Two days before President Donald Trump plans to sign a sweeping executive order to roll back Obama-era environmental protections, his EPA chief called the landmark 2015 international agreement to fight climate change ājust a bad dealā for the U.S.āChina and India, the largest producers of CO2 internationally, got away scot-free,ā EPA head Scott Pruitt said in a Sunday ABC interview. Pruitt was referring to the Paris Climate Agreement, in which almost every country in the world committed to decreasing emissions of climate changeācausing greenhouse gas, such as carbon dioxide (CO2). Unlike in previous agreements, both developing and developed countries pledged to help.ā[China and India] didnāt have to take steps till 2030,ā Pruitt went on. āSo weāve penalized ourselves through lost jobs while [they] didnāt take steps to address the issue internationally. So Paris was just a bad deal, in my estimation.āWhile on the campaign trail, Trump said he would ācancelā the Paris agreement.Pruitt also labeled the Clean Power Plan, an Obama initiative to cut power plantsā carbon pollution, as part of āpast administrationās effort to kill jobs throughout the country.ā The plan ā already stayed thanks to a lawsuit Pruitt helped originally bring ā was seen as an important part of meeting the goals the United States set in the Paris accord.Yet Pruittās comment that China and India are the ālargest producers of CO2 internationallyā may be misleading. While China does emit more carbon dioxide than any other country in the world, the next-biggest emitter is not India, according to the U.S. Energy Information administration. That would be the United States.While Chinaās energy consumption led the country to emit more than 9,000 million metric tons of carbon in 2014, the United States released about half that amount ā even though the United States has less than a third of Chinaās population. India emitted only about 1,800 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that year.China and the United Statesā carbon emissions have declined in recent years, leading the global rate of carbon emissions to flatten even as the world economy grows. Experts say this trend may represent a ādecouplingā of the conventional wisdom that economies cannot grow and go green at the same time.But the United Statesā carbon emissions may soon be on the rise again, as Pruitt revealed in his Sunday interview that Trumpās executive order will review, rescind, or revise several federal environmental protections. And its impact may be immense, according to details of the order shared with Bloomberg News.Not only will the Clean Power Plan likely be dismantled, but other regulations are also at risk. For instance, during the Obama administration, officials had to often calculate the effects of climate change by factoring a metric called āthe social cost of carbonā into their decision-making. Trumpās executive order is expected to end that policy.These changes may help resurrect the ailing U.S. coal industry, which Trump promised to improve during his campaign.Itās unclear whether Trump will use the order to withdraw from the Paris accord, but Pruitt said that the Clean Power Plan was ānot tetheredā to that agreement, suggesting that Trump may pull the United States out of the deal later on.āThis is about making sure that we have a pro-growth and pro-environment approach to how we do regulation in this country,ā Pruitt said of the order.
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