To:
Jackson, Ryan[jackson.ryan@epa.gov]
From: POLITICO Pro Energy
Sent: Thur 6/1/2017 9:44:40 AM
Subject: Morning Energy: Trump's final Paris decision comes today at 3 p.m. -- States, cities look at
filling climate void -- Dakota Access begins shipping today
By Anthony Adragna | 06/01/2017 05:42 AM EDT
With help from Esther Whieldon
DECISION DAY: In a scene that could come straight from reality TV, President Donald Trump today will announce his decision on whether to abandon the 2015 landmark Paris climate agreement today at 3 p.m. in the Rose Garden, he tweeted Wednesday night. Withdrawing from the pact would honor his campaign pledge to "cancel" the deal, but go against the wishes of vast swathes of the U.S. business community, many of his own aides and the international community. Three officials tefLPOLITICO's Andrew Restuccia and Josh Dawsey that Trump plans to pull out of the deal, though they noted he could still change his mind at the last minute.
Trump's decision comes after months of internal clashes between Trump's warring factions of advisers spilled into the open with a rush of leaks Wednesday, Andrew and Josh report. And if Trump follows through and withdraws, as expected, opponents of the agreement will have to thank the months-long effort by White House strategist Steve Bannon and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to play to his populist instincts and publicly push the narrative the accord was effectively dead. One White House official said the president's team was furiously working on an announcement of the withdrawal on Wednesday.
Some aides were still clinging to hope late Wednesday that Trump may change course and stay in the deal, while drastically scaling back the Obama administration's non-binding carbon cleanup promises, in line with a plan they had previously pushed. Trump had not officially told his entire team of senior aides he was considering leaving the agreement Wednesday when news leaked out, and administration officials cautioned against definitive reporting, warning that the president is notoriously fickle.
Takeaway from one former U.S. official: "Will global leaders trust the U.S. to negotiate a climate treaty ever again? After Kyoto and Paris, who will trust us to keep our word as a nation? Our credibility is gone."
Meanwhile, cities and states aren't waiting: Talks are just getting off the ground but several states, municipalities, and business leaders are in early discussions to create a carbon reduction agreement to replace the cuts that Trump is expected to eliminate, Pro's Eric Wolff reports . Potentially modeled after the "Nationally Determined Contributions" nations submitted to join the Paris agreement, the possible reduction pledge would help show the international community that climate action continues in the U.S. "It is really important to the international community to understand to avoid a knock-on effect of U.S. withdrawal on the actions of other countries," a source working to facilitate the conversations told Eric. Meanwhile, a group of West Coast Democratic lawmakers urged the governors of California, Washington and Oregon to keep pursuing climate policies to "send a signal" to the international community absent federal action.
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California not pleased: Gov. Jerry Brown didn't mince words in calling Trump's intent to withdraw from the Paris accord "outrageous" while predicting its effects would be short-lived, POLITICO California's David Siders reports. "I think Trump, paradoxically, is giving climate denial such a bad name that he's actually building the very movement that he is [purporting] to undermine," Brown said in an interview. "You can't fight reality with a tweet."
More European reverberations: European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned Trump about the consequences of following through on withdrawing from the Paris deal, POLITICO Europe's Kalina Oroschakoff reports . "I am a trans-Atlanticist, but if the American president said in the next hours or days that he wants to get out of the Paris climate deal, then it is the duty of Europe to say, 'No, that's not how it works,"' Juncker said at an event in Berlin. "Eighty-three countries run into danger of disappearing from the surface of the Earth if we don't resolutely start the fight against climate change."
Clinton weighs in too: Trump's election rival, Hillary Clinton, said it would be "really stupid" and "totally incomprehensible" to squander the economic opportunities that arise from addressing climate change if the administration withdraws from the pact. "The President is a very impulsive, reactive personality," she said at the Code Conference in California. "So if we all like the Paris Agreement, he may decide to get out of it. Not even understanding one bit about what that means."
But it's worth taking a step back to remember that regardless of the fate of Paris, Trump has been busy chipping away at Obama's climate policies. Your Pro Energy team looks at all the ways he's already taken shots at Obama's green legacy here.
Carper invokes Exxon vote: Top Senate EPW Democrat Tom Carper urged Trump to look at the fact that more than 62 percent of Exxon Mobil shareholders on Wednesday called for the company to assess how climate change and global efforts to limit temperature increases will affect its business as he mulls the fate of the Paris deal. "President Trump should take note of what happened today as he decides the fate of our country's participation in the Paris Climate Agreement," he said in a statement. "We should seize the economic opportunities that come from combating climate change, not cede our role as a global leader."
Greens gather today: Environmental groups, including 350.org, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Peoples Climate Movement, NextGen Climate and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, are holding a rally outside the White House today at 5 p.m. in support of the Paris accord. The Sierra Club said more than 20,000 people have already called the White House to voice their opposition to withdrawal.
WELCOME TO THURSDAY! I'm your host Anthony Adragna, and congrats to Van Ness Feldman's Jonathan Simon for being first out of the box to correctly guess there are six non voting members of the House (D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa). For today: Who was D.C.'s first modem delegate in Congress? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to aadragna@politico.com, or follow us on Twitter @AnthonyAdragna, @Moming Energy , and @POLITICOPro.
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CATANZARO GIVEN ETHICS WAIVER: The White House has granted an ethics waiver for energy aide Mike Catanzaro, a former partner at CGCN Group LLC, to participate in matters related to EPA's Clean Power Plan, waters of the U.S. rule and methane regulations. His past clients include Devon Energy, an Oklahoma oil and gas company close to Pruitt, and he has lobbied on behalf of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and the American Chemistry Council, among others. Catanzaro's is one of more than a dozen waivers quietly released Wednesday night after a dust up between the Office of Government Ethics and White House, which initially refused to disclose them.
DAKOTA ACCESS BEGINS SHIPPING TODAY: The hotly-contested Dakota Access pipeline is expected to begin shipping North Dakota oil today to a distribution point in Illinois, the Associated Press reports. That comes even as the North Dakota Public Service Commission plans to look later this summer at whether the pipeline's developer, Energy Transfer Partners, violated state rules during its construction.
GROUP SEEKS REVIEW OF HARLEY SETTLEMENT: The free-market Cause of Action Institute is taking aim at a settlement the Obama administration reached with Harley-Davidson over after-market "super tuner" devices the company sold to boost motorcycles' performance that allegedly led to Clean Air Act Violations. The August 2016 settlement with EPA required the motorcycle manufacturer to fund a program to replace or retrofit wood-burning stoves with cleaner appliances. But Cause of Action says that approach violates the agency's own guidance, and the group says Pruitt ought to take another look at the settlement. "EPA is overstepping its authority by requiring Harley-Davidson to implement an emissions mitigation project that lacks such a sufficient nexus to the underlying violation," the group wrote today in a letter to Pruitt, along with a FOIA request for documents related to the settlement negotiations.
