Trump's climate-change order: now what happens?

The White House, Washington, D.C. [Creative Commons license by dcjohn]

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These do not appear to be the best of times for President Donald J. Trump, but his agenda of eliminating regulations and promoting fossil fuels continues to roll out.

This week, Trump appeared at the EPA to sign an executive order that directed the agency to reopen and reassess its Clean Power Plan for reducing carbon emissions from generating electricity in each state.

The event was sparsely attended and, as reported by The Washington Post, some agency employees wore buttons saying “Scientific Integrity” as a silent protest.

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Meanwhile, Politico reports that the U.S. Department of Energy has banned use of the words “climate change” by its Office of International Climate and Clean Energy.

DoE employees fear that’s the prelude to a wholesale reorganization of the department to eliminate large portions of its scientific research under new head Rick Perry, formerly governor of the fossil-fuel-producing state of Texas.

But back to the EPA, where employee morale is at rock-bottom, according to a letter from agency climate scientist Michael Kravitz, sent to The New York Times and published at potentially great risk to his career.

Flower developed by Toyota to offset emissions from its Prius facility

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“Our standard weekly newsletter now contains articles mainly about flower shows and photo contests,” he writes, “rather than articles about environmental protection.”

“I hope the nightmare ends soon,” Kravitz concludes.

Assuming that doesn’t suddenly happen, how might Trump’s eradication of Obama’s climate-change legacy play out?

As the Brookings Institute, a progressive think-tank, pointed out in an analysis, an executive order cannot directly overturn a regulation.

So the EPA must technically reopen its investigation and issue a new finding on whether the Clean Power Plan should be changed or repealed.

The agency is now run by administrator Scott Pruitt, a climate-science denier who sued the agency he now runs more than a dozen times to prevent it from enforcing emission rules while he was attorney general of the fossil-fuel-producing state of Oklahoma.

Virtually every analyst assumes that the agency will, one way or another, issue a finding that the Clean Power Plan should be repealed.

But, as Brookings noted, “the EPA is currently legally obligated to regulate CO2.”

“Since the Supreme Court has ruled that CO2 is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, if EPA chooses not to regulate CO2, it will be sued.”