In 2017 the current US president Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin scaling back President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and exited the Paris Climate Agreement. In 2018, the Trump Administration’s head of the EPA Scott Pruitt, departed his position under many clouds of scandal, including the installation of a $43,000 secure phone booth.  In August 2018, under Trump’s direction, the EPA announced its replacement for the Clean Power Plan. The new plan, Affordable Clean Energy Rule or ACT, purports to have clean air goals but differs from the CPP in allowing each state to how to achieve its goals including keeping coal plants operating and encouraging efficiency improvements for current coal plants. ACT does not “pick winners and losers.” https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-08/documents/ace-cpp_side_by_side.pdf

Even the Trump administration acknowledges that ACT will result in higher emissions and a higher rate of deaths from these emissions. The Trump administration argues that a lowering of regulations is necessary to make certain that coal plants have time to become more efficient.

In Australia, Federal Coalition MPs voted to support the new National Energy Guarantee or, NEG.  The NEG calls for no new investment in large scale wind, solar or battery storage from 2022 through 2030, and supports current coal generation and new coal generation under the guise of ensuring baseload availability and keeping costs down for ratepayers.  The coalition also called for an immediate end to the Renewable Energy Target, or RET, and end to rebates for rooftop solar, and an exit from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. This means that the NEG is one step closer to becoming Australia’s energy direction.

Comment: Just when you thought the world had turned the corner on climate change, two polluting nations throw their speeding cars in reverse and ram backwards through progress. Both the US ACT and Australia’s NEG are obvious, clear, undeniably coal supporting documents that may, and only may, keep electricity costs down (for a very short time), but in the long term will result in the much higher costs of climate change damage remediation. These costs cannot be avoided by executive order or by legislation with misleading names. Sadly, other countries will take their cues from the US and Australia and turn their backs on needed change.

Lesson: Two more examples of the following – no matter the trend, it can and probably will be reversed and what the government giveth, the government will taketh away.  On the former, the trend to renewable energy is clear, it can be slowed, it will speed up again. Unfortunately, the world is almost out of climate-time. On the latter, coal and all polluters need to remember, what governments of the US and Australia have giveth to you, another government will taketh away.