With the bulk of his recent time and energy being devoted to extorting Ukraine and assassinating a world leader without getting approval from Congress, you might have forgotten that Donald Trump has many other items on his four-year plan, or as it’s known internally, Operation Do as Much Damage as Possible in the Little Time I’ve Got. Top items on the agenda include, but are not limited to: demonizing immigrants; emboldening white supremacists; making life extra miserable for the poor; alienating allies; and cozying up to dictators. Truly, the list goes on and on. Somewhere near the tippy-top is, of course, his pledge to turn the earth into an uninhabitable hellhole, an undertaking to which he’s shown a bigger commitment than to any of his current or former wives, and upon which he bestowed some presidential attention just today.

On Thursday, in between complaining that he‘s a victim of harassment and trying to take credit for lower cancer rates in the U.S., Trump announced from the White House his proposal to gut the National Environmental Policy Act, a 50-year-old law that requires federal agencies to assess the impact of major projects on the environment, and to loop the public in on the process. Why? To build more coal mines, among other planet-heating enterprises, of course. And quickly!

The proposed changes would redefine what constitutes a “major federal action” to exclude privately financed projects that have minimal government funding or involvement. That interpretation of the law could make it much easier to build some pipelines, which have become controversial as activists have sought to block projects that extract, transport or burn fossil fuels linked to climate change…. Other aspects of the proposal would set deadlines and page limits for environmental reviews, so that, with rare exceptions, agencies would have to finish their most exhaustive reviews within two years. Currently, environmental impact statements for major projects can take three times that long to complete and can span hundreds of pages.