Trump speaks before signing the order.
Trump scraps Obama-era rules to curb climate change
WASHINGTON, March 29, 2017
US President Donald Trump yesterday signed an order rolling back Obama-era regulations aimed at curbing climate change.
Signing the order in a room filled with coal miners and coal company executives, Trump said this would put an end to the "war on coal" and "job-killing regulations".
The Energy Independence Executive Order suspends more than half a dozen measures enacted by his predecessor, and boosts fossil fuels, said a BBC report.
The move drew swift backlash from a coalition of 23 states and local governments, as well as environmental groups, which called the decree a threat to public health and vowed to fight it in court, Reuters said.
The order's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a key factor in the US' ability to meet its commitments under a climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015.
Trump's decree also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions. Carbon dioxide and methane are two of the main greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for heating the earth.
The order is the boldest yet in Trump’s broader push to cut environmental regulation to revive the drilling and mining industries, Reuters said.
Energy analysts and executives have questioned whether the moves will have a big effect on their industries, and environmentalists have called them reckless.
