Climate report won’t stop EPA rollback

Government targets Clean Power Plan

WASHINGTON – EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said a newly released government report that lays most of the blame for the rise of global temperatures on human activity won’t deter him from rolling back the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, a rule aimed at combating climate change.

“We’re taking the very necessary step to evaluate our authority under the Clean Air Act, and we’ll take steps that are required to issue a subsequent rule. That’s our focus,” Pruitt told USA TODAY on Tuesday. “Does this report have any bearing on that? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t impact the withdrawal, and it doesn’t impact the replacement.”

Last month, the Trump administration began the formal process of dismantling the Clean Power Plan intended to curb carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. Pruitt, who sued to block it as Oklahoma’s attorney general, said Congress never gave the Obama administration the authority to implement such a sweeping regulation.

In his first public comments since the Trump administration released the National Climate Assessment on Friday, Pruitt said a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last year to suspend the regulation until legal challenges are resolved “created great uncertainty” about the regulatory framework.

The EPA is drafting a replacement rule that will have to be legally defensible as environmental groups threaten legal action.

“Our job is to administer statutes,” Pruitt said, explaining the limits of what the EPA can do. “We have to act (based) on the authority given to us by Congress.”

President Trump has dismissed climate change as a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese to gain a competitive edge over the United States. A champion of the coal industry, Trump followed through on his vow to undo the climate change agenda implemented under President Obama by pulling out of the Paris Accord and withdrawing the Clean Power Plan. The EPA, under Pruitt’s di- rection, has been at the forefront of that effort.

David Doniger, a climate change expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, criticized the EPA administrator for abandoning the power rule, saying the Supreme Court has recognized the EPA’s authority to curb carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act.

“The National Climate Assessment has sounded a five-alarm fire bell, and Scott Pruitt pretends he can’t hear it,” he said. “The assessment shows unequivocally that carbon pollution is causing dangerous climate change and that our future depends on whether we cut that pollution.”

“The National Climate Assessment has sounded a five-alarm fire bell, and Scott Pruitt pretends he can’t hear it.” David Doniger Natural Resources Defense Council