Trump to sign executive order reversing environmental regulations
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order that will dramatically change the country’s approach to climate change.
The president’s executive order is fulfilling a campaign promise to unravel former President Obama’s plans to curb climate change. Those plans had a big impact here in Indiana.
In 2015 Obama announced the Clean Power Initiative to try to curb the carbon footprint of the coal industry.
Indianapolis Power and Light operated its Harding Street energy station on coal for decades. The company switched to natural gas last year to be in line with the Clean Power Initiative.
This was something the Indiana Coal Council and then Governor Mike Pence strongly opposed. Indiana was one of 24 states that sued the EPA over the initiative. Pence called the plan “ill conceived.”
Tuesday’s executive order will initiate a review of the Clean Power Initiative, end a 14-year moratorium on new coal mining leases on U-S federal lands and urge federal agencies to figure out what is holding America back from its energy independence.
The order will also eliminate six other executive orders Obama had signed to fight climate change.
Trump has called global warming a “hoax” invented by the Chinese, and has repeatedly criticized the power-plant rule and others as an attack on American workers and the struggling U.S. coal industry. However, federal data shows that U.S. mines have been shedding jobs for decades due to increased automation, competition from cheaper natural gas and the plummeting cost of solar panels and wind turbines, which now produce emissions-free electricity cheaper than burning coal.
Business groups have praised Trump’s plan, and environmental groups are strongly against the executive order.
24-Hour News 8 has reached out to IPL for comment. As of this posting, we have not heard back.