WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is set to sign a sweeping directive to dramatically shrink the role climate change plays in decisions across the government, ranging from appliance standards to pipeline approvals, according to a person familiar with the administration’s plan.
The order, which could be signed this week, goes far beyond a targeted assault on Obama-era measures blocking coal leasing and throttling greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that has been discussed for weeks. Some of the changes could happen immediately; others could take years to implement.
It aims to reverse President Barack Obama’s broad approach for addressing climate change. One Obama-era policy instructed government agencies to factor climate change into formal environmental reviews, such as that for the Keystone XL pipeline. Trump’s order also will require a reconsideration of the government’s use of a metric known as the “social cost of carbon” that reflects the potential economic damage from climate change. It was used by the Obama administration to justify a suite of regulations.
Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative, fossil fuel-oriented advocacy group, welcomed Trump’s comprehensive approach, calling it essential to undoing Obama-era climate policies that “permeated the entire administration.”
“President Obama created such a labyrinth of rules and orders and regulations to cement his agenda across practically every agency,” Pyle said in a phone interview. “It was designed to put into the mission of the agencies climate change first and make the rest of their mission second. This was a constraint deliberately set up by the previous administration to make it difficult to utilize coal, oil and natural gas.”
Environmentalists said the president’s action will erode the international leadership the U.S. has played addressing climate change and encouraging other countries to limit the heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions that are the primary driver of the phenomenon.
The anticipated action “puts our country, our communities and our people at great risk,” said Paul Getsos, national coordinator of the People’s Climate Movement, a coalition of labor, civil rights and faith-based groups. “It also sends a dangerous message to the world that the United States does not care about climate change or protecting front-line communities.”
Trump’s coming order has been discussed by his staff since before he took office. Asked about when the executive order would be issued, White House spokeswoman Kelly Love said she had “nothing to announce at this time.”
It will set in motion some discrete policy changes designed to make coal easier to extract and more enticing to burn.
For instance, the directive will compel the Environmental Protection Agency to undo the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era rule that forced states to slash the use of coal-fired electricity. Trump also is set to direct Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to reverse an Obama administration order that blocked the sale of new coal-mining rights on federal lands to producers such as Cloud Peak Energy Inc. and Peabody Energy Corp.