ORDER AIMS AT BOOSTING ALASKAN ENERGY PRODUCTION: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order Wednesday calling for a review of opportunities to increase oil drilling in Alaska. He directed Interior to examine whether oil production can increase in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and assess how much oil and gas could be extracted from a piece of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Pro's Ben Lefebvre reports. Officials have 31 days to develop a plan to implement his order. Zinke signed the order following a speech at an Alaska Oil and Gas Association conference in Anchorage. "Rules should be based on science and best practice not on arbitrariness," he said.
Alaska's congressional delegation hailed the move. "This Secretarial Order is exactly the type of announcement that so many Alaskans have been asking for: a smart, timely step to restore access to our lands, throughput to our Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and growth to our economy under reasonable regulations that do not sacrifice environmental protections," Senate Energy Chairman Lisa Murkowski said in a statement.
As for Paris, Zinke sidestepped a question on the climate change agreement that's on everyone's mind this week. Zinke told reporters in Alaska that he has "yet to read what the actual Paris agreement is," and declined to weigh in without having a chance to "sit down and read" it, the Associated Press reports.
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RUSSIA LATEST COMPLICATION IN FILLING VACANCIES: Some potential federal appointees are having second thoughts about executive branch appointments given the ongoing investigations into the Trump campaign's ties with Russia, POLITICO'S Andrew Restuccia and Josh Dawsey report. "You're going to have a situation where they're going to have trouble getting A-list or even B-list people to sign up," one lawyer advising potential appointees said. The administration has announced nominees for just 117 of the 559 most-important Senateconfirmed positions.
CASSIDY DOWNPLAYS PROPOSED EPA CUTS: Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy told attendees of a Covington, La. town hall meeting Tuesday that "EPA is not being dismantled" despite Trump's proposed cut of one-third of the agency's budget and efforts to roll back landmark Obama-era regulations addressing climate change and water quality, among other issues. "Certainly there are regulations being rolled back," Cassidy said. "But the Clean Water Act is still in place. There will not be mercury spewing out. All those regulations are still in place." (h/t Pro Health Care's Jennifer Haberkom)
PERRY'S MOVE TOWARD JAPAN: Energy Secretary Rick Perry kicks off a week-long trip to Asia today. He'll stop in Japan and China. Stops include a trip to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear site where Perry will look at efforts to recover from the 2011 earthquake and participation in the 8th Annual Clean Energy and Mission Innovation Ministerials in Beijing where energy ministers from around the world discuss clean energy efforts.
EPA BOOSTS EAST CHICAGO EFFORTS: Fresh off a visit to the East Chicago, Ind., Superfund site, Pruitt ordered a dedicated community coordinator deployed to the area of the contaminated site and vowed the agency would monthly community meetings to provide updates on cleanup progress. "We will take a more hands-on approach to ensure proper oversight and attention to the Superfund program at the highest levels of the agency," he said in a statement. More information is available here.
ZINKE TO FOCUS ON FOREST FIRES FRIDAY: Zinke and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue will spend Friday in Boise, Idaho -- the home of the National Interagency Fire Center -- where the two will likely talk about forest fires and prevention techniques. The secretaries will also speak at Boise State University in the morning.
WATCHDOG QUESTIONS IF TILLERSON VIOLATED ETHICS PLEDGE: A nonprofit watchdog group launched to track the Trump administration's activities is questioning whether Secretary of State Rex Tillerson violated his ethics pledge. The group, American Oversight, is raising questions over reports Tillerson appeared at a signing ceremony between his former employer, Exxon Mobil, and the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation concerning a proposed petrochemical complex slated for Texas. American Oversight filed FOIA requests seeking any guidance or waivers issued to Tillerson regarding the signing ceremony, as well as photos of the event and his calendar. Tillerson pledged during his confirmation process not to participate in any matters related to Exxon for one year.
MAIL CALL! STRENGTHEN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE PROGRAM: Democratic
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Reps. Donald McEachin, Nanette Diaz Barragn and Pramila Jayapal released a letter to Pruitt urging him to build upon and strengthen EPA's environmental justice program. "We must act on climate change, recognizing that frontline communities have continually been most impacted by the effects of climate change," the letter, signed by 43 other congressmen, said. Their calls are likely to fall on deaf ears, though, given Trump's budget zeroed out the program.
MOVE THOSE FERC NOMS ALONG: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Energy Committee Wednesday, urging them to swiftly advance the nominations Robert Powelson and Neil Chatterjee for open slots on the quorumless FERC. "Mr. Powelson and Mr. Chatterjee have demonstrated a solid grasp on the subject matter within FERC's overview and have a demonstrated record of advocating policy over partisanship," Neil Bradley, chief policy officer for the Chamber, wrote.
PERRIELLO NABS McKIBBEN ENDORSEMENT: Two weeks ahead of the Virginia gubernatorial primary election, Tom Perriello picked up the endorsement of prominent environmentalist Bill McKibben on Wednesday. "Tom Perriello, for the first time in Virginia's political history, has stood up to Dominion Energy," McKibben said. "That's a smart move -- what the politically connected utility wants to do is lock the Commonwealth into a future of pipelines and power plants, even as the energy landscape is changing fast in the direction of renewables."
NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: EPA needs to do better at tracking spending on contracts and grants to small businesses to develop and commercialize innovative technologies, GAO said in a report released Wednesday.
EDF PLANS CHALLENGE TO PRUITT METHANE ACTION: Joining the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund announced Wednesday it would challenge Pruitt's decision to stay additional components of the agency's 2016 rule setting methane emissions limits for new oil and gas industry sources. "Colorado, Wyoming and Ohio, already have similar protections in place, which demonstrate the reasonableness of these clean air measures," Peter Zalzal, lead attorney for the group, said in a statement.
The American Petroleum Institute praised Pruitt's decision in its own statement. "As demonstrated through previous regulatory efforts, EPA's focus should be on cost-effective regulations that target emissions of volatile organic compounds, providing the co-benefit of methane emission reductions," the group said in statement.
QUICK HITS
-- God 'can take care of climate change if it's a real problem, congressman says. MLive.
-- Lawsuit alleges EPA failed to protect Shenandoah River. AP.
-- Trump is deciding on the Paris climate agreement with virtually no science advisers on staff. Vox.
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-- California, Canada are teaming up to fight climate change -- again. USA Today.
-- Controversial EPA chief skips Lexington speech, but groups still protest. Lexington Herald Leader.
-- EPA sues over tailings near Park City. Salt Lake Tribune.
-- Gas May Be Killing the Nuclear Option. Bloomberg.
HAPPENING TODAY
11:30 a.m. -- API to release new report on safety, environmental stewardship, and benefits to local communities, RSVP: SammonB@api.org
12:30 p.m. -- "The Political Economy of Forests: REDD+, Good Governance and Land Rights," World Resources Institute, 10 G Street NE, Suite 800
THAT'S ALL FOR ME!
To view online'. https://www.politicopro.eom/tipsheets/morning-energy/2017/06/how-pruitt-bannon-outsmartedivanka-on-paris-023090
Stories from POLITICO Pro
How Bannon and Pruitt boxed in Trump on climate pact Back
By Andrew Restuccia and Josh Dawsey | 05/31/2017 08:00 PM EDT
Donald Trump's chief strategist and EPA administrator maneuvered for months to get the president to exit the Paris climate accord, shrewdly playing to his populist instincts and publicly pressing the narrative that the nearly 200-nation deal was effectively dead -- boxing in the president on one of his highest-profile decisions to date.
