ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION Agency Director Scott Pruitt achieved a long-sought personal victory last week when he signed a measure to begin the process of repealing the Clean Power Plan, a 2015 measure aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
The policy was a signature environmental triumph of the Obama administration, and a target of opportunity for Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who led the fight to undermine the plan’s requirements.
Repeal of the Clean Power Plan is an unfortunate, if expected, setback in the fight to slow the effects of climate change, which are evident in every unprecedented high tide across the Hampton Roads region. And it underscores the need for thoughtful leadership in Richmond and other state capitals, which can help blunt the damage being done by Washington.
The past nine months have demonstrated that the Trump White House’s scattershot and superficial approach to policy making does not extend to environmental protection, an area in which the administration appears determined to do lasting harm.
Begin with President Donald Trump’s selection of Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to lead his transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Ebell is a noted climate change “skeptic,” the term one uses in polite company to avoid the more pointed “crank.” He rejects the notion that humans affect environmental conditions in substantial measure and has advocated for slashing two-thirds of the EPA workforce.
Amazingly, Team Trump didn’t appoint Ebell as director — though it wasn’t because they realized the folly of putting in charge of environmental protections a man committed to undermining them.
No, instead the White House plucked Pruitt from the oilfields of Oklahoma, where he had distinguished himself by his willingness to curry favor with the fossil fuel industry.
So eager to please was the former AG that, per New York Times reporting, “when Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, emailed him a draft letter in 2011 opposing a federal effort to limit methane gas leaking from drilling operations, Pruitt changed a few words, put the letter on his own letterhead, and sent it to the [EPA].”
Trump, at a Rose Garden celebration, announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement — never mind that he cannot formally do so until 2020. Those accords seek to prevent global temperatures from rising higher than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels by dramatically cutting CO2 emissions.
Trump’s move effectively ceded global leadership on the environment to China, where leaders are determined to cut emissions and reverse the country’s reputation as a notorious polluter. In contrast, the White House wants to double down on coal and other carbon-heavy fuels rather than foster development of a green-energy economy.
So it’s little surprise the administration would ultimately repeal the Clean Power Plan.
Last year, a lawsuit by 29 state attorneys general — a group that included Pruitt — earned a favorable ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted 5-4 to grant a temporary stay of the initiative pending consideration of the suit by a lower court.
And last week Pruitt wielded the pen that could lead to the elimination of rules intended to slash CO2 pollution and encourage clean energy alternatives, using state-by-state requirements to achieve a sweeping reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
If there is a cause for comfort, it’s that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA has an obligation to regulate CO2, meaning Pruitt’s agency must replace the Clean Power Plan with something. As well, most states and many businesses are already committed to reducing CO2 emissions, moving the United States toward its goals under the Paris agreement, whether the president wants to or not.
But these episodes, one after another, show the importance of having strong, thoughtful environmental voices in Richmond and in communities across Hampton Roads, where sea-level rise is an existential threat.
Using this crisis as a moment of opportunity can put Virginia on firm footing for the future. And, in light of the White House’s destructive tendencies, it’s the only way forward.
