Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Trump’s position on climate change was a “global embarrassment” while Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the president was perpetuating a “know-nothing, anti-science agenda.”
“America should not be taken back to a time when it was hard to breathe, when our cities were filled with haze and smog, and when our rivers were so polluted they caught fire,” Leahy said.
In a floor speech Tuesday, Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said “some of the best minds of the 18th century are apparently advising President Trump on science matters.”
“President Trump today plans to unravel the Clean Power Plan – a plan that once implemented would reduce carbon emissions by 170 million tons, the equivalent of 166 million cars. Why? False science. False economics,” Welch said. “President Trump believes we either have jobs or a clean environment. He has it exactly wrong. We have both or we have neither. A confident nation faces its problems – it doesn’t deny them.”
Flanked by coal miners in a White House ceremony Tuesday, Trump signed an order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a carefully crafted rule that limits the amount of carbon emissions from power plants across the country.
Trump reversed Obama-era requirements that federal agencies insert climate change mitigation language into mission statements. And the president struck down the government’s “social cost of carbon” metric, which priced carbon by the ton, taking into account the future costs associated with climate change, such as coastal erosion and food shortages.
The Trump order also directs the EPA to relax or rescind rules on methane emissions at oil and gas plants and lifts the moratorium for coal mining on federal lands.
The Clean Power Plan was the main component to America’s promise in the 2015 Paris climate accords to reduce emissions from 2005 levels by 26 percent by 2025.
Vermont was one of three states excluded from the Clean Power Plan because the state does not house power plants big enough to qualify for the regulations.
But while Vermont is not a big polluting state, Vermont environment officials said the Obama rules would benefit the state’s public health, cutting down on the number of asthma attacks and heart attacks from particulate matter from power plants in the Midwest.
“We’re exempt from the requirements of the new rule, but we get to benefit from its implementation,” Deb Markowitz, then secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, told The Associated Press short after the rules were finalized in 2015.
According to EPA data, 10 Vermont companies released more than 480,000 metric tons of carbon emissions in 2015, the most recent year for which numbers are available. The No. 1 polluter in the state that year, according to the EPA, was the GlobalFoundries facility in Essex Junction.
While Vermont is a relatively clean state with few major polluters — and a burgeoning green energy sector — the state is not immune from the impacts of climate change. According to the EPA, the state has warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century, a change that has made for milder winters and heavier rainstorms.
The federal agency expects that as the Vermont climate becomes more temperate, tick season will last longer, and invasive species will spread farther north. As droughts intensify, crop yields will shrink and cows will produce less milk. The ideal habitat for sugar maple trees will migrate north into Canada.
Trump’s Tuesday order is representative of a broader mission of his administration to nix Obama-era rules curbing pollution. Earlier this month, Trump directed the EPA to reconsider vehicle emission regulations, and in February he overturned a rule prohibiting coal companies from dumping waste into public waterways.
Democratic-leaning states have pledged to fight Trump’s environmental actions in court, alleging they violate various federal statutes, including the Clean Air Act. This week, Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan joined a coalition of 23 states, cities and counties opposed to the rollback of the Clean Power Plan.
“We won’t hesitate to protect those we serve — including by aggressively opposing in court President Trump’s actions that ignore both the law and the critical importance of confronting the very real threat of climate change,” Donovan said in a statement Tuesday.
A number of Democratic governors promised this week to continue abiding by the regulations, including New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California’s Jerry Brown. Gov. Phil Scott did not return a request for comment on the Trump environmental actions.
