Climate change-denying President Donald Trump received a pro-coal group’s recently created award on Wednesday as his administration prepares to further weaken regulations on greenhouse gases.
Trump, 79, held an event Wednesday at the White House with Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, during which he announced an executive order directing the Defense Department to buy electricity from coal-fired power plants.
Trump also awarded $175 million in federal funding to improve six coal plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina and Kentucky, according to an Energy Department press release.
The Washington Coal Club, through National Coal Council President James Grech, then presented Trump with the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal” award. Like the “FIFA Peace Prize,” Trump was its first recipient.
The pro-coal lobbying group has ties to the fossil-fuel industry. One of Trump’s EPA administrators during his first term, Andrew Wheeler, once held the position of vice president.
The Sierra Club, the grassroots environmental organization, condemned Trump’s pro-coal announcements.
“Americans are already grappling with soaring energy costs and a massive affordability crisis,” Beyond Coal Campaign Director Laurie Williams said in a statement. “Rather than helping people with their crippling electric bills, Donald Trump is illegally bailing out his coal industry buddies with precious taxpayer dollars. As energy bills and hospital bills stack up for everyday families, Americans have one man to blame: Donald Trump—the undisputed champion of expensive energy and deadly pollution.”
Trump, who has called climate change a “con job,” is taking more fossil fuel-friendly actions this week. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the administration is planning to repeal what’s known as the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which determined that six greenhouse gases threaten public health. That finding allowed the EPA to enact emissions caps on power plants and fuel economy standards for vehicles.
“This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” Zeldin proudly told the paper.
That comes after the administration has given several wins to business interests at the expense of the environment.
Last July, Zeldin’s EPA announced it was closing its office of research and development, which measures the harmful effects of toxic chemicals and water pollution.
As of last September, the administration had declared more than 160 pollution-producing facilities exempt from certain Clean Air Act standards, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
And the Trump administration last year considered allowing the use of cancer-causing asbestos.
More recently, The New York Times reported that Zeldin’s agency would be ending the long-running practice of assigning a value to human life when examining how regulations affect certain air pollutants. Yet, the agency would still document the business costs of complying with those regulations.
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