Trump Has Options In Killing Obama’s ‘Climate Change’ Legacy

The first thing the soon to be inaugurated President Trump should do is restrict Mr. Obama from using taxpayer funds to take fossil fueled flights, since Mr. Obama is such a big believer in anthropogenic climate change. Then, whatever house Obama settles in, should remove it from the electric grid and put solar panels on the roof and in the yard. Since Obama cares.

(NY Times) If he follows through, most of these moves will be opposed by environmental groups, by Democrats in Congress and perhaps even by some Republicans. But Mr. Trump will have several tools to begin nullifying the Obama climate agenda.

One of them is the little-known Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a small outpost within the executive branch that has, since the Clinton administration, been the last stop for many regulations before they go into effect.

Lawyers in the office pore over thousands of pages of federal regulations daily and pride themselves on meticulously reviewing the fine print, even if that takes months or years.

Under the control of the new administration, the office could slow President Obama’s latest regulatory initiatives by repeatedly sending them back for additional work.

Well, that’s one way. Another is to make sure that the regulations from the climate weenies in government never make it there.

If Mr. Trump does decide to withdraw from the Paris agreement, he will find it difficult: The accord went into force this month. He would also encounter tremendous obstacles were he to try to dismantle the E.P.A., another campaign threat.

Warmists, like the NY Times writers, continuously say it would be hard to kill the Paris agreement. No. It is not binding, and, has no legal force since it was never ratified by the Senate, as required by the Constitution. A simple Executive Order cancelling it would suffice. Dismantling the EPA? That would be hard, but, their actions can be heavily rolled back with the proper person installed as the head of the EPA. It would be a mistake to get rid of the EPA, as they are important to environmental standards. Their overall power should be rolled back, though, so that they deal with their mandate, rather than all the mission creep. Trump could force a redirection of the mission to focus on the environment, rather than the ultra-political ‘climate change.’

“Donald Trump can’t just snap his fingers and change climate policy,” said David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We have ways to thwart him in Congress and the courts that we could employ.”

Au contraire. Obama snapped his fingers and signed documents. Trump can do the same in cancelling those documents. What Obama’s pen giveth, Trump’s Sharpie can take away.

The article provides lots of ways Trump could dismantle Obama’s climate legacy. Worth the read. The question is “will he?” Time will tell who the real Donald Trump is.