IMAGE: CNS photo/Carlos Barria, Reuters
By Dennis Sadowski
WASHINGTON
(CNS) — Catholic environmental advocates decried President Donald Trump’s executive
order that would begin a review of his predecessor’s Clean Power Plan, which set targets to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The
advocates said that reversing any effort that reduces greenhouse gas pollution endangers
the planet and puts the world’s most vulnerable people at risk because of
climate change.
Citing
the efforts by Pope Francis, Pope Benedict, St. John Paul II and the U.S.
bishops to address the importance of protecting the environment, Dan Misleh,
executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, said Trump’s action
“neither protects our common home nor promotes the common good.”
“The
administration claims that these new orders will create jobs and grow the
economy,” Misleh said in a statement March 28, the day Trump signed the order. “The fact is, however,
that those who work in energy conservation and renewable energy are already
experiencing an economic boom.”
Misleh
also called for bipartisan cooperation to reach solutions to climate change.
Trump, flanked by coal miners, signed the order, titled “Energy Independence.” In his remarks at the
EPA, the president said the country will still have clean water and clean air, but his order
seeks to eliminate what he said are too many job-killing regulations.
The president said his
goal was to drive energy independence and bring back coal-mining and
manufacturing jobs while reducing the cost of electricity.
According to Patrick Carolan, executive director
of the Franciscan Action Network, Trump’s
order indicates the administration “does not care about climate
change” or protecting people of color and low-income and indigenous
communities that are most likely to experience the effects of pollution.
“By
cutting the Clean Power Plan, the administration is demonstrating that
corporate polluters are more important than the health and prosperity of our
common home,” Carolan said in a statement.
Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des
Moines, Iowa, episcopal liaison to the Catholic Climate Covenant, did not refer
specifically to the executive order during a March 28 conference call — introduced
as ” President Trump’s Dirty Energy Executive Order Conference Call” — that was held shortly before Trump’s executive order was issued.
But he cited three effects of
climate change: the increasingly intense weather events that “we believe
are an assault on God’s creation” and which affect the world’s poor more
drastically than others; the support the U.S. bishops, as well as Catholic
Charities and Catholic Relief Services, have given, in a letter to Congress, of
the Clean Power Plan, vehicle fuel economy standards, the Green Climate Fund
and the Paris climate agreement; and a growth in jobs from alternative energy efforts.
“Pope Francis could not be
more strong on jobs,” said Bishop Pates, who referred to the pope’s 2015
encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home.”
“He
believes that providing work is a moral imperative of every economy.” In
Iowa, he added, 35 percent of the state’s energy comes from wind or solar
power, and has created 17,300 jobs, and has been cited by Iowa Gov. Terry
Branstad, a Republican, as having been a source for “good, high-paying
jobs, helping families grow.”
Bishop Pates said the bishops
and their allies would “work closely” with the White House, Congress
and “everybody who’s involved with this.”
Others on the conference call
with the bishop described other effects of the Trump order.
“The American Lung Association and its partners from
coast to coast will push back,” said Lyndsay Moseley Alexander, assistant
vice president and director of its Healthy Air Campaign, citing the projected
loss of 300,000 school and work days a year to 2030, and an estimated 3,600
“lives ended prematurely,” if the Clean Power Plan is scuttled.
The executive order also would
have deleterious effects on the military, according to Stephen Cheney, a
retired Marine brigadier general who is CEO of the American Security Project.
“On the domestic side, it certainly threatens our coastal military bases
with sea-level rise, and increases the risk to our soldiers, sailors, Air Force
and Marines,” he said. Internationally, he added, “it also acts as a
threat multiplier all over the world.”
Shannon Baker-Branstetter, energy
and environment policy counsel for Consumers Union, said the goal of short-term
gain risks the Clean Power Plan’s long-term benefits, pointing to an estimated
$150 a year in annual savings per household on utility bills by 2030. Medical
saving costs also would result from cleaner power, Baker-Branstetter added.
