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Trump’s War On Climate Change

In a world of post-truth democracy, it is fitting that President-Elect Donald Trump's new Director of the centre for Energy and Environment “is not a climate scientist. I'm just...the informed layman.”

It would be truly fascinating/terrifying to take a peek at what Myron Ebell is reading. On the one hand, he believes that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the EU (at odds with his new boss who tweeted it was a Chinese concept designed to bring down U.S. business). And on the other hand, he accepts it as fact but sees a silver lining: as really cold places become warmer it'll be nicer to live there and where it is already hot, “the higher temperatures are killing people who are likely to die soon anyway.”

Ebell is quite comfortable with his controversial views. He submitted a list of accomplishments to the U.S. Congress in which he stated he'd made it onto Greenpeace's list of “Climate Criminals”, was described by Rolling Stone as a 'misleader' on global warming and was the subject of a House of Commons censure when MPs signed an Early Day Motion deploring “in the strongest possible terms (his) unfounded and insulting criticism of Sir David King” - he accused the UK's Chief Scientist of being “an alarmist with ridiculous views who knows nothing about climate change.”

He is solidly on point with President-Elect Trump's views on the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump has previously stated he intends on dismantling the accord which hoped to limit global warming to within 2°C, saying that it was a waste of money. In 2016, Ebell called on Congress to prohibit any funding for the Agreement – and also the Green Climate Fund as well as the UN Framework Convention on Climate change. Most analysts think President Trump will simply ignore the commitment made under President Obama.

Turning the country's back on securing a source of energy independence though renewables – a move seen as strategically essential after the recent oil crash - will put the U.S. massively out of step with the rest of the developed world. As renewable energy costs continue to fall through technological advances, they will be picked up by other signatories to the Paris Agreement. China and India in particular have good reason to invest here, due to costs, geopolitics and industrial policy. Related: Oil Sinks Back After Key OPEC Members Turn Down Invitation For Doha Meeting

Trump has promised on many occasions to roll back regulations and has repeatedly promised coal workers he will put them to work again. He told a conference organised by the Marcellus Shale Coalition that “Producing more American energy is a central part of my plan to making America wealthy again, especially for the poorest Americans.” (Of course that could be something of a problem for the coal workers. After all, this industry was hit by cheap natural gas – and the glutted market will remain glutted via more fracking under Trump).

President-Elect Trump quotes figures from the Institute of Energy Research which says lifting restrictions on oil and gas would increase GDP by more than $127 billion and add around 500,000 jobs. But it is worth noting that restrictions are not the dam holding back American energy prosperity. While Warwick Energy CEO Kate Richard believes Trump's economic plan could be beneficial for economic growth, saying it is “interesting”, she did point out that his talk of repealing Environmental Protection Agency regulations was difficult to understand. “We haven't seen a decline in drilling in this country because of EPA regulations. We've seen a decline in drilling in this country because of two years of low prices.” Related: Is GE Looking To Exit Oilfield Services?

She points out that what goes on with OPEC is going to be crucial. However, with what looks like an agreement to cut production going into the final stages, what impact will President-Elect Trump have on the group? If he is determined to boost U.S. oil production, pulls out of the Iranian nuclear agreement delivered by the Obama administration and the bromance with Putin continues, it will not, as bloomberg.com put it, “fill Riyadh with unalloyed confidence” and that could be problematic.

Whether we are entering a time of “planetary disaster” (bluntly put by the director of the environmental group the Sierra Club) remains to be seen. When Reagan took the White House, some too thought it would be the end of the world. That didn't happen. In fact, as Kevin Fay, executive director of the Internal Climate Change Partnership, said recently, “the Montreal Protocol - which Reagan personally authorised - is now the most successful multilateral environment treaty ever adopted.” Folks, you never know.

By Precise Consultants for Oilprice.com

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Leave a comment
  • Bill on November 16 2016 said:
    The article is a joke. .04 % of the atmosphere is CO2.. It's time to get away from the liberal propaganda. They lost .
  • Steve on November 16 2016 said:
    I'm pretty sure that scientific reality doesn't depend on the results of Presidential elections! If not, then next time I will happily run on the "human beings can fly" ticket.
  • dave on November 17 2016 said:
    Post truth huh? As always, the what the left propagates and the truth are opposites. Our founding fathers made one mistake. They did not envision Marxism and Leninism, felt that men would be reasonable. Not wacko. Pure democracy NEVER works, and descends to civil war if left unchecked. Thus the attempt at allaying pure democracy with the Electoral College. Then, as now, the concern was that small states would be bullied by large populous states and the Electoral College was born. It worked this time. Get over it. If left to the majority, through fraud or otherwise, we would lose our country. The grand experiment in self government would end.
  • Robert Harris on November 17 2016 said:
    Mankind and our arrogant pseudo-scientists want to blame humans for climate change. It was going to happen anyway according to 500 year weather cycles. The earth and universe are so vast we should not be miss-led into taking any credit for "solving" a pretended problem which will correct itself in the next 500 years ! These same scare tactic EPA experts will want to take credit for brain washing our kids into believing all this crap in the first place.
  • RICHARD on November 17 2016 said:
    It's not a war on climate change because as globalists look at it because it's a scam to shake down government into taking more money away from people so they can continue to jet around claiming they are doing so for the benefit of the little people. It's a war against a tax.
  • unpacified on November 20 2016 said:
    My girl and I have boycotted ff as much as possible for over 3 years. We live in a facist country where corporations are considered people, and can donate unlimited money for political campaigns, have constitutional rights, and pay for everything on our televisions. Everyone around us is constantly giving there money to the corporations that are spending money against our own rights Climate change is very real, and a NOW problem, also we need accountability for all ghg emissions not just carbon. I know my founding father quotes, and I know the greatest enemies of our nation. I have boycotted so much, this is what we have to do it&#039;s in our history. We are under facist rule, and being forced to vote for deeper facism or socialism.
  • Harold on August 11 2017 said:
    I live in rural Alaska, I am a Yupik Eskimo. The wilderness is our backyard and we live pretty much as one with our wildlife. We know that our climate is changing and it is scary. In just a few short years we have seen the weather warm up, warmer winters earlier springs, animals are changing their migration routes. We depend on the wilderness a lot and live off catching animals. We are living in a changing world and people are fighting about it as if it were nothing. How many of you commenters can say you live in the wild and see it everyday and can notice a subtle change in weather patterns? Not too many I&#039;d guess. The perma frost is melting and the riverbanks are erroding. You people cannot tell us that there is no change

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