Trump's Climate Change Order: EPA Accidentally Releases Statement Slamming 'Irrational' Move

On Thursday, just two days after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on “energy independence,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a statement containing congratulatory quotes from several individuals and organization. What stood out was a quote attributed to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia), a prominent Trump supporter and an outspoken advocate for the coal industry.

“With this Executive Order, President Trump has chosen to recklessly bury his head in the sand,” the quote read. “Walking away from the Clean Power Plan and other climate initiatives, including critical resiliency projects is not just irresponsible – it’s irrational. Today’s executive order calls into question America’s credibility and our commitment to tackling the greatest environmental challenge of our lifetime. With the world watching, President Trump and Administrator Pruitt have chosen to shirk our responsibility, disregard clear science and undo the significant progress our country has made to ensure we leave a better, more sustainable planet for generations to come. ”

Read: Trump Issues Executive Order On Clean Power Plan

The less-than-glowing commendation of Trump’s actions was soon removed by the EPA, which corrected the statement, stating it “misattributed a quote from another senator to Senator Capito.”

“An internal draft was mistakenly sent with a quote that belonged to Senator Carper but was wrongly attributed to Senator Capito, whom we originally meant to quote,” an unnamed EPA spokesperson told Mother Jones. “We apologize for the error and are making sure that our process is improved as we build our team.”

The criticism actually came from Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, a Democrat, who also called Trump’s promises of bringing back the coal industry “an insult to the men and women who voted for him.”

As part of Tuesday’s executive order, the president lifted the ban on federal leasing of land for coal production. However, experts do not share Trump’s optimism on whether the move would actually bring back lost coal jobs, primarily because the two key factors that are currently plaguing the coal industry — competition from cheap natural gas and dropping demand in China — cannot be reversed.

According to recent analysis by Brookings Institution, environmental regulations played only a small role in the decline in employment in the coal industry, and automation began eating into coal jobs much before the Clean Power Plan was announced in 2015.

“Nationwide, employment in the coal mining industry peaked in 1920, when it employed roughly 785,000 people. The more recent decline started in 1980, when the industry employed approximately 242,000 people,” Brookings researchers Devashree Saha and Sifan Liu wrote in their analysis. “By 2015, coal mining had shed 59 percent of its workforce, compared to 1980.”

However, this hasn’t stopped supporters of Trump’s rollback of the Clean Power Plan from lauding his move.

“Stopping this disastrous plan will preserve America’s coal industry, expand our manufacturing renaissance that is reliant upon affordable energy, and protect American families from unprecedented hikes in their electric bills,” Capito was quoted as saying in the corrected EPA press release. “I was honored to join the president for the signing of this Executive Order, and I look forward to continuing working with the Trump administration to advance environmentally responsible policies that grow the economy – not kill jobs.”