Climate and Energy Ideas for the Trump Administration

There will no doubt be some sharp departures from Biden's policies. Many new ideas are being floated. Here are some of those.

Ideas For An Incoming Trump Administration: Climate And Energy Edition
November 12, 2024/ Francis Menton

• 
  The arena of climate and energy is sufficiently large that it deserves its own post of ideas for the incoming Trump administration. The Biden people went so far off the rails in this area that there are far more topics than I can cover. I’ll have to stick to some highlights.
  
  
• Communications.
  
  
• As I noted in the previous post, changing the communications of the prior administration should be an easy and obvious first priority. However, the Trump people notably did a poor job on this subject the first time out.
  
  
• The subject of climate and energy is pervasive through the websites of dozens of federal agencies. Let’s just note a few examples:

Executive Orders and Actions
From the day he entered office,President Biden took numerous executive actions and signed a series of Executive Orders directing an “all of government” approach to the climate/energy issue. Examples include: “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science To Tackle the Climate Crisis,” January 25, 2021; “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” January 27, 2021; and “Executive Order on Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration,” February 4, 2021. There are plenty more such. And yes, the official Biden administration line is that the main reason for the surge of illegal migrants across the Southern border is “climate change.”

Also in the executive action category are things like Biden administration efforts to restrict leasing of drilling rights on federal lands, to delay or refuse permits to pipelines and other energy-related projects, and the like.

All of these can be wiped away at the stroke of a pen on day one.

Paris Climate Agreement

Obama joined this Agreement by executive action. Trump exited by the same method. And Biden rejoined, again by executive action, right on January 20, 2021.

Trump could follow the previous method and just quit again. But my preferred suggestion would be to submit the Agreement to the Senate as a treaty. There is zero chance that the Senate would ratify. That would kill this thing much more securely than the other method.

Regulations

“Regulations” are different from mere Executive Orders and actions, in that in order to be adopted they have gone through some complex and time-consuming processes prescribed by the Administrative Procedure Act. The processes are designed to give these “regulations” some purported legitimacy and heft, to make them hard to undo, and to distract the gullible public from the fact that they have not gone through the only process that counts under the Constitution for valid legislative action, namely passage by both houses of Congress and signature by the President. The result of all the procedural rigamarole is that — if you buy the legitimacy of enactment of massive substantive regulations by administrative agencies in the first place — then the processes to eliminate the regulations are the same complex and time-consuming mess that it previously took to adopt them.

The Biden administration has seen a veritable blizzard of major regulations designed to restrict, hobble, and ultimately eliminate the use of hydrocarbon fuels. I have had numerous posts on multiple of these regulations, for example this one from May 1, 2024 on no fewer than four big new Rules from EPA, then-newly-adopted, intended to force the phase out of fossil fuel power plants, and this post from June 8, 2024 on two big new Rules, one from EPA and the other from NHTSA, intended to force the conversion to electric vehicles. These Rules in the aggregate are thousands of pages long. There are other comparable gigantic Regulations sprinkled around dozens of other federal agencies, for example a massive SEC Rule requiring burdensome disclosures of “carbon emissions” for all public companies. All of these Rules had gone through the lengthy and difficult “notice and comment” process, which involves widely disseminating notices of the proposed rule-making, collecting comments from the public over the course of months (in these instances there were tens of thousands of such), responding to all of the comments, modifying the proposed Rule accordingly, and finally going public with a final Rule after many, many months. I should mention that all of these Rules were then promptly challenged by litigation brought by interested parties, which in this case include large numbers of the red states.

Do the Trump people really need to go through the same labyrinth to rescind these Rules? Here’s an approach I would take: First, announce that the legal opinion of the administration is that the Rules are invalid under Supreme Court precedent (i.e., the “major questions doctrine” of West Virginia v. EPA), and therefore they will not be enforced. Next, announce that permitting on power plant and other fossil fuel projects will take place as if these Rules did not exist. Finally, switch sides in the litigation, and join the red states and other plaintiffs seeking to have the Rules invalidated. Simultaneously, start the rescission process under the APA. It should be completed in about two years.

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The writer suggests that he'd volunteer to help out.

Me too.

 

More from Milloy:


1. Paris Climate Treaty and Endangerment Finding. Determine that the Paris climate agreement is properly a treaty (rather than a mere “Executive agreement”) that requires Senate ratification. Transmit the treaty to the Senate for its advice. This is will legally relieve the US of any and all obligations under the treaty until and unless the Senate formally ratifies it. Repeal the Obama/Biden EPA determination that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are threats to the public health and welfare (the “endangerment finding”).

