The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Trump’s new era for fossil fuel production
Policy aims to ‘bring back jobs and dreams’
Declaring “the start of a newera” in energy production, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that he said would revive the coal industry and create jobs.
The move makes good on his campaign pledge to unravel former President Barack Obama’s plan to curb global warming.
The order seeks to suspend, rescind or flag for review more than half a dozen measures in an effort to boost domestic energy production in the form of fossil fuels.
Environmental activists, including former vice president Al Gore, denounced the plan. But Mr Trump said the effort would allow workers to “succeed on a level playing field for the first time in a long time”.
“That is what this is all about: bringing back our jobs, bringing back our dreams and making America wealthy again,” Mr Trump said, during a ceremony at the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA) headquarters attended by miners.
The order initiates a review of the Clean Power Plan, which restricts greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants. The regulation, which was the former president’s signature effort to curb carbon emissions, has been the subject of long-running legal challenges by Republican-led states and those who profit from burning oil, coal and gas.
But environmental groups are promising to fight Mr Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda in court.
He has called global warming a “hoax” invented by the Chinese.