‘War on coal is over’: EPA scraps Obama-era clean power plan
RT.com
9 Oct, 2017
The Trump administration has put another nail in the coffin of former President Barack Obama’s climate change legacy by withdrawing from the 2015 Clean Power Plan intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Regulatory power should not be used by any regulatory body to pick winners and losers,” said the head of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt Monday, announcing he will sign a new rule rescinding the Obama-era plan. The Clean Power Plan was designed to prompt a shift away from coal-fired power and toward cleaner energy sources, like natural gas, wind and solar.
“The war on coal is over,” Pruitt declared in Hazard, Kentucky, echoing President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to support the American coal industry.
While the coal miners celebrated the news, the administration’s critics blasted the decision.
“By saving an estimated 240 million tons of annual coal production, the administrator’s action helps to safeguard more than 27,000 mining jobs and almost 100,000 additional jobs throughout the supply chain,” Hal Quinn, CEO of the National Mining Association, said in a statement.
The move by Trump’s EPA is “a wholesale retreat from EPA’s legal, scientific and moral obligation to address the threats of climate change,” said Gina McCarthy, Obama’s former EPA administrator.
“They’re adding more pollution into our air and threatening public health at a time when the threats of climate change are growing and the costs are growing immeasurably higher on our children and their future,” McCarthy added.
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