Steve Bannon and Scott Pruitt have sought to outsmart the administration's pro-Paris group of advisers, including Trump's daughter Ivanka, who were hoping the president could be swayed by a global swell of support for the deal from major corporations, U.S. allies, Al Gore and even the pope. But some of that pro-Paris sentiment wound up being surprisingly tepid, according to White House aides who had expected that European leaders would make a stronger case during Trump's trip abroad earlier this month.
Those who want Trump to remain also faced an insurmountable hurdle: The president has long believed, rightly or wrongly, that the U.S. is getting a raw deal under the accord, and it proved nearly impossible to change his mind.
The internal reality show will culminate Thursday when Trump finally announces his decision,
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after a rush of leaks Wednesday from administration officials saying he was on the verge of pulling the plug on U.S. participation in history's most comprehensive global climate agreement.
"I will be announcing my decision on Paris Accord, Thursday at 3:00 P.M.," Trump tweeted Wednesday night, without revealing the outcome. "The White House Rose Garden. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
Some White House aides held out the prospect that the president still might take the middle course that Ivanka Trump and others had advocated -- staying in the deal while drastically scaling back the Obama administration's non-binding carbon cleanup promises. But three White House officials said Wednesday that they expect Trump to make a clean break by withdrawing from the agreement, though they noted it's possible the president changes his mind at the last minute.
In recent months, Pruitt and Bannon made sure Trump heard from a parade of conservative leaders and Republican lawmakers who raised concerns that the deal would hobble his pro-fossil fuel energy agenda.
"We made very much the economic message argument," said Club for Growth President David McIntosh, whose group wrote letters to the White House and spoke to senior staff. "It was bad for the U.S. economy. It would stifle economic growth and the United States should withdraw."
As the news of the impending decision spread Wednesday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus began calling and fielding calls from lawmakers, indicating that the U.S. was unlikely to stay in the agreement, one person familiar with the conversations said.
If he withdraws, Paris' foes will have Pruitt and Bannon to thank.
One Republican close to the White House called it the "classic split" and said conservative activists had flooded the White House in recent weeks, after seeing increasing chatter that Trump may stay in. This person said Bannon and Pruitt worked quietly to make sure Trump was hearing their side and touched base occasionally on political strategy to woo him.
"You had the New Yorkers against it, and all the campaign loyalists for it," this person said, referring to the push to withdraw. "When the New Yorkers get involved, it gets complicated for Trump and everyone else around him."
Pruitt and Bannon have told others repeatedly for months that Trump will pull out of the agreement, as they aggressively pushed a narrative that they hoped would prove to be true, even as White House aides continued to debate the issue.
"Some of the debate was for show to help the moderates feel like they had their say," said one person who has spoken to Pruitt. "Pruitt has believed all along that this was never in doubt."
Pruitt, who frequently attacked the EPA's regulations in court when he was Oklahoma's attorney general, used his new post as EPA administrator to orchestrate an aggressive campaign to
Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906
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marshal conservative opposition to the Paris agreement.
He bashed the deal during a closed-door April meeting of the National Mining Association's executive committee, telling the group that the agreement would hurt the economy. Pruitt's staff also urged lawmakers and conservative groups to publicly criticize the agreement, sources familiar with the issue told POLITICO, which had the effect of increasing public pressure on Trump.
Bannon similarly argued in meetings with Trump and his team that the president would be breaking his campaign promise to "cancel" the agreement if he decided to remain. And he argued that the accord is a bad deal for the United States because other countries aren't doing enough to curb their emissions.
Pruitt and Bannon's anti-Paris campaign was meant to counter a separate offensive by members of the administration who supported staying in the pact, including Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
In recent months, Ivanka Trump set up a process in which the president would regularly hear from people who supported remaining in the agreement, according to administration officials.
The remain camp believed, perhaps naively, that Trump could be influenced by the support the Paris deal has received from major corporations, including Exxon Mobil, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson led for more than a decade.
"Ivanka is doing what she can to get him to stay," one official said. "But that doesn't mean he's going to do it."
White House aides outlined a plan to remain in the agreement while weakening former President
Barack Obama's pledge to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions. They made the case that
Trump could use the good will generated from remaining to
for fossil fuels, and they even won the buy-in of
that detested Obama's
climate policies.
They hoped European leaders could persuade Trump he would risk damaging diplomatic relations if he withdrew. Ivanka Trump also brought Gore to Trump Tower to try to sway her father's mind during the presidential transition, and Pope Francis handed the president a copy of his papal encyclical on climate change when the two men met at the Vatican last week.
Trump took calls from a parade of business leaders and foreign leaders in recent weeks, most pressing him to remain, according to a senior administration official -- and the calls continued on Wednesday.
"He had tremendous pressure from international leaders, from members of his own Cabinet and advisers in the international sphere not to pull out of the accord because of the perceived loss of face," said McIntosh, the Club for Growth president.
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But while the leaders of G-7 nations all pressed Trump to remain in the agreement during last week's summit in Italy, Paris supporters in the White House have privately groused that they didn't make an aggressive enough case.
European officials countered they tried not to push Trump too much during the meetings, believing that a hard-sell could backfire. And they were buoyed by early signals from White House officials ahead of the summit that Trump was open to remaining.
Indeed, European officials received a series of mixed messages from Trump's team during the summit. National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, a Paris supporter and the only U.S. official permitted to attend meetings with G-7 leaders, told reporters that Trump was "evolving" on climate change, which many interpreted to mean that he would remain.
White House officials chalked up Cohn's comments to Trump's habit of echoing the perspective of the last person he talked to. By that time, Bannon and other opponents of the agreement had returned the United States. But Trump's decision to delay a final verdict on the agreement gave Pruitt and Bannon a final opportunity to make their case. Pruitt met with Trump to discuss Paris on Tuesday.
Most European officials were unwilling to comment about the prospect that Trump will withdraw, as they have not yet received official word from the White House and they are still holding out hope that the president will change his mind.
The officials have already begun looking to other countries for support on climate change, with the European Union set to promise deeper cooperation with China. Some officials have even adopted a new informal nickname for the major remaining countries that support action on climate change: the G-6.
Some Trump administration officials were reeling on Wednesday after the news first broke that Trump was prepared to withdraw.
Trump had not officially told his entire team of senior aides he was considering leaving the agreement Wednesday when news leaked out. "Everyone assumed that's what was going to happen, but we weren't called all in and told, 'Oh, we're putting this story out today," one person said.
Having learned a lesson after Trump changed his mind about pulling out of NAFTA, administration officials cautioned against definitive reporting, warning that the president is notoriously fickle. As administration officials began tamping down reports that Trump's decision was final, White House aides were swamped with calls, emails and texts from lobbyists and diplomats seeking clarification.
Officials close to Trump sometimes leak information before it is final -- hoping to back him into a comer, or believing that comments during a private meeting represent his ultimate view. White House officials put out word in April that he was pulling out of NAFTA, even though Trump had not made up his mind, and news leaked during the campaign that he would pick Mike Pence as
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his running mate even as he weighed other candidates.
