nuclear-news

America’s EPA head announces pullout from a global pact to cut emissions

U.S. will change course on climate policy, says former EPA transition head Reuters, By Nina Chestney |30 JAN 17  LONDON The United States will switch course on climate change and pull out of a global pact to cut emissions, said Myron Ebell, who headed U.S. President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team until his inauguration.

Ebell is the director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a U.S. conservative think tank, and helped to guide the EPA’s transition after Trump was elected in November until he was sworn in on Jan. 20.

Trump, a climate skeptic, campaigned on a pledge to boost the U.S. oil and gas drilling and coal mining industries by reducing regulation.

He alarmed nations that backed the 2015 Paris agreement to cut greenhouse gases by pledging to pull the United States out of the global deal agreed by nearly 200 countries. However, Trump told the New York Times in November that he had an “open mind” on the agreement.

Trump’s administration has asked the EPA to halt all contracts, grants and interagency agreements pending a review, sources said.

“The U.S. will clearly change its course on climate policy. Trump has made it clear he will withdraw from the Paris Agreement. He could do it by executive order tomorrow or he could do it as part of a larger package,” Ebell told reporters in London on Monday.

The top energy official for the European Union, meanwhile, said he hoped that Trump would stick to the Paris deal……..http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-epa-idUSKBN15E1MM

February 1, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, USA