Ed. Note: This post was originally posted on January 19, 2017, with Donald Trump on deck to take the Presidency.
“Good news indeed! Energy cuts are easy cuts compared to the hard budget choices that lie ahead in the transition from statism and stagnation to a vibrant, coordinated, expanding entrepreneurial economy.”
Rome is not burning, but Joe Romm at Climate Progress is. “Will Trump go down in history as the man who pulled the plug on a livable climate?” he writes, with the subtitle, “The fate of humanity is in the hands of a denier who pledged to kill domestic and global climate action and all clean energy research.”
Really, Joe?
But Romm goes on to (usefully) report:
The Australian journalist Graham Readfearn notes that while you can’t find Trump’s original “100 day action plan” for energy and climate on the campaign website anymore, “it was archived by Wayback Machine”.
Here is my 100-day plan:
- We’re going to rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan and the Water of the U.S. rule.
- We’re going to save the coal industry and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton’s extremist agenda.
- I’m going to ask Trans Canada to renew its permit application of the Keystone Pipeline
- We’re going to lift moratoriums on energy production in federal areas
- We’re going to revoke policies that impose unwarranted restrictions on new drilling technologies. These technologies create millions of jobs with a smaller footprint than ever before.
- We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.
- Any regulation that is outdated, unnecessary, bad for workers, or contrary to the national interest will be scrapped. We will also eliminate duplication, provide regulatory certainty, and trust local officials and local residents.
- Any future regulation will go through a simple test: is this regulation good for the American worker? If it doesn’t pass this test, the rule will not be approved.
AIso importantly, Trump (as Romm noted) has announced a plan to cut $100 billion in climate related federal funding over eight years, which would require “zeroing out all federal clean energy R&D, efforts to help countries around the globe deal with climate and the entire government’s climate science effort.”
Good news indeed! Energy cuts are easy cuts compared to the hard budget choices that lie ahead in the transition from statism and stagnation to a vibrant, coordinated, expanding entrepreneurial economy.