Along the way were other sacrifices offered to the gods of fossil fuels — two national monuments in Utah established by President Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama, and millions of acres of Western lands set aside by Mr. Obama to save the endangered sage grouse. The damage this year, though considerable, was less visible in the shadows of a global pandemic. It’s hard to find encouragement in all this, though here is one positive sign often overlooked in what has been a relentless, attention-grabbing onslaught: The administration has not always received buy-in from the very industries Mr. Trump purports to help. Automakers, for instance, wanted some relief from the Obama fuel efficiency standards, though nothing on the scale of Mr. Trump’s rollback, which dropped the target from 54 miles per gallon by 2025 to 40 miles per gallon. The major utilities, meanwhile, saw no great value in softer mercury rules because they had already invested heavily in the technologies that capture it.

Source: New York Times August 22, 2020 18:22 UTC