Although climate change was widely seen as a main global problem, it seems that the US government would be stopping its efforts sooner. In recent news, an insider reported that US President Donald Trump is actually set to sign an order which would drop the climate change as the main proponent in the decision making process in their government.
Bloomberg first reported that the insider shared that Trump is in the works of signing the said order this week. This order will not only reduce the role of climate change in the government agenda but it will mainly target the path already laid out by former US President Barack Obama. The said article also explains that the order will most likely abolish the Clean Power Plan by Obama, a policy which will combat the anthropogenic causes of climate change.
The said directive can also affect several existing climate change-related environmental reviews. One of these is Obama's instruction where climate change used to be a criterion for reviewing cases such as the Keystone XL pipeline issue. However, with this order from Trump, issues like this will be tackled more on the economic damages instead of the environmental issues which are pretty alarming according to some experts.
According to an article in Reuters, Trump has long stated his intentions of reversing some of Obama's policies including the ones concerning the topic of climate change. To answer his critics, Trump also clarified that despite his intended revisions, he will not let his new policies harm the current quality of air and water in America.
Trump's decision is getting a huge support from companies mainly operating on fossil fuels. However, Trump also received a lot of backlash from environmental groups. Paul Getsos, the national coordinator of the People’s Climate Movement, shared in an interview in Bloomberg that this action shall break the leadership of the US government in combating climate change. Getsos also added that this order can put the country and the Americans into a major risk.
