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WASHINGTON — President Trump is poised in the coming days to announce his plans to dismantle the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s climate change legacy, while also gutting several smaller but significant policies aimed at curbing global warming.
The
moves are intended to send an unmistakable signal to the nation and the
world that Mr. Trump intends to follow through on his campaign vows to
rip apart every element of what the president has called Mr. Obama’s
“stupid” policies to address climate change. The timing and exact form
of the announcement remain unsettled, however.
The
executive actions will follow the White House’s release last week of a
proposed budget that would eliminate climate change research and
prevention programs across the federal government and slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31 percent, more than any other agency. Mr. Trump also announced last week that he had ordered Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A.
administrator, to revise the agency’s stringent standards on
planet-warming tailpipe pollution from vehicles, another of Mr. Obama’s
key climate change policies.
While the White House is not expected to explicitly say the United States is withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Agreement
on climate change, and people familiar with the White House
deliberations say Mr. Trump has not decided whether to do so, the policy
reversals would make it virtually impossible to meet the emissions
reduction goals set by the Obama administration under the international
agreement.
In
an announcement that could come as soon as Thursday or as late as next
month, according to people familiar with the White House’s planning, Mr.
Trump will order Mr. Pruitt to withdraw and rewrite a set of Obama-era
regulations known as the Clean Power Plan,
according to a draft document obtained by The New York Times. The Obama
rule was devised to shut down hundreds of heavily polluting coal-fired
power plants and freeze construction of new coal plants, while replacing
them with vast wind and solar farms.
The
draft also lays out options for legally blocking or weakening about a
half-dozen additional Obama-era executive orders and policies on climate
change.
At a campaign-style rally on Monday
in the coal-mining state of Kentucky, Mr. Trump told a cheering
audience that he is preparing an executive action that would “save our
wonderful coal miners from continuing to be put out of work.”
Experts
in environmental law say it will not be possible for Mr. Trump to
quickly or simply roll back the most substantive elements of Mr. Obama’s
climate change regulations, noting that the process presents a steep
legal challenge that could take many years and is likely to end up
before the Supreme Court. Economists are skeptical that a rollback of
the rules would restore lost coal jobs because the demand for coal has
been steadily shrinking for years.
Scientists
and climate policy advocates around the world say they are watching the
administration’s global warming actions and statements with deep worry.
Many reacted with deep concern to Mr. Pruitt’s remarks this month
that he did not believe carbon dioxide was a primary driver of climate
change, a statement at odds with the global scientific consensus. They
also noted the remarks last week by Mick Mulvaney, the director of the
White House Office of Management and Budget, in justifying Mr. Trump’s proposed cuts to climate change research programs.
“As
to climate change, I think the president was fairly straightforward:
We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Mr. Mulvaney said at a White
House briefing.
“The
message they are sending to the rest of the world is that they don’t
believe climate change is serious. It’s shocking to see such a degree of
ignorance from the United States,” said Mario J. Molina, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist from Mexico who advises nations on climate change policy.
The
policy reversals also signal that Mr. Trump has no intention of
following through on Mr. Obama’s formal pledges under the Paris accord,
under which nearly every country in the world submitted plans detailing
actions to limit global warming over the coming decade.
Under
the accord as it stands, the United States has pledged to reduce its
greenhouse pollution about 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. That can
be achieved only if the United States not only implements the Clean
Power Plan and tailpipe-pollution rules, but also tightens them or adds
more policies in future years.
“The message clearly is, ‘We won’t do what the United States has promised to do,’” Mr. Molina said.
In
addition to directing Mr. Pruitt to withdraw the Clean Power Plan, the
draft order instructs Attorney General Jeff Sessions to request that a
federal court halt consideration of a 28-state lawsuit against the regulation.
The case was argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit in September, and the court is expected to
release a decision in the coming months on whether to uphold or strike
down the rule.
According
to the draft, Mr. Trump is also expected to announce that he will lift a
moratorium on new coal mining leases on public lands that had been
announced last year by the Obama administration.
He
is also expected to order White House economists to revisit an
Obama-era budgeting metric known as the social cost of carbon.
Economists and policy makers used the metric to place a dollar cost on
the economic impact of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution: about
$36 per ton. That measure formed the Obama administration’s economic
justification for issuing climate change regulations that would harm
some industries, such as coal mining, noting that those costs would be
outweighed by the economic benefits of preventing billions of tons of
planet-warming pollution.
Eliminating
or lowering the social cost of carbon could provide the Trump
administration the economic justification for putting forth
less-stringent regulations.
The
draft order would also rescind an executive order by Mr. Obama that all
federal agencies take climate change into account when considering any
form of environmental permitting.
Unlike
the rollback of the power plant and vehicle regulations, which could
take years and will be subject to legal challenges, Mr. Trump can make
the changes to the coal mining ban and undo Mr. Obama’s executive orders
with the stroke of a pen.
White
House staff members and energy lobbyists who work closely with them say
they have been expecting Mr. Trump to make the climate change
announcements for weeks, ever since Mr. Pruitt was confirmed to head the E.P.A. on Feb. 17,
but the announcement has been repeatedly rescheduled. The delays of the
one-page announcement have largely been a result of disorganization and
a chaotic policy and planning process, said people familiar with that
process who asked to speak anonymously to avoid angering Mr. Trump.
One
reason for the confusion, these people said, is internal disputes about
the challenging legal process required to dismantle the Clean Power
Plan. While Mr. Trump may announce with great fanfare his intent to roll
back the regulations, the legal steps required to fulfill that
announcement are lengthy and the outcome uncertain.
“Trump’s announcements have zero impact,” said Richard J. Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard. “They don’t change existing law at all.”
Much of that task will now fall to Mr. Pruitt.
“To
undo the rule, the E.P.A. will now have to follow the same procedure
that was followed to put the regulations in place,” said Mr. Lazarus,
pointing to a multiyear process of proposing draft rules, gathering
public comment and forming a legal defense against an expected barrage
of lawsuits almost certain to end up before the Supreme Court.
