Speaking at an event in Hazard, Kentucky, on Monday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced plans to repeal an Obama-era effort to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, asserting, “The war against coal is over.” Pruitt, who has extensive ties to the oil and gas industries, opposed this particular piece of environmental regulation since his time as attorney general in Oklahoma, where he participated in a lawsuit against it. (Before he was asked to run it, Pruitt had infamously sued the EPA a total of 14 times.)
“Tomorrow, in Washington, D.C., I’ll be signing a proposed rule to withdraw the so-called Clean Power Plan of the past administration, and thus begin the effort to withdraw that rule,” Pruitt said in Kentucky. Withdrawing from the Clean Power Plan is largely viewed as just the latest in the Trump administration’s multipronged attempts to dismantle Obama’s legacy on fighting climate change. Previous efforts have included the delay or rollback of rules limiting levels of toxic pollution in smokestack emissions and wastewater discharges from coal-burning power plants.
The Clean Power Plan aimed to dramatically lessen the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists agree are fueling the planet’s rapid warming, contributing to climate change and erratic, dangerous weather patterns. The plan was also an integral part of the commitment U.S. officials made as part of the 2015 Paris climate accord, for which some 200 countries committed to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and from which President Trump has said he plans to withdraw. As of today, the only other country who joins the United States in its absence from the climate accord is Syria.
In a statement to the Washington Post on Monday, former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said that a proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan, “without any timeline or even a commitment to propose a rule to reduce carbon pollution, isn’t a step forward, it’s a wholesale retreat from EPA’s legal, scientific, and moral obligation to address the threats of climate change.”
“The Supreme Court has concluded multiple times that EPA is obligated by law to move forward with action to regulate greenhouse gases,” said McCarthy, “but this administration has no intention of following the law.”