Donald Trump scrapped Barack Obama's flood protection standards days before Hurricane Harvey - Independent

Donald Trump scrapped Barack Obama's flood protection standards days before Hurricane Harvey

Donald Trump signed an executive order just days before Hurricane Harvey that scrapped many of the flood protections introduced by Barack Obama.

Harvey has caused huge damage in Texas as 30 inches of rain in less than 48 hours resulted in massive flooding.

The current US President, however, has abolished a number of flood standards in an attempt to get infrastructure projects approved more quickly. The Federal Flood Risk Management Standard is among those to have been rolled back.

In 2015, Mr Obama introduced measures that made it harder to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure in areas that were susceptible to flooding. Plans for such projects would legally have to take into account the impact of climate change and be built to withstand future changes.

Hundreds rescued from epic floods as Houston braces for worse to come

While the new regulations had not yet come into effect, they have now been scrapped entirely after Mr Trump decided they were too likely to slow down plans for new infrastructure.

Announcing the decision earlier in August, the billionaire businessman said: “We're going to get infrastructure built quickly, inexpensively, relatively speaking, and the permitting process will go very, very quickly."

“It’s going to be a very streamlined process, and by the way, if it doesn’t meet environmental safeguards, we’re not going to approve it.”

However, some of those safeguards have now been removed. The order also introduces a two-year time limit for permission to be granted for major infrastructure projects, in which Mr Trump has pledged to invest $1 trillion.

The move was praised by business groups but strongly opposed by environmentalists.

Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists warned even before the executive order was issued that it would "put vital infrastructure that communities depend on at greater risk of flooding".

"It will lead to more costly and damaging consequences of these floods," she told The Independent, "And frankly, it's a waste of taxpayer dollars if money is invested in projects that will just get washed away."

She added: "Even as we're seeing flood risk growing in many places around the country – due to sea level rise, heavy rainfall, and other types of factors – it just flies in the face of common sense to turn back progress on greater flood prevention that communities depend on."

Hurricane Harvey has caused devastating flooding in Texas. At least five people have been reported dead and as many as 2,000 had to be rescued after the area received a year’s rainfall within the space a week.

“The breadth and intensity of this rainfall are beyond anything experienced before,” the US National Weather Service said on Twitter. “Catastrophic flooding is now underway and expected to continue for days.”

Returning to the topic of storm Harvey, Ms Cleetus said: "It would be a serious mistake to rebuild without taking account of future flood risks in the wake of terrible tragedies such as Texas is currently experiencing with Hurricane Harvey."

What would happen if a missile from North Korea actually hit Japan? - Independent

What would happen if a missile from North Korea actually hit Japan?

The US would have been forced to immediately attack North Korea had the missile Pyongyang fired over Japan hit its territory rather than landing in the sea off its coast, experts say.

Japan is a long-standing Nato partner which means a strike by a foreign power on its soil is deemed as an attack on all the countries in the alliance, meaning member nations are obliged to react.

Tokyo would have declared war against Pyongyang regardless of whether the "reckless act" by Kim Jong-un had not intended to directly target the island nation, analysts say.

Trump fires back warning to North Korea: 'all options are on table'

The United States, which has the biggest military presence of the member states in Asia, would have launched a counter-attack either with a nuclear missile or other strike.

And that would have plunged the world into all-out war, with fears that China could wade into the conflict and defend North Korea.

The threat of global warfare came when Pyongyang fired a missile, thought to be a new Hwasong-12, which torpedoed into waters off Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.

Kim Jong-un fired the intermediate-range weapon despite the threat by US president Donald Trump that North Korea would feel the “fire and fury” if it launched further missiles towards Japan.

North Korea warns US of 'catastrophic consequences' after missile test

Where is Hokkaido? The Japanese island most at risk from North Korea

“It’s extremely serious. Most wars happen by accident, not by design, and if these missiles had landed on Japan there would have undoubtedly been war this morning,” Professor Anthony Glees, a security expert with the University of Buckingham, told The Independent.

“I think Japan would have been forced to declare war on North Korea. It would have been seen as an attack on Japan.

“Japan is a Nato partner. Retaliation is obligatory, it is not a choice. We know the US is a guarantor of Japan’s security. Even if they retaliated with conventional weapons against North Korea, it would then escalate straight away.

“It was a totally, reckless, dangerous act by North Korea. The whole world is lucky that these weapons did not kill anybody in Japan.”

Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for American Progress, told CNN that North Korea launched the missile to reinforce the message that Pyongyang can deter any US-led regime change.

“They cross line after line in an effort to say this is the new reality and you should accept it and go easy on us,” Mr Mount said. “I think that's a pretty unambiguous signal that they're no longer going to be restrained by the United States.”

The Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe denounced the launch as an “unprecedented and grave threat” to the country’s security. In a 40-minute phone call with Mr Trump, the pair agreed to call for an emergency meeting of the UN security council to discuss the situation.

Mr Trump said the US was “100% with Japan” and repeated his strong commitment to the defence of Japan, Mr Abe said shortly after the call.

“The outrageous act of firing a missile over our country is an unprecedented, serious and grave threat and greatly damages regional peace and security,” Mr Abe told reporters in Tokyo, adding that his government had protested to Pyongyang through the Japanese embassy in Beijing.

The missile was the third fired by North Korea to have passed over Japanese territory. The first was in 1998 and the second in 2009, although Pyongyang claims they were satellites.