Trump Picks Climate Sceptic To Head Environment Agency

Ebell Offers Energy And Environment Agenda To Next US Congress 
Brought to you by Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Forum

President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Oklahoma
Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency—
a climate change skeptic and sharp critic of the organization. Photo: AP

Donald Trump has signalled his intent to undo Barack Obama’s efforts to curb climate change by choosing as his chief environmental regulator a conservative state law enforcer who is battling to overturn the president’s legacy. Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney-general, has been selected to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, as the president-elect turns to a man who, like himself, has questioned the science of climate change, the Trump team said. If confirmed by the Senate he would be catapulted from the US’s oil-producing heartland to the centre of global policymaking on climate change, a position from which green groups worry he would wreck progress to stem carbon emissions. --Barney Jopson, Financial Times, 8 December 2016

 

Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime. The Clean Power Plan was promulgated without any consultation with Congress. No bills were debated, no votes were taken. --Scott Pruitt and Luther Strange, National Review Online, 17 May 2016 

 

Senate leaders would schedule a ratification vote on the Paris climate agreement to set the stage for withdrawal from the deal if they follow an agenda released today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Other recommendations include defunding the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and amending the Clean Air Act to clarify that it never delegated to U.S. EPA the authority to make climate policy. The 25-page energy and environment portion of the free-market think tank's "pro-growth" proposal for the 115th Congress cites longtime climate change skeptic Myron Ebell, whom President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead his EPA transition team, as the chief expert behind the plan. --Hannah Hess, E&E News, 8 December 2016

 

Earlier this week, U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) blamed the “Keep It In The Ground” (KIITG) movement for Democrats’ devastating losses in the November election. When asked by CNBC “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernan if the “somewhat radical” energy and climate policy advocated by the KIITG movement has served her party well, Heitkamp responded, “I think when you look at it, it’s so critically important that we live in the real world and not in the world of ideology. I can tell you that… there’s a large number of people that are ‘Leave It In The Ground’ that think we should shut down all fossil fuels. I think people in the fossil fuel industry feel that, whether they’re coal miners, or they’re oil workers, and I think that kind of alignment with ‘Leave It In The Ground’ and not looking at energy policy, has had an effect (on the way voters cast their ballots this year).” --Lily Emanian, Energy InDepth, 6 December 2016

 

In the af­ter­math of the pres­id­en­tial elec­tion, Demo­crats have been blam­ing their de­feat on everything but the ob­vi­ous. The most glar­ing prob­lem for the Demo­crat­ic Party is an un­will­ing­ness to even en­ter­tain the pos­sib­il­ity that its policy agenda had any­thing to do with its stun­ning de­feat. Let me of­fer a piece of un­so­li­cited ad­vice, one that Demo­crat­ic strategists have dis­cussed privately but are reti­cent to pro­mote pub­licly for fear of ali­en­at­ing green act­iv­ists. Tak­ing a more mod­er­ate stand on en­ergy policy—wheth­er it’s support­ing the Key­stone XL pipeline, cham­pi­on­ing the frack­ing boom that’s trans­form­ing re­gion­al eco­nom­ies, or simply sound­ing a more skep­tic­al note on the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion’s lit­any of en­vir­on­ment­al reg­u­la­tions—would do won­ders for the Demo­crat­ic Party’s abil­ity to com­pete for the work­ing-class voters who have drif­ted away from the party. --Josh Kraushaar, National Journal, 6 December 2016

 

The Labour Party needs to reposition on climate change. It should not ignore it; if evidence shows dangerous warming developing, we should make proportionate responses. We have time for that. But the ‘insurance’ case is not convincing. The price currently being imposed is not justified by the evidential risk. We should retreat from the punitive 2008 legal emissions targets and accept that an energy efficient economy is crucial to the wellbeing of the British people. The costs of sensible climate adaption should rest on progressive direct taxation. Labour should make a realistic appraisal of the climate situation and get back in touch with its natural support among working people. --Lord Donoughue, Politics Home, 5 December 2016 