"Sometimes people close to Trump put things into the media environment to see how he'll react to it," one adviser said. "If your idea gets good coverage, it's likely to help him decide to go with what you're saying."
One of the biggest lingering questions: If he withdraws, how will Trump do it?
He could abide by the formal procedures in the underlying text of the agreement, which mandate that a formal withdrawal will not go into effect until at least Nov. 4, 2020. Or he could pull out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the underlying 1992 treaty that governs the negotiations, which would allow for a speedier pullout -- a far more radical step that would see the U.S. abstain from the entire climate negotiating process.
He could also declare that the agreement is a treaty, which would require a two-thirds-majority ratification vote in the Senate that would certainly fail.
Whatever he does, supporters of the climate agreement expect a harsh reaction from the United States' friends if the country pulls out.
"I think the diplomatic backlash will be worse than it was when the U.S. rejected Kyoto," said Susan Biniaz, the State Department's longtime former climate change lawyer, referring to the George W. Bush administration's decision to spurn the 1997 Kyoto climate agreement.
One former U.S. official agreed: "Will global leaders trust the U.S. to negotiate a climate treaty ever again? After Kyoto and Paris, who will trust us to keep our word as a nation? Our credibility is gone."
To view online click here.
Back
How Bannon and Pruitt boxed in Trump on climate pact Back
By Andrew Restuccia and Josh Dawsey | 05/31/2017 08:00 PM EDT
Donald Trump's chief strategist and EPA administrator maneuvered for months to get the president to exit the Paris climate accord, shrewdly playing to his populist instincts and publicly pressing the narrative that the nearly 200-nation deal was effectively dead -- boxing in the president on one of his highest-profile decisions to date.
Steve Bannon and Scott Pruitt have sought to outsmart the administration's pro-Paris group of advisers, including Trump's daughter Ivanka, who were hoping the president could be swayed by a global swell of support for the deal from major corporations, U.S. allies, Al Gore and even the pope. But some of that pro-Paris sentiment wound up being surprisingly tepid, according to
Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906
ED_001523_00003504-00010
White House aides who had expected that European leaders would make a stronger case during Trump's trip abroad earlier this month.
Those who want Trump to remain also faced an insurmountable hurdle: The president has long believed, rightly or wrongly, that the U.S. is getting a raw deal under the accord, and it proved nearly impossible to change his mind.
The internal reality show will culminate Thursday when Trump finally announces his decision, after a rush of leaks Wednesday from administration officials saying he was on the verge of pulling the plug on U.S. participation in history's most comprehensive global climate agreement.
"I will be announcing my decision on Paris Accord, Thursday at 3:00 P.M.," Trump tweeted Wednesday night, without revealing the outcome. "The White House Rose Garden. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
Some White House aides held out the prospect that the president still might take the middle course that Ivanka Trump and others had advocated -- staying in the deal while drastically scaling back the Obama administration's non-binding carbon cleanup promises. But three White House officials said Wednesday that they expect Trump to make a clean break by withdrawing from the agreement, though they noted it's possible the president changes his mind at the last minute.
In recent months, Pruitt and Bannon made sure Trump heard from a parade of conservative leaders and Republican lawmakers who raised concerns that the deal would hobble his pro-fossil fuel energy agenda.
"We made very much the economic message argument," said Club for Growth President David McIntosh, whose group wrote letters to the White House and spoke to senior staff. "It was bad for the U.S. economy. It would stifle economic growth and the United States should withdraw."
As the news of the impending decision spread Wednesday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus began calling and fielding calls from lawmakers, indicating that the U.S. was unlikely to stay in the agreement, one person familiar with the conversations said.
If he withdraws, Paris' foes will have Pruitt and Bannon to thank.
One Republican close to the White House called it the "classic split" and said conservative activists had flooded the White House in recent weeks, after seeing increasing chatter that Trump may stay in. This person said Bannon and Pruitt worked quietly to make sure Trump was hearing their side and touched base occasionally on political strategy to woo him.
"You had the New Yorkers against it, and all the campaign loyalists for it," this person said, referring to the push to withdraw. "When the New Yorkers get involved, it gets complicated for Trump and everyone else around him."
Pruitt and Bannon have told others repeatedly for months that Trump will pull out of the
Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906
ED_001523_00003504-00011
agreement, as they aggressively pushed a narrative that they hoped would prove to be true, even as White House aides continued to debate the issue.
"Some of the debate was for show to help the moderates feel like they had their say," said one person who has spoken to Pruitt. "Pruitt has believed all along that this was never in doubt."
Pruitt, who frequently attacked the EPA's regulations in court when he was Oklahoma's attorney general, used his new post as EPA administrator to orchestrate an aggressive campaign to marshal conservative opposition to the Paris agreement.
He bashed the deal during a closed-door April meeting of the National Mining Association's executive committee, telling the group that the agreement would hurt the economy. Pruitt's staff also urged lawmakers and conservative groups to publicly criticize the agreement, sources familiar with the issue told POLITICO, which had the effect of increasing public pressure on Trump.
Bannon similarly argued in meetings with Trump and his team that the president would be breaking his campaign promise to "cancel" the agreement if he decided to remain. And he argued that the accord is a bad deal for the United States because other countries aren't doing enough to curb their emissions.
Pruitt and Bannon's anti-Paris campaign was meant to counter a separate offensive by members of the administration who supported staying in the pact, including Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
In recent months, Ivanka Trump set up a process in which the president would regularly hear from people who supported remaining in the agreement, according to administration officials.
The remain camp believed, perhaps naively, that Trump could be influenced by the support the Paris deal has received from major corporations, including Exxon Mobil, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson led for more than a decade.
"Ivanka is doing what she can to get him to stay," one official said. "But that doesn't mean he's going to do it."
White House aides outlined a plan to remain in the agreement while weakening former President Barack Obama's pledge to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions. They made the case that Trump could use the good will generated from remaining to negotiate better economic incentives for fossil fuels, and they even won the buy-in of several coal companies that detested Obama's climate policies.
They hoped European leaders could persuade Trump he would risk damaging diplomatic relations if he withdrew. Ivanka Trump also brought Gore to Trump Tower to try to sway her father's mind during the presidential transition, and Pope Francis handed the president a copy of his papal encyclical on climate change when the two men met at the Vatican last week.
Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906
ED_001523_00003504-00012
Trump took calls from a parade of business leaders and foreign leaders in recent weeks, most pressing him to remain, according to a senior administration official -- and the calls continued on Wednesday.
"He had tremendous pressure from international leaders, from members of his own Cabinet and advisers in the international sphere not to pull out of the accord because of the perceived loss of face," said McIntosh, the Club for Growth president.
But while the leaders of G-7 nations all pressed Trump to remain in the agreement during last week's summit in Italy, Paris supporters in the White House have privately groused that they didn't make an aggressive enough case.
European officials countered they tried not to push Trump too much during the meetings, believing that a hard-sell could backfire. And they were buoyed by early signals from White House officials ahead of the summit that Trump was open to remaining.
