EPA ACTS TO ROLL BACK CONTROL ON CLIMATE CHANGING COAL

Washington — The Environmental Protection Agency acted again to ease rules on the sagging U.S. coal industry, this time scaling back what would have been a tough control on climate-changing emissions from any new coal plants. The latest Trump administration targeting of legacy Obama administration efforts to slow climate change comes in the wake of multiplying warnings from the agency’s scientists and others about the accelerating pace of global warming. In a ceremony Thursday at the agency, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler signed a proposal to dismantle a 2015 rule that any new coal power plants include cutting-edge techniques to capture the carbon dioxide from their smokestacks. Wheeler called the Obama rules “excessive burdens” for the coal industry. Janet McCabe, an EPA air official under the Obama administration, and others challenged that.