Last night, there was this tweet:
The fellow works for Buzzfeed, and highly liberal and pro-climate outfit. It was quite an admission. Since existing climate plans are almost certain to be on the scrap heap now, here’s a new plan from Christopher Monckton. I agree with most of it, except item 7 “Abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency”. That’s not really practical. Before “climate change” became the universal boogeyman for any enviro-ailment, real or imagined, the EPA actually did useful work in dealing with real, tangible, pollution issues. We have cleaner air, cleaner lakes, and cleaner waterways today because of that. So rather than abolish it, which would allow resurgence of those problems by the unscrupulous, I think a significant curtailment, plus a revocation of their powers of enforcement – putting enforcement in the hands of law, is a better choice.. – Anthony
Guest opinion by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
1. U.S. withdrawal from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, from the Paris climate agreement and from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The President of the United States should invite the Secretary of State to serve upon the Secretary General of the United Nations, qua Depositary, immediate notification of withdrawal from the Framework Convention on Climate Change and from all protocols or agreements thereunder, including the Paris climate agreement, in terms of Article 25 [withdrawal] of the Convention, which provides for a year’s delay before the withdrawal takes effect. Under Article 28 [withdrawal] of the Paris climate agreement, notification of withdrawal from the Framework Convention entails automatic withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and from any obligations thereunder. Pour politesse, the Government of France, qua Depository of that agreement, should also be given immediate notification of withdrawal. Separate immediate notification of withdrawal should be given to the Secretary General of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
2. Termination, on environmental and humanitarian grounds, of all Federal Government payments to foreign entities in connection with climate change: The President should invite the Secretaries of State and to the Treasury to terminate all payments to foreign entities in connection with climate change at the earliest permissible dates, and to report the savings achieved to the White House Chief of Staff at monthly intervals until all such payments have ceased.
3. Termination, on environmental grounds, of all Federal Government subsidies for climate change research and for “renewable” energy. The President should invite the Secretary to the Treasury to terminate all climate subsidies at the earliest permissible dates, and to report the savings to the White House Chief of Staff at monthly intervals until all such subsidies have ceased.
4. Nullification of all previous Executive Orders mandating any action on climate change. The President should invite the Chief of Staff to put before him a draft executive Order nullifying forthwith all Executive Orders concerning climate change and related matters.
5. Program of U.S. humanitarian assistance with the installation of coal-fired power stations and electricity grid infrastructures in regions without electric power. The President and the Secretaries of State, of the Treasury and of Energy should jointly announce a program of U.S. humanitarian assistance with the intention of preventing the millions of deaths each year among the 1.2 billion people who do not have the life-saving benefits of electric power. Coal-fired power is preferable because it is cheaper per TWh generated than any other form of power, and because stocks of coal are plentiful, and because the clean technology of the current generation of power stations is easier for third-world nations to maintain than any other form of power.
6. Independent inquiry into climate change science. The President should invite the Secretary of Energy to establish an independent inquiry into climate change science, to address the questions 1. At what rate will our enrichment of the atmosphere with CO2 and other greenhouse gases warm the world? and 2. Is mitigation of global warming today cost-effective compared with adaptation to its consequences the day after tomorrow? Scientists and economists sympathetic to the President’s opinion should be appointed to the inquiry, whose effect will be to provide ample justification for the President’s earlier decisions to resile from international climate agreements and to terminate climate-related payments and subsidies.
7. Abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency: The President should exercise his influence over Congress to enact at the earliest opportunity a Bill to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA’s activities run counter to the interstate commerce provisions of the U.S. Constitution, and its functions would be better performed if transferred to the States.
8. Approval for the Keystone XL pipeline: The President, after consulting the cabinet, should at the earliest opportunity announce approval for the Keystone XL pipeline.
9. Reversal of scientifically-unjustifiable measures such as the listing of polar bears as endangered should be carried out at the earliest opportunity.
10. Investigation of scientific and economic frauds in connection with climate change science and economics, and with renewable energy, should be set in hand at once.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This is my short list of P.-E. Trump’s ‘to-do’ ——
1) abolish EPA (state enforcement is much more localized and immediate)
2) get the US out of the U.N.
