The Trump administration is repealing Obama's climate change measures

The government of Donald Trump will repeal one of the most important measures of former US President Barack Obama to tackle climate change, in an effort to achieve the fulfillment of one of the Republican campaign promises, the revival of the mining industry. strongly criticized by ecologists.

The development follows Trump's announcement in early June that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, arguing that its implementation would be to the detriment of the US economy. The agreement was signed in December 2015 by 195 countries, including the United States of Obama, in order to limit global warming.

This time, Trump is turning against the Clean Power Plan, which was signed by his Democratic predecessor in August 2015. The package was aimed at speeding up the transition to clean energy and enforcing power plants. reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 32% by 2030 compared to 2005. The plan would lead to the closure of many lignite and coal-fired power plants, which are the oldest and most polluting.

However, its implementation has been hampered since February 2016 by the US Federal Supreme Court, to which thirty States, mostly ruled by Republicans, have appealed. "The war on coal is over," EPA chief Scott Pruitt said Monday during a speech in Kentucky, a state full of mines in the eastern United States. "Tomorrow (Tuesday) in Washington I will sign a decision to scrap the previous administration's so-called Clean Energy Plan," said Pruitt, who has made it clear that he does not believe in climate change. initiatives of the Obama administration on the environment.

The plan, he argued, was made to determine the winners and losers (…). The previous government used all its power to determine the winners and losers of the EPA and how energy is produced in this country. That's wrong, "he insisted. In 2015, when Pruitt was Oklahoma's secretary of justice, he argued that Obama's plan was an "illegal attempt to usurp federal bureaucracy in shaping US energy policy."

The decision by the Trump and Pruitt administrations is "one of the most serious attacks on public health, our climate and the safety of every community in the United States," said Michael Brown of the Sierra Club, one of the world's leading environmental organizations. . According to him, the Clean Energy Plan would "prevent thousands of premature deaths and asthma attacks in children each year."

Ken Kimmel, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, also said that the announcement of the head of the EPA was canceled by his "conflict of interest". "Mr. Pruitt is involved in this story as a lawyer for one of the parties, a judge, a jury and now an executioner," Obama's plan said.

His organization reminded that before the Obama Plan "there was no rule restricting" carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, which are one of the "main causes of climate change and global warming." Coal continues to make a significant contribution to the US energy landscape, but this mineral no longer accounted for 2015% of the US energy mix in 21, compared to 32% for natural gas, 28% for oil and by-products, and 11%. % of renewable energy and 9% of nuclear power plants, according to the US Federal Reserve (EIA).

In 2015 alone, coal mining in the United States fell by more than 10%, falling to its lowest level since 1986, while the number of workers in the sector fell from 88.000 in 2008 to 66.000 in 2015, according to the EIA. The United States ranks second in the world behind China in emitting greenhouse gases and global warming.

Source: KYPE