Given the dreadful spectacle our president made of himself this week, it was easy to overlook the intended theme of his now-notorious news conference - infrastructure. More specifically, building it without planning for climate change.

Everyone's talking about Nazis, but did you notice that Donald Trump also just gutted federal flooding protections at the Shore?



Yes, the same day our president self-imploded, he signed an executive order that rescinded an Obama-era rule requiring developers to plan for rising sea levels in areas prone to flooding, if they get federal money.

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This means critical projects like roads and bridges, hospitals, evacuation centers and senior citizen housing will not be constructed to withstand future storms, based on the latest science. We will be wasting a lot of public money and putting a lot of vulnerable people at risk.



Why? "So the permitting process will go very, very quickly," Trump said this week.



This is not getting much attention right now, as Trump defends "beautiful" Confederate statues and the "very fine people" at a Nazi parade. But it will get plenty the next time a Hurricane-Sandy-caliber storm hits.



New Jersey is among the states most at risk. By the end of the century, up to 131 communities in our state will face chronic flooding from high tides, according to a study released last month by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

We will suffer more than any state, except for Louisiana, from the worsening flooding, the study found. It could happen as often as every other week.



The only rational reason for refusing to account for climate change when making huge public investments is if you don't believe in it. Calling global warming a Chinese "hoax" is typical of Trump's fact-free pandering, but also packs a heavy dose of irony.



Because his reflexively anti-climate change, anti-Obama, anti-regulatory agenda will ultimately put more taxpayer dollars at risk - and wasn't ending inefficient public investments a supposed hallmark of this presidency?



So was draining the swamp, and make no mistake: This is a big air kiss to developers. If they don't have to build higher, they save money. People will remain in high-risk areas - encouraged by the government building new roads and sewer lines.

And when the next big storm hits, it's not developers who will have to bail them out. It's taxpayers.



Earlier this year, the Trump administration also revoked an Obama directive that the federal government treat climate change as a national security threat - the last administration's effort to highlight the threat rising sea levels pose to military bases.

Trump has vowed to spend more on defense, but is he even protecting the investments we make?



Now, with this latest rule-gutting, he's putting many more people in harm's way, who we might not be able to get out when a storm hits - including first responders. A lot of Sandy victims still haven't returned home. When they finally do, shouldn't we make sure they're safe?



Let's hope our next governor finds a way to rectify this, at least for New Jersey. If Trump won't prepare for climate change, we have to.

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