Earth Day (April 22) arrives, this year, shrouded in a veil of pessimism.

Tomorrow, the March for Science will take place on the national mall in Washington, D.C. It is anticipated to be the largest anti-Trump demonstration to date.  Donald Trump will claim they’re all paid demonstrators and probably say something incredibly inappropriate and inflammatory.

Been there, done that.

Plenty of events will take place here in Vermont, in California and elsewhere in the blue states, observing the green holiday as has become customary. After years of incremental progress, there will be less to celebrate this year.

As ineffective as Donald Trump’s “first hundred days” in office have been in many ways, the one place where a real impact threatens is on nearly two generations of hard-won environmental gains.

Deprived of both public confidence and the expected easy ride of a Republican dominated Congress, the spiteful child-president has used the executive order to reverse every Obama initiative that is within his reach and directed Congress to strip away decades of regulation protective health, safety and environmental integrity.

Those are easy targets because the big money that is the only thing Donald Trump respects almost always comes down on the other side from those interests. So he goes about merrily dismantling the EPA before moving on to food and drug regulation.

Anyone who held out the hope that Donald Trump would miraculously be transformed by the gravitas of his office, or that his daughter might temper his worst instincts, has been rudely disappointed. All that’s left to those dreamers is to hunker down and hope his many flirtations with unconstitutional, possibly treasonous behaviors will finally culminate in his downfall before irreversible tragedy strikes.

Thank goodness market forces will prevent him from delivering on his big promise to bring back coal; but that won’t stop the collateral damage that deregulation will do.

It’s like a very bad dream.