Indeed, European officials received a series of mixed messages from Trump's team during the summit. National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, a Paris supporter and the only U.S. official permitted to attend meetings with G-7 leaders, told reporters that Trump was "evolving" on climate change, which many interpreted to mean that he would remain.
White House officials chalked up Cohn's comments to Trump's habit of echoing the perspective of the last person he talked to. By that time, Bannon and other opponents of the agreement had returned the United States. But Trump's decision to delay a final verdict on the agreement gave Pruitt and Bannon a final opportunity to make their case. Pruitt met with Trump to discuss Paris on Tuesday.
Most European officials were unwilling to comment about the prospect that Trump will withdraw, as they have not yet received official word from the White House and they are still holding out hope that the president will change his mind.
The officials have already begun looking to other countries for support on climate change, with the European Union set to promise deeper cooperation with China. Some officials have even adopted a new informal nickname for the major remaining countries that support action on climate change: the G-6.
Some Trump administration officials were reeling on Wednesday after the news first broke that Trump was prepared to withdraw.
Trump had not officially told his entire team of senior aides he was considering leaving the agreement Wednesday when news leaked out. "Everyone assumed that's what was going to happen, but we weren't called all in and told, 'Oh, we're putting this story out today," one person said.
Having learned a lesson after Trump changed his mind about pulling out of NAFTA, administration officials cautioned against definitive reporting, warning that the president is
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notoriously fickle. As administration officials began tamping down reports that Trump's decision was final, White House aides were swamped with calls, emails and texts from lobbyists and diplomats seeking clarification.
Officials close to Trump sometimes leak information before it is final -- hoping to back him into a comer, or believing that comments during a private meeting represent his ultimate view. White House officials put out word in April that he was pulling out of NAFTA, even though Trump had not made up his mind, and news leaked during the campaign that he would pick Mike Pence as his running mate even as he weighed other candidates.
"Sometimes people close to Trump put things into the media environment to see how he'll react to it," one adviser said. "If your idea gets good coverage, it's likely to help him decide to go with what you're saying."
One of the biggest lingering questions: If he withdraws, how will Trump do it?
He could abide by the formal procedures in the underlying text of the agreement, which mandate that a formal withdrawal will not go into effect until at least Nov. 4, 2020. Or he could pull out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the underlying 1992 treaty that governs the negotiations, which would allow for a speedier pullout -- a far more radical step that would see the U.S. abstain from the entire climate negotiating process.
He could also declare that the agreement is a treaty, which would require a two-thirds-majority ratification vote in the Senate that would certainly fail.
Whatever he does, supporters of the climate agreement expect a harsh reaction from the United States' friends if the country pulls out.
"I think the diplomatic backlash will be worse than it was when the U.S. rejected Kyoto," said Susan Biniaz, the State Department's longtime former climate change lawyer, referring to the George W. Bush administration's decision to spurn the 1997 Kyoto climate agreement.
One former U.S. official agreed: "Will global leaders trust the U.S. to negotiate a climate treaty ever again? After Kyoto and Paris, who will trust us to keep our word as a nation? Our credibility is gone."
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Trump aides weighing staying in Paris deal, but rejecting Obama pledge Back
By Andrew Restuccia | 03/09/2017 03:08 PM EDT
Trump administration officials are considering a plan to remain part of the nearly 200-nation
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Paris climate change agreement, while weakening former President Barack Obama's pledge to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, multiple sources told POLITICO.
The plan has not yet won the buy-in of key Trump aides and the president has not signed off. Sources familiar with the plan cautioned that it remains in flux, and could be scuttled by Trump advisers who are critical of the agreement.
But keeping the U.S. in the 2015 Paris pact would be a victory for some in the Trump administration, including the president's daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who have sought to boost the president's green credentials and fear that pulling out would damage relations with key U.S. allies. Many conservatives have been pushing President Donald Trump to withdraw from the deal altogether, as the president himself pledged to do during the campaign.
One way to square those conflicting imperatives would be to reject the pledge Obama offered as part of the 2015 Paris pact -- a nonbinding target for reducing the United States' emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. That's increasingly seen within the White House as a possible way forward.
Obama had pledged that by 2025 the U.S. would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below where it was in 2005.
Weakening Obama's pledge would probably frustrate many American allies, who see the United States' commitment to tackling climate change as a bedrock of the Paris agreement. It would also reflect the likelihood that Trump's push to revoke key Obama environmental regulations would make it more difficult to meet the existing target.
George David Banks, a White House senior adviser on international energy and environmental issues, has briefed people outside the administration on the plan in recent days, according to people who have spoken with him.
Banks discussed the plan during a Thursday meeting with about a dozen fossil fuel industry officials, according to people familiar with the closed-door discussion.
Banks did not respond to a request for comment. A White House spokeswoman said, "We have no announcements to make at this time."
It's unclear when the Trump administration will announce a final decision on its approach to Paris. Sources cautioned a verdict may not be made public for weeks or even months, and could hinge on broader energy-related discussions with other countries.
Ivanka Trump and Kushner, a senior adviser to the president, have been strong advocates of staying in the agreement, sources said. And other advisers raised fears that withdrawing altogether would greatly damage U.S. diplomatic relations with other countries.
Trump's appointees are separately taking steps to revoke regulations requiring cuts in greenhouse gas pollution from the nation's power plants, among other rollbacks of Obama-era environmental
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rules.
Those regulations were the bulwark of Obama's promise that the United States, the world's second-largest carbon polluter, would do its share to address the problem -- even though scientists have said steeper cuts are needed to avoid catastrophic harm from climate change.
Trump's advisers have sometimes been at odds over how to approach Paris -- and Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is said to be advocating for withdrawing from the agreement. Bannon's influence with Trump could undercut the proposal to stay in the deal.
Some Trump supporters have even hoped he would pull out from the entire decades-old "framework" of United Nations climate negotiations. Such a step would have been even more extreme than former President George W. Bush's abandonment of the 1997 Kyoto climate accord, which made the U.S. an untrusted figure in international climate circles for years afterward.
To clinch the Paris agreement, the Obama administration had to pull off some tricky diplomatic gymnastics, bringing together rich and poor countries that had disagreed for decades about how to divide the burden of curbing the world's carbon output. The pact, reached in December 2015 after two weeks of negotiations in a Paris suburb, followed months of U.S. pressure on China and India to make their own commitments, despite arguments from the developing world that already-wealthy nations should be doing the lion's share.
Ultimately, the talks were successful because negotiators allowed countries to write their own domestic pledges to tackle climate change, rather than imposing across-the-board mandates to slash emissions.
Those pledges are largely nonbinding, which enabled Obama to avoid a politically disastrous ratification fight in the Senate. But that also makes it easier for Trump to change Obama's pledge.
Even if Obama's target remained in place, scientists and climate activists have warned that the deal won't cut carbon pollution enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change, including rising seas and worsening droughts and storms. Instead, they said, countries would need to steadily escalate their targets.
The agreement calls on countries to aim to limit global warming to "well below" 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit from pre-industrial levels, and it said countries should "pursue efforts" to keep temperature increases to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Under a business-as-usual scenario, global temperatures could rise by 4.7 to 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, according to scientists, an increase that would have catastrophic consequences for the planet.
