President Trump will issue an executive order on Tuesday to begin undoing former President Obama’s rule on carbon emissions, Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt said Sunday.
“This is about making sure that we have a pro-growth and pro-environment approach to how we do regulation in this country,” Pruitt said on ABC’s This Week.
The order, he said, “will address the past administration’s efforts to kill jobs across this country through the Clean Power Plan.”
The plan, currently stayed by a February 2016 Supreme Court decision, sets specific carbon dioxide emission reduction targets for states, discouraging electricity produced from coal.
Pruitt said that Trump aimed to bring back coal jobs, and that future efforts from the EPA would be directed toward that end.
As for the Paris Agreement setting emissions targets for countries, Pruitt called it a “bad deal” because it cost the U.S. jobs without getting concessions from China and India.
Innovation in coal and natural gas extraction have lowered emissions while also lowering the price of electricity, Pruitt argued.
“This is an effort to undo the unlawful approach the previous administration engaged in and to do it right going forward with the mindset of being pro-growth and pro-environment, and we can achieve both,” he said.
