Donald Trump says he isn’t frightened about local weather change.
Earlier than he was a presidential candidate, he mentioned international warming was “a hoax” invented by China to kneecap the American financial system.
“The local weather has at all times been altering,” he shrugged extra lately.
If he’s elected president, Trump says, one in all his “Day One” priorities shall be rising oil and gasoline manufacturing — or, as he places it: “Drill, child, drill!”
With extra fossil fuels, he guarantees, “we shall be wealthy once more and joyful once more.”
These positions are on the coronary heart of Trump’s marketing campaign to regain the White Home. They usually put him on a collision course with California, the place the Democratic-led authorities, supported by most voters, has made a clean-energy financial system a significant objective.
“It’s breathtaking how simply manipulated this man is,” Gov. Gavin Newsom mentioned in an announcement. “His solely curiosity is enjoyable Large Oil CEOs, and mortgaging our children and the planet within the course of.”
A big majority of Californians help their state’s bold local weather targets, the Public Coverage Institute of California present in a survey final yr. Virtually two-thirds mentioned they imagine defending the setting ought to be a precedence even on the danger of curbing financial development.
In attacking the state’s environmental agenda, Trump regularly portrays California as a catastrophe zone, usually in wildly exaggerated or invented tales.
“Should you take a look at California, it’s bought brownouts and blackouts each single day,” he claimed in a marketing campaign video final yr. “Folks can’t activate their air conditioners.” (Not true; California hasn’t had vital energy grid issues since 2020.)
If he wins a second time period, Trump plans to scrap President Biden’s applications encouraging renewable vitality. He has mentioned he would provide tax breaks to grease, gasoline and coal producers; repeal federal subsidies for photo voltaic, wind and different renewable vitality tasks; and roll again Biden’s efforts to encourage using electrical automobiles.
“First day in workplace, I’ll be ending all of that,” Trump mentioned final yr, referring to EV tax credit and different subsidies. (The truth is, he couldn’t repeal the tax credit score on Day One — that may take an act of Congress — however he may add necessities to restrict the vehicles and vehicles that qualify for the subsidy.)
Former aides say Trump can be prone to revive two of his first-term targets that spurred clashes with California: revoke the state’s robust car emissions requirements and open extra federal waters to grease drilling, together with off the Pacific coast.
He failed at each partly due to opposition from California and different states but additionally due to his administration’s incompetence.
“Within the first time period, the Trump administration had a sort of blunderbuss method. Their proposals weren’t effectively thought out. They usually didn’t maintain up underneath shut evaluate,” mentioned Richard M. Frank, a professor of environmental legislation at UC Davis Faculty of Regulation. “Now they look like attempting to study from these errors. … They could possibly be much more strategic the second time.”
The clearest instance is Trump’s assault on California’s robust automotive emissions requirements.
The 1970 Clear Air Act permits the federal Environmental Safety Company to restrict air air pollution from vehicles. It additionally permits California to impose harder requirements due to its decades-long battle to cut back smog, underneath a “waiver” the EPA usually grants annually.
Congress additionally allowed different states to undertake the California requirements; 17 states and the District of Columbia have achieved so.
In 2019, after vehicle producers complained that the California requirements have been a burden, Trump introduced that he was revoking the state’s waiver “with the intention to produce far cheaper vehicles for the patron.”
His choice was a part of a broad effort to reduce federal guidelines requiring auto fleets to cut back gas consumption.
Newsom and then-Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra sued the federal authorities, charging that the EPA had overstepped its authority. The case meandered by way of the courts till Biden took workplace and restored California’s waiver.
Trump hasn’t talked explicitly about attacking California’s waiver once more. However final yr, the conservative Heritage Basis assembled a group of former Trump aides to compile a coverage agenda referred to as “Venture 2025.” The roughly 900-page doc features a detailed technique for revoking or limiting California’s emissions requirements.
It means that as an alternative of revoking the waiver, the EPA may restrict California’s requirements to smog-producing pollution like ozone, not greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. If that fails, the agenda says, the EPA may attempt to block different states from adopting greenhouse gasoline requirements.
“They’re recognizing that they screwed up the primary time and laying out a highway map to attempt to do higher the second time,” mentioned Dan Becker, an environmental lawyer on the nonprofit Middle for Organic Range. “They’re principally selecting every of the areas by which California can act and going after every of them.”
Becker mentioned the technique could also be geared toward getting the case into the Supreme Court docket, the place a second Trump administration may strive its luck earlier than a 6-3 conservative majority.
If a second Trump administration tried to revoke the waiver, Newsom mentioned at a February information convention, the state would go to courtroom once more.
“We all know the playbook,” he mentioned. “We have been profitable again and again [in Trump’s first term] within the courts, and we’ve confidence that may proceed.”
Offshore oil drilling may produce one other standoff.
In 2018, Trump proposed opening federal waters alongside your entire Pacific Coast, in addition to Alaska and the Atlantic Coast, to drilling for oil and gasoline. That kicked up a storm of opposition, together with — to Trump’s shock — from Republicans.
And Trump’s administration discovered itself tied up within the federal rule-making course of.
“They made procedural errors that slowed all the things down,” mentioned Kassie Siegel, an lawyer on the Middle for Organic Range.
If he wins a second time period, Trump would have broad authority to open the continental shelf to grease leases, however he would run into different issues.
One is economics: Deep-water drilling within the North Pacific is pricey and dangerous. Oil firms are extra involved in drilling within the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, the place recognized reserves are bigger.
The opposite is native politics. In 2018, when Trump proposed opening the Pacific Coast to drilling, the California Legislature shortly handed a legislation banning new oil pipelines, piers or different infrastructure inside three miles of shore. That would make it prohibitively costly to maneuver oil from offshore wells to onshore refineries or terminals.
Oil firms know that any try to drill new wells off California would spark large opposition. A PPIC ballot in 2021 discovered that 72% of Californians, together with 43% of Republicans, oppose the concept.
A 3rd potential battle: wind. Offshore wind farms are a giant a part of California’s clear vitality plans, geared toward supplying about 13% of the state’s energy provide by 2045. However wind is Trump’s least favourite vitality supply.
“Windmills rot. They rust. They kill the birds. It’s the costliest vitality there’s,” he charged final yr. There’s far more to say about that, and I’ll return to it in a later column.
Newsom says he doesn’t imagine Trump will get a second time period.
“It received’t occur,” he mentioned on the February information convention. Nonetheless, simply in case, “we’re undoubtedly attempting to future-proof California in each manner, form or kind.”
“We’re hardly only a punching bag on this,” the governor added. “We’re attempting to claim ourselves.”
However environmentalists are nonetheless frightened.
“The issue is, a second Trump time period would come when the local weather disaster is extra dire than it was in his first time period,” Becker mentioned. “Every part the scientists predicted is occurring extra shortly than they anticipated. … However Trump doesn’t imagine it’s an issue, doesn’t wish to remedy it and would solely make it worse.”
Which helps clarify why so many environmental teams, together with the Sierra Membership and the League of Conservation Voters, have endorsed Biden’s reelection, despite the fact that they’ve criticized a lot of his selections: They’ve thought of the choice.
