Trump Could Walk Away From Decades of Climate Deals
While Trump has made it clear he plans to walk away from Paris, his precise exit strategy remains unclear. “I don’t think that’s been decided,” Myron Ebell, the head of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, said in an interview. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Trump has at least four options. First is to exit the Paris deal, which was signed in December. Yet, the exit clause of the agreement means the U.S would still be bound by it until 2020. Trump must now wait three years to formally submit his intention to withdraw and then another year before the U.S. can exit.
There is a quicker way. Schmidt of the NRDC referred to it as “the nuclear option,” which would allow the U.S. to leave by early 2018. That would entail withdrawing from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty that established the entire process.
That deal was unanimously adopted by the U.S. Senate and signed in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush. Trump could pull the U.S. out with one year’s notice, Dan Bodansky, an Arizona State University law professor who studies international environmental agreements, said in an interview.
While faster, that option would raise the diplomatic stakes.
“It will negatively impact his ability to get the co-operation of other world leaders on issues he cares about such as trade and terrorism,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group in Washington. “Climate change has become a geopolitical issue of the top order.”…
Here’s Who Trump Could Ask To Head The EPA
…DNC Staffer claims Trump presidency will be fatal! ‘I’m going to die from climate change…it’s going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy’
BY:
One Democratic National Committee staffer became enraged at interim chair Donna Brazile on Thursday in the DNC’s first meeting since Hillary Clinton’s unexpected loss to Donald Trump.
The staffer, only identified as Zach, had some choice words for Brazile and her failure to lead the Democratic Party to victory on Tuesday night.
Brazile was giving a post-election rallying speech to a group of approximately 150 DNC staffers on Thursday when Zach stood up and offered his unfiltered thoughts on her leadership during the 2016 election, the Huffington Post reported.
“Why should we trust you as chair to lead us through this?” he asked, according to two people in the room. “You backed a flawed candidate, and your friend [former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz] plotted through this to support your own gain and yourself.”
Some DNC staffers started to boo and some told him to sit down. Brazile began to answer, but Zach had more to say.
“You are part of the problem,” he continued, blaming Brazile for clearing the path for Trump’s victory by siding with Clinton early on. “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”
After his tirade, Zach reportedly packed up his belongings and stormed out of the room as Brazile called after him. He then told Brazile that she needed to go outside and explain to the “people there” why she should still be leading the DNC.
Other staffers at the meeting supposedly nodded along as he spoke, agreeing with the sentiments he raised. Sources at the meeting told the Huffington Post that his feelings are not unique among DNC staffers.…
Gov. Jerry Brown warns Trump that California won’t back down on ‘existential threat’ of climate change
…Proposed for Trump Admin: A Letter to US EPA to Reconsider & Withdraw Its GHG Endangerment Finding
Alan Carlin | November 9, 2016
In March, 2009 I prepared almost 100 pages of comments to EPA concerning the need to revise the draft Technical Support Document (TSD) for the EPA Endangerment Finding for Greenhouse Gases (GHGs).
The three main points in my comments were that the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) hypothesis is invalid from a scientific viewpoint because it fails a number of critical comparisons with available observable data, that the TSD draft was seriously dated and the updates made to an earlier 2007 version were inadequate, and that EPA should make an independent analysis of the science of global warming rather than adopting the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and US Government reports based on it.
EPA chose to suppress my comments, ignore these recommendations, and issue its GHG Endangerment Finding late in 2009. As I had feared the Finding laid the legal framework for the issuance of a number of EPA regulations intended to reduce emissions of GHGs.
Subsequent research outlined in my book, Environmentalism Gone Mad, made an even stronger case that the alarmist “science” presented in the EPA GHG Endangerment Finding TSD as well as the IPCC reports are scientifically invalid. A new report provides even more conclusive evidence in this regard. There is now overwhelming evidence that the EPA GHG Endangerment Finding is simply wrong and needs to be reconsidered and withdrawn before it leads to even greater economic harm by incorrectly justifying CO2 EPA-imposed emissions reductions that have no measurable effects on global temperatures.
I hope that the new Trump Administration will make this an early priority at EPA if the outgoing Obama Administration fails to do so.
The following letter to five current EPA officials makes the formal case for this:
November 5, 2016
Mr. Arthur A. Elkins, Jr.
Inspector General
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Mailcode 2410T)
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20460
Dear Mr. Elkins:
We write to request that EPA forthwith reconsider – or, more accurately, that it properly consider for the first time – its so-called “Endangerment Finding” (EF) of December 2009 with respect to atmospheric greenhouse gases. As you know, in the EF EPA concluded that certain atmospheric greenhouse gases “endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.”
Real-world events described below, both prior and subsequent to the adoption of the EF,
EPA Chief Urges Staff To Finish Obama’s Agenda Before Trump Takes Over
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) urged employees to finish out the last weeks of the Obama administration “running” to finish implementing what they can of the president’s environmental agenda.
