The Environmental Protection Agency’s new Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule would allow states the flexibility to set their own standards for performance at existing coal-fired power plants, rather than follow a single federal standard.

The EPA says the measure is designed to replace Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which called for cuts to greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and a shift toward solar, wind and less polluting natural gas.

The move marks the latest effort by Trump’s administration to roll back the environmental legacy of his Democratic predecessor, having already pulled out of the 2015 Paris climate accord aimed at slashing global fossil fuel emissions.

Obama’s energy plan aimed to usher in the strictest anti-pollution measures in history on power plants, but was put on hold in 2016 by the US Supreme Court.

Trump, whose ascent to the presidency effectively killed off the plan, had blasted it as “intrusive” and claimed it would “kill jobs.”

The president trumpeted the plan at a rally late Tuesday in the coal-producing state of West Virginia.

“We are putting our great coal miners back to work,” he said, adding: “We love clean, beautiful, West Virginia coal.”

Earlier, EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler told reporters in a call: “The era of top-down, one-size-fits-all federal mandates is over.”

The new plan could take months or even years to take effect. Legal challenges are already lining up, as the proposal awaits a 60-day comment period before it can be finalized.

Critics warned the plan will boost emissions from power plants, which emit about 28 percent of US greenhouse gases, and worsen global warming.

“Under this proposal, the air will be dirtier and we’ll be less healthy as a country because President Trump is siding with a few powerful special interests,” said Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer.

Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the plan called for “only modest efficiency improvements at individual power plants, which will barely make a dent in cutting heat-trapping emissions from the electricity sector, and could even, under some circumstances, lead to increased emissions depending on how much the plants are run.”

Kimmell said the new rules “would also result in more pollution from nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury and other harmful pollutants.”

– Coal in decline –

AFP / Alain BOMMENEL. The United States, Donald Trump and coal.

The White House said in a statement that, if finalized, the rule “will significantly decrease bureaucratic red tape and compliance costs, keeping American energy affordable and competitive on the world stage.”

The White House claimed it would also save $6.4 billion in compliance costs for industry, compared to the Obama plan.

“We’re the only country in the world doing this, looking at coal as the future instead of understanding the future is about clean air, the future is about clean energy,” Gina McCarthy, who served as EPA administrator under Obama, told CNN.

Despite Trump’s support for coal plants, there have been many closures.

Some 40 percent of coal plants in operation in 2010 are now closed or slated to close, according to estimates from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

According to Bob Perciasepe, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, “EPA is now proposing a plan that will essentially be ignored by most of the industry.”

Bill Wehrum, administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, acknowledged that the industry “continues to transform in front of our eyes.”

“What we see is an ongoing significant shift in the direction of natural gas and renewable energy generation,” he told reporters.

Wehrum said that because of the shifting energy landscape, he expected emissions to fall at a rate “roughly comparable” to the goals outlined under the Obama-era plan, which called for a 26 percent cut in greenhouse gases from power plants by 2025, compared to 2005 levels.

According to former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a leading philanthropist and climate activist, coal is a losing proposition.

“Americans are demanding cleaner air and cheaper, cleaner energy — and cities, states and businesses are delivering,” he said in a statement.

“Wind, solar and other clean energy sources are beating coal in the marketplace, which is benefiting both public health and the economy. That will continue to happen even if the EPA keeps spitting in the wind.”

Featured Photo: “GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File / MARK WILSON. Emissions spew from a large stack at the coal-fired Brandon Shores Power Plant in Baltimore, Maryland.”

Directly across from the White House, demonstrators filled Lafayette Square park in an atmosphere of both indignation and sadness, before marching toward the Capitol.

“We don’t believe in borders, we don’t believe in walls,” Sebastian Medina-Tayac, of the Piscataway Indian Nation, declared in English and Spanish at the start of the rally dubbed “Families Belong Together.”

Loudspeakers broadcast the cries of a child split from its relatives, as a Brazilian mother told of being separated from her own son.