3) get the U.N. out of the US
4) fire and prosecute Comey
5) prosecute Lois Lerner, as well as any other IRS employees involved in TeaPartyGate
6) prosecute Hillary, the Clinton “Foundation”, and any officers thereof
7) make life a living Hell for any Supreme who voted to define CO2 as a ‘pollutant’
Draining the swamp might take a while, but unless you strike hard while the iron is hot, and keep striking, and keep striking and keep striking … … it could all be for naught.
As they say in my part of the country, “When in doubt, empty the magazine.”
Regards,
Vlad
He does not have the power to do #1, #2, #3, or #4 without Congressional approval, so I don’t think any of that will happen. Number 5 might be possible, but since Hillary and her staff will most likely be pardoned by Obama before he leaves office, I don’t see #6 happening either. He has no way of legally making #7 happen. The Supreme Court was intended to be separate and unassailable by the other branches of the federal government, and mostly it is.
I’m guessing you really don’t know how the US government works.
Paul Penrose commented: “…He does not have the power to do #1, #2, #3, or #4 without Congressional approval, so I don’t think any of that will happen
The Republicans are going to start falling all over themselves to get next to Trump and they hold both sides of the house. What problem do you foresee?
Somewhere in comments either here or at Jo Nova’s someone stated that a pardon cannot be given for treason. Some officials see what H. Clinton did as treason. She’s not out of the woods yet.
No, the only case where pardons are forbidden is in the case of impeachments. Treason can be pardoned under the Constitution by the President.
The only exception to the pardon is Impeachment. It can be given for treason.
That’s why Ford could pardon Nixon. He resigned before the impeachment happened.
@CD – True. But Impeachment only carries the penalty of removal from office. So when Nixon resigned, he made the issue of Impeachment moot. However, once removed from office, the office holder is liable for criminal proceedings, hence the pardon.
High on the agenda would be to appoint Rudy Giuliani as Attorney General to kick off investigations and indictments on the Washington Swamp including all the junk science from the climate alarmists.
The problem with an EPA is that it is basically a monopoly and dictator and serves no useful function to boot.
Air pollution and water pollution was not defeated by the EPA, but by those who wanted clean rivers, etc.
While there mauy have been some locales where pollution was preferable to unemployment, that was clearly
an odd thing, and the state would most likely have ovrruled the locale. The genius of the Federalist system is that it allows different states to attempt the same or different methods of dealing with a problem. The Federal govt’s most useful role is to enforce such things as standardization of electric outlets, etc. What it amounts to is the realization that seldom is a solution either universal, or obtained by one rather than many ideas and experiments, which states, but not the Federal govt can undertake. Ignorance of the advantages of the Federalist system is almost universal. I seriously doubt whether one in ten U.S. Senators could provide a coherent explanation of these advantages. Our Federalist system is one of our govt’s most valuable atrributes.
The EPA should consist of, at most, 500 employees. It should have no legislative/regulatory authority. It should possess no firearms. It should not have ANY legislative/regulatory authority over a State of the USA. It should only identify problems and propose solutions for either a: Congress to put into legislation, or b: States to put into legislation. All regulations put into effect by the EPA since 1990 should be marked for death by 2025 unless congress legislates each separate regulation into US law, by a full vote of the Senate, the House, and ratification by the President, just as the founders law to be put into effect.
In my ideal Federal government, the same goes for all agencies that don’t involve military, police, or courts. That would drop the budget down to < $1T and we could pay off our debt in about a decade.
Mine, too; we have governments for cops, courts and armies. The rest are within the purview of a free people.
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is plenty of scientific reasoning that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is really zero. The most important task for the IPCC is to make an accurate determination of the climate sensitivity of CO2. In their first report they published a wide range of possible values. In their last report they published the exact same values. So after more than two decades of effort they have learned nothing that would allow them to narrow their range of guestamates one iota. To date their efforts have been a complete failure and wasting money on then should stop. The United State’s federal government is continuing to run at a loss with huge annual deficits. The United States has become a debtor nation with huge annual trade deficits. The red ink has to stop. The Unites States needs to stop spending money on useless efforts like fighting climate change. No one yet knows how to force the sun and the oceans to provide the ideal climate for everyone all the time. The ideal climate has yet to be defined. Mankind has been unable to change a single weather event let alone change global climate. Rather than spend money on problems that we cannot solve, we need to spend it on problems that we can solve, on efforts that will result in a real return for our investment.
