Trump Takes Chainsaw to Obama's “Climate” Schemes

Obama failed in his mission to make his “global-warming” schemes “Trump proof.” Fulfilling some of his key campaign promises to voters, President Donald Trump moved Tuesday to dismantle huge swaths of the unconstitutional “climate” regime imposed on Americans by his predecessor. Among other important targets in Trump’s latest executive order is Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” decree, which sought to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide, also known to scientists as the “gas of life.” The measure signed by Trump also takes aim at multiple other schemes adopted by Obama that restricted energy production or killed jobs under the guise of stopping alleged man-made global warming. Trump’s supporters and climate realists celebrated the news, though some warned that there was still important work left to do on the issue. Far-left Democrats, United Nations bureaucrats, and tax-funded climate alarmists, on the other hand, were left frothing at the mouth.

In a sweeping executive order signed Tuesday, Trump ordered all federal agencies to begin reviewing regulations that unnecessarily burden energy production. The same order also overturned a wide range of decrees issued by Obama on “climate,” CO2 emissions, energy production, and related schemes. In addition, Trump rescinded Obama’s “Climate Action Plan” and his “Climate Action Plan Strategy,” both of which were used to wage war on the American people, the U.S. economy, and the energy sector in particular. In fact, so extreme were Obama and his agenda that he actually bragged on television about how his scheming would “necessarily” cause electricity prices “to skyrocket.” Especially harmed were the poor and vulnerable, along with working-class Americans whose jobs were lost.

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While not explicitly mentioned in the executive order, Trump’s latest actions also effectively nullify U.S. compliance the United Nations “Paris Agreement” that Obama signed without the constitutionally mandated advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. The UN scheme, negotiated in Paris by the UN and its mostly autocratic member regimes, called for, among other policies, dramatic controls placed on the economy, and energy in particular, under the guise of controlling “global warming.” The pseudo-treaty also called for trillions of dollars in wealth redistribution from Western taxpayers to Third World governments and dictators through the UN “Green Climate Fund.” On the campaign trail, Trump, who has frequently referred to the man-made global-warming theory as a “hoax,” vowed to “cancel” the UN scheme. Discussions about whether to formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement are apparently still ongoing.

Energy independence was a key motivation behind Trump’s order, which was headlined “Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth.” “It is in the national interest to promote clean and safe development of our Nation’s vast energy resources, while at the same time avoiding regulatory burdens that unnecessarily encumber energy production, constrain economic growth, and prevent job creation,” Trump’s order declared in the opening. “Moreover, the prudent development of these natural resources is essential to ensuring the Nation’s geopolitical security. It is further in the national interest to ensure that the Nation’s electricity is affordable, reliable, safe, secure, and clean, and that it can be produced from coal, natural gas, nuclear material, flowing water, and other domestic sources, including renewable sources.”

In a refreshing use of proper terminology, Trump also called on all federal agencies to follow U.S. policy “respecting the proper roles of the Congress and the States concerning these matters in our constitutional republic.” Of course, many politicians — presumably out of ignorance, though not always — often inaccurately refer to America as a “democracy.” Trump’s use of the correct terminology to describe the American system of government, a constitutional republic, and his acknowledgment of the role of Congress and the states, also marks a sharp departure from his predecessor. Indeed, when Congress refused to adopt parts of his extreme unconstitutional agenda, Obama vowed to impose it with his “pen and phone” instead. Now, broad swaths of his legacy are being undone with Trump’s pen.

At the signing ceremony, flanked by coal miners whose livelihoods Obama worked hard to destroy, Trump hinted at the enormity of his actions, saying Obama’s “crushing attack” on America was over. “Together we are going to start a new energy revolution,” Trump said at the Environmental Protection Agency headquaters. “I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion and to cancel job-killing regulations.” He vowed that there would still be safety, clean water, and clean air. “But so many [regulations] are unnecessary, so many are job-killing,” he added, echoing the rhetoric he used on the campaign about bringing back jobs and reviving the U.S. economy smothered by lawless federal scheming. “Together we will create millions of good American jobs, also so many energy jobs, and really lead to unbelievable prosperity.”

Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a business-friendly climate realist, said the administration was charting a new course that was both “pro-jobs and pro-environment.” “It’s going to create jobs in the oil and gas sector,” he said of Trump’s order shredding much of the illegal “climate” regime foisted on America by Obama and his bureaucrats. “For too long, over the last several years, you’ve had certain industries, certain sectors of our economy that were within the crosshairs of the EPA. That is not going to happen anymore.” In short, what top administration officials called the “War on Coal” is officially over. Pruitt has also been bold in declaring that he does not believe man is primarily responsible for changes in the climate, a position at odds with the establishment but in line with that of most Americans in polls.

Still, there are key policies Trump promised on the campaign trail that have yet to be fulfilled. Among them: Overturning the Obama EPA’s absurd “finding” that CO2 — the gas of life, exhaled by every living person and required by every plant — is dangerous “pollution.” Formally canceling the UN Paris regime has also not been done yet. Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s EPA transition team, said he expected those decisions would be made in the future. “We’re happy with it so far and we look forward to the right decisions on Paris and [CO2] endangerment, but I think those are still to be made and they’re a ways down the road,” Ebell was quoted as saying in Politico. Prominent climate realist and Breitbart writer James Delingpole, though, took a harder line, saying that Pruitt should resign if he was not ready to overturn the Obama administration’s widely ridiculed “endangerment finding” on CO2 that declared human breath to be pollution.

