In an executive decision described as ‘taking a sledgehammer to US climate action’ the United States President, Donald Trump has signed an executive order cancelling the Clean Power Plan (CPP) of his predecessor, Mr. Barack Obama.
With the order, Mr. Trump dismissed America’s carbon-cutting commitments, and promised a new energy revolution that would unleash America’s abundant fossil-fuel resources.
He was flanked by coal miners when he signed the executive order on Tuesday to end the flagship climate policy of Obama.
While Obama’s administration had put in place a number of programs that attempted to address the impact of climate change, including rising sea levels and temperatures on the environment, Mr. Trump said those actions were harming American businesses, and thus would begin to with his new executive order, unravel a raft of rules and directives to combat climate change.
“My administration is putting an end to the war on coal,” Trump said, and added: “With today’s executive action, I am taking historic steps to lift the restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion and to cancel job-killing regulations.”
“Perhaps no single regulation threatens our miners, energy workers and companies more than this crushing attack on American industry,” the president noted.
Mr. Trump had once called climate change a hoax, and vowed to reorient the government to allow the US oil and coal producers thrive.
As explained by experts, parts of the highlights of Trump’s action would be the rollback of Obama’s clean power plan which discouraged utilities from using fossil fuel to generate electricity, climate action plan which focused on cutting carbon pollution in America, preparing infrastructure for the impact of climate change and making the US a global leader on efforts to combat climate change, as well as an executive order on climate change in which Obama instructed the federal government to prepare for the impact of climate change, and a moratorium on federal coal program.
While Trump’s order seeks to make coal competitive again in the US power sector and obviously increase carbon emissions, in addition to deleting Obama’s accomplishments in climate change, experts however noted that the ongoing renewable energy revolution has gone beyond reversal if that was the intention of Trump in signing the order.
