Trump signs executive order unwinding Obama climate policies

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Trump Signs Executive Order Unwinding Obama Climate Policies
Americans overwhelmingly believe that global warming is happening, and that carbon emissions should be scaled back, but fewer are sure that it will harm them personally; 2016 is the hottest year on the historical record and the third consecutive record-breaking year, scientists say.

• WASHINGTON — President Trump signed on Tuesday a much-anticipated executive order intended to roll back most of President Barack Obama’s climate-change legacy, celebrating the move as a way to promote energy independence and to restore thousands of lost coal industry jobs.
• Flanked by coal miners at a ceremony at the Environmental Protection Agency, Mr. Trump signed a short document titled the “Energy Independence” executive order, directing the agency to start the legal process of withdrawing and rewriting the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s policies to fight global warming.
• The order also takes aim at a suite of narrower but significant Obama-era climate and environmental policies, including lifting a short-term ban on new coal mining on public lands.
• The executive order does not address the United States’ participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement, the landmark accord that committed nearly every country to take steps to reduce climate-altering pollution. But experts note that if the Trump program is enacted, it will all but ensure that the United States cannot meet its clean air commitments under the accord.
• Mr. Trump advertised the moves as a way to decrease the nation’s dependence on imported fuels and revive the flagging coal industry.
• But energy economists say the order falls short of both of those goals — in part because the United States already largely relies on domestic sources for the coal and natural gas that fires most of the nation’s power plants.
• “We don’t import coal,” said Robert N. Stavins, an energy economist at Harvard University. “So in terms of the Clean Power Plan, this has nothing to do with so-called energy independence whatsoever.”
• Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, said in an interview on ABC News on Sunday that the order will help the United States “be both pro-jobs and pro-environment.”
• But coal miners should not assume their jobs will return if Trump’s regulations take effect.
• The new order would mean that older coal plants that had been marked for closing would probably stay open for a few years longer, extending the demand for coal, said Robert W. Godby, an energy economist at the University of Wyoming.
• But even so, “the mines that are staying open are using more mechanization,” he said.
• “They’re not hiring people,” he continued.
• “So even if we saw an increase in coal production, we could see a decrease in coal jobs,” he added.
• Legal experts say it could take years for the Trump administration to unwind the Clean Power Plan, which has not yet been carried out because it has been temporarily frozen by a Supreme Court order. Those regulations sought to cut planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution from coal-fired power plants. If enacted, they would have shut down hundreds of those plants, frozen construction of future plants and replaced them with wind and solar farms and other renewable energy sources.
• Throughout his campaign, Mr. Trump highlighted his support of coal miners, holding multiple rallies in coal country and vowing to restore lost jobs to the flagging industry. At a rally last week in Kentucky, Mr. Trump vowed that his executive order would “save our wonderful coal miners from continuing to be put out of work.”
• While coal mining jobs have dropped in the United States, they do not represent a significant portion of the American economy. Coal companies employed about 65,971 miners in 2015, down from 87,755 in 2008, according to Energy Department statistics.
• And though the percentage of coal mining jobs dropped sharply, economists said that was not driven by the Clean Power Plan. Rather, they blamed two key forces: an increase in the production of natural gas, which is a cheaper, cleaner-burning alternative to coal, and an increase in automation, which allowed coal companies to produce more fuel with fewer employees. The rollback of Mr. Obama’s regulations will not change either of those forces, economists say.
• “The problem with coal jobs has not been CO2 regulations, so this will probably not bring back coal jobs,” Mr. Godby said. “The problem has been that there has not been market demand for coal.”
• The coal industry nonetheless cheered the move.
• “These actions are vital to the American coal industry, to our survival, and to getting some of our coal families back to work,” said Robert E. Murray, the chief executive of Murray Energy, one of the nation’s largest coal mining companies.
• But even Mr. Murray conceded that he did not expect Mr. Trump’s order to return coal mining numbers to their former strength. “I really don’t know how far the coal industry can be brought back,” he said.
• Mr. Trump’s directive also eliminates about a half-dozen of Mr. Obama’s smaller executive orders and memorandums related to combating climate change.
• For example, the order would require White House economists to recalculate a budgeting metric known as the social cost of carbon that, under the Obama administration, limited pollution by arguing that global warming outweighed economic benefits for industries. It would also eliminate a requirement that federal agencies consider the impact on climate change when analyzing all future environmental permits.
• Combined, the measures are likely to ensure the United States’ emissions of planet-warming pollution remain too high to meet the terms of the Paris climate accord.
• The aim of the Paris deal is to reduce emissions enough to stave off a warming of the planet by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the level at which, experts say, the Earth will be irrevocably locked into a future of extreme droughts, flooding and shortages of food and water.
• But analysts say Mr. Trump’s order signals that the United States will not meet its pledges under the Paris deal to cut its emissions about 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.
• “Meeting the U.S. terms of the Paris Agreement would require full enforcement of the current regulations, plus additional regulations,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University. “It takes a comprehensive effort involving every country doing what they committed to and more.”
• He said Mr. Trump’s order “sends a signal to other countries that they might not have to meet their commitments — which would mean that the world would fail to stay out of the climate danger zone.”

