After halting federal attempts to combat global warming, President Trump is now targeting efforts by states to reduce greenhouse gases, setting up a legal clash.
First, the Trump administration moved to dismantle federal climate regulations. Now it has launched an assault on efforts at the state and local levels, where many leaders are still working to try to avoid the dangerous impacts of global warming.
President Trump outlined the move in an expansive executive order he signed on Tuesday directing the Justice Department to block all “burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security.”
The directive appears aimed at laws in places like Michigan, Colorado and Minnesota, where legislatures have required that all electricity should come from wind, solar and other carbon-free sources. It attacks policies in California, Washington State and Northeastern states that charge companies for the carbon dioxide pollution they emit into the atmosphere. And it specifically assails laws in New York and Vermont that seek to hold fossil fuel companies financially responsible for damage caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas.
“These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy,” Mr. Trump said in the order, adding, “They should not stand.”
Several state attorneys general called Mr. Trump’s order “lawless” and said they were prepared to fight any federal effort to intrude on local laws.
“We don’t want Washington, D.C., telling us we can’t govern the way we see fit,” said Philip J. Weiser, the Democratic attorney general of Colorado, a state that limits the amount of methane that oil and gas companies can emit and is trying to gradually replace fossil fuels with wind, solar and other renewables as a source of electricity.