US President Donald Trump has signed a sweeping executive order at the Environmental Protection Agency that dramatically changes the US government's approach to rising sea levels and temperatures, two impacts of climate change.
The Energy Independence Executive Order suspends more than half a dozen measures enacted by his predecessor, President Barack Obama, and boosts fossil fuels.
The order's main target is the Clean Power Plan, which required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants, a key factor in the United States' ability to meet its commitments under a climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015.
Trump's decree also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions.
Trump said that said that this would put an end to the "war on coal" and "job-killing regulations". "With today's executive action I am taking historic steps to lift the restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion and to cancel job-killing regulations," he said. 
However, the move drew swift backlash from a coalition of 23 states and local governments, as well as environmental groups, which called the decree a threat to public health and vowed to fight it in court.
The coalition includes states such as California, Massachusetts and Virginia, as well as cities including Chicago, Philadelphia and Boulder, Colorado. Trump vowed during his campaign to pull the US out of the Paris climate deal agreed in December 2015.
The landmark agreement commits governments to moving their economies away from fossil fuels and reducing carbon emissions to try to contain global temperature rise. Trump argued that the agreement was unfair to the United States. 

Source: QNA