Climate Point: What's next for environmental regulations?
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. From frosty New England, where the leaves have fallen along with the campaign signs, I'm Janet Wilson.
He's back. Donald Trump is headed back to the White House, and his early picks for key posts show he's aiming to keep his word to roll back environmental regulations and clean energy incentives. Fossil fuels and products, particularly gasoline and the cars that run on it, could expand with help from a Republican-run Congress, including new allies like the first car salesman ever elected to the Senate.
Meanwhile, the head of Exxon Mobil wants Trump to stick with the Paris climate accord, saying this week that the country's shifting stances creates a difficult business environment. The first Trump administration pulled the U.S. from the agreement in 2020, and the Biden administration reversed the decision in 2021.
On the other hand, The American Petroleum Institute ‒ the nation's top oil and gas trade group ‒ on Tuesday called on Trump to scrap many of President Joe Biden's policies aimed at fighting climate change, saying the measures threaten jobs, consumer choice and energy security, reports Reuters' Nichola Groom. That includes doing away with vehicle emissions standards meant to produce more electric vehicles, lifting a pause on export permits for liquefied natural gas facilities and working with Congress to repeal a fee on methane emissions from drilling operations, among a range of other actions.
Key nominations announced. Trump on Monday nominated former Rep. Lee Zeldin to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin, a 44-year-old attorney and former military intelligence officer, was a Republican New York congressman from 2015 to 2023.
Trump announced Zeldin's appointment − which requires Senate approval − in a statement that said, "He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards."
Zeldin has a 14% lifetime environmental voting score out of a possible 100% from the League of Conservation Voters, writes Paste BN's Joey Garrison.
Trump will also nominate North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be his Interior Secretary, overseeing 500 million acres of federal lands, including energy production leases and national parks and monuments. The Interior Department also administers federal programs involving native tribes.
As governor, Burgum, 68, took steps to improve relations with the state's five tribes, including signing legislation giving preference to Native American families in the adoption of Native children.
Burgum, who campaigned extensively for Trump and supports deregulation and fossil fuels, aligns with Trump's pledge to increase oil drilling on public lands. Environmentalists quickly slammed Trump's pick. “Burgum will be a disastrous Secretary of the Interior who’ll sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry’s profits,” Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
What's next for EVs? Trump has vowed to end Biden's efforts to expand manufacturing of electric vehicles. He will have a strong ally for that goal in the Senate, where the first car dealer ever elected to serve there, Bernie Moreno of Ohio, says he and the President-elect have spoken, and agree on upending a strategy Detroit's automakers have spent billions pursuing: The transition to electric cars. Trump could also reward companies with big tax breaks if they build cars in the United States.
Both initiatives were laid out to the Detroit Free Press in an exclusive interview with Moreno, 57, who was backed by more than 1,000 auto dealers in a campaign that cost him and his rival, incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown, a record $500 million. He says the industry must focus on cars that people want to buy and can afford, not manufacturing EVs for what he said are unrealistic government fuel economy standards.
Hottest. Year. Ever. Scientists say 2024 is "virtually certain" to be the warmest year on record, reports Paste BN's Dinah Voyles Pulver. The findings are based on computer-generated analyses and billions of real-time measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.
Fires on both coasts. It's not just the West that's burning now. Fires on both coasts have been blamed on a combination of drought, heat and sprawling development. An 18-year-old firefighter was killed by a falling tree as he helped battle a blaze in a state forest straddling New York and New Jersey, as drought conditions intensified across the Northeast, fueling wildfires and threatening lives and homes. Joggers and dogwalkers were astounded to see wildfires in popular parks, and skies were polluted not from far off Canadian smoke, but ashy, acrid plumes close to home.
It's tricky to link specific events to climate change, but as Paste BN's Elizabeth Weise chronicles, a rapidly warming atmosphere has created tinder box conditions and other weather variability from coast to coast.
Not over 'til it's over. President Joe Biden is still flexing his pen. His administration promised this week at an annual global climate summit to triple nuclear energy production ‒ a bipartisan goal that could move forward under a Trump presidency. Biden's Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, also proposed a single lane road through Alaskan wilderness that members of a remote tribe have sought for decades for medical evacuations, but which 20 other tribes and major environmental groups have battled.
Read on for more, including how a thirsty chip factory could impact drought-stressed Phoenix. Some stories below may require a subscription. Sign up and get access to eNewspapers across the Paste BN Network. If someone forwarded you this email and you'd like to receive Climate Point in your inbox for free once a week, sign up here.