Trump will end Obama's signature Clean Power Plan this week: EPA chief

New EPA chief Scott Pruitt also called the Paris climate accord "a bad deal."

ByABC News
March 26, 2017, 1:40 PM

— -- Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt slammed the 2015 Paris accord to combat climate change as "a bad deal."

Pruitt also revealed in an interview with ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that President Trump will this week sign a new executive order that will eliminate a signature Obama-era policy for combating climate change, the Clean Power Plan.

The policy, which the Supreme Court put on hold pending judicial review, aims to cut carbon emissions from U.S. power plants.

But Pruitt said on ABC's "This Week" that the Obama administration had "a very anti-fossil fuel strategy, coal, natural gas and the rest" and that Trump aims to change that with the goal of producing jobs and lowering electricity rates for consumers.

The former Oklahoma attorney general also suggested the Paris climate accord is unfair to the U.S.

"China and India, the largest producers of [carbon dioxide] internationally, got away scot-free” in the climate pact, Pruitt said. “So we’ve penalized ourselves through lost jobs while China and India didn’t take steps to address the issue internationally. So Paris was just a bad deal, in my estimation.”

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