Donald Trump says he isn’t nervous 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, certainly one of his “Day One” priorities shall be growing oil and fuel manufacturing — or, as he places it: “Drill, child, drill!”
With extra fossil fuels, he guarantees, “we shall be wealthy once more and comfortable once more.”
These positions are on the coronary heart of Trump’s marketing campaign to regain the White Home. And so they 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 serious aim.
“It’s breathtaking how simply manipulated this man is,” Gov. Gavin Newsom mentioned in a press release. “His solely curiosity is enjoyable Huge Oil CEOs, and mortgaging our children and the planet within the course of.”
A big majority of Californians help their state’s formidable local weather objectives, the Public Coverage Institute of California present in a survey final yr. Virtually two-thirds mentioned they consider defending the atmosphere must be a precedence even on the threat of curbing financial development.
In attacking the state’s environmental agenda, Trump incessantly portrays California as a catastrophe zone, usually in wildly exaggerated or invented tales.
“If you happen to take a look at California, it’s acquired brownouts and blackouts each single day,” he claimed in a marketing campaign video final yr. “Individuals can’t activate their air conditioners.” (Not true; California hasn’t had important 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 supply tax breaks to grease, fuel 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 autos.
“First day in workplace, I’ll be ending all of that,” Trump mentioned final yr, referring to EV tax credit and different subsidies. (In actual fact, he couldn’t repeal the tax credit score on Day One — that may take an act of Congress — however he might add necessities to restrict the vehicles and vans that qualify for the subsidy.)
Former aides say Trump can be more likely to revive two of his first-term objectives that spurred clashes with California: revoke the state’s powerful automobile 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 type of blunderbuss method. Their proposals weren’t nicely thought out. They usually didn’t maintain up below shut evaluate,” mentioned Richard M. Frank, a professor of environmental legislation at UC Davis College of Regulation. “Now they look like making an attempt 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 powerful 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, below 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 accomplished so.
In 2019, after car producers complained that the California requirements had been a burden, Trump introduced that he was revoking the state’s waiver “in an effort to produce far cheaper vehicles for the buyer.”
His choice was a part of a broad effort to cut back federal guidelines requiring auto fleets to cut back gasoline 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 staff of former Trump aides to compile a coverage agenda known as “Mission 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 might restrict California’s requirements to smog-producing pollution like ozone, not greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. If that fails, the agenda says, the EPA might attempt to block different states from adopting greenhouse fuel 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 mainly selecting every of the areas during 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 Courtroom, the place a second Trump administration might attempt 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 court docket once more.
“We all know the playbook,” he mentioned. “We had been profitable time and again [in Trump’s first term] within the courts, and we’ve got confidence that may proceed.”
Offshore oil drilling might produce one other standoff.
In 2018, Trump proposed opening federal waters alongside your complete Pacific Coast, in addition to Alaska and the Atlantic Coast, to drilling for oil and fuel. 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 every part 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 focused on drilling within the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, the place identified reserves are bigger.
The opposite is native politics. In 2018, when Trump proposed opening the Pacific Coast to drilling, the California Legislature rapidly handed a legislation banning new oil pipelines, piers or different infrastructure inside three miles of shore. That might 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 an enormous 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 consider Trump will get a second time period.
“It gained’t occur,” he mentioned on the February information convention. Nonetheless, simply in case, “we’re positively making an attempt to future-proof California in each method, form or type.”
“We’re hardly only a punching bag on this,” the governor added. “We’re making an attempt to say ourselves.”
However environmentalists are nonetheless nervous.
“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 little thing the scientists predicted is going on extra rapidly than they anticipated. … However Trump doesn’t consider it’s an issue, doesn’t need to resolve 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, regardless that they’ve criticized lots of his choices: They’ve thought-about the choice.