Donald Trump says he is not worried about climate change.
Before running for president, he declared that global warming was “a hoax” invented by China to bring the American economy to its knees.
“The climate has always changed,” he recently shrugged.
If elected president, Trump says, one of his “day one” priorities will be to increase oil and gas production — or, as he puts it: “Drill, baby, drill!” »
With more fossil fuels, he promises, “we will be rich and happy again.”
These positions are at the heart of Trump’s campaign to win back the White House. And they put it on a collision course with California, where the Democratic-led government, supported by most voters, has made a clean energy economy a major goal.
“It’s mind-boggling how easily this man is manipulated,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “His only interest is to please the CEOs of big oil companies and, in doing so, mortgage our children and the planet.”
A large majority of Californians support their state’s ambitious climate goals, the Public Policy Institute of California found in a survey last year. Nearly two-thirds believe that protecting the environment should be a priority, even at the risk of slowing economic growth.
In attacking the state’s environmental agenda, Trump frequently portrays California as a disaster zone, often in wildly exaggerated or fabricated stories.
“If you look at California, there are brownouts and power outages every day,” he said in a campaign video last year. “People can’t turn on their air conditioners.” (Not true; California hasn’t had major power grid problems since 2020.)
If he wins a second term, Trump plans to scrap President Biden’s programs encouraging renewable energy. He said he would offer tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers; repeal federal subsidies for solar, wind and other renewable energy projects; and rolling back Biden’s efforts to encourage the use of electric vehicles.
“On my first day in office, I will end all of this,” Trump said last year, referring to electric vehicle tax credits and other subsidies. (In fact, he couldn’t repeal the tax credit on day one — that would require an act of Congress — but he could add requirements to limit the number of cars and trucks eligible for the subsidy.)
Former aides say Trump is also likely to revive two of his first-term goals that sparked clashes with California: repealing the state’s strict vehicle emissions standards and opening more federal waters to oil drilling , including off the Pacific coast.
He failed in both areas, partly because of opposition from California and other states, but also because of the incompetence of his administration.
“During the first term, the Trump administration had something of a blunderbuss. Their proposals were not well thought out. Often they have not stood up to scrutiny,” said Richard M. Frank, a professor of environmental law at UC Davis Law School. “Now they seem to be trying to learn from these mistakes. … They could be a lot more strategic the second time around.”
The clearest example is Trump’s attack on California’s strict auto emissions standards.
The Clean Air Act of 1970 allows the federal Environmental Protection Agency to limit air pollution from automobiles. It also allows California to impose stricter standards because of its decades-long battle to reduce smog, under a “waiver” that the EPA normally grants each year.
Congress also authorized other states to adopt California’s standards; 17 states and the District of Columbia have done so.
In 2019, after automakers complained that California’s standards were a burden, Trump announced he was revoking the state’s waiver “in order to produce cars that are much cheaper for the consumer.”
His decision was part of a broader effort to reduce federal rules requiring automobile fleets to reduce their fuel consumption.
Newsom and then-Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra sued the federal government, accusing the EPA of overstepping its authority. The case wound its way through the courts until Biden took office and reinstated California’s waiver.
Trump has not explicitly talked about attacking California’s waiver again. But last year, the conservative Heritage Foundation assembled a team of former Trump aides to develop a policy agenda called “Project 2025.” The approximately 900-page document includes a detailed strategy for revoking or limiting California’s emissions standards.
He suggests that instead of revoking the waiver, the EPA could limit California’s standards to smog-producing pollutants like ozone, not greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. If that fails, the agenda says, the EPA could try to block other states from adopting greenhouse gas standards.
“They recognize they made a mistake the first time and lay out a road map to try to do better the second time,” said Dan Becker, an environmental attorney at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “Basically, they’re picking each of the areas that California can act on and going after each of them.”
Becker said the strategy could aim to take the case to the Supreme Court, where a second Trump administration could try its luck before a 6-3 conservative majority.
If a second Trump administration tried to revoke the waiver, Newsom said at a February news conference, the state would go to court again.
“We know the playbook,” he said. “We have won many cases (during Trump’s first term) in court, and we are confident that this will continue.”
Offshore oil drilling could lead to a new impasse.
In 2018, Trump proposed opening federal waters along the entire Pacific coast, as well as Alaska and the Atlantic coast, to oil and gas drilling. That set off a storm of opposition, including — to Trump’s surprise — from Republicans.
And the Trump administration found itself stuck in the federal rulemaking process.
“They made procedural errors that slowed everything down,” said Kassie Siegel, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
If he wins a second term, Trump would have broad authority to open the continental shelf to oil concessions, but he would face other problems.
One is economic: Deep-water drilling in the North Pacific is expensive and risky. Oil companies are more interested in drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, where known reserves are larger.
The other concerns local politics. In 2018, when Trump proposed opening the Pacific coast to drilling, the California legislature quickly passed a law banning new pipelines, jetties or other infrastructure within three miles of the coast. This could make it prohibitive to transport oil from offshore wells to refineries or onshore terminals.
Oil companies know that any attempt to drill new wells off California would be met with massive opposition. A 2021 PPIC poll found that 72% of Californians, including 43% of Republicans, oppose the idea.
A third potential conflict: the wind. Offshore wind farms are a major part of California’s clean energy plans, aiming to provide about 13% of the state’s electricity supply by 2045. But wind power is the energy source Trump’s least favorite.
“The windmills are rotting. They rust. They kill the birds. It’s the most expensive energy there is,” he said last year. There is still a lot to say about this, and I will return to it in a future article.
Newsom says he doesn’t believe Trump will get a second term.
“It’s not going to happen,” he said at the February press conference. Still, just in case, “we’re definitely trying to future-proof California in every way, shape and form.”
“We are not just a punching bag in this area,” the governor added. “We’re trying to assert ourselves.”
But environmentalists remain worried.
“The problem is that a second Trump term would come when the climate crisis is more serious than it was during his first term,” Becker said. “Everything scientists predicted is happening faster than expected. … But Trump doesn’t believe it’s a problem, doesn’t want to solve it and will only make the situation worse.”
Which partly explains why so many environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, supported Biden’s re-election, even as they criticized many of his decisions: They considered the alternative.
California Daily Newspapers
