and hillsides in California - just like last year's made up inferno in Gatlinburg.
Trump announced in June that he would pull out of the Paris climate deal. Undoing the Clean Power Plan makes it harder for any leader following him to quickly get the nation and the world back on track.
Scientists from 13 federal agencies had already analyzed what will happen if this undoing stands. In the second half of this century, America could suffer sea level rise of 1 foot per decade, along with 8°F to 10°F warming over the nation's interior and devastating drops in soil moisture across most of the country, including in our breadbasket states, according to a leaked draft of that analysis.
The document reportedly was leaked out of concern that it would be censored by the administration, much as the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index was in July: Any mention of human activity of fossil fuels as a influence in those soaring greenhouse gases was simply erased.
As for creating jobs? Hardly. Unless you count jobs for the robots used in today's mining industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tallies about 50,000 coal mining jobs in the United States - total. Dollar General stores employ more than twice as many people - 105,000.
With yet more sad irony, what this mindless action really does is narrow the opportunity for new jobs in natural gas, renewable and alternative fuel innovation. We could be leading in that field. Instead, we're abdicating that important and lucrative role to China.
Nothing, nothing, nothing shows Trump for the business dunce he is more than this.
No matter how many stupid rule rollbacks the Trump swamp pulls out, smart business the world over will keep moving at warp speed toward renewables. Global automakers have just announced plans to introduce dozens of electric cars over the next several years, and forward-thinking utilities are looking at new business models that include shifting from power making to power storage. They would buy power from the public, store the energy and then sell it back - much as TVA does now with its far too limited green power providers program.
Instead of building pipelines, the U.S. should be working on a new transmission grid to distribute the solar and wind energy from the plains and desert Southwest, or from offshore. Such a grid would open up tremendous development, just as highways do.
But remember, last week's Clean Power Plan repeal announcement is just one of many environmental rules that Trump or Pruitt - with help and encouragement from Republicans in Congress - have trashed.
These are nonsensical moves - like revoking standards that required federal agencies to protect new infrastructure projects by building them to higher flood standards. Like revoking a rule that prevented coal companies from dumping mining debris into local streams.
Trump has made eliminating federal regulations - especially environmental ones - a priority since he took office in January. Republicans have made opposing environmental protections a priority for decades.
We must stop them. Think 2018.