2. EV mandate and California waiver. Repeal the Biden tailpipe rule/EV mandate and withdraw the California CO2 waiver that allows California to set tailpipe emissions and de facto national gas mileage standards. Request legislation clarifying that the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) pre-empts state regulation of fuel economy, including Clean Air Act waivers, and that clarifies that the Clean Air Act cannot be used to regulate CO2.

3. Green New Scam and Grid Security. Freeze all Inflation Reduction Act climate/energy spending pending review. Ask Congress to repeal all the energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act through budget reconciliation. For national and economic security purposes, bar electricity grid reliance on variable sources of electricity generation such as wind and solar.

4. Oil and Gas. Restore active federal oil and gas leasing on federal lands and offshore, including the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. Lifting moratoria on offshore drilling in areas put off limits by prior presidents. Reverse the Biden moratorium on federal leasing for coal mining. Streamline the permitting process for energy production. End the Biden moratorium on LNG export terminals.


More in the link.


https://heartland.org/publications/...items-for-president-trump-in-his-second-term/

 

Trump is going to shaft the loyal subjects and support EVs. He sold you down the river with mr. Musk.

 

Trump already beat Obama's attempt to regulate CO2.

Both Trump and Musk know how stupid that mandate is.

It's only a matter of time before Trump's EPA destroys the EV mandate, for good this time.

 

Musk will get his thank-you via high tariffs on Chinese EV's. EV subsidies and mandate will go.

 

Musk is a free market guy. Trump will protect US manufacturing against unfair competition from the Chinese Communist Party’s 100 year for global domination.

 

I'd just like to see the Trump administration introduce the state of CA to the new EPA head, and watch the CA emissions standards get axed. I mean, at some point, liberals, y'all need to pic a side. Either you agree that the EPA can regulate you, or you don't. In any event, CA's ability to dictate to the rest of the nation needs to be revoked.

 

Speaking of California (btw another power outage yesterday):

Goreham, Steve. Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure (pp. 179-183). New Lenox Books. Kindle Edition.

 

The referenced Brick and Thernstrom Analysis:

Goreham, Steve. Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure (pp. 174-175). New Lenox Books. Kindle Edition.

Stephen Brick and Samuel Thernstrom, “Renewables and Decarbonization: Studies of California, Wisconsin, and Germany,” The Electricity Journal, Mar. 22, 2016, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82637221.pdf

 

No one is free market when they have control. Then it is just lip service.

 

Musk has no control over anything but the quality of his product.

 

He will have.

 

Not necessarily in Trump world.

 

Much more likely in the Kamala world of global warming alarmism. EV’s are a keystone policy for the greenies.

 

Turn it all over to Elon Musk. He’s made a lot of statements over the years. Here’s one —-

“Climate change is the biggest threat that humanity faces this century, except for AI," Musk told Rolling Stone in 2018. "I keep telling people this. I hate to be Cassandra here, but it's all fun and games until somebody loses a f---ing eye."

 

Here is another list of ideas.

Climate Realist Groups Propose TOP 10 Climate and Energy Action Items for President Trump

In anticipation of Trump’s victory, a coalition of groups, among them the Heartland Institute, E&E Legal Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), Truth in Energy and Climate, and The American Energy Institute, assembled a list of 10 climate and energy actions Trump could begin implementing on day one to bring sound science and economics back to energy and climate policy.

Bloomberg News provided a cursory discussion and critique of these proposals in a story misleadingly titled, “Climate Skeptics Urge Trump to Boost Coal, Gut Federal Science.” While the proposals do boost coal, it does not gut science but rather proposes policies to improve it while getting America on track to energy dominance within the law. We at Climate Realism believe people should judge for themselves to determine the merits of the proposals, thus we present the TOP 10 list below unfiltered.



1. Paris Climate Treaty and Endangerment Finding. Determine that the Paris climate
agreement is properly a treaty (rather than a mere “Executive agreement”) that requires Senate ratification. Transmit the treaty to the Senate for its advice. This is will legally relieve the US of any and all obligations under the treaty until and unless the Senate formally ratifies it. Repeal the Obama/Biden EPA determination that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are threats to the public health and welfare (the “endangerment finding”).

