In Trump’s last days, a spree of environmental rollbacks

The Trump administration has gone on a spree of environmental rollbacks in its final days, loosening standards for equipment Americans use to heat their homes, reducing protected habitat for the northern spotted owl and opening conservation lands in California and Utah to development.

The flurry of new rules — several of which will help the fossil fuel, logging and mining industries — sets up a clash with the incoming Biden administration. As the president-elect gears up to cut greenhouse gas emissions and put more land off limits to development, his aides will have to spend months unwinding these policies unless congressional Democrats or federal judges overturn them.