With President Donald Trump doubting the authenticity of climate change, it wouldn't be surprising that some key members of the current administration view the predicament as such. Even the White House budget director recently called anti-climate change efforts as a "waste of money" to the dismay of many.
Despite a $1.1 trillion budget outline, some agencies were deprived of enough funding including departments that deal with the environment. Like President Trump, the department chiefs seem to be fine with the decision.
President Trump may have allocated budget for building the wall to prevent illegal immigrants from stepping into to the U.S. soil, but it looks like climate change efforts won't receive as much. The White House budget director Mick Mulvaney blatantly expressed that funding the effort may not be worth it.
"We consider that to be a waste of money," Mick Mulvaney said as quoted by CNBC. "I think the president is fairly straightforward. We're not spending money on that."
This is after he announced that the Trump administration plans to cut spending on anti-climate change projects. The businessman and billionaire President Donald Trump already received disapproval earlier after calling climate change a "hoax". Of course, his key administration chiefs are expected to follow their leader.
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Recently, Scott Pruitt, the EPA chief, also announced that he himself does not think that carbon dioxide is the main contributor to global warming. The current Environment Protection Agency (EPA) budget was trimmed down by 31 percent.
In the proposal, a cut of $2.6 billion from the agency would be taken from the $5.7 billion 2018 budget, according to CNN. The move will result in more than 3,200 individuals losing their jobs, and efforts to alleviate climate change drastically lessened.
Not only that, the new proposed budget will cut funding for the State Department's Global Climate Change Initiative and the UN Green Climate Fund. Other affected efforts include the Clean Power Plan created by former President Barack Obama to fight climate change.
International assistance and partnerships geared towards curbing climate change will also be affected by the budget cut. Not only will the U.S. suffer from these but the developing nations that the projects assisted.