President-elect Donald Trump is continuing with his new industrial policy to save and retain U.S. jobs -- and it is still more than a month before he takes the oath of office in Washington D.C. Immediately after the Obama administration stopped the progress of a prominent midwestern oil pipeline, by refusing to issue a new permit for the rest of the route, a spokesman for Trump's transition team said the incoming administration supports completing the project.  Nasdaq News, 6 December 2016

Native American reservations cover just 2% of the United States, but they may contain about a fifth of the nation’s oil and gas, along with vast coal reserves. Now, a group of advisors to President-elect Donald Trump on Native American issues wants to free those resources from what they call a suffocating federal bureaucracy that holds title to 56 million acres of tribal lands, two chairmen of the coalition told Reuters in exclusive interviews. “We should take tribal land away from public treatment,” said Markwayne Mullin, a Republican U.S. Representative from Oklahoma and a Cherokee tribe member who is co-chairing Trump’s Native American Affairs Coalition. “As long as we can do it without unintended consequences, I think we will have broad support around Indian country.”--Reuters, 5 December 2016

The President-Elect’s Transition team named me and others to the EPA Transition Landing Team today. This will upset some of you and will please others. My approach, and that of the entire transition team, is to be highly professional as we seek the information the transition team needs to create its action plans. Our job will be to ask appropriate questions and to listen. Any of you that would like to meet with our team, please let me know and I will transmit that to our team. In the mean time, I will have nothing to share on the team’s activities and I’ll not be airing my own opinions until our job is done. Best to you all. – David Schnare, Watts Up With That, 5 December 2016

Energy mogul Harold Hamm will not be taking President-Elect Trump up on his offer to name him Energy Secretary, according to Fox News. Hamm, whose net worth was previously estimated to be $13.8 billion, has served as Donald Trump’s energy advisor and has long been considered a front runner for the position of Energy Secretary. Speaking of North Dakota, in his stead, Harold Hamm offered Trump an alternative Energy Secretary nominee: Rep. Kevin Cramer from North Dakota. In fact, Hamm said he thought Cramer would do a better job than he would. "Kevin's a great guy, and he would be a perfect candidate, as well. I've put his name forward.” --Julianne Geiger, Oilprice.com, 1 December

One month after saying that Donald Trump “would take us toward a climate catastrophe,” former Vice President Al Gore met with the newly elected Republican on Monday in New York as he tries to extend an olive branch on his top issue. “Climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax—a lot of people are making a lot of money,” Mr. Trump said on Meet the Press in January. After the election, Reince Priebus, chief of staff to Mr. Trump, said on Fox News that the president-elect’s “default” position is that he thinks “most of it is a bunch of bunk.” Still. Mr. Gore has said that he hopes Mr. Trump won’t undo President Barack Obama’s ambitious climate agenda. --The Wall Street Journal, 5 December 2016

 

Ivanka Trump got former Vice President Al Gore inside Trump Tower to talk about global warming with President-elect Trump. If she uses her role as first daughter to serve as an informal climate change czar, her success could end there. Usually, when the word "conflict" appears in the same sentence with Donald and Ivanka Trump, it is a reference to whether the incoming president can disentangle himself from the family business empire. But there could be a conflict over environmental policy. "He taught us that there's nothing that we cannot accomplish, if we marry vision and passion with an enduring work ethic," Ivanka declared of her father at the Republican National Convention. Greening the Trump administration might take even more. -- Washington Examiner, 6 December 2016
 
Trump plans to rely on all energy sources to pick up the economy, and that includes wind power and solar, although he considers solar panels a fraud. He does want to end subsidies to renewable fuels, and he is absolutely right. Let the free market have at it instead, saving public money and more likely leading to breakthroughs. Tip of the day: Crony capitalism does not work. --Jay Ambrose, Tribune News Service, 6 December 2016
 
If producers can find a way to microwave oil shales in the Green River Formation, which sprawls across Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the nation’s recoverable reserves could soar and energy independence could become more than an election slogan. Even with existing methods — strip-mining the shale and then cooking it, or injecting steam to cook the rock underground (hydraulic fracturing is useless here) — the formation contains enough oil to last the U.S. 165 years at current rates of consumption. Microwave extraction could goose those numbers even higher. After all, there are more than 4 trillion (with a “t”) barrels of oil in the Green River Formation. --James Watkins, OZY News, October 2016