Press Releases

Reps. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) and Don Beyer (D-VA) issued scathing denunciations of President Trump’s Executive Orders on climate and the environment today.

“We all want our world to be a safe, healthy place to raise our families and grow our economy.  Unfortunately, the President’s action today slows down the progress we’ve been making and puts U.S. leadership on climate in question,” said Rep. Alan Lowenthal.  “This executive order only kicks the climate change can further down the road, forcing future generations to suffer and deal with it. With a stroke of his pen, President Trump has pushed the collective head of the U.S. government further into the sand on climate change.”

“President Trump’s executive orders represent a multi-pronged retreat from American global leadership on the existential threat of our time: climate change,” said Rep. Don Beyer. “His failure to understand basic economics – that coal jobs were hurt by natural gas and automation – in favor of campaign rhetoric is shocking. President Trump could have acted to take our country, our economy, and our environment forward. But rather he chose to vacate U.S. leadership in the fight to address global carbon pollution.”

The Executive Orders, signed by the President in a ceremony at the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency, require that agency to begin unraveling the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan, a central pillar of the US strategy to fight climate change.

They also direct federal agencies to end the use of the metric known as the “social cost of carbon,” which factors the impact on climate into agency decisions. Another order directs the Department of the Interior to lift its moratorium on coal and gas development on public lands.