2. EV mandate and California waiver. Repeal the Biden tailpipe rule/EV mandate and withdraw the California CO2 waiver that allows California to set tailpipe emissions and de facto national gas mileage standards. Request legislation clarifying that the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) pre-empts state regulation of fuel economy, including Clean Air Act waivers, and that clarifies that the Clean Air Act cannot be used to regulate CO2.

3. Green New Scam and Grid Security. Freeze all Inflation Reduction Act climate/energy spending pending review. Ask Congress to repeal all the energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act through budget reconciliation. For national and economic security purposes, bar electricity grid reliance on variable sources of electricity generation such as wind and solar.

4. Oil and Gas. Restore active federal oil and gas leasing on federal lands and offshore, including the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. Lifting moratoria on offshore drilling in areas put off limits by prior presidents. Reverse the Biden moratorium on federal leasing for coal mining. Streamline the permitting process for energy production. End the Biden moratorium on LNG export terminals.

5. Presidential Appointments. Appoint officials at federal agencies like EPA, Interior, DoE, FERC and other key agencies who will aggressively permit new oil and gas pipelines, LNG terminals and other infrastructure required for producing oil, gas and coal. Streamline the permitting process. Terminate all existing federal science advisory boards and reconstitute only the ones legally required. Appoint qualified and pro-energy individuals to the boards.

6. Offshore wind. Foreign offshore wind developers threaten consumers, endangered species, and iconic maritime communities whose prosperity depends on the fishing. The industrialization of fisheries by offshore wind development should be terminated by delisting unleased wind energy areas, revoking the “30×30” pledge, implementing a cumulative effects approach to planning, and developing a balanced interagency process not dominated by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

7. Coal. Repeal all the anti-coal regulatory actions of the Biden administration and promote coal as a preferred means of producing electricity. Commence a review of related air quality regulations issued by EPA.

8. Litigation. Withdraw from, so as to terminate, industry litigation over Biden administration regulatory actions. Re-staff the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division attorneys who will zealously defend administration priorities.

9. Regulatory Reform. End regulatory agency use of the linear non-threshold model (LNT) for radiation and chemical risk assessment. Reinstate the EPA rule against the use of “secret science.” Request legislation to require that federal courts no longer defer to regulatory agencies on scientific matters.

10. Regulatory Burden. Request the REINS act be passed to require congressional authorization of regulations with a significant economic impact, including but not limited to those with an economic impact of $100 million or more.

Read the original document here.

 

So will trump throw Elon Musk under the bus? Elon has a dedicated following, and many are typically Liberal voters. Arguably he won the election for Trump. Musk is now more powerful than ever. Trump will whimper like a puppy to every whim of Elon Musk.

 

Steve Milloy in action.

 

We shall see.

 

Some considerations for the Trump team to use when justifying their climate priorities. To paraphrase - 'the schnitzel has hit the fan in Germany'.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/germany...:text=As political crack,politics always wins.

 

Let's frack!
Trump Taps Fracking Executive and “TV-ready Evangelist for Fossil Fuels” for Energy Secretary
Leslie Eastman
I have longed for representatives of the fossil fuel industry to fight the underhanded tactics used by climate-crisis promoters. In a LinkedIn video, Wright shows he will be a champion…

 

MAFA!!

 

Here's a look at the new roster.
A Look At President-Elect Trump's Picks For The Key Energy Policy Positions
November 21, 2024/ Francis Menton

• 
  Over the past two weeks, President-elect Trump has engaged in rapid-fire announcements of his picks for the cabinet and other top positions.
  
  
• Among the announced selections are Trump’s nominees for the three top positions in climate and energy policy: EPA Administrator (Lee Zeldin), Secretary of Energy (Chris Wright), and Secretary of the Interior (Doug Burgum). In this post I will take a first look at these nominees.
  
  
• Without doubt, these three Trump appointees will be an enormous improvement over the Biden administration functionaries they will replace (EPA Administrator Michael Regan, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland). The three outgoing Bidenauts are all committed fanatic climate warriors, fighting every day to restrict development and use of hydrocarbon fuels, and thus to make America weaker and Americans poorer. Having them in office has been like having the country’s energy policy under the control of a cabal of its worst enemies.
  
  
• But is there anything about President-elect Trump’s nominees for these positions that we should be at least somewhat concerned about?
  

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The U.S was already producing dirty fuels at record levels before the doddering geezer took orifice.

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Placing ideological dogma above climatological data won't change reality.

In 2024, the U.S. oil production reached a new record high, surpassing the previous record set in 2023. Technological advancements, including precision fracking and enhanced recovery techniques, have played a significant role in increasing productivity.​