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In the case of Donald Trump, given the choice between unity and multiplicity, I vote for the fox. As important as it is to understand the factors that led to Donald Trump's election, it is even more important to examine as objectively and honestly as possible the prospects for the next four years. First, there is a great deal we simply cannot predict. It seems unlikely that President Trump will pursue many of the high profile causes he promoted during the campaign. My guess is that immigration reform will be vastly less radical than he has proposed, and that he will not substantially modify international trade agreements. The business community and the US Chamber of Commerce, whose core positions on these subjects conflict with Trump's, are simply too powerful to overcome. Who knows about health care? I am certain, though, that Trump will aggressively attempt to dismantle environmental laws and programs. There could not be a worse time for America to reverse course to curb greenhouse gas emissions, to secure wildlife habitat, to protect clean water and air, and to preserve wetlands. Yet candidate Trump made it abundantly clear that this is exactly what he intends to do. This article from the New York Times by veteran environmental journalist Andrew Revkin presents a thorough and thoughtful summary of the situation, (with a few notably optimistic observations.) Perhaps most important, President Trump's advisers and potential cabinet members are unified in their disdain for environmental safeguards and conservation investments. Although Donald Trump may have only modest loyalty to the ideology of the right wing, that is absolutely not the case with these potential cabinet members. As Revkin and this article from Science report, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency transition team is Myron Ebell. Ebell comes from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization that has consistently presented a biased and misleading perspective on the science of climate change, denying both the extent and causes of global warming and challenging the importance of acting to reduce greenhouse gasses. i M Fill Perhaps the most important climate initiative enacted by the Obama administration is the clean power plan. Trump has pledged to terminate the program. (As I mentioned last week, South Carolina is well positioned to comply with and benefit from this program.)