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States, cities to boost climate action as Trump's Paris withdrawal looms Back
By Eric Wolff | 05/31/2017 07:49 PM EDT
Amid news that President Donald Trump is preparing to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, several cities, states and private businesses are hoping to accelerate their efforts to fight climate change and fill any gap left by Washington.
Mayors of New York, Los Angeles and other cities are promising to maintain their own commitments to reduce their cities' carbon dioxide emissions, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo responded to Wednesday's leaks from the White House with a new proclamation that he would advance "bold" renewable energy goals.
While governments below the national level cannot officially sign onto the Paris agreement, Trump's expected move to pull out of the 2015 accord signed by 195 countries is prompting them to look for other paths they can follow to contribute to the international effort. Sources tell POLITICO that several states, municipalities, and business leaders are in early discussions to create a carbon reduction agreement that could be called a "Societally Determined Contribution," a name that aims to mimic the "Nationally Determined Contribution" that each of the Paris accord's members submitted.
Liberal states like New York and California have already launched efforts to fight greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change is becoming an issue in Virginia's gubernatorial race. And while questions remain whether states, cities and businesses have the political will and the capacity to make a significant contribution to reducing the pollution blamed for global warming, for climate activists,they offer the best chance to reduce emissions.
"Local governments, corporations, individuals, they're the ones who have made a difference in America, and not the Obama administration," said former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, now the U.N. Special Envoy for Cities and Climate change. "I think the danger and the damage that the Trump administration decision to pull out would [have] is more psychological -- it isolates us from the rest of the world, it sends exactly the wrong message."
Former President Barack Obama had pledged under the U.S.' Nationally Determined Contribution to reduce carbon dioxide emissions between 26 percent to 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025. That promise, though not legally binding, was built on Obama's policies like the Clean Power Plan, which would have shrunk emissions at power plants but is now being unwound by Trump's administration.
Trump tweeted that he'd announce a decision in the "next few days," prompting calls from business heavyweights like Apple's Tim Cook and Tesla's Elon Musk to remain in the global deal, but the local and state leaders are working to develop their plan B to step in for the U.S. on the international climate scene, sources tell POLITICO.
Discussions are still very preliminary, but the participants are trying to come up with a combined
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carbon reduction from states, cities and businesses to replace the cuts that Trump is expected to eliminate. The structure and operation of the group behind the "SDC" is still unknown, as is the final target, whether it would set a single reduction target for the group or if there will be other clean energy or carbon reduction goals. Developing an agreement would require analysis to determine whether policies like California's carbon price and commitments like Facebook's promise to rely solely on renewable power could be merged, but proponents are hopeful they can find some way to set a target.
"It strikes folks as an obvious thing, a great way to show the international community that there's a lot going on in the U.S." said a source working to facilitate the conversations. "It is really important to the international community to understand to avoid a knock-on effect of U.S. withdrawal on the actions of other countries."
Even without a binding document, states are moving into the space created by the absence of federal action. A group of 18 lawmakers led by Democratic Reps. Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), Jared Huffman (Calif.), and Suzan DelBene (Wash.), sent a letter to Govs. Kate Brown (Ore.), Jerry Brown (Calif.), and Jay Inslee (Wash.), calling for them to act.
"Given the vacuum in climate leadership that has resulted from the election of Donald Trump, our states must continue to form a 'green wall' in the West that will maintain climate leadership in the United States. The Paris Agreement calls for significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and if Donald Trump's administration won't lead, our states must," the lawmakers wrote.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe enacted a series of policies that will make the commonwealth "trading ready" for a carbon cap-and-trade program, a move seen as a precursor to Virginia's joining the nine-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. McAuliffe's successor will have to decide whether to take that next step, thrusting the issue into this year's gubernatorial race, where Republican candidates have been critical of his efforts.
To be sure, there may be limits to what the green-minded cities and states can do. California plus the nine states in RGGI comprised less than 14 percent of U.S. emissions in 2014, according to the Energy Information Administration, and they have been working toward decarbonization for years. Meanwhile, Texas, a state with an intensive energy industry and little appetite for carbon action, contributes nearly 12 percent of U.S. emissions on its own.
Pennsylvania and Illinois are the third and fourth biggest emitters among U.S. states, and both states have active coal-mining industries that would likely oppose aggressive state action. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, who signed a letter calling on Trump to stay in the Paris agreement earlier this month, made joining RGGI a campaign promise, but has rarely mentioned it since taking office.
Critics of climate change policies say any state efforts are likely to have no effect, except to raise energy prices.
"Climate regulations at the state and local levels will still be all cost and no climate benefit but I
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would say that if states want to pursue climate policies that's their prerogative," said Nick Loris, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "There's also a matter of politics. Even a pretty liberal state like Washington couldn't get through an aggressive carbon tax policy because environmental groups didn't like that the money wasn't being spent on green technologies."
But for environmental leaders, like California's Brown, Trump's expected rejection of the Paris pact has only helped make the case for climate action clearer.
"This current departure from reality in Washington will be very short-lived, that I promise you," Brown told POLITICO in an interview. "I've spoken with Republicans here in the legislature, and they're beginning to get very serious about climate action, so the momentum is all the other way. And I think Trump, paradoxically, is giving climate denial such a bad name that he's actually building the very movement that he is [purporting] to undermine."
Helena Bottemiller Evich and David Siders contributed to this report
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Brown: 'The rest of the world is against' Trump Back
By David Siders | 05/31/2017 04:10 PM EDT
LOS ANGELES -- California Gov. Jerry Brown, one of the nation's foremost proponents of efforts to address climate change, on Wednesday called President Donald Trump's planned withdrawal from the Paris climate accord "outrageous," while predicting the effect of the move will be short-lived.
"This current departure from reality in Washington will be very short-lived, that I promise you," Brown told POLITICO in an interview. "I've spoken with Republicans here in the Legislature, and they're beginning to get very serious about climate action, so the momentum is all the other way. And I think Trump, paradoxically, is giving climate denial such a bad name that he's actually building the very movement that he is [purporting] to undermine."
Brown added, "You can't fight reality with a tweet."
News of the president's decision drew ire from Democrats and environmental groups across the country, nowhere more so than in California, where the state Senate hours later passed major climate legislation requiring utilities to obtain 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2045.
After the vote, state Senate President Pro Tern Kevin de Leon told reporters that Trump's decision is "distressing" but that California "will forge ahead."
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Brown has been harshly critical of Trump on climate policy, but he said last week that he believed the Republican president to be a political "realist" and that progress on the issue might be "not as disastrous as we thought a few months ago."
On Wednesday, Brown said, "I don't think the Trump deviation will stand."
"Yes, he's making this announcement," the governor said. "But the rest of the world is against him. California is against him. New York is against him. We are for sensible, scientifically based climate action. And this is unfortunate, even tragic, but we will overcome it. And through Trump's outrageous action, the contrary movement is galvanized, and we're mobilizing people, states, provinces and working with other countries to move in a direction that is sustainable and is compatible with what we know we must do to survive."
