Image: Trump to Issue Exec Orders “Reshaping” EPA – Swamp Rats Nervous
From Climate Change Sanity
Somehow, I am on Climate Home’s email list. The news in this edition is several months old, but a couple of its postings bother me a lot. While the postings do not address repeal of the Endangerment Finding, they do leave me wondering how committed are the Congressional Republicans to the draining of the EPA swamp”?
Several years ago, a hearing before the Supreme Court was being conducted, that wanted CO2 to be added, as a pollutant, in the Clear Air Act. Congress had passed and the President had signed the Clear Air Act into law a number of years prior to the case in question. Despite the fact that the legislative body of the US Government had considered CO2 and had rejected it being included, the Supreme court said that the EPA should determine if CO2 was a danger to the nation. The EPA cherry picked the science from the IPCC, in particular, and announced that indeed CO2 was endangering the nation. So, the Supremes, ignoring the separation of powers, said ok, it’s now the law of the land that CO2 is a pollutant. From that moment, the EPA has been writing the laws about CO2. They have carte blanc to do whatever they want.
By now the Trump Administration should have acted to repeal this inclusion of CO2 on several bases. One: the science is bogus and two: the Supremes overstepped their Constitutional authority.
The reason repeal is so urgent is summed up by Alan Carlin in his posting “Why Revoking the EPA GHG Endangerment Finding Is the Most Urgent Climate Action Needed”:
Revoking the EF is the only way to bring the climate alarmism scam to the untimely end it so richly deserves in the US and hopefully indirectly elsewhere. Until that happens the CIC will continue to pursue its bad science through reports such as the National Climate Assessment with the recommended disastrous policies that would seriously damage the environment, impoverish the less wealthy, and bring economic disaster for our Nation by raising the prices and decreasing the availability and reliability of fossil fuel energy which is so central to our way of life and economy. If a genuine debate is desired, it would best be undertaken as part of a reconsideration of the GHG Endangerment Finding where the outcome would have some practical and important consequences. Each day that this reconsideration is postponed increases the risks that EPA will be forced by court decisions to impose unjustified carbon dioxide emission reduction regulations based on implementing the EF.
Back to the Climate Home. The Climate Home refers us to two posting about how the IPCC is running out of money. The first one: “EU and others to fill UN climate science funding gap left by Trump”.
The financial situation reached crisis point after Donald Trump this year announced he would halt US contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The US has supplied nearly a third of the panel’s income since its inception and 45% of its funds in 2016.
This is the projection of what happens when the US does pay the IPCC way:
Perhaps you are cheering this outcome. But there is another movement going on in the US Congress. The second link “US senate committee votes to reinstate funding to UN climate treaty” tells me that a US Senate Committee has voted a Democrat proposal that is in favor of supplying the former US share and it looks like even more. How did this happen? Well, several Republican Senators chose to vote for the Democrat proposal. See this
The US senate appropriations committee, which is led by Republicans, has voted to contribute $10 million to the UN treaty organization that oversees the Paris climate agreement.
The US has traditionally contributed around 20% of the operational funding – $6.44m – for the secretariat of the UNFCCC and last year provided $2m to the IPCC, around 45% of its budget. The US contributes further money to other UN climate initiatives.
The amendment passed through the committee 16 to 14. All the Democrats in the committee voted for the amendment, except Joe Manchin the West Virginian senator. Two Republicans Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins voted in favour.
It is not law yet and may never be. But, many of the Republicans seem to be RINOs (Republican in Name Only).
That is my concern. With the narrow margin the Republicans hold in the Senate, I do not think much draining of the swamp can be done legislatively. Write your Congressional people. Let them know how you feel.
