Here’s how Trump’s new executive order will dismantle Obama’s efforts to reverse climate change

pulse

March 28, 2017 5:18 PM

In an executive order signed Tuesday, President Donald Trump takes a stab at the Clean Power Plan, and sets the US up for a carbon-dioxide-driven future.

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a rally at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. March 20, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Sitting at a desk at the Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that attacks the heart of former President Barack Obama's climate legacy: the Clean Power Plan.

Trump can't simply scrap a federal regulation like the Clean Power Plan with a stroke of his pen. Instead, he has ordered his EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, to begin the process of doing away with it.

"You know, our nation can’t run on pixie dust and hope," said Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of the Interior, "And the last eight years showed us that."

Vice President Mike Pence said that West Virginia had lost over a third of its coal mining jobs, with 130 plants closing in recent years

"Those days are over, because the war on coal is over," Pence said.

Trump echoed the statement.

"I made them this promise: We will put our miners back to work," he said, to applause from the crowd, which included group of coal miners who had been brought up on stage.

Many analysts disagree with the claim that deregulating coal will do much to increase the number of coal mining jobs, given the rise in automation and the availability of cheap natural gas. Robert Murray, founder and chief executive of Murray Energy — America's largest privately held coal company — has said that lost coal mining jobs aren't coming back. Murray was in the front row of the audience at the EPA for the signing.

A broad attack on climate regulations

The President's order also targets fossil fuel rules, lifting a moratorium on new coal mining leases on federal land, beginning to relax limits on new coal power plant construction, and rolling back rules designed to limit methane emissions in oil and gas extraction. (Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, though less common than carbon dioxide.)

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