NATION/WORLD
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Trump administration: ‘The war on coal is over’
By MICHAEL BIESECKER
and ADAM BEAM
Associated Press
HAZARD, Ky. — A
coalition of left-leaning states
and environmental groups are
vowing to fight the Trump
administration’s move to kill
an Obama-era effort to limit
carbon emissions from coal-
fired power plants.
Speaking Monday in
the coal-mining state of
Kentucky,
Environmental
Protection Agency Admin-
istrator Scott Pruitt said he
would be issuing a new set
of rules overriding the Clean
Power Plan, the centerpiece
of President Barack Obama’s
drive to curb global climate
change.
“The war on coal is over,”
Pruitt declared, adding that
no federal agency should ever
use its authority to “declare
war on any sector of our
economy.”
It was not immediately
clear if Pruitt would seek
to issue a new rule without
congressional
approval,
which Republicans had
criticized the Obama admin-
istration for doing. Pruitt’s
rule wouldn’t become final
for months, and is then highly
AP Photo/Adam Beam
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, talks to a reporter after
speaking at Whayne Supply in Hazard, Ky, Monday.
likely to face a raft of legal
challenges.
New York Attorney
General Eric Schneiderman
was among those who said
they will sue.
“The Trump Administra-
tion’s persistent and indefen-
sible denial of climate change
— and their continued assault
on actions essential to stem-
ming its increasing devasta-
tion — is reprehensible, and I
will use every available legal
tool to fight their dangerous
agenda,” said Schneiderman,
a Democrat.
For Pruitt, getting rid of
the Clean Power Plan will
mark the culmination of a
long fight he began as the
elected attorney general of
Oklahoma. Pruitt was among
about two dozen attorney
generals who sued to stop
Obama’s 2014 push to limit
carbon emissions, stymieing
the limits from ever taking
effect.
Closely aligned with the
oil and gas industry in his
home state, Pruitt rejects the
consensus of scientists that
man-made emissions from
burning fossil fuels are the
primary driver of global
climate change.
President Donald Trump,
who appointed Pruitt and
shares his skepticism of
established climate science,
promised to kill the Clean
Power Plan during the 2016
campaign as part of his
broader pledge to revive
the nation’s struggling coal
mines.
In his order Tuesday, Pruitt
is expected to declare that the
Obama-era rule exceeded
federal law by setting emis-
sions standards that power
plants could not reasonably
meet.
Pruitt appeared at an event
with Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell at Whayne
Supply in Hazard, Kentucky,
a company that sells coal
mining supplies. The store’s
owners have been forced to
lay off about 60 percent of its
workers in recent years.
While cheering the demise
of the Clean Power Plan as
a way to stop the bleeding,
McConnell conceded most
of those lost jobs are never
coming back.
“A lot of damage has been
done,” said McConnell, a
Kentucky Republican. “This
doesn’t immediately bring
everything back, but we think
it stops further decline of
coal fired plants in the United
States and that means there
will still be some market
here.”
Obama’s
plan
was
designed to cut U.S. carbon
dioxide emissions to 32
percent below 2005 levels
by 2030. The rule dictated
specific emission targets for
states based on power-plant
emissions and gave officials
broad latitude to decide how
to achieve reductions.
The Supreme Court put
the plan on hold last year
following legal challenges
by industry and coal-friendly
states. Even so, the plan
helped drive a recent wave
of retirements of coal-fired
plants, which are also being
squeezed by low cost natural
gas and renewable power. In
the absence of stricter federal
regulations curbing green-
house gas emissions, many
states have issued their own
mandates promoting energy
conservation.
The withdrawal of the
Clean Power Plan is the
latest in a series of moves by
Trump and Pruitt to dismantle
Obama’s legacy on fighting
climate change, including
the delay or roll back of rules
limiting levels of toxic pollu-
tion in smokestack emissions
and wastewater discharges
from coal-burning power
plants.
On Thursday, Trump
nominated former coal-in-
dustry lobbyist Andrew
Wheeler to serve as Pruitt’s
top deputy at EPA — one
of several recent political
appointees at the agency with
direct ties to the fossil fuel
interests.
The president announced
earlier this year that he will
pull the United States out of
the landmark Paris climate
agreement. Nearly 200
countries have committed to
combat global warming by
reducing carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases that
contribute to global warming.
“This
president
has
tremendous courage,” Pruitt
said Monday. “He put
America first and said to
the rest of the world we are
going to say no and exit the
Paris Accord. That was the
right thing to do.”
BRIEFLY
Republican was restrained during a joint interview with
Rubio after a re-election fundraiser in Scottsdale.
“Any of us who’ve worked with Sen. Corker know that
he speaks his mind,” Flake said, demurring on whether he
shares Corker’s view that the White House has become an
“adult day care center.”
“I agree with him on some things, I’ve supported a lot of
his agenda, some things I’ve disagreed with and continue to
do so,” Flake said of Trump.
As Trump challenges Iran nuclear
deal, those in Tehran worry
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — As U.S. President Donald Trump
threatens the Iran nuclear deal, those living in Tehran feel
that an accord they have yet to benefit from may already be
doomed, hardening their skepticism about America.
Trump is set to deliver a speech on Iran this week in
which he is expected to decline to certify Iran’s compliance
in the landmark 2015 agreement, referring it to Congress,
and perhaps targeting the country’s paramilitary Revolu-
tionary Guard with new sanctions.