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Scott Pruitt Heads To Coal Mine To Pitch New EPA Agenda
The mining company paid a $3 million fine last year for violating environmental laws.

• SYCAMORE, Pennsylvania — The head of the Environmental Protection Agency chose a Pennsylvania coal mine with a history of violating environmental laws as his venue for unveiling a new plan to refocus his agency in a way that he says will both protect the planet and promote economic growth.
• Ignoring the fact that the U.S. coal industry’s troubles are primarily the result of market forces, Scott Pruitt offered roughly 75 miners at the Harvey Mine this hopeful message: The “regulatory assault” on coal is over.
• It was here in Appalachian coal country, at North America’s largest producing underground coal complex, that Pruitt formally launched the EPA’s “Back-To-Basics agenda.” But instead of sharing details about that plan, he commiserated with those in the room. What happened to coal under former President Barack Obama, Pruitt said in a four-minute address, is “really sad.”
• Pruitt, a climate change denier and longtime ally of the fossil fuel industry, claimed that coal, oil and gas companies are both pro-environment and pro-growth. Now that Obama is out of office, he said, America doesn’t have to chose between the two.
• “It’s been said — I think you’ve heard it said — you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” Pruitt said. “I’ll tell you, whoever says that doesn’t know what you’re supposed to do with cake.”
• Pruitt’s message wasn’t surprising, but his choice of venue was somewhat baffling.
• Consol Energy was fined $3 million just last year for dumping mine wastewater into Ohio River tributaries. Consol Energy owns the Bailey Mine Complex, which includes Harvey Mine. The company exceeded its daily or monthly effluent limit more than 300 times between 2006 and 2015, according to the EPA complaint. Consol, which now focuses primarily on natural gas production, has voiced its intent to sell off its remaining coal assets.
• Patrick Grenter, a senior campaign representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, told The Huffington Post that Consol has operated recklessly for many years. In a 2005 settlement, the company paid $36 million to replace a dam that it was accused of damaging with its operations.
• Grenter called Pruitt’s visit to Harvey Mine “very concerning.” He said the only reasonable conclusion he could draw is that “’back-to-basics’ means back to promoting polluters over public health.”
• Pruitt’s visit to coal country comes a little over two weeks after President Donald Trump, surround by coal miners, signed an executive order instructing the EPA to review Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a policy limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The order also took measures to further protect the coal industry, namely by instructing the Department of the Interior to lift a temporary ban on coal leasing on federal lands that the Obama administration put in place last year.
• The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 700,000 federal and D.C. government employees, including EPA workers, has called the order the latest in “a continued assault on the country’s top-line of defense for community health.”
• Miners, most of whom were in their 30s and 40s and many of whom were covered in dust from their morning shift below ground, began to gather inside a large common area of the portal building before Pruitt’s address. At one end, workers wearing headlamps, hardhats and reflective suits came and went from a silver elevator shaft. On a long wall, a board covered in tags indicated who was on shift.
• “[It’s] no lie that the [coal] industry in the last eight years, we’ve all felt a lot of pain,” said Jimmy Brock, CEO of CNX Coal Resources, which operates the Harvey Mine. But the Bailey complex persevered somehow, he said.
• “It’s easy to be optimistic now,” Brock said following Pruitt’s speech. He added that coal miners should never apologize for the work they do.
• Other miners in attendance seemed to share Brock’s optimism about the future of coal.
• Eben McClay, of the nearby town Claysville, has worked at the Bailey complex for a decade. He told HuffPost that he sees Trump as being “all about America” and likes to see the administration standing up for coal and bringing jobs and industry back to the U.S.
• “The coal mine produces a lot of money and a lot of jobs for this area — for a lot of families,” he said.
• Harvey Mine is located in Pennsylvania’s Green County, which has a population of just over 35,000. The coal industry here employs between 7,000 and 8,000 people, according to Robbie Matesic, executive director of the county’s Department of Economic Development. The county probably couldn’t withstand a sudden death of the industry, she said, but added that she is seriously concerned about climate change and believes coal companies must be held accountable for the environmental damage they cause.
• “Here’s our problem: We have an economy dependent on it,” she said. “The truth is our economy is not healthy because of the way it is dependent on the energy industry.”
• The community has been working hard to diversify its economy for the last several years, Matesic said. But it needs more time.
• Mark Kusky, a coal miner who has been with Consol for 11 years, said it’s encouraging to see Trump follow though on his campaign promise. Asked about climate change and the argument for cutting carbon emissions and moving toward renewable energy, Kusky said all energy sources have their downsides.
• He added that he’s hopeful coal will make a comeback, but that only time will tell if it can become the powerhouse it once was.
• “The future looks bright from where we’re standing,” he said.
• Matesic, however, said the only way to have healthy economies is to diversify ― meaning Trump and Pruitt are giving the coal industry, and communities like her own, false hope.
• “If the Trump administration is really concerned about the economic health and the environmental health of this country — if they really are — they’re not going about it the right way,” she said.

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