President Trump is preparing to take executive actions soon that will begin the process of unraveling former President Barack Obama’s climate change legacy, while clearing the way for the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Trump’s White House team will begin the climate rollback by striking down a controversial climate metric called the Social Cost of Carbon, which the Obama administration used to justify the cost of its environmental regulations.
The carbon cost formula has been a big target by Republicans who have criticized it as a hidden standard that few people have access to and that appeared to be directly controlled and tweaked by the Obama White House.
Trump plans to move soon on issuing the executive order to end the carbon metric, while issuing a second order to remove regulatory roadblocks for approving trans-border pipeline projects such as the Keystone XL project to connect Canada’s oil sands to U.S. refiners in the Gulf of Mexico, Bloomberg reported.
The pipeline order would remove the State Department’s authority to review pipeline projects that cross U.S. borders, which appears to be an attempt to speed up project reviews and remove proceedings that could create a way for environmental groups to block the projects.
Meanwhile, environmental groups are using Trump’s inauguration to drum up up funding to fight the incoming administration’s actions.
“His inauguration = our fight,” said Natural Resources Defense Council President Rhea Suh in an email to donors Friday.