In the streets of the Iranian capital on Monday, The
Associated Press spoke to a series of people about the
nuclear deal: students and teachers, young and old, men in
fashionable clothes and women in chadors.
Nearly all had the same concerns: Benefits from the 2015
accord have yet to reach Iran’s 80 million people despite its
government signing billion-dollar airplane deals. Inflation
remains high, job opportunities stay low.
They also said Trump’s threats fall in line with what
Iranian leaders since the 1979 Islamic Revolution have
warned: Americans can’t be trusted. That feeling has unified
hard-liners supporting Iran’s clerically overseen government,
as well as reformists seeking to change it.
Sheriff: Vegas gunman aimed
at fuel tanks as diversion
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The gunman who killed 58 people
in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history
targeted aviation fuel tanks, stocked his car with explosives
and had personal protection gear as part of an escape plan,
authorities said Monday.
Sheriff Joe Lombardo again expressed frustration with the
pace of the investigation, but not with the investigators who
have yet to pinpoint the motive behind the shooter’s decision
to fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel casino
on a Las Vegas Strip concert crowd of 22,000 on Oct. 1.
“It’s because this individual purposely hid his actions
leading up to this event, and it is difficult for us to find the
answers to those actions,” Lombardo said. “We believe he
decided to take the lives he did and he had a very purposeful
plan that he carried out.”
There is still no evidence Stephen Craig Paddock was
motivated by ideology, or that there was another shooter,
he said. Investigators have found 200 incidents of Paddock
moving through the city, and at no time was he with anyone
else, Lombardo said.
Lombardo said police and FBI agents, including
behavioral profilers, still haven’t found a particular event in
Paddock’s life that might have triggered the shooting. The
sheriff added that a complete evaluation of Paddock’s mental
condition was not yet done. Authorities didn’t find a note in
his room, only a paper with numbers, he said.
In Weinstein’s downfall, a moment
of reckoning for Hollywood
AP file photos
President Donald Trump (left) and Sen. Bob Corker
(R-Iowa, right) traded barbs on Sunday.
Corker’s attacks on Trump
highlight broader concerns in GOP
WASHINGTON — Sen. Bob Corker is hardly the only
Republican lawmaker raising dark concerns about harm
President Donald Trump might cause the U.S. and the world.
But he’s one of the few willing to air those worries in public.
Most GOP senators were silent Monday, a day after Corker
charged that the White House was an “adult day care” and
Trump could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”
The only senator who publicly hinted at similar concerns
was Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who said both Trump and
Corker should “cool it.”
“And I think it would help if the president would be the
first to cool it,” he added.
Tennessee’s Corker, with his Twitter broadsides and an
explosive weekend New York Times interview, gave voice
to concerns that circulate widely on Capitol Hill about an
unpredictable president whose tendency to personalize
every issue creates risks for the GOP agenda. But Trump’s
enduring popularity with a segment of the GOP base serves as
a political muzzle that keeps most elected Republicans from
saying anything similar, even those who believe it to be true.
Grassley, who won’t be up for re-election until 2022,
responded bluntly when asked about the situation.
“I don’t see how it’s productive, and I think that two
words would kind of answer your question from my point of
view: Cool it,” he said. “I think it would be better if we stuck
to the issues and leave personalities out of it.”
A few other Republican senators who provided public
views Monday avoided aligning themselves with Corker.
“You’ll have to ask Sen. Corker what led him to make that
statement. I haven’t made that statement,” Sen. Marco Rubio
of Florida said of Corker’s suggestion that Trump could take
the country into another world war.
Sen. Jeff Flake has been outspoken in his criticism of
Trump, who’s attacked him in return. But the Arizona
NEW YORK (AP) — If in a movie, Harvey Weinstein
would probably cut the scenes of sexual harassment that
have been described against him. They’re too cliché.
The hotel room seductions, the massage requests, the
coercive suggestions. They are, as the Los Angeles Times
editorial board called them, “classics of the genre.” The
encounters depict a Hollywood culture immediately recog-
nizable, one where power-broker sleaziness is an accepted
and acknowledged part of the business.
Hollywood now finds itself in a crisis not just because
one of its most prominent moguls has been disgraced and
fired from the company he co-founded, but because the
allegations against him describe a dark underbelly of the
movie business rarely scrutinized outside the industry. It’s
a moment of reckoning for a Hollywood that has faced
increasing scrutiny over its treatment of women, from pay
equality to fair employment opportunity behind the camera.
Weinstein’s ouster may have been a long time coming,
with allegations going back to 1990. (Weinstein is yet to
respond to directly though on Thursday he apologized for
the pain he’s caused.) But by apparently bringing down such
a pivotal figure — the kind that has long been considered
untouchable because of industry and legal might — many
see a watershed moment for the industry.
“There is a tectonic shift going on with people having
the courage to say, ‘No more,’” said Melissa Silverstein, the
founder and publisher of Women and Hollywood.
3 0
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Free Example:
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and those who are currently serving
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SALUTE E
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We are
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proud and
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Cheryl
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J OSEPH S MITH
your country.
J OSEPH B. D AVIS
Staff Sergeant
Joel Davis
US Marines
Veteran
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Love Evelyn,
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