Change in direction
Trump EPA transition chief: Expect U.S. to pull out of climate pact soon
Now this is not coming from Scott Pruitt, the EPA director-designate, who hasn't actually been confirmed yet - nor is there even a vote scheduled. Myron Ebell was thought at one point to have the inside track for EPA director because he was Trump's transition chief on matters related to the EPA, and he either knows what's going on or he's going around talking like he does.
His day job is head of policy on matters pertaining to global warming at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, and he's apparently still tapped in enough with the administration that he feels pretty confident saying we're about to make a major change in direction on this issue. How major? Let's just say we won't be ratifying the Paris climate agreement any time soon, and in all likelihood Obama policies related to "climate change"
will be U.S. policy no more:
Ebell is the director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a U.S. conservative think tank, and helped to guide the EPA's transition after Trump was elected in November until he was sworn in on Jan. 20.
Trump, a climate skeptic, campaigned on a pledge to boost the U.S. oil and gas drilling and coal mining industries by reducing regulation.
He alarmed nations that backed the 2015 Paris agreement to cut greenhouse gases by pledging to pull the United States out of the global deal agreed by nearly 200 countries. However, Trump told the New York Times in November that he had an "open mind" on the agreement.
Trump's administration has asked the EPA to halt all contracts, grants and interagency agreements pending a review, sources said.
"The U.S. will clearly change its course on climate policy. Trump has made it clear he will withdraw from the Paris Agreement. He could do it by executive order tomorrow or he could do it as part of a larger package," Ebell told reporters in London on Monday.
The global warmists want you to think the "discussion is over" and that no reputable scientist dissents from the orthodoxy. That's not science. That's propaganda
Now the media will portray withdrawal from the Paris accord as a radical step, but we were never really in it in the first place. Typical of Obama, he negotiated a U.S. role in international treaties but never submitted them to the Senate for ratification because he knew they had no chance of being ratified. So he just considered them "executive" agreements and proceeded as if the U.S. was an actual, legal signatory. We never were, so the only thing Trump will change here is to stop pretending we're in the treaty and stop pursuing policies that the treaty would require.
That's all to the good, as we've discussed many times before in this space. Global warming, climate change or whatever they're calling it this week is little more than an excuse to pursue the high-tax, heavy-regulation policies the left wants anyway. They know they can't get the public behind these policies on their merits, so they pretend there's a global emergency for which liberal anti-business policies just happen to be the only possible solution.
I'll say again what I've said many times before: I'm a skeptic on the matter of man-made global warming precisely because its advocates are so dishonest and such bullies in how they press their case. Real scientists don't attack those who question their theories. They welcome the free and open discussion because that's how scientific inquiry is actually supposed to work. The global warmists want you to think the "discussion is over" and that no reputable scientist dissents from the orthodoxy. That's not science. That's propaganda.
But even if they were 100 percent correct, I would not favor liberal tax and regulatory policies as the solution. I would tell you that the solution to the problem was cleaner technology, and that's likely to come from the private sector. So unleash the innovative talents of the private sector and let someone come up with the solution. Whoever does will get very rich - if the Earth is really in jeopardy and their invention is the solution to the problem.
In the meantime, the United States does not need to be committing itself to the policies contemplated in Paris 2015, so Trump is once again doing the right thing by taking us in a very different direction from his predecessor.
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