Brown is preparing to travel this week to China, where he will participate in an international climate summit, meet with Chinese officials and rally support for local efforts to counteract the effects of climate change. The fourth-term Democratic governor, a longtime champion of environmental causes, has helped sign more than 170 mostly subnational governments to a nonbinding pact to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Asked what he would tell Chinese officials about Trump, Brown said, "I don't think I'll have much to say about the president. I'll have a lot to say about California, and I'll have a lot to say about the 170-plus states and provinces that have joined with California in the 'Under 2' initiative."
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All the ways Trump is shredding Obama's climate agenda Back
By Ben Lefebvre, Esther Whieldon, Darius Dixon, Alex Guillen and Andrew Restuccia | 05/31/2017 04:45 PM EDT
President Donald Trump's expected decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement is a huge morale blow to the worldwide effort to head off the worst effects of global warming. But it's just the latest step in his determined campaign to erase Barack Obama's green agenda.
Pulling out of the Paris deal means that the United States -- the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases -- would no longer take part in the most comprehensive international pact ever crafted on climate change, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only holdouts among nearly 200 nations.
But Trump's domestic environmental efforts will have the most immediate real-world impact on the planet's fate, by halting Obama's attempts to achieve steep cuts in U.S. carbon emissions and
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shift the country away from fossil fuels. The impact of those regulation rollbacks and other steps could be equivalent to adding almost 2 percent to the world's carbon output by 2025 compared with Obama's targets, based on recent analyses -- at a time when climate researchers say the world urgently needs to accelerate its reductions.
This is POLITICO'S rundown of the steps Trump has already set in motion:
Lifting limits on coal
-- Trump ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to take the first steps toward repealing Obama's Clean Power Plan, a suite of curbs on greenhouse gas pollution from thousands of existing power plants. Those restrictions, and a separate regulation on future plants, would have encouraged power companies to shift away from coal.
-- The administration lifted Obama's freeze on new coal leases on federal land, and halted the Interior Department's formal environmental review of coal leasing charges.
-- Interior announced it will repeal an Obama-era rule that threatened to increase companies' royalty payments for coal, oil and natural gas they extract on federal lands.
-- Energy Secretary Rick Perry ordered a 60-day review of tax and regulatory policies that "are responsible for forcing the premature retirement of baseload power plants," language suggesting the report will criticize federal support for wind and solar power.
Drill, baby drill
-- Trump ordered Interior to end restrictions on oil drilling in Arctic waters, and told it to consider opening up the Atlantic coast for drilling.
-- He ordered Interior to rewrite a 2015 rule that called for tighter environmental standards for fracked oil and gas wells on public lands. He also ordered reviews of a rule on offshore oil well safety, as well as one relating to air quality evaluations for offshore oil and gas drillers.
-- He signed a congressional repeal of an Interior Department land-use planning update after fossil fuel companies complained it would hurt their access to federal lands.
-- EPA withdrew a request for information from oil and gas companies about methane emissions from their operations. The Obama administration's request had been seen as an early step toward regulating those sources.
-- Trump ordered the Commerce Department to review all marine sanctuaries established or expanded in the past 10 years for possible oil and natural gas drilling opportunities.
-- He reversed Obama's denial of a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to allow final construction on the Dakota Access pipeline. Neither project
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would have much impact on the climate by itself, but the moves sent a strong signal of the administration's intention to increase fossil fuel production.
Rolling back regulations
-- Trump ordered EPA to reopen its review of Obama's tightened automobile emissions standards for model years 2022-2025. The review is the first step toward relaxing the standards.
-- The administration froze the rollout of several Energy Department energy efficiency rules.
-- EPA is reviewing whether to continue a 2013 waiver that lets California impose stricter air pollution limits regulations than the federal government does on "non-road" diesel engines like bulldozers and tractors.
-- EPA is reviewing several regulations still in litigation, including rules on mercury from power plants, ozone, wetlands and waterways, pollution from heavy-duty trucks, methane emissions from new oil and gas operations, coal plants' pollution discharges into waterways and refrigerants, plus a rule that would let citizen groups sue power plants that exceed emissions limits during startup, shutdown or malfunction.
Cutting climate and green energy programs
-- Trump's 2018 budget request proposed a 31 percent cut to EPA's budget, which especially targeted its climate programs. He also proposed cutting climate research at other agencies, including Interior's U.S. Geological Survey.
-- EPA reassigned employees who had been working on adapting to the effects of climate change.
-- Trump called for eliminating DOE's loan program and its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which supports commercially risky technologies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The administration also sought deep cuts to offices devoted to fossil, nuclear and renewable energy as well as energy efficiency.
-- DOE placed a hold on funding for nearly two dozen ARPA-E projects. Only three have gotten approval under the Trump administration.
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Exxon shareholders win vote to build Paris climate pact into plans Back
By Ben Lefebvre | 05/31/2017 02:37 PM EDT
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The Trump administration may be preparing to withdraw the U.S, from the Paris climate change accords, but shareholders at Exxon Mobil and at least one other U.S. oil company are demanding the companies incorporate the international deal in their business models.
Nearly two-thirds of Exxon's shareholders backed a proposal on Wednesday calling for the company to assess how climate change and global efforts to limit temperature increases will affect its business. The vote is non-binding, but the results show that the once-fringe idea of linking climate change to big oil's operations has gained momentum.
The vote at the Exxon annual shareholder meeting in Dallas came after investors in its smaller rival Occidental Petroleum earlier this month cast more than two-thirds of their votes for a measure calling for the company to assess how its business would be affected by the Paris climate change accord's target of holding global warming to 2-degrees. Company credit rating agency Moody's said last year it would start to use the Paris pledge to assess financial risk for corporations.
"Shareholders have spoken clearly on climate," said Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel for As You Sow, a group that helps shareholders introduce environmental proposals. "If there's less demand for oil and the world is awash in oil, there's going to be more competition among these companies. Shareholders are trying to figure out who is the best bet."
Not all of these climate-related investor proposals succeeded, however. Chevron shareholders Wednesday morning rejected a motion that the company issue a report on how limiting global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would affect its business. Only 27 percent of voting shareholders approved the proposal, down from more than 40 percent who voted for a similar proposal last year.
Exxon, Chevron and other energy companies facing such proposals argue that they are already taking the Paris agreement seriously and incorporating it into their business plans. Exxon in particular pointed out that it was developing technology that would capture the carbon emitted at natural gas power plans and then either store it or use it to produce more electricity.
"We believe the goal of carbon policy is to reduce emissions at the lowest cost to society," Exxon Chief Executive Darren Woods said at the shareholder meeting. "These goals led us to support the Paris Agreement." Woods sent President Donald Trump a letter earlier this month urging the U.S. to stay in the Paris deal.
For Exxon, the votes also illustrate how entangled the company has become in New York state climate change politics. The climate change proposal shareholders approved was partly sponsored by the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which is run by the State's comptroller. Meanwhile, the company is embroiled in a lawsuit with the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general over whether it withheld its own research on climate change from shareholders.
"The burden is now on Exxon Mobil to respond swiftly and demonstrate that it takes shareholder concerns about climate risk seriously," New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said in
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a prepared statement after the vote.