“I missed nine months of his life and it should never have happened,” said the woman, Jocelyn, whose case dates from before the practice of separating families intensified in May.

“Shame! Shame!” the crowd responded in temperatures above 90 F (33 C).

The president could not hear the protesters’ shouts, as he spent the day in Bedminster, New Jersey at the Trump National Golf Club.

There, too, protesters gathered on his motorcade route, many of them with signs about immigration policy.

“Asylum seekers are not criminals,” said one.

Starting in early May, in an attempt to staunch the flow of tens of thousands of migrants to the southern US border every month, Trump ordered the arrest of adults crossing the boundary illegally, including those seeking asylum.

Many trying to cross the US-Mexico frontier are destitute, fleeing gang violence and other turmoil in Central America.

As a result of Trump’s crackdown, distraught children were separated from their families and, according to widely broadcast pictures, held in chain-link enclosures, a practice that sparked domestic and global outrage.

Trump later signed an order ending the separation of families but immigration lawyers say the process of reuniting children and their parents will be long and chaotic.

About 2,000 children remained split from their parents, according to official figures released last weekend.

“It’s thinly-veiled racism,” Dorothy Carney, 59, a middle school French and Latin teacher, told AFP at the Washington rally.

“The way for evil to win is for good people to do nothing. This is doing at least something,” said the resident of Charlottesville, Virginia

Rita Montoya, 36, a Washington lawyer, was born in California but has Mexican origins and arrived at the protest with her two sons, aged four and two.

– ‘Not what we stand for’ –

AFP / DOMINICK REUTER. As part of nationwide rallies, protesters gathered in Philadelphia to oppose the practice of family separations under US President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.

“We’re children of immigrants,” she said. “We’ve been putting in our dues in this country for a long time, and this country needs to start paying us some respect.”

The mood was similar in New York, where Julia Lam, 58, joined the protest with two friends and their young children in strollers.

Lam is a mother and retired fashion designer who emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1980s.

“I think it’s really cruel to separate kids,” she said.

“I am angry. I’m very sad already with what is going on with our country. I just don’t see how a human being would do such a thing.”

Courtney Malloy, 34, a lawyer, said it was important to show support for immigrants and that administration policies are “not America.”

“This is not what we stand for and this is not okay, and we will not stand here and watch our country be torn apart and watch babies be torn from their mothers,” she told AFP, holding a sign that said, “The Only Baby Who Belongs in a Cage is Donald Trump.”

Families, young people, children and the elderly — both recent arrivals and long-time citizens — all stood under a burning sun as part of a protest that a New York police officer said numbered “a couple of thousand.”

“Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here,” they chanted, also declaring a welcome for Muslims.

A band of drummers whipped up the fervor of a crowd carrying signs including, “Our New York is Immigrant New York.”

“Abolish ICE,” said another sign, reflecting growing calls by activists for disbanding the country’s frontline immigration enforcement agency.

Saturday’s protests come after the US Supreme Court on Tuesday handed Trump a major victory by upholding his ban that mostly applied to travelers from five primarily Muslim nations.

More than 500 women, including a member of Congress, were arrested Thursday in the US Capitol complex protesting Trump’s immigration policy.

Saturday’s demonstrations were the biggest yet. Marches were also reported in Philadelphia, Boston, Denver, Chicago and Portland.

Trump has made fighting immigration — both illegal and legal — a major plank of his “America First” policy agenda.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) makes arrests and otherwise enforces the administration’s immigration crackdown, but an emerging coalition of politicians, activists and pro-immigrant protesters has begun calling for the agency to be dismantled.

“Occupy ICE” camps have been set up in several US states.

Featured Photo: AFP / Alex Edelman. A demonstrator in Washington, where protesters filled a park across from the White House in opposition to the immigration policies of US President Donald Trump.

“Philly is committed to upholding at (the) local level the same commitment made by the US in the Paris climate agreement,” tweeted the sixth largest US city’s mayor, Jim Kenney, a Democrat.

