By executive order, President Donald Trump made good on a campaign promise to dismantle the Clean Power Plan. His directive also dismantles requirements that federal agencies, including the military, consider climate change in policymaking decisions, including using a calculation referred to as the “social cost of carbon.” A main component of the directive requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to to rewrite the 2015 carbon emissions rules for power plants, currently tied up in court. The agency will need to get permission from the court in order to do this. The order is silent on whether the U.S. should remain in the Paris climate agreement.
“Our administration is putting an end to the war on coal,” Trump said, accompanied onstage by more than a dozen coal miners and Vice President Mike Pence. “We’re ending the theft of American prosperity, and rebuilding our beloved country.”
“You know what it says, right? You’re going back to work,” Trump told the coal miners after he signed the measure. Trump did not mention climate change once or suggest any replacement policies for reducing carbon emissions.