Trump’s environment chief says ‘war on coal is over’ as US ends Obama’s clean power rules
Trump’s effort to undo Barack Obama’s centrepiece regulation to fight climate change is part of a broader target to revive the coal industry and boost domestic fossil fuels production
The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency said that he would sign a new rule overriding the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era effort to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.
“Here’s the president’s message: the war on coal is over,” EPA administrator Scott Pruitt declared in the coal mining state of Kentucky Monday, at an event with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.
For Pruitt, getting rid of the Clean Power Plan will mark the culmination of a long fight he began as the elected attorney general of Oklahoma. Pruitt was among about two-dozen attorneys general who sued to stop Obama’s push to limit carbon emissions.
Closely tied to the oil and gas industry in his home state, Pruitt rejects the consensus of scientists that emissions from burning fossil fuels are the primary driver of global climate change.
Donald Trump, who appointed Pruitt and shares his scepticism of established climate science, promised to kill the clean power plan during the 2016 campaign as part of his broader pledge to revive the nation’s struggling coal mines.
In his order on Tuesday, Pruitt was expected to declare that the Obama-era rule exceeded federal law by setting emissions standards that power plants could not reasonably meet.