MONDAY, MARCH 27
Welcome back to the Apocalypse, dears! Let’s see if maybe, just maybe, this week was better than last wee… no. No, it was not. This week Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote by 2,864,974 votes, set up a photo op with coal miners as he gleefully canceled “President Barack Obama’s climate change efforts… effectively ceding American leadership in the international campaign to curb the dangerous heating of the planet,” reports the New York Times. Trump, for his part, brayed at his coal miner props: “C’mon, fellas. You know what this is? You know what this says? You’re going back to work.” MEANWHILE… In what must be a coincidence, Politico reports that “A supervisor at the Energy Department’s international climate office told staff this week not to use the phrases ‘climate change,’ ‘emissions reduction,’ or ‘Paris Agreement’ in written memos, briefings or other written communication.” Huh. AND EVEN MORE MEANWHILE… “President Trump and his team are pursuing what I call a ‘control-alt-delete’ strategy: control the scientists in the federal agencies, alter science-based policies to fit their narrow ideological agenda, and delete scientific information from government websites,” Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists tells BBC News. Well, at least those coal miners are going back to work! Everything we’ve been told would indicate they’re a YUGE segment of the American workforce. (That’s called sarcasm. See Thursday.)