Dayton rips Trump over environmental order reversals

US President Donald Trump speaks to members of the National Governors Association and his administration in the State Dining Room of the White House on February 27, 2017.

Trump’s order attempts to roll back Obama’s policies on power plant emissions limits, coal mining on federal lands, and regulations on fracking and methane in an effort, the Trump administration says, to prioritize American jobs above addressing climate change.

The broad-ranging executive order was one of Trump’s promises during his presidential campaign a year ago and it’s part of a wider effort to cut environmental regulations and revive the United States mining sector.

US President Donald Trump’s latest executive order will mean some swift changes in areas such as lifting the coal moratorium, no longer factoring in climate change in environmental reviews, and changing the social cost of carbon, a report said.

A coalition of 16 states and the District of Columbia said they will oppose any effort by the Trump administration to withdraw the Clean Power Plan or seek dismissal of a pending legal case before a federal appeals court in Washington.

“With today’s executive action, I am taking historic steps to life the restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion and to cancel job-killing regulations”, Trump said after signing the order at the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday.

“What we agreed to there, in the Paris accord, said that we had to take steps domestically to address Carbon dioxide emissions while China and India did not until the year 2030”. He also scrapped a requirement to consider climate-change effects in weighing environmental rules and permits.

Still, Ryan says Republicans haven’t given up on repealing and replacing the controversial measure.

Murray emphatically disagreed, however, as he maintains the plan would hurt Americans who depend on the jobs coal mining provides.

“The real world impacts are that we continue to see renewable generation thrive under this administration”, Bischoff said. The expedited closure of the Navajo Generating Station, the largest clean coal fired coal plant in the western United States, would create an economic disaster that would devastate Navajo families and our entire economy.

But Shaheen argued the order ignores mountains of evidence on climate change and is part of a “dangerous agenda that threatens the health and well-being of New Hampshire”. “No one man or group can stop the encouraging and escalating momentum we are experiencing in the fight to protect our planet”.

Jeremy Symons, associate vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said advocates will work to build support among lawmakers along with the public.

Developing and least developed countries are expected to receive $100 billion from the GCF annually starting 2020 to help them adapt to climate change and adopt clean energy technologies going forward to mitigate climate change.

She said the industry’s big concern is that the Obama rules would cause an even sharper drop in demand for coal as states and utilities moved to phase out remaining coal-fired power plants to meet the tougher emissions targets.

Trump’s move came one day after a Gallup poll showed that the share of the USA population concerned about climate change has reached a new high of 50 percent. By contrast, renewable energy — including wind, solar and biofuels — now accounts for more than 650,000 U.S.jobs.

Despite the concern of the new executive order, Asadollahi hopes the USA rollback of climate change legislation leads to countries like Canada stepping up to do more. The president’s promises to boost coal jobs run counter to market forces, such as USA utilities converting coal-fired power plants to cheaper, cleaner-burning natural gas.