Trump dropping climate change impact from government reviews: report

President Trump plans to drop climate change as a factor in making government decisions, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

The move, which would reportedly cover environmental reviews of appliance standards, industry regulations and pipeline projects, would largely reverse how the Obama administration addressed climate change.

Former President Obama required government agencies to submit formal environmental reviews that factored the possible economic harm and impact projects would have from climate change.

{mosads}Trump’s plan would also reconsider the metric the Obama administration used to measure projects’ expected economic costs and damage to the climate, called the “social cost of carbon,” Bloomberg reports. Obama used the metric to justify a set of environmental regulations.

Should Trump sign the order reversing this Obama-era approach, some changes could be implemented immediately while some could take years.

Bloomberg also reports the order would wipe out industry restrictions on methane emissions, a greenhouse gas.

Trump during the presidential race repeatedly promised to bring back coal jobs, and Bloomberg reports that this order would like lead to policy changes that make coal extraction easier.  

American Energy Alliance President Tom Pyle praised the possibility that the Obama regulations would be reversed.

“President Obama created such a labyrinth of rules and orders and regulations to cement his agenda across practically every agency,” Pyle told Bloomberg.

Pyle, the leader of a fossil fuel-oriented advocacy group, said Obama’s policies restricted companies from fully utilizing non-renewable energy sources.

“It was designed to put into the mission of the agencies climate change first and make the rest of their mission second. This was a constraint deliberately set up by the previous administration to make it difficult to utilize coal, oil and natural gas,” Pyle said.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, argue that Trump’s approach will upend the climate change commitments the U.S. made abroad and hurt the country’s environment.

Paul Getsos, national coordinator of People’s Climate Movement, believes Trump’s order will put “our country, our communities and our people at great risk.”

“It also sends a dangerous message to the world that the United States does not care about climate change or protecting front-line communities,” Getsos told Bloomberg.