Weeks after President Donald Trump moved to keep California from applying its own stringent regulations to auto emissions, White House officials indicated that the president would soon unveil a plan to give several other states the right to self-regulate regarding pollution—but the states in question this time are coal producers, and Trump’s proposal is likely to cause an explosion in emission rates as well as a worsening of the climate crisis.
At a rally in West Virginia on Tuesday, Trump is expected to unveil a plan to allow states to determine whether they’ll regulate coal plant emissions, and if so, how.
“Emissions are going to go up, and I don’t mean from where they would have been under the Clean Power Plan, but relative to the trends now,” Conrad Schneider, advocacy director for the Clean Air Task Force, told the New York Times. “This is to put the thumb on the scales and bring coal back.”
The Environmental Protection Agency estimated in a 300-page analysis that the plan would affect about 300 coal plants, likely keeping them in operation and going against the will of 65 percent of Americans who, according to Pew Research, say the development of renewable energy should take precedence over fossil fuels.
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