“Praise goes to Donald Trump. He waited, listened, and decided. American First. Consumers First. Taxpayers First. Global climate and energy planners and an intellectual elite last.”
The good news is that the Paris climate agreement, weak and aspirational to begin with, will increasingly go the way of the Kyoto Protocol. President Trump did a big favor for the US and the world by pulling out.
Progressives, weep not. Remember what the father of the climate alarm, James Hansen, said about the heralded 2015 agreement:
…“[The Paris agreement] is a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”
“When The Washington Post reported earlier this month that President Trump appointed Daniel Simmons to run the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the paper called him a ‘conservative scholar.’ Conservative scholar? ‘Fossil fuel industry propagandist’ would have been more accurate.”
– Elliott Negin (Senior Writer, Union of Concerned Scientists). “Can Trump’s Koch-Funded Appointees STall Clean Energy Momentum?” May 19, 2017.
“Elliott Negin can earn his paycheck by impugning the motives of his opponents and trotting out superficial arguments for political energies instead of market-chosen ones. But he is fooling himself and propping up the Washington, DC Big Environmentalist shared narrative about benign, affordable renewable energy.”
Meet Daniel Simmons, the current acting assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
“Beginning with the Memorial Day weekend and throughout the summer, Americans will spend their hard-earned dollars traveling to visit family, friends, and the great outdoors. Meanwhile, Big Oil will be making huge profits off of these travel expenditures on fuel, while at the same time fighting for decreased public health and climate-change protections.”
– Center for American Progress (and Climate Progress), four years ago.
The American Automobile Association predicts that 39.3 million Americans will hit the open road this Memorial Day weekend, a million more this year than last. Affordable, reliable, widely available gasoline and diesel is a big reason. And maybe Americans feel energy-liberated by the current Administration.
While we wait for the anti-energy, glass-emptying Center for American Progress (not Prosperity) to psychologically retool, the rest of us can be optimistic.