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Trump To Sign ‘Energy Independence’ Order Tomorrow Rolling Back Obama Climate Change Initiatives
Coming off a brutal Trumpcare defeat, delivered by members of his own party no less, Trump has decided to return to a strategy of progressing his policy initiatives through executive order. As such, tomorrow President Trump is set to sign a sweeping new order aimed at promoting domestic oil, coal and natural gas by reversing much of Obama’s efforts to address climate change.
The order is expected to lay out a broad blueprint for the Trump administration to dismantle the architecture that Obama built to combat Climate Change, which Trump argued throughout the 2016 campaign season only serves to kill 1,000s of energy jobs in the U.S.
Obama’s Clean Power Plan was designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from electricity by 32% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels and resulted in the collapse of the coal industry, including several large bankruptcies. That said, the initiative has been in legal limbo since the Supreme Court stayed it while it was reviewed by a federal appeals court. The Trump administration now is expected ask that court to put the matter on hold to allow it time to revise or undo the measure — an action environmentalists have vowed to challenge. Per Bloomberg:
Trump’s executive order also is set to revoke six specific directives from his predecessor, including Obama’s broad strategy for paring emissions of methane released from oil and gas operations. Other Obama directives targeted for repeal include one on climate change and national security, as well as a pair of directives from June 2013 that laid out his climate plans.
The removal of the Clean Power Plan could halt coal’s decline as a source of electricity during the next two decades, according to projections from the Energy Information Administration. More coal use would mean less natural gas use, EIA said.
Speaking with George Stephanopoulos over the weekend, EPA Chief Scott Pruitt said that, among other things, Trump’s forthcoming executive order would “address the past administration’s effort to kill jobs across this country through the clean power plan.”
“This is about making sure we have a pro-growth and pro-environment approach to how we do regulation in this country. For too long, over the last several years, we’ve accepted the narrative that if you’re pro-growth, pro-jobs you’re anti-environment and that’s just not where we’ve been in the country. And the executive order is going to address the past administration’s effort to kill jobs across this country through the clean power plan.”
Among other things, Trump’s new executive order will give the heads of various federal agencies broad authority to suspend, revise or rescind the policies that could burden the production or use of domestic energy resources.
It also will toss out two Obama-era directives that gave consideration of climate change a prominent role in federal rule making. One advised government agencies to factor climate change into environmental reviews, such as those governing where oil drilling should take place. The other, called the “social cost of carbon,” is a metric reflecting the potential economic damage from climate change that was used by the Obama administration to justify a suite of regulations.
The order also is set to include a targeted assault on a handful of specific Obama-era regulations. It will require the Interior Department to lift a moratorium on the sale of new coal leases on federal land and compel the EPA to review, and, “if appropriate,” begin proceedings to suspend, revise or rescind regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
And just like that, the lawyers of the Natural Resources Defense Council were just guaranteed millions of dollars of incremental fees…we can’t only assume, at this point, that Eric Holder is getting his ‘fair share.’
But energy isn’t the only focus, Trump will also be signing 4 other initiatives aimed at relaxing land-use rules from the Bureau of Land Management, Education Department rules on school accountability and a ‘blacklisting’ rule that required federal contractors to disclose labor violations as part of their bidding procedures.
4 bills Trump signs today reverse Obama on:
-disclosure of labor violations
-Planning 2.0 rule
-school standards
-reporting on teacher prep. pic.twitter.com/3vLTT60mmC— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) March 27, 2017
Source: http://silveristhenew.com/2017/03/27/trump-to-sign-energy-independence-order-tomorrow-rolling-back-obama-climate-change-initiatives/