Since then, the City of Brotherly Love has cut energy consumption in municipal buildings, started replacing street lamps with LED lights, and launched a major green energy overhaul of its celebrated museum of art.

But these actions represent just a drop in the bucket, faced with the 18 million tons of carbon spewed into the atmosphere by Philadelphia each year. Although emissions have declined, there is only so much the city can do.

Here, 85 percent of residents heat their homes with natural gas, a fossil fuel that is abundant in the rocks beneath Pennsylvania. Cars and trucks rumble through downtown — and more than half of the electricity the city gobbles up each day is produced by oil- and coal-powered power plants.

“It can’t be done by cities and states. We do need a completely clean, carbon-free grid to meet this goal,” said Christine Knapp, director of the office of sustainability for the city of Philadelphia.

“We’re going to take the pieces of cleaning that grid up as much as we can, but someone still higher than us needs to set the policy that that’s what’s going to happen.”

– ‘Still In’ –

Philadelphia is among some 2,700 cities, states and businesses that declared “We Are Still In” when it comes to the 190-plus nation Paris accord, signed in 2015.

The movement emphasizes progress, such as how carbon dioxide emissions fell in 2017 to their lowest point in 25 years, and how gigawatts of solar and wind energy have been installed as coal use declines.

In Philadelphia, a city of 1.6 million people, such gains are evident, but are also happening at a far slower pace than many would like.

For instance, the mayor is simply not able to close coal and gas-powered plants that fuel the city, since they are connected to a vast network that covers 13 states in the northeast.

AFP / Ivan Couronne. Philadelphia Gas Works workers replace cast iron gas mains with stainless steel pipes to reduce methane leaks in north Philadelphia.

Only the state legislature in Pennsylvania can force operators to increase the share of electricity that comes from alternative energies beyond its current goal of 18 percent in 2021. With only 0.5 percent of the power mandated to come from solar, it is far from enough.

Add to this Trump’s cancellation of the Obama-era federal anti-pollution “Clean Power Plan,” which was expected to lead to numerous plant closures.

In the end, the market may be the biggest force at play in Philadelphia’s drop in emissions, with natural gas prices falling below the price of coal and gaining market share.

Used as fuel, natural gas is responsible for half the carbon of emissions of traditional coal burning. However, drilling and extracting it from the ground leads to leaks of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 34 times more potent than CO2.

– Gas on rise –

Philadelphia is even more embroiled in the use of fossil fuels because the city owns the local gas company, PGW.

Little by little, the distributor is replacing its pipelines in order to reduce methane leaks, which currently make up two to five percent of total volume.

But the clashing of goals is jarring. On one side, the mayor imagines a future without gas. On the other, PGW defends its future as the cleanest, least polluting of all the fossil fuels.

“Natural gas is not coal, it’s not oil,” said Barry O’Sullivan, director of corporate communications at Philadelphia Gas Works.

Deep in the belly of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, built in 1928, steam pipes that feed radiators are being replaced throughout the building in order to boost efficiency.

The air conditioning system, installed in 1974, will be replaced, along with 12,000 halogen or florescent lightbulbs, swapped out for energy saving LED lights.

“We’re saving a lot of steam,” said Charles Williams, capital project engineer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The 11 million investment will pay for itself over 20 years, thanks to lower energy and water bills.

Beyond these budgetary gains, the renovation is a window into the city’s efforts to prove its goodwill.

That’s the silver lining of Trump’s anti-climate actions, which Knapp said have shocked local actors and businesses into increasing their own engagement.

“And those actors are going to show the rest of the world that we’re not completely insane, and try to keep us afloat until the federal government steps back in,” she said.

Featured Photo: AFP / Ivan Couronne, Ivan Couronne. When US President Donald Trump announced the US exit from the Paris climate deal one year ago on June 1, 2017, the mayor of Philadelphia Jim Kenney was among those who vowed to keep carrying the torch.