H. Sterling Burnett:
The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States has left reeling the environmental lobbyists and activists and international leaders committed to reducing fossil fuel use to meet the Paris climate agreement. As the Washington Postnoted, “Trump comes into office with a plan to toss out most of what President Obama achieved on energy and the environment.”
Trump, who has called the alleged human-caused climate change catastrophe a “hoax,” vowed to “cancel” the United States’ participation in the Paris climate accord. Trump also has committed to scrapping the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Trump has said he will review and possibly reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) determination carbon dioxide is a pollutant endangering public and environmental health (the “endangerment finding”). Trump can’t undo the endangerment finding with the stroke of a pen, but he is in a position to get that done over time. Reversing the endangerment finding would end the legal justification for a range of climate regulations. In the process, it also would end radical environmental activists’ ability to use the courts to impose climate policies on an unwilling public whose elected representatives have repeatedly rejected climate policies.
Before the election, Trump said he would reverse Obama administration rules imposing undue burdens on businesses. In particular, Trump said he would cut EPA’s budget dramatically, virtually reducing it to an advisory agency, and review all EPA regulations, eliminating many of them because, “Over-regulation presents one of the greatest barriers to entry into markets and one of the greatest costs to businesses that are trying to stay competitive.”
Trump says he wants to open up more federal lands to oil and gas drilling and eliminate regulations that have contributed to the decline of the coal industry.
The Washington Post reported,
“Scott Segal, co-head of government relations at the legal and lobbying firm Bracewell, said in an email a Trump administration would be ‘clearly in favor of enhanced exploration and production of oil and gas as a tenet of energy, economic and national security policy.’”
Environmentalists and some foreign dignitaries fear what Trump’s election means for America’s climate commitments and environmental policies. “We’re feeling angry and sad and contemplative,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, told the Post.
Asked by the Post how “the environmental movement would deal with a President Trump, Bill McKibben, founder of the climate action group 350.org, said in an email
When the Democrats had the White House and all of Congress, they could have addressed the economic crisis and enacted policies which would have helped the millions in economic distress. Economic relief would have ensconced the Democrats in power perhaps indefinitely. Instead, the lure of socialism was too strong and they used their unlimited power to inflict economic harm on the nation. In two years, they lost the House, in four more, all of Congress. Now, they’ve lost the White House and Congress and an opportunity to implement liberal control over the Supreme Court for decades to come.
Now, the Republicans have this opportunity. If they enact some true economic help, in part through beginning the reversal of the harmful effects of Obamacare, they can possibly improve their majorities in Congress and, perhaps eventually, begin enacting truly conservative measures to promote further economic growth.
What ever happened with Global Cooling and the New Ice Age we were suppost to be getting back in the 1970’s the same liberal rag TIME was reporting on this global cooling back then just as much their blabbering this Global Warming poppycock
The “Treaty” “Agreement” was never given to the Senate for approval as the Constitution requires, so the whole thing is DEAD! Use it to wipe your Butt with and FLUSH it down the Toilet.
The difficulty with the Obama administration is his first statement, “I won. you lost!” That ensured he would get little cooperation from Congress. As a result, he had to rely upon executive orders to accomplish anything. Executive orders are only as good as the time the executive s in office. The climate agreement is basically a treaty and must be approved by congress. It was not! So, when a president works outside of the Constitution, his “accomplishments” can be valued less than the paper upon which they were written. If Obama had not been so arrogant and actually worked instead of playing golf, he might have more accomplishments than “the most time playing golf by a US President!”
President-elect who said global warming is a ‘hoax’ wants to ‘leave Paris deal as soon as possible’
2016 Set to Break Heat Record Despite Slowdown in Emissions
Yeah, well, what do they know?
@Greg: Earth could be headed toward cooling
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/08/09/solar-physicist-sees-global-cooling-ahead/
CO2 & temperature correlation only apparent 15% of 165 years
Declining solar activity… and cooling
http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/06/25/the-sun-goes-blank-again-during-the-weakest-solar-cycle-in-more-than-a-century/
97% completely debunked
http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/24/most-debunked-global-warming-paper-ever-passes-half-million-download-mark/?utm_campaign=atdailycaller&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&print=1
@Greg: It was a stupid agreement made by an dork, not caring what it would do to the working middle class, while he sipped champange. Its over most of Obamas destructive actions will be reversed erased and mourned bitterly by his adherents only.
@Greg:
Maybe you democrats should have passed tax legislation taxing the Sun.
@Greg: Trump is right about AGW being a hoax. There are people like you who are ignorant about scientific evidence and processes who actually believe the propaganda. AGW is a money tree for those who promote AGW at our expense. Eliminating the money wasted on alternative energy sources can have a major impact on our economy.
Myron Ebell as head of the EPA? Do you have any frickin’ idea how insane this is? Well, no, of course you don’t. You can’t even figure out why pushing the move to LED lighting was a brilliant policy decision for the nation’s energy future.
The sonofabitch was formerly Policy Director for the Frontiers of Freedom Institute. His job was to counter governmental efforts to rein in the tobacco industry’s promotion of an addictive product directly responsible for the early deaths of half-a-million Americans per year. If you lost a smoking friend or relative to heart disease, lung cancer, or respiratory disease, this jackass is partially to blame. Frontiers of Freedom? Sure, why not? Special interests have a constitutionally guaranteed right to lure customers to their deaths for profit.
@Greg: There needs to be a major restructure of the EPA. They are bureaucrats gone wild! Elections have consequences. Abuse of power often causes violent reactions. You are about to experience the reaction to Obama’s lawlessness..
The EPA is so out of control that it will not provide the justification for their promulgated regulations to congress. They even defy SCOTUS decisions with no ramifications. The EPA has stocked their bureaucracy with activists from the most far left environmental organizations. Their little sue us, we capitulate and implement your far left regulations scheme is likely going to come to an end. The EPA fails to understand their mission or who they work for.
@Randy:
The EPA should be defunded. Let the states determine what they need to do or not do. Regulations issued by the EPA or any bureaucracy for that matter that have the force of law are in and of themselves unconstitutional. Congress has over the many years, violated the nondelegation doctrine.