Will the reality is that there is no empirical, definitive evidence that adding more co2 to the atmosphere has any measurable effect on temperature. Please read that carefully
Gently and slowly, or you’ll terrify the children.
The ones who think they’ll be soon drown’d.
I can’t stop:
For the dems you should throw in “Land of Confusion” by Genesis. The video is a hoot, BTW.
The EPA is completely out of control. More EPA regulations more job security for EPA employees, less jobs for Americans.
EPA justification science related to energy use was fudged as the objective (hidden agenda) was to increase the cost of hydrocarbon energy and to force the use of green scams.
An example of EPA fudged science is the justification for the mandated blending of ethanol with gasoline in the US which results in a 37% increase in energy use, not a reduction.
Trump’s challenge will be how to downsize the EPA without creating future problems which would result in the EPA’s return.
The EPA downsizing problem is solvable, as there is no CAGW problem to solve and regardless the green scams do not work to significantly reduce CO2 emissions due to the combined cycle paradox.
6 is rubbish. Erase it ! It allows the warmists the opportunity to delay and prevaricate.
Thank GOD for sanity to return. Go President Trump you have put the LEFT out in the cold.
The Left is out there protesting Trump’s election right now. Soros pays well.
I think we should expect a lot of public demonstrations by the Left on all sorts of topics including CAGW. That’s one thing the Left does well: going out into the streets and perpetrating violence and anarchy. And now they have Leftist billionaire sugardaddies to pay them to raise hell.
The radical Left are Sore losers. Dangerous losers. Losers we should keep a close eye on, and make sure some foreign billionaire is not bankrolling violence and death on the streets of the USA.
Genuine protest is one thing. Paid agitators are something completely different. This is criminal activity against society, and is unacceptable.
Point 6 is easy. All that needs to happen is to compel them to justify a high sensitivity using the laws of physics.
I agree with Christopher Monckton, except for the abolition of the EPA. The EPA should be told to go back to doing what it was formed to do, counter real pollution. If the EPA can remove ‘Climate Change / Global Warming from its agenda, it will be fine again, and so will everyone else.
The major reason to abolish the EPA as such is civil service rules. Ever since Nixon established it, the EPA has accumulated a good number of green activists as staff, and the only practial way to remove them is to eliminate their jobs. Some of the functions of the EPA are useful, but it should be a small part of another organization, such as Interior.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, and career bureaucrats that would impede the wishes of the agency director can be given the “lateral arabesque.” Moved from line responsibility to some useless task like “manager of planning how to save paperclips within the agency.” I actually know an EPA manager that was victim of a lateral arabesque (not because of policy disagreement, but so a woman could be given the job).
There will have to be a lot of this in many government agencies (including NOAA) if the all the vestiges of CAGW are to be removed from the Federal government.
“The EPA should be told to go back to doing what it was formed to do, counter real pollution.”
If by “counter” you mean “prevent”, how does it do that short of installing EPA monitors into every company that has the potential to pollute?
If by “counter” you mean “hold accountable” then you don’t need an agency to do that. A single well written law from Congress will do that. Combined with public awareness and a very environmentally friendly media few if any companies would willfully pollute today.
It is the nature of a bureaucracy to want to grow.
It is the nature of congress to let it grow.
No matter how many times you trim it back, in a few years you will have to trim it back again.
Better to pull it out by the roots now, while we have the chance.
This is the most cogent reasoning for abolishing the EPA that I’ve seen yet. This goes for other unnecessary departments like Education, Energy, etc.
Excellent series of suggestions Lord Monckton!
If you do not mind, I would like to some suggestions.
11): Immediate orders to all agencies, bureaus, departments and military organizations to cease and desist planning for,
Requiring others to plan for,
Implementation of,
Requiring or contracting others to solicit and implement any,
Climate Change impacts or green energy implementations without proper ROI.
12): Immediate orders to all agencies, bureaus, departments and military organizations to preserve all records, communications, and documents, until notified otherwise. All electronic records, communications and documents are to be kept in electronic form.
13): A Presidential Order, preferably soon confirmed in law by Congress; that all whistle blowers will be fully protected.
• 13a): A legal department will be formed to specifically accept, collect, document and pass on Whistle Blower information.
