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Aerial view of the coal powered electricity power station known as Fort Martin outside Morgantown, WV.<\/span>BackyardProduction\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This story was originally published by<\/em>\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0Guardian<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration<\/em>.<\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s administration<\/span> is set to claim planet-heating pollution spewing from US power plants is so globally insignificant it should be spared any sort of climate regulation.<\/p>\n But, in fact, the volume of these emissions is stark\u2014if the US power sector were a country, it would be the sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0drafted a plan to delete all restrictions on greenhouse gases coming from coal and gas-fired power plants in the US because they \u201cdo not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution\u201d and are a tiny and shrinking share of the overall global emissions that are driving the climate crisis.<\/p>\n However,\u00a0a new analysis shows<\/a>\u00a0that the emissions from American fossil-fuel plants are prominent on a global scale, having contributed 5 percent of all planet-heating pollution since 1990. If it were a country, the US power sector would be the sixth largest emitter in the world, eclipsing the annual emissions from all sources in Japan, Brazil, the UK, and Canada, among other nations.<\/p>\n \u201cThat seems rather significant to me,\u201d said Jason Schwartz, co-author of the report from New York University\u2019s Institute for Policy Integrity. \u201cIf this administration wants to argue only China has significant emissions they can try to do that, but a court will review that, and under any reasonable interpretation will find that US power plant emissions are significant too.\u201d<\/p>\n Fossil fuel-derived electricity is responsible for the second largest source of emissions in the US, behind transportation. No country in history\u00a0has caused<\/a>\u00a0more carbon pollution than the US, and while its power sector\u2019s emissions have\u00a0declined somewhat<\/a>\u00a0in recent years, largely through a market-based decline in heavily polluting coal, it remains a major driver of the climate crisis.<\/p>\n The cocktail of toxins emitted by power plants have a range of impacts, the NYU analysis points out. A single year of emissions in 2022 will cause 5,300 deaths in the US from air pollution over many decades, along with climate impacts that will result in global damages of $370 billion, including $225 billion in global health damages and $75 billion in lost labor productivity.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a completely illogical argument: There\u2019s not a lot of emissions so don\u2019t worry, but yet we have to block every attempt to control them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cWe were surprised when we ran the numbers just how quickly these deaths start tallying up,\u201d said Schwartz. \u201cAll of these harms stack up on top of each other. Climate change will be the most important public health issue this century and we can\u2019t just ignore the US power sector\u2019s contribution to that public health crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0Trump administration<\/a>, though, is looking to dismantle a plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The move comes as part of a wider deregulatory blitz upon a wide range of rules aimed at protecting clean air and water; on Thursday, the EPA also confirmed a plan to delay the implementation of Clean Air Act protections against methane and other harmful pollutants from fossil fuel production.<\/p>\n Removing these protections will prove not only dangerous, but also costly, said Christopher Frey, who was a science advisor to Joe Biden and led a clean air EPA committee under Barack Obama.<\/p>\n \u201cA \u2018do nothing\u2019 policy to rollback greenhouse gas emission standards is not really a policy to do nothing,\u201d said Frey, now an associate dean at North Carolina State University\u2019s college of engineering. \u201cIt is a policy to force us to have to do more later to compensate for not taking preventive action sooner. It is a policy to knowingly cause more damage for folks in the not so distant future to contend with.\u201d<\/p>\n The power plant plan has endured a tortuous history, having been first put forward by the Obama administration, only to be halted by the first Trump administration and also the Supreme Court. The Biden administration last year\u00a0rolled out<\/a>\u00a0a more limited version of the plan aimed at satisfying the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n This version is now targeted for repeal by the Trump administration, expected in the coming weeks ahead of a public comment period and further expected legal challenges. Despite pointing to declining power plant emissions in its justification, the Trump administration has simultaneously attempted to increase these emissions by demanding\u00a0a revival of the coal industry<\/a>, boosting\u00a0oil and gas drilling<\/a>\u00a0and axing\u00a0incentives for cleaner energy<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump promised to kill the clean power plan in his first term, and we continue to build on that progress now,\u201d said Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA. \u201cIn reconsidering the Biden-Harris rule that ran afoul of Supreme Court case law, we are seeking to ensure that the agency follows the rule of law while providing all Americans with access to reliable and affordable energy.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has\u00a0long<\/a>\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0that the US should not engage in international climate talks because its emissions footprint is negligible, noted Judith Enck, who served as an EPA regional administrator under Obama. Meanwhile, his administration has cracked down on\u00a0states\u2019 ability<\/a>\u00a0to regulate emissions, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cApparently there is no level of governance where we can have these regulations,\u201d Enck said. \u201cIt\u2019s a completely illogical argument: There\u2019s not a lot of emissions so don\u2019t worry, but yet we have to block every attempt to control them at the state, federal [and] international levels?\u201d<\/p>\n Experts have questioned whether pollution needs to be deemed \u201csignificant\u201d in order to be subjected to the\u00a0Clean Air Act<\/a>, which has been used to regulate even proportionally small levels of environmental toxins.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is absolutely no legal basis for them to propose a pollutant like CO2 has to meet some sort of significance, they are making this up, this is make-believe law,\u201d said Joseph Goffman, who led the\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>EPA\u2019s office of air and radiation during Biden\u2019s term. \u201cThis is a sort of cheat code to try to neutralize any tool they fear might be used to reduce greenhouse gases.\u201d<\/p>\n The climate crisis is a global problem of the shared commons that experts say requires all countries, particularly the largest emitters, to remedy. Goffman said the Trump administration is attempting to reject this basic tenet. \u201cThey are trying to write one of the biggest historical emitters in the world a get-out-of-jail-free card,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n