The Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era rules to regulate the emissions of ozone and particulate matter from power plants, was expected to prevent 15,000 heart attacks, 400,000 asthma attacks and 34,000 premature deaths, including 60 in ME, in the eastern USA each year.
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What should Canada do about President Donald Trump’s announcement last week he intends to bring back coal as a major US energy source, by gutting Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan?
There is a lot less to U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to unravel Obama’s climate legacy than advertised, which is good news for Canada and the world.
The Clean Power Plan aimed to reduce Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Experts in the industry have already pointed out, repeatedly, that the coal jobs are extremely unlikely to come back. The Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents oil and natural gas producers, also praised Trump’s move.
While Trump’s order on Tuesday does not officially end USA compliance with the Paris Accord, the decision to end restrictions on coal-fired power plants was widely seen as a clear rejection of the accord by the US administration. Trump’s imagineers have turned coal miners into a Madison Avenue version of the besieged American working man, the pretty wrapping on a toxic package of environmental delinquency.
Looking at the level of individual businesses, the coal industry in 2014 (76,572) employed about as many as Whole Foods (72,650), and fewer workers than Arby’s (close to 80,000), Dollar General (105,000) or J.C. Penney (114,000).
“There is a clear risk that the United States might go beyond the delicate balance that the countries agreed in Paris”, said Li Shuo, senior climate adviser with environmental group Greenpeace.
Curbing emissions from coal-fired power plants was a pillar of America’s commitment to cut carbon emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025.
“We regret the U.S. is rolling back the main pillar of its climate policy, the Clean Power Plan”. “So Paris was just a bad deal, in my estimation”. He added that any damage can be mitigated in the courts and in states, which are tasked with coming up with emissions reduction plans.
First, Congress and the president moved against a massive stream rule allowing the Office of Surface Mining to both muscle in on state mining oversight and duplicate EPA authority over water quality standards. Miners were by his side again on Tuesday. I made them this promise: “We will put our miners back to work”, the president said. The finding, along with a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, forms the basis of the Clean Power Plan.
Competing with cheap natural gas and renewables is vastly more hard because the nation’s coal fleet is rapidly aging.
“Defunding or dismantling the EPA and repealing its regulations is not going to bring the coal industry back”.
Even though the annual coal output of the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming is only 4.7 percent of global production, the Obama administration wanted to sacrifice it to please climate activists who claimed the federal coal program isn’t profitable enough.
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Countries that dragged their feet then – Saudi Arabia, India, Japan – “might hide behind the Americans going forward”, he told AFP. But the oil and gas lobbies have also become more organized and sophisticated in recent years, and environmentalists looking to pressure Midwestern states into embracing California-style policies will have a fight on their hands.
