Trump abolishes Obama restrictions on coal-powered installations

The Trump administration has undermined another piece of the Obama era: the intervention this time is on the environmental issue and concerns the carbon dioxide emissions of coal-fired power plants. The previous US administration had set clear limits also as part of its strategy for the fight against climate change. The EPA (the Environmental Protection Agency) of the Trump era today unveiled its 'alternative' program, which gives to individual states the power to set emission limits on their territory.

An electoral promise of the tycoon who flies in West Virginia to announce that he has kept his word. Yet the legal battle is considered almost certain, with the environmental groups already on the warpath. Because if on one hand the revocation of the legislation launched by Barack Obama in 2015 promises to put an end to what Trump has always referred to as the "war on coal" by giving breath to a crucial sector for some areas of the country (West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania in particular) among the areas that in the last ten years have suffered the most from the economic crisis, on the other hand the program is accompanied by a sort of 'admission of guilt'. The same analysis of Epa admits that it can not provide projections about the effects of the new plan on public health, will depend on the decisions of the States on itself and how to regulate the emissions, on the other hand, the models developed by the same agency calculate that with the new plan you would avoid between 300 and 1500 premature deaths a year by 2030, with the Obama plan instead these were between 1500 and 3600.

According to Gina McCarthy, who was head of the EPA during the Obama administration and developed the 'Clean Power Plan’, «actually it's just a move to respond to their base (electoral note) and not to they fulfill their task of protecting public health». But Donald Trump was clear in his intentions and on several occasions, also in motivating the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement on Climate: «I was elected by the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris». A 'promise' that the President reiterates in a meeting in Charleston, West Virginia, in front of the crowd of his supporters while entering a hot electoral period ahead of midterm elections in November. Unveiled today is subject to a period of public evaluation before the final approval of the president, and the debate is already on, with a series of states that have expressed their intentions against the provision, especially California. «A declaration of war against America and all humanity», democrat Jerry Brown, governor of California, said in a note. «It will not hold up - he continued - the truth and common sense will triumph over the absurdity 'of Trump administration».