5 minute read…

Late last month, President Donald Trump signed an exec­u­tive order revers­ing the mea­sures ini­ti­at­ed by for­mer President Barack Obama to address cli­mate change.

Trump’s exec­u­tive order comes on the heels of House Joint Resolution 38 (H.J.Res.38 — Disapproving the rule sub­mit­ted by the Department of the Interior known as the Stream Protection Rule). Trump signed that mea­sure into law on 16 February 2017. The Stream Protection Rule was an Obama ini­tia­tive that lim­it­ed coal com­pa­nies’ dump­ing of min­ing waste into water­ways.

Trump’s move makes cli­mate change denial nation­al pol­i­cy in the US and abdi­cates the coun­try’s inter­na­tion­al lead­er­ship role in attempt­ing to reverse glob­al warn­ing.

With a fin­gers-crossed promise of putting US coal min­ers back to work, Trump direct­ed the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to roll­back Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The EPA-devel­oped Clean Power Plan had the ambi­tious goal of reduc­ing car­bon diox­ide emis­sions from gen­er­at­ing elec­tri­cal pow­er by 32 per­cent with­in 25 years. Coal-fired pow­er plants would be closed and replaced with pho­to­volta­ic solar and wind facil­i­ties.

During his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Trump pledged to reverse the Obama admin­is­tra­tion’s cli­mate change poli­cies, pledg­ing to bring back coal jobs to impov­er­ished US coal coun­try.

Paris Agreement

The Clean Power Plan was the key­stone of the Obama admin­is­tra­tion’s plan to meet the US oblig­a­tion under the Paris Agreement’s direc­tive of lim­it­ing the warm­ing of the plan­et to no more than 3.6 degrees. That’s the mag­ic num­ber beyond which the earth reach­es a tip­ping point of no return result­ing in ris­ing sea lev­els, flood­ing, droughts, and food short­ages.

The Paris Agreement was adopt­ed by 195 sig­na­to­ry nations on 12 December 2015. The 12-page agree­ment (.pdf; 554KB) has no enforce­ment mech­a­nism and con­sists of pledges and promis­es by the sig­na­to­ry nations to reduce their car­bon out­put “as soon as pos­si­ble” and to “do their best” to keep glob­al warm­ing well below 2 °C (3.6 °F).

Article 2 (page 21 of the agree­ment) out­lines the intent of the Paris Agreement:

“This Agreement, in enhanc­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of the Convention, includ­ing its objec­tive, aims to strength­en the glob­al response to the threat of cli­mate change, in the con­text of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and efforts to erad­i­cate pover­ty, includ­ing by: “Holding the increase in the glob­al aver­age tem­per­a­ture to well below 2 °C above pre-indus­tri­al lev­els and to pur­sue efforts to lim­it the tem­per­a­ture increase to 1.5 °C above pre-indus­tri­al lev­els, rec­og­niz­ing that this would sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the risks and impacts of cli­mate change;

“Increasing the abil­i­ty to adapt to the adverse impacts of cli­mate change and fos­ter cli­mate resilience and low green­house gas emis­sions devel­op­ment, in a man­ner that does not threat­en food pro­duc­tion;

“Making finance flows con­sis­tent with a path­way towards low green­house gas emis­sions and cli­mate-resilient devel­op­ment. “This Agreement will be imple­ment­ed to reflect equi­ty and the prin­ci­ple of com­mon but dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed respon­si­bil­i­ties and respec­tive capa­bil­i­ties, in the light of dif­fer­ent nation­al cir­cum­stances.”

Central to the Paris Agreement was a 2014 agree­ment between Xi Jinping, pres­i­dent of China, and Obama in which the largest and sec­ond-largest pol­lut­ing coun­tries on the plan­et, respec­tive­ly, agreed to sub­stan­tial poli­cies to cut car­bon diox­ide emis­sions.

“This is not the time for any coun­try to change course on the very seri­ous and very real threat of cli­mate change,” Erik Solheim, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the United Nations Environment Programme, told Coral Davenport and Alissa J. Rubin writ­ing for the New York Times. “The sci­ence tells us that we need bold­er, more ambi­tious com­mit­ments.”

Trump — whether he for­mal­ly with­draws from the Paris Agreement or not — has uni­lat­er­al­ly opt­ed the US out of the cli­mate change ini­tia­tive.

As recent­ly as last January’s Davos World Economic Forum meet­ing, Xi Jinping insist­ed that China would con­tin­ue to work to meet its Paris Agreement com­mit­ment. No one knows what impact Trump’s rever­sal will have on the Paris Agreement or the response of the oth­er sig­na­to­ry nations.

Rare Trump consistency

Trump’s “Promoting ener­gy inde­pen­dence and eco­nom­ic growth” exec­u­tive order is, if noth­ing else, at least con­sis­tent with his nom­i­na­tion of Scott Pruitt, for­mer attor­ney gen­er­al of Oklahoma and rabid cli­mate change denier, as admin­is­tra­tor of the EPA. While Oklahoma attor­ney gen­er­al, Pruitt elim­i­nat­ed the state’s Environmental Protection Unit and sued the EPA 13 times to block the Clean Power Plan and Clean Water Rule. All 13 law­suits failed.

All of that’s not enough for the alt-right, of course. According to Coral Davenport writ­ing for the New York Times, they’re upset because Pruitt has­n’t chal­lenged the EPA’s endan­ger­ment find­ing, some­thing quite incon­sis­tent for Pruitt, giv­en his pen­chant for suing the agency.

Here’s the entire text of the endan­ger­ment find­ing:

“The Administrator finds that the cur­rent and pro­ject­ed con­cen­tra­tions of the six key well-mixed green­house gas­es — car­bon diox­ide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydro­flu­o­ro­car­bons (HFCs), per­flu­o­ro­car­bons (PFCs), and sul­fur hexa­flu­o­ride (SF6) — in the atmos­phere threat­en the pub­lic health and wel­fare of cur­rent and future gen­er­a­tions.”

That’s a pret­ty clear state­ment of a sci­en­tif­ic find­ing. Best of all, it’s easy enough to test: Put a test sub­ject in a room con­tain­ing noth­ing oth­er than the “six key well-mixed green­house gas­es” and observe. Science does­n’t get much more real.

Davenport reports that Pruitt “has told the White House and Congress that he will not try to reverse the find­ing,” real­iz­ing that any rever­sal would like­ly be struck down by the judi­cia­ry (the endan­ger­ment find­ing has already been upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal).

Have a won­der­ful Earth Day.