By Stephen Crowley / The New York Times
President Donald J. Trump, flanked by company executives and miners, signed a long-promised executive order on Tuesday to nullify President Barack Obama’s climate-change efforts and revive the coal industry, effectively ceding US leadership in the international campaign to curb the dangerous heating of the planet.
Trump made clear that the United States had no intention of meeting the commitments that his predecessor made to curb planet-warming carbon- dioxide pollution, turning denials of climate change into national policy.
At a ceremony, Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency to start the complex and lengthy legal process of withdrawing and rewriting the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which would have closed hundreds of coal-fired power plants, frozen construction of new plants, and replaced them with vast new wind and solar farms.
“C’mon, fellas. You know what this is? You know what this says?” Trump said to the miners. “You’re going back to work.”