Attorney Craig Richardson, president of the pro-liberty, pro-science Energy & Environment Legal Institute, celebrated Trump’s order reining in the “outlaw, junk science-fueled and job-killing” EPA. “This executive order rolls back one of the most economically damaging policies of the Obama Administration,” he said, adding that it was another sign that Trump plans to keep his promises. “Through this action, President Trump is also keeping his promise to offer relief to minorities, the poor and seniors by helping them stay out of ´green energy poverty.´ While becoming wealthy at taxpayer expense ´green energy´ billionaires are driving up utility costs for to those who can least afford it. This executive order will provide these individuals and families the help and hope they so desperately need.” Richardson also said Obama’s scheming was never about clean air or water, but was designed to enrich his cronies such as billionaire Tom Steyer at the expense of U.S. workers and taxpayers.

On the other side of the debate, Democrats and climate alarmists were fuming. Speaking for Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s order a “spiteful assault” on Obama’s lawless “Clean Power Plan.” She also claimed Trump’s efforts would not bring back coal jobs. “President Trump and Congressional Republicans’ contempt for clean air, clean water, and our clean energy future endangers the health of our children and the strength of our economy,” she whined in a statement quoted in media reports, without elaborating on how the gas exhaled by every person on the planet posed a danger to children’s health or the economy. With the man-made warming theory completely discredited by the evidence and in the public mind, climate profiteer Al Gore tried to put a smiley face on the latest blow to his agenda. “No one man or group can stop the encouraging and escalating momentum we are experiencing in the fight to protect our planet,” he claimed, sounding like the infamous “Baghdad Bob” who kept proclaiming that Saddam would rule forever even as American tanks passed in the background.

At the UN, former UN global-warming boss Christiana Figueres, who infamously opened a UN “climate” summit in Cancun with a prayer to the Mayan goddess of cannibalism and human sacrifice, was also outraged. “This decision will make things harder, not easier for Americans,” claimed Figueres, who promoted the brutal Communist Chinese system of mass-murder and oppression as superior to the U.S. constitutional system for fighting alleged man-made warming. “That’s because trying to make fossil fuels remain competitive in the face of a booming clean renewable power sector, with the clean air and plentiful jobs it continues to generate, is going against the flow of economics.” She also repeated the lies about “dirty air,” perhaps hoping people would be too ignorant to realize that CO2 is exhaled with every breath. “I am optimistic that Paris will endure, with world leadership remaining resilient in its commitments to Paris,” she added as the UN Paris agreement comes unglued without U.S. tax funds to bribe Third World regimes into compliance.

Some especially radical climate alarmists — mostly ultra-far-left Democrats from extremely liberal states and cities — announced the formation of a new “coalition” to stop Trump’s order undoing Obama’s illegal orders. “We won’t hesitate to protect those we serve — including by aggressively opposing in court President Trump’s actions that ignore both the law and the critical importance of confronting the very real threat of climate change,” the coalition said in a statement. The group of fringe climate alarmists is led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who legal experts said appeared to be involved in a “criminal conspiracy” to deprive Americans of their rights with his bizarre crusade to persecute those who exposed the flaws in his imploding warming theories. Officials from California, Massachusetts, and the cities of Chicago and Boulder, Colorado, are also participating in the extremist group.

In another example of the extreme deception and dishonesty of climate alarmists and Obama officials, former Obama EPA boss Gina McCarthy falsely accused the Trump administration of wanting “us to travel back to when smokestacks damaged our health and polluted our air, instead of taking every opportunity to support clean jobs of the future.” In the real world, CO2 not only does not damage health, it is an essential building block of life. Every human exhales about two pounds of CO2 each day, and plants need it to live. Human emissions of CO2 account for a fraction of one percent of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, with water vapor making up about 95 percent. And countless top scientists have pointed out that CO2 levels have been far higher in the past, and that the earth and its plant life are currently starving for more CO2. That is why, for example, farmers pump CO2 into their greenhouses.

Aside from his latest executive order, Trump’s proposed federal budget slashes taxpayer funding for “climate” schemes at the federal and UN levels. Among other cuts, the budget proposal ends federal schemes to reduce emissions of the gas of life. It also cuts diplomatic programs on “climate,” as well as cutting funding to the pseudo-scientific bureaucracies pumping out a constant stream of discredited climate hysteria by manipulating and concealing data. “We’re not spending money on that anymore,” said Trump administration Office of Management and Budget chief Mick Mulvaney in response to a question about “climate” funding. “We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.”

Trump still has some work to go on the climate issue before all his campaign promises are fulfilled. For one, the U.S. government must withdraw from Obama’s illegal UN Paris Agreement pseudo-treaty. Secondly, the EPA should reverse the absurd finding that human breath is dangerous pollution. An even better solution would be to pass H.R. 861 to abolish the entire unconstitutional EPA, which was created by disgraced President Richard Nixon with an illegal executive order. But with Trump’s latest order, along with other recent actions such as his order to review Obama’s power grab over “Waters of the United States,” the president is on the right track. Americans hoping Trump will go all the way should re-double their efforts to expose the “climate” fraud and the real agenda behind it. Contacting Congress can help, too.

Photo of President Trump, accompanied by administration officials and coal miners, holding up his “Energy Independence” executvie order: AP Images

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, was at the UN climate summit in Paris. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.

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