Trump is rolling back Obama’s crippling Climate Change rule and there’s something really INTERESTING that could happen

Trump’s EPA is now unveiling a new rule that will roll back Obama’s most crippling climate change rule that did a lot of harm to the coal industry:

POLITICO – The Trump administration rolled out its proposal for gutting former President Barack Obama’s most sweeping climate change regulation Tuesday — a move that could also block any future Democratic president from trying to put it back together.

The proposal from the EPA goes to the core of the criticisms that the coal industry and conservatives lodged against Obama’s 2015 regulation, which used a novel reading of the Clean Air Act to require states to cut greenhouse gas pollution from the power sector. The replacement from President Donald Trump’s EPA would give states far more leeway to meet more modest climate goals — or even to opt of the program entirely.

Here’s the interesting part. The old rule was so overreaching that it was unconstitutional. The new rule, despite it’s more modest cuts to carbon emissions, is considered to be a ‘lawful rule’. If the courts uphold its legality when the liberal lawsuits come and rule the Obama rule was unconstitutional, that would set a precedent for the future which would tie the hands of liberal administrations on this issue!

In other words, bring the lawsuits!

But the new rule’s biggest impact could come from the inevitable lawsuits that environmental groups and Democratic-leaning states will file against Trump’s proposal. If they lose, the result could be a court decision enshrining the Trump administration’s hobbled approach to climate regulation as the only reasonable approach under the law — slamming the door shut on any later attempts to recreate Obama’s handiwork.

At the very least, experts say, the proposal from Trump’s regulators would mean years of delay in curbing one of the world’s most dire problems — the greenhouse gas pollution that causes climate change.

EPA said the proposed rule would “more appropriately balance federal and state responsibilities” to regulate air pollution.

“Today’s proposal provides the states and regulated community the certainty they need to continue environmental progress while fulfilling President Trump’s goal of energy dominance,” said EPA acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler in a statement Tuesday.

Conservatives and fossil fuel companies have argued that Congress never meant to empower EPA to enforce sweeping rules affecting such a major sector of the economy.

“I think that they are on a path that [former EPA chief Scott] Pruitt started, which was to say, ‘First walk, then run,’” said Tom Pyle, president of the energy industry-backed American Energy Alliance.

“The reductions in carbon emissions will be less, but it will be a legal rule, a lawful rule,” said David B. Rivkin Jr., a lawyer who represented Oklahoma and other states in litigation that froze the Obama rule in 2016.

While it may be a few years before we see this new rule come to fruition, I do like our chances when this new rule is litigated, especially with the Supreme Court becoming more originalist. Obama overreached and it’s about time the courts slapped him down for good.


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