CLIMATE CHANGE/EPA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Trump administration will repeal the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Obama’s effort to fight climate change, and will ask the public to recommend ways it could be replaced, according to an internal E.P.A. document.
The draft proposal represents the administration’s first substantive step toward rolling back the plan, which was designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, after months of presidential tweets and condemnations of Mr. Obama’s efforts to reduce climate-warming pollution.
But it also lays the groundwork for new, presumably weaker, regulations by asking for the public and industry to offer ideas for a replacement…
The document does not explain how the Environmental Protection Agency will justify to the courts the decision to eliminate the regulation. Several industry attorneys familiar with the agency’s plans said they expected Mr. Pruitt to argue that the Obama administration relied on an overly-broad reading of federal clean air laws in writing the Clean Power Plan.”
-Lisa Friedman “Trump Takes a First Step Toward Scrapping Obama’s Global Warming Policy,” The New York Times online, Oct. 4, 2017