• 13b): Whistle Blower documentation that aids prosecution and conviction of wrongdoers or directly results in budget savings will receive tip rewards.
• 13c): Employees, whether peers or superiors, who damage, harm, disrupt, disparage, cause retribution will be subject to recompensing their victims and penalties.
14): All United States Government agents or representatives must comply with all FOIA immediately.
• 14a): All United States Government agents or representatives must immediately comply with all requests for information from Senate or Congressional investigatory units.
• 14b): obstructionists to FOIA or official information requests or who destroy records/information, without official sanction, can expect investigation and possible prosecution by the Federal government.
15): Given that governmental decisions must be based on information as accurate as humanly possible:
• 15a): All data collected, must be used and presented as collected without modification. Interpretation of data, e.g. satellite readings, may be presented so long as the data is available and the interpretation method(s) are certified and validated.
• 15b): All stylistic adjustments must be presented separately with documentation and justifications. Summaries can be presented, but must be identified as such, and include all error rates/factors. This includes statistical manipulations.
• 15c): All model information must be clearly identified as modeled or including model data. Models or model data are useful for analysis, but are never acceptable in place of actual measurements. Research
• 15d): All research dependent on models or resulting in models must provide independent detailed certification and verification of accuracy to reality.
• 15e): Averages are useful for many purposes, but averages are not useful when disparate or unequal items are summarized then averaged. e.g., Climate claims depend on forced averages from different latitudes, longitudes, elevations, urbanization, etc. Fear proponents use these confused averages for propaganda, but can not demonstrate actual harm or endangerment anywhere. While individual weather events, disconnected from climate, damage and inflict harm.
• 15e1): Our focus must be on weather systems and weather events, not prognosticating some possible future event.
12 is already a legal requirement.
All departments of the government have expiration schedules to which they keep documents. Only documents at a presidential level are considered historic enough to consider keeping forever; which explains a relative abundance of “Presidential Libraries”.
Communications are the fleetest of documents and most subject to cleansing for space.
No one keeps buck slips, memos or simple emails unless commanded. The sheer volume of documents is incredibly overwhelming.
Thanks to Blackberries and it’s multitude of descendants, enabled an immense amount of short abrupt usually confusing communications. Streams and streams of them!
Emails sent or received by a very ordered person are kept in neat libraries with the dross filtered out.
Emails by bosses who depend on 10 seconds or less information tend to be huge long lists that no one understands.
The 10 second or less boss rarely cares about emails from last week, or God forbid, earlier; their whole focus is on emails over the last few days. All too often, to keep their systems responsive, large portions of history are wiped out.
Subordinates, whose merit reviews depend on satisfying their Superior’s demands. Often these subordinates maintain the records the boss rarely does. Frankly, full accurate documentation is often required to remind some bosses, just what their subordinates were ordered to do and when.
The first actions of an investigation often include orders to preserve documents. These order almost always include beginning dates, but rarely end dates. Over the last few years, we saw Lamar Smith and Ted Cruz along with a couple of Inspector Generals issue similar orders.
Nor are these orders usually followed by cease and desist orders. Eventually, the workers either delete stuff, or they haul out their drives and send them to archival storage.
An order to preserve documents with specific requirement that preservation continues until voided is rare.
13 is already the law
14 you want to pass a law requiring the government to follow a previously passed law. If they aren’t following the first law, what makes you think they are going to pay any attention to the second.
Whistleblower protection are just words in a law. A law that has been ignored or avoided numerous times.
FOIA is law, but there are numerous departments, many with full POTUS complicity, obstructing information requests; especially those Non-FOIA official investigative requests from Senate and Congress investigative queries.
What a POTUS can order to obstruct, another can open back up. FOIA was to be a law of the land, then starting over a decade ago, suddenly appeared to be despised throughout government.
Only a few departments of a few agencies actually work with truly classified information. Everything else is work paid for by the people. Personal information is restricted, but all too often agencies are pushing public servant information as ‘personal’. It is not.
I take an exception to Anthony’s introduction: “a pro-climate outfit”. Wrong! They are not pro-anything. They are anti-realist, anti-science, anti-nature. Do not accept their self-labeled pro-.
Also need to shut down all the activist “scientists” who churn out and spew out all the garbage that tries to support the scam. Shukla, Mann, GISS, etc. And save literally billions in wasted tax money.
