This week we would like to talk about the so-called affordable so-called clean energy

rule and why Gina McCarthy is pulling out her bell-bottom pens. Hello and welcome to Outrage and Optimism a new podcast about dealing with the

climate crisis and remaking the world. I'm Tom Rifikarnack. I'm Christina

Figuettes and I'm Paul Dickinson and today we discuss the repeal of the

clean power plan announced last week by the Trump EPA we talk about what happened

what it means and why its significance goes well beyond climate change.

Plus we talk to Gina McCarthy, former administrator of the EPA under President Obama

and current professor of public health at Harvard University.

Thanks for being here.

So this week we're in the US and just a few days ago the clean power plan which was

Barack Obama's signature policy to address greenhouse gas emissions from power plants

was replaced by the EPA with what is called the affordable clean energy

rule and they could hardly be more different.

Now we should say at the top end that due to an endangerment finding which established that greenhouse gases are pollutants,

the EPA is required to do something about them.

But what is entirely evident here is that the Trump administration is claiming to put in place a rule but in fact doing nothing at all.

It has claimed it has no authority to do anything other than a few small fixes to technology

and as a result has produced a rule which may actually increase emissions, but even by their own best case estimates would lead to a reduction of only 1.5% by 2030.

The EPA's own analysis shows that this could lead to more than 1,400 additional

deaths per year and 48,000 new cases of asthma, not to mention the catastrophic impact in terms of increased

greenhouse gas emissions and all the chaos that could flow from that.

So this will of course be challenged in the courts and various attorneys general are gearing up to challenge it now,

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