Donald Trump’s climate-change plan will make matters worse than if he did nothing at all, according to new Harvard research. Greenhouse-gas emissions will “rebound” under the Trump policy, researchers say, because the plan postpones the retirement of coal-fired power plants. Carbon-dioxide emissions will be 8.7 percent higher in some states by 2030 when compared to having no policy at all. The Harvard study comes ahead of a congressional hearing Wednesday to confirm Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. “This new plan essentially gives out a free pass for carbon pollution,” said Kathleen Lambert, who coauthored the research. “It’s a recipe for increased carbon emissions. It will make it even harder for the U.S. to meet its emissions targets under the Paris accord and sets us in exactly the opposite direction we need to go in.” The Obama administration’s clean-power plan set limits on pollution and helped phase out the use of coal, but Trump wants to replace it with a weaker alternative called the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.
