Newly inaugurated President Joe Biden took executive action today to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, as promised during his campaign. The executive order takes effect after a thirty-day notice period expires. Governments around the world deplored the move by Trump to take the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases out of the international agreement that took years of dedicated diplomacy to reach. President Biden is set to revoke the border crossing permit of the Keystone XL pipeline that was designed to carry Alberta tar sands south to US refineries from Canada. He is also expected to issue a flurry of orders reversing, where legally possible, environmental protection rollbacks instituted by the extraction friendly regime that ended today.
{19.01.21}The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected Trump's Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule intended to replace and weaken his predecessor's clean power plan. His rejected plan would have only lowered power plant emissions by an estimated 11 million tons or less than one percent compared to the 32% reduction called for under the previous plan, which never took effect due to lawsuits by Repugnant attorneys general.
The decision on the last full day of his chaotic term is significant because power plant emissions are the second largest contributor to greenhouse gases warming the plant and causing global climate change. The incoming administration of Joe Biden will have a clean slate to regulate these emissioins that the conservative Supreme Court decided the EPA has the authority to do so under the Clean Air Act (Massachusettes vs. EPA, 2007) The appeals court said the ACE law was based on a fundamental misreading of the Clear Air Act. No surprise there, as political influence always overruled science and even fact during Trump's regime. Trump's ACE law was worse than no regulation at all because it gave incentives to burn more fossil fuels. One study found that the ACE rule would cause model coal plants to spew 28 percent more carbon dioxide by 2030. EPA assessed that extra pollution could cause between 460 and 1400 additional deaths by 2030, while making respiratory illnesses like asthma worse. ACE was but a part of a broader effort to eliminate or relax environmental protection laws during his tenure in office. Significantly, he withdrew the US from the historic Paris climate accord, a deciosion Biden has pledged to reverse.