"The U.S. has abandoned any claim to climate leadership as the only nation to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. In Trump's Cabinet, climate denial is pretty much cause for a Merit Badge. Congressional leadership doesn't acknowledge climate change to be a problem, or even a thing.

America's two political parties are as far apart as ever on environmental issues. Republicans who may have found enough of a comfort zone to speak out a decade ago – even Donald Trump who with his three oldest kids signed a New York Times climate ad in 2009 —now toe the party's denial line.

Trump put an exclamation point on it this week by tweeting that the snow and cold weather in the Northeast was further evidence of a Climate Hoax."

Columnist Peter Dykstra writes for Environmental Health News December 31, 2017. [2]