“As I’ve mentioned to you before, we’re running — not walking — through the finish line of President Obama’s presidency,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy wrote in an email to staff after Republican nominee Donald Trump won Tuesday’s election.
“Thank you for taking that run with me. I’m looking forward to all the progress that still lies ahead,” McCarthy wrote, according to Politico.
Al Gore wants a ‘climate intervention’ with Trump
He asked people not to give up hope and he was “optimistic” they would solve the climate crisis. Trump’s election was a huge setback for Big Green and climate doomsters, who view the election’s outcome as sounding the death knell for planet Earth. Anti-fossil fuel groups are already threatening to sue the Trump administration.
“Last night, President-elect Trump said he wanted to be a president for all Americans. In that spirit,” Gore wrote, “I hope that he will work with the overwhelming majority” of people who think climate change is the “greatest threat we face as a nation.” Unfortunately, most people believe the economy is in jeopardy, and not the climate. That’s according to polls done by Gallup, Pew Research, and the United Nations.
Energy stocks riding high
Trump said throughout his campaign that he would “scrap” any environmental regulations that harmed economic growth or slashed jobs. He also said he would work to save the coal industry using carbon-scrubbing technology and carbon capture and storage (CCS). Many believe #Hillary Clinton lost the election because blue-collar rural voters turned out in droves to vote for the energy-friendly Trump. Coal and other stocks rebounded to their highest levels in history yesterday.
Throughout his campaign, Trump said he would abandon or renegotiate the Paris Climate Agreement, a non-binding accord to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and signed by nearly 200 nations. But the single largest complaint Trump heard while campaigning was how the Obama administration has rolled out hundreds of thousands of #Government regulations that hamper economic growth and
Lawyers: Trump could pull out of global climate accord in a year
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump could use legal short-cuts to pull out of a global agreement for fighting climate change within a year, keeping a campaign promise and by-passing a theoretical four-year wait, lawyers say.
Trump, who has called global warming a hoax and said it was invented by the Chinese to undermine U.S. manufacturing, has said he wants to cancel the 2015 Paris Agreement among almost 200 nations that entered into force on Nov. 4.
The accord, which seeks to phase out greenhouse gas emissions this century with a shift from fossil fuels, says in its Article 28 that any country wanting to pull out after joining up has to wait four years.
In theory, the earliest date for withdrawal is Nov. 4, 2020, around the time of the next U.S. presidential election.
But Trump could pull out of the parent treaty of the Paris Agreement, the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change with just a year’s notice, also voiding U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement, U.N. legal experts say.…
Obama’s Environmental Legacy Just Went Up in Smoke: ‘You can pretty much burn the Paris agreement’
President Obama’s environmental legacy went up in smoke the minute Donald Trump won. Obama has spent the past four years pursuing an aggressive regulatory agenda aimed at lowering the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels, boosting green energy, and giving the U.S. a leading role in the global fight against climate change. His hope was to hand off this regulatory framework to Hillary Clinton, who would then spend much of her term following through on it.
Included in the new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, Nov. 14-20, 2016, which features two covers on Trump’s American Revolution. Subscribe now.
That stops cold now. Trump has vowed to reverse course on Obama’s entire slate of environmental policies by rescinding “job-killing” regulations, including rules limiting oil and gas development on federal lands, as well as Obama’s signature climate initiative, the Clean Power Plan (CPP). Because much of what Obama put in place was done through either regulatory rule-making or executive order, Trump may be able to make good on most of those promises, especially since he’ll be bolstered by support from congressional Republicans, says Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners. “We spent much of our time examining how Clinton might expand the existing green agenda,” he says. “Now we’re looking at what may constrain Trump’s attempt to collapse it.”
The CPP remains in legal limbo. A coalition of 27 states, led by West Virginia, has challenged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s legal authority to implement the plan, which directs states to lower carbon emissions from power plants. Even if the EPA wins, a Trump administration could simply revoke the rules. And while the agency would remain obligated to lower greenhouse gas emissions under the auspices of the Clean Air Act, a Trump administration would have wide latitude in determining how to fulfill that duty.
What Does Trump’s Victory Mean For Energy Policy?
“Climate sanity has been restored to the U.S.,” Marc Morano, the published of the global warming skeptic website Climate Depot, said in a statement.
“No longer do we have to hear otherwise intelligent people in charge in D.C. blather on about how UN treaties or EPA regulations will control the Earth’s temperature or storminess,” he said.
…
“The time for a Clexit has arrived, a U.S. exit from the UN Paris climate agreement,” Morano said.
Trump made the so-called “war on coal” a major part of his campaign message, traveling across coal states attacking EPA regulations for hurting miners. Trump handily won in coal states like, Kentucky, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Trump ‘s victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania, key swing states, were in no small part due to huge turnout in coal mining regions of the state. Trump’s stance on trade and energy likely resonated with voters there.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/09/what-does-trumps-victory-mean-for-energy-policy/#ixzz4Pc2a3Naw…