I see no suggestions for schooling and education. Dismantling the “get ’em while they’re young” brainwashing with AGW propaganda in early to secondary schools would be a worthy inclusion. Replace it with some facts and teach a scientific approach at the same time. The entire curriculum could be gleaned from right here on WUWT!
Cleansing the Department of Education would go far.
Getting rid of excess administrators would go far towards hiring more qualified teachers.
The federal government agencies were established by the congress. Any new regulations were supposed to be reviewed and approved or declined by the congress before they could be enacted. This is the way it was originally supposed to work. The congress has abrogated its duty of oversight and approval to the agencies themselves, making them autonomous, unelected lawmaking organizations that only report to the executive, aka the president. I would like to see a scientific review of each regulation and re-approval if scientifically sound and necessary or removal if unnecessarily onerous or based on dubious science. All regulations should be sun-setted after a set period of time requiring a review and re-approval. The EPA is the most unscientific “scientific” agency of them all. Once listed as a pollutant, sometimes on political / environmental advocacy grounds, any substance is on the list forever, even if 50 or 100 years of subsequent testing has falsified original assumptions. EPA and associated agencies have a history of ever-tightening limits on any listed substance based, not on real harm, but on lower detection limits as instruments improve. If Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant and reduction is the goal, then plants will die for lack of enough sustenance to live. (Plants die at or below 180 ppm in air).
The EPA began on the wrong track even when it was first formed in 1970. Under its first director; William Ruckelshaus, it banned DDT, despite the recommendations against banning it by the EPAs own scientists. Ruckelshaus had his own agenda, brought to it by his affiliation with an environmental group and bolstered by that myth, Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson. That was the start of the rot.
Either ban the EPA outright, or cut its funding by 98% and stop it acting outside of the law. When we can bring back DDT, saccharin, and other things needlessly banned, based upon rotten science and outright mendacity, I will begin to feel that sanity is once more coming back to this world. The EPA did not fall apart just recently, it has always been a rogue that has cost hundreds of times more lives, by bleeding wealth from the USA, than it ever saved. In other words the cost of the EPA to society, exceeds its benefits by about a 1,000 or more times.
Thanks for being another well-informed DDT advocate. Silent Spring was propaganda to cripple the chemical industry, but the ban was used to limit life spans and populations in poor countries. In over 70 years of testing no evidence of harm, as carcinogen, wildlife decimation or any other harm, has ever been found. Still, MSDS still list it as a possible, probable, anticipated to be carcinogen and warns of poisoning wild life. For a good summary of the subject see “DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud” by J. Gordon Edwards at http://www.jpands.org vol19no3-edwards
In 2011 the WHO approved DDT and suggested using it again due to its’ effectiveness and safety.
To follow on from my post above. Insist that they follow the law and do a transparent cost/benefit analysis of everything they propose.
Had we not banned DDT, we could have possibly got rid of Malaria and third world deaths (a prospect that horrified Ruckelshaus) as well as being well-armed to get rid of the recent resurgence and scourge of Bed Bugs. Solid DDT is effective and safe.
Then there is this:
Maybe even better would be “Running down a dream”.
Just shut off the gravy train and global warming will grind to a halt.
Add No. 11: Ensure the Mark Steyn/Michael Mann court case is brought to immediate trial
Personal opinion, we should take a huge chunk of the money currently going to “climate scientists” in research grants and the money going for renewable energy subsidies and give it to the National Park Service. We have some real jewels in America that need to be protected, with the population only growing we should be more vigilant than ever to make sure they are still here for the next 100 years. Take the rest of the money and pay off debt or invest it in other infrastructure projects.
10 or 11 billion a year would go a long way in rebuilding bridges and airports and such.
Ah the first day of victory optimism.
Those who hope for a YUGE reduction in government and shutting down of various agencies need to read this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Politics-Reagan-Revolution-Failed/dp/1610392779
Peter Sable commented: “…Those who hope for a YUGE reduction in government and shutting down of various agencies need to read this book:…”
If I remember correctly, and I was there, the Democrats had complete control of the House during Reagan’s whole tenure as President and the Senate had control for part of it. But I do agree that to expect a complete dismantling of the status quo wishful thinking.
Christopher Monkton of Brenchly has made some fascinating proposals in the past, google his name. Very interesting reading.