Democratic state officials quickly vowed Tuesday to sue the Trump administration for proposing a less-stringent replacement to Barack Obama’s signature initiative to combat climate change.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, whose state is a national leader on combating climate change, said the Trump EPA’s proposal amounts to a “declaration of war.”
“This is a declaration of war against America and all of humanity – it will not stand,” Brown said in a Twitter post. “Truth and common sense will triumph over Trump’s insanity.”
New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood pledged to file suit if the proposal is adopted, she said, “in order to protect New Yorkers, and all Americans, from the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change.”
The Trump administration officially rolled out its replacement for the Clean Power Plan with claims that the revision would save money while also slightly reducing carbon dioxide pollution.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday morning released its plan, renamed the “Affordable Clean Energy Rule,” that the agency said would provide $400 million in annual benefits, while reducing carbon emission levels by up to 1.5 percent by 2030. President Trump is expected to tout the new rule at a rally in coal-friendly West Virginia Tuesday night.
The proposal would cut carbon dioxide emissions between 0.7 percent and 1.5 percent by 2030, compared to having no regulation.
The Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Power Plan projected to reduce carbon emissions by about 19 percent compared to doing nothing. However that would translate to a four percent reduction in today’s climate, because the U.S. electricity mix is already naturally shifting away from coal to cheaper and cleaner alternatives.
The Trump administration argues that Obama based the Clean Power Plan on an overbroad interpretation of the Clean Air Act, and its new rule fits more squarely into what the law allows for. The Supreme Court issued a stay of the Clean Power Plan, and it was never implemented.
“We think we are on much firmer legal ground than the Clean Power Plan was,” EPA Assistant Administrator Bill Wehrum told reporters in a press call Tuesday.
The rewritten rule will achieve more modest carbon reduction impacts because it regulates power plants individually, instead of pushing for broad changes to the U.S. power system.
Critics say the proposal would not significantly cut carbon emissions because it would help keep alive coal plants that would otherwise retire
The EPA also acknowledged the weaker rule would lead to a potential rise in soot and other particulate matter that contribute to health issues such as asthma and lung disease, although the agency has other means to regulate those.
It projects the revised rule could lead to between 470 and 1,400 premature deaths each year by 2030 compared to the Obama plan.
“There are collateral effects of those emissions relative to what the Clean Power Plan would have accomplished,” Wehrum said. “We have abundant legal authority to deal with those other pollutants directly.”
