Ideas For An Incoming Trump Administration: Climate And Energy Edition

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:

At the Department of Energy, a big section is devoted to “Combating the Climate Crisis.” From the intro:

There is no greater challenge facing our nation and our planet than the climate crisis. That’s why President Biden has laid out the boldest climate agenda in our nation’s history—one that will spur an equitable clean energy economy and cement America on a path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. . . . DOE has long been the nation’s powerhouse for scientific and innovative solutions to the challenges we face, including the climate emergency. Our program offices and 17 National Laboratories are working every single day to research, develop, and deploy the clean energy technologies of the future, including battery storage, renewable power, electric vehicles, carbon capture, and resilient grid infrastructure.

And don’t forget the subject of “Energy Justice,” otherwise known as the scam of justifying vast wasteful subsidies to useless energy sources as some kind of quasi-reparations to minority communities:

For far too long, communities of color and low-income communities have borne the brunt of pollution to the air, water, and soil they rely on to live and raise their families. The clean energy revolution must lift up these communities that have been left behind, and make sure those who have suffered the most are the first to benefit.

Over at EPA, the huge “Climate Change” section of the website pretends that the regulatory onslaught attacking hydrocarbon fuels has something to do with “human health.” Example:

Understanding and addressing climate change is critical to EPA’s mission of protecting human health and the environment.

A massive section on “Climate Change Indicators” falsely claims that things like hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts and floods have been increasing and are proof of dangerous climate change. Example:

Tropical storm activity in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico has increased during the past 30 years. Storm intensity, a measure of strength, duration, and frequency,  is closely related to variations in sea surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic and has risen noticeably during that time.

At NOAA and NASA, an endless succession of press releases touts the claims that the most recent week, month or year was the “warmest on record.” They somehow never mention that the data set in question only goes back to the late 1800s, and that they lack any data for, for example, the Southern Hemisphere oceans, for almost all of the period in question.

There is no reason why all of this claptrap, and hundreds or thousands of other examples of same, cannot just be wiped away on January 20. Putting up something new can then begin, but is not necessarily a rush.

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.

Cost and feasibility study of Net Zero

So far all of these ideas have been things that many others have thought of. But how about this one that I haven’t seen anywhere else: launch a cost and feasibility study of the plans to transition the U.S. economy to “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050.

It is truly incredible that our federal government has launched a supposed “energy transition,” with an announced goal of reaching “net zero” emissions by 2050, without any cost or feasibility study of whether this can possibly work. Somehow, the bureaucrats have the idea that their job is just to order up a multi-trillion dollar transformation that has never been done before, and then the little people will figure out the details. In the real world the chance that this energy transformation can actually be accomplished are about zero. Meanwhile, enormous damage is being inflicted.

There are plenty of people who understand the problems who could be used to staff the study commission. I’d be happy to volunteer!

Audit the NOAA and NASA surface temperature data

The record of what are called “global average surface temperatures” has been altered and manipulated to reduce earlier-year temperatures and increase more recent temperatures, the better to show a strong warming trend and to support the narrative of dangerous climate change. For more details than you will ever want, see my 33 part series “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time.”

As a first step, the incoming administration should replace the statements on the existing websites that the most recent month or year was “the warmest ever” with a statement that the surface temperature records have been altered and therefore are not to be used for any public policy purpose. Then start an audit process. As part of the audit, fully disclose the computer code that executes the “homogenization” process of temperature alteration, and disclose quantitatively how much the temperatures have been altered. Any discrediting of the crooks who have been doing the alterations is merely a side benefit.

Rescind the Endangerment Finding

Underlying all efforts of the bureaucracy to regulate CO2 emissions and “climate change” is a regulatory determination made by EPA in 2009, shortly after Barack Obama first took office, the CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a “threat to human health and safety.” What a crock. The first Trump administration never got around to rescinding this ridiculous regulatory overreach. The existence of the EF gives environmental litigants as evergreen basis to try to force more and more regulation from agencies that are often very willing to go along.

I recommend convening a commission of scientists to evaluate the EF. Key suggestion: anyone who gets any grants from the government for studying climate issues should be disqualified for conflict of interest. The CO2 Coalition should be able to come up with plenty of highly qualified and non-conflicted genuine scientists to study the matter. The EF will shortly be gone.

And finally — Repeal the “Inflation Reduction Act”

The fraudulently-named “Inflation Reduction Act” is the fount of trillions of dollars of subsidies for useless wind and solar energy generators. The subsidies are mostly in the form of tax credits and are uncapped, meaning that they could run into multiple trillions of dollars.

Unlike the other items on this to-do list, repeal of the IRA clearly requires Congressional action. However, note that this is a budgetary item and thus could be included in so-called “reconciliation,” thus requiring only a simple majority vote in the Senate, rather than the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

As I said, this topic is so broad that my list here is only a start. I can’t wait for them to get going.