In a post on TruthSocial on Monday, President Donald Trump announced that he would be authorizing his administration to open “hundreds” of coal fire power plants, despite coal’s role in accelerating climate change.
“After years of being held captive by Environmental Extremists, Lunatics, Radicals, and Thugs, allowing other Countries, in particular China, to gain tremendous Economic advantage over us by opening up hundreds of all Coal Fire Power Plants, I am authorizing my Administration to immediately begin producing Energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL,” Trump wrote”
{snip}
Burning coal, like most fossil fuels, produces CO2, a greenhouse gas largely to blame for Earth’s rising global temperatures. The IPCC found that 89% of global CO2 emissions in 2018 were produced by the burning of fossil fuels.
Trump in his post claimed that the power plants his administration wants to facilitate are “clean coal” a long debunked myth pushed by the fossil fuel industry. So called “clean coal” involves carbon capture and storage technologies by pumping CO2 produced through burning coal underground instead of into the air, according to the non-profit climate advocacy group Green America. However, Green America asserts that the technology is extremely expensive and even if the carbon can be trapped, the mining of coal still produces methane gas which is 87% more potent than CO2.
{snip}
Trump, who has repeatedly claimed climate change is a “Chinese hoax,” has been rolling back environmental policy during his first months in office, as well as during his first term in office when he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords.
In what he called the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history,” the head of the Environmental Protection Agency announced a series of actions last Wednesday to roll back landmark environmental regulations, including rules on pollution from coal-fired power plants, climate change and electric vehicles.
“We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age,’’ EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in an essay in The Wall Street Journal.
{snip}
“Our actions will also reignite American manufacturing, spreading economic benefits to communities,” he wrote. “Energy dominance stands at the center of America’s resurgence.”
In all, Zeldin said he is rolling back 31 environmental rules, including a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action against climate change.
Zeldin said he and President Donald Trump support rewriting the agency’s 2009 finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. The Obama-era determination under the Clean Air Act is the legal underpinning of a host of climate regulations for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources.
{snip}
“In the face of overwhelming science, it’s impossible to think that the EPA could develop a contradictory finding that would stand up in court,” David Doniger, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group told The Associated Press.
* Original Article:
https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/breaking-trump-announces-plan-reopen-34880181.amp