Reverting to old ways means a
higher likelihood of weather-related crop failures, meaning higher food costs
and insurance premiums. “They shift the cost away from polluting entities
and onto families,” she said. Baker-Branstetter also voiced concern that the
executive order could ” prohibit the government from quantifying the
impact” of the changes ordered by Trump.
Gina McCarthy, a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School and former EPA administrator,
charged in a statement that the Trump administration wants “us to travel
back to when smokestacks damaged our health and polluted our air, instead of taking every
opportunity to support clean jobs of the future.”
“This
is not just dangerous; it’s embarrassing to us and our businesses on a global
scale to be dismissing opportunities for new technologies, economic growth and
U.S. leadership,” said McCarthy, who is Catholic.
Thomas J.
Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president, supported Trump’s action to “make
regulatory relief and energy security a top priority.”
“These
executive actions are a welcome departure from the previous administration’s
strategy of making energy more expensive through costly, job-killing regulations
that choked our economy,” he said in a statement released late March 27.
Beyond
the Clean Power Plan, Trump’s order prioritizes the development of domestic
coal, oil and natural gas reserves over renewable energy sources and opens
federal land to coal leases. The president’s blueprint calls for dismantling
many of the environmental initiatives of President Barack Obama that were meant
to address what the vast majority of scientists have concluded is human-caused
climate change.
The
Trump administration has maintained that there can be a balance between the need for
jobs and economic growth and protecting the environment.
Coal usage
for electrical power generation has seen a decline in recent years as utility
companies converted plants from coal to less costly natural gas during the past
decade.
While
Trump has ordered a review of the Obama’s signature plan, it has been on hold,
however, as a federal appeals court weighs a legal challenge from 27 states and
100 companies. The plan was Obama’s primary tool to meet the country’s emissions
reductions goals under the 2015 Paris climate accord.
Meanwhile,
the CEO of the nation’s largest privately held coal company urged Trump to
“temper his expectations” about mining industry jobs making a
comeback.
Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy,
told The Guardian newspaper March 27 that he supported the review of the Clean
Power Plan, but that it was market forces, rather than government regulations,
that largely affect employment in the U.S. coal industry.
Critics
have described the Obama-era plan as an overreach by the EPA that
exceeds the original intent of the Clean Air Act. Supporters have said the plan
would lead to thousands of clean energy jobs, reduce illnesses caused by air
pollution and slow climate change.
The plan called for reducing
power plant emissions by 2030 by about 32 percent from 2005 levels. It set
targets for each state to reach. Coal-fired power plants are the nation’s
largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The EPA introduced the
Clean Power Plan in August 2015, 26 months after Obama outlined general principles
for tighter limits on power plant
emissions in a speech at Georgetown University. He also stressed then the
importance of meeting the country’s growing electrical demand through renewable
energy sources and called for efficiency upgrades to the country’s electrical
grid.
The Dominican Sisters of Adrian,
Michigan, said Trump’s action “sends a dangerous signal to the rest of the
world that the United States is reneging on its pledge to cut carbon emissions
by 26 percent by 2025, putting the historic Paris agreement — and the well-being
of people and planet — in jeopardy.”
The Paris climate agreement has
been ratified by 134 of the 197 countries that approved it in December 2015
under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. President Barack Obama
ratified the agreement on his own, bypassing the U.S. Senate. The agreement
went into force last October after enough countries ratified it.
The Dominicans’ statement said
Trump’s order “will not put all coal miners to work (because) most mining
is increasingly mechanized.”
“It will give a green light
to planet-warming carbon pollution, threatening to relegate our children to an
irreversible future of extreme weather events, droughts, floods, and untold
billions in costs to adapt to these harmful impacts,” it said.
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Contributing to this report was
Mark Pattison in Washington. Follow Sadowski and Pattison on Twitter: @DennisSadowski and @MeMarkPattison.
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