Since becoming EPA administrator, Pruitt has denied the scientific consensus on climate change on national television, called for the United States to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, and defended the administration’s proposed cuts to his agency.
That’s because several of the rules he’s most interested in repealing — the Clean Power Plan, for instance, or the Clean Water Rule — were finalized long before Trump came into office.
In late March, he signed another executive order directing the EPA to start repealing and rewriting the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature domestic climate regulation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
Putting environmental regulations on hold But it’s not just through executive order that Trump has sought to weaken environmental protections and slow progress on climate change — by delaying court cases regarding environmental regulations, the Trump administration can effectively hold these regulations in limbo while taking years to rewrite and enact a new rule.
Over at the EPA, Administrator Scott Pruitt got to work repealing various regulations aimed at limiting pollution from industry.
In one of his first acts as administrator, Pruitt withdrew an EPA request asking for methane emission data from the oil and gas industry, which the Obama administration had called a “critical step” in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from existing fossil fuel operations.
The EPA isn’t the only federal agency that would see sharp cuts in its environmental and climate programs under Trump’s proposed budget.
“We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.” Trump’s budget would also cut funding for the Global Climate Change Initiative, and stop payments to both the Green Climate Fund and the Climate Investment Funds.
Such a step would essentially remove the United States from the conversation about global climate finance.
And environmental regulations, despite the Trump administration’s rhetoric, are largely popular: 59 percent of American’s say the environment should take priority over energy production, and 79 percent think there should be more emphasis on solar power (only 28 percent feel the same way about coal).