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Feds reach settlement with Harley-Davidson over defeat devices Back
By Alex Guillen | 08/18/2016 12:32 PM EDT
Harley-Davidson riders may have to do a little less freewheel burning after the motorcycle maker agreed to stop selling defeat devices that had EPA spitting flames.
In a lawsuit and settlement announced today, the Justice Department and EPA allege that HarleyDavidson sold 340,000 "super tuners," after-market defeat devices that can be installed on motorcycles to boost their performance. But they also increase emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, which contribute to smog formation.
The company has agreed to buy back and destroy the devices, which it sold at dealerships across the U.S. since 2008. It also will pay a $12 million civil penalty and spend $3 million on air quality mitigation projects.
"Given Harley-Davidson's prominence in the industry, this is a very significant step toward our goal of stopping the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices that cause harmful pollution on our roads and in our communities," said John Cruden, DOJ's top environmental prosecutor.
The violations were discovered following a "routine" inspection, according to the agencies.
Any tuners Harley-Davidson looks to sell in the future will have to be approved by the California Air Resources Board.
DOJ and EPA also say Harley-Davidson sold more than 12,000 bikes from 2006 to 2008 that were not covered by a key EPA certification. The company agreed to have all future motorcycle models certified by EPA.
The deal is open to a 30-day public comment period and judicial approval.
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Zinke signs order to promote oil drilling in Alaska Back
By Ben Lefebvre | 05/31/2017 05:27 PM EDT
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Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke today signed an order aimed at sparking additional oil development in Alaska.
Interior will review the possibility of increasing oil production in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and to assess how much oil and gas could be extracted from part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The order seeks to revise BLM's Integrated Activity Plan to evaluate "efficiently and effectively maximizing the tracts offered for sale during the next NPR-A lease sale."
It also tells officials to come up with a plan to measure undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and natural gas resources of Alaska's North Slope, focusing in part on Section 1002 of the ANWR.
"Working with the Alaska Native community, Interior will identify areas in the NPR-A where responsible energy development makes the most sense and devise a plan to extract resources," Zinke said in a statement. "We will do it in a way that both respects the environment and traditional uses of the land as well as maintains subsistence hunting and fishing access."
Alaskan Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan hailed the move. Both senators have submitted bills this year in an attempt to jump-start energy production in the state.
The U.S Geological Survey in 2010 estimated the NPR-A held about 895 million barrels of economically recoverable oil and 52.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. In 1995, then-President Bill Clinton vetoed legislation Congress sent him that called for oil and gas exploration in the 1.5million-acre Section 1002 of the ANWR.
WHAT'S NEXT: Interior officials have 31 days to come up with a plan to implement Zinke's directive.
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Russia probe scares off potential appointees Back
By Andrew Restuccia and Josh Dawsey | 05/31/2017 05:05 AM EDT
President Donald Trump's effort to fill hundreds of vacant jobs across the federal government has hit a new snag: Russia.
Potential hires are paying close attention to the expanding investigations, which have now begun to touch senior Trump aides, with some questioning whether they want to join the administration.
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Four people who work closely with prospective nominees told POLITICO that some potential hires are having second thoughts about trying to land executive branch appointments as federal and congressional investigations threaten to pose a serious distraction to Trump's agenda.
"It's an additional factor that makes what was an already complicated process of staffing the government even harder," said Max Stier, head of the Partnership for Public Service, which has advised the Trump transition on hiring.
According to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, the White House has announced nominees for just 117 of the 559 most important Senate-confirmed positions.
That trails the records of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who had each nominated about twice as many people by this point in the first year of their first terms.
Trump has not yet nominated a No. 2 at the Agriculture Department, Education Department, Department of Veterans Affairs or Environmental Protection Agency, and dozens of top positions at every federal agency remain vacant. Trump's nominees for deputy secretary of Commerce and Treasury both withdrew.
One lawyer who represents prospective political appointees told POLITICO that three clients said over the past two weeks that they are no longer interested in working for the Trump administration following the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the federal investigation into Trump associates' contacts with Russian officials during the campaign.
"There's no doubt in my mind that people are being very cautious, to put it mildly," this lawyer said, adding that there is growing concern in Republican circles that the caliber of hires could deteriorate if the administration's top picks drop out.
"You're going to have a situation where they're going to have trouble getting A-list or even B-list people to sign up," the lawyer added.
Others agreed. "With all that is going on now, there is certainly a greater amount of hesitation," said a former government official who regularly speaks with one of Trump's Cabinet secretaries. "They have a real talent problem that continues to grow."
A White House spokeswoman said the Russia investigation and the series of news stories that have pummeled the administration in recent weeks have had no impact on hiring. She said the president is recruiting individuals "of the highest quality."
But the steady stream of palace intrigue stories about internal tensions and plans for a staff shakeup -- after months of rumors about various senior officials getting pushed out -- are making it harder to persuade people to join the administration, another White House official said.
White House communications director Michael Dubke said Tuesday he will leave his role, while Trump is weighing the possibility of bringing former campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and
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David Bossie into the White House.
"It's not the best place to work right now, but you're still working at the White House, so there are far worse jobs," the official said.
Former Bush and Obama administration officials who worked on personnel issues told POLITICO they never struggled to find qualified candidates for top jobs.
"I can't speak to Republicans not wanting to join this administration but, as a general matter, we didn't have trouble recruiting people -- quite the opposite," said Lisa Brown, who served as White House staff secretary under Obama for two years.
Along with distracting from lower-level hires, the Russia probe has slowed and complicated the process of filling the administration's highest-profile vacancy -- director of the FBI.
Trump administration officials have been frustrated by the difficulties they've faced in finding a new FBI director. Top White House officials, including chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon, hoped to have made a decision made by now.
Instead, leading candidates Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and former Sen. Joe Lieberman have all withdrawn from consideration. The White House is now looking at a new field of candidates, and Trump met with two possibilities -- John Pistole and Chris Wray -- on Tuesday.
"It's not so easy to find an FBI director in the Trump administration," the White House official said.
The official added that Trump and his senior team are aware that hiring is not moving fast enough at agencies but said that, right now, "It's just not priority No. 1."
A second White House official said he was not aware of any potential nominees dropping out because of the recent news but echoed concerns that the Russia probe would inevitably add to further delays filling empty jobs.
"The problem we are likely to have is it may be difficult to get people to focus on hiring with all of this going on," the official said.
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EPA to reconsider more provisions of oil and gas well emissions rule Back
By Alex Guilln | 05/31/2017 11:55 AM EDT
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EPA today placed a 90-day stay on several additional portions of its 2016 rule setting methane emissions limits for new oil and gas industry sources.
The delay is needed as the agency considers several petitions to reconsider parts of the regulation, EPA said. The agency in April stayed some other portions of the rule, including fugitive emissions requirements, but today's announcement covers other key parts of the regulation.
Two more parts of the rule EPA will now reconsider are standards for well site pneumatic pumps and requirements for closed vent systems to be certified by a professional engineer, according to a Federal Register notice signed by Administrator Scott Pruitt on Friday and running soon.
Those requirements will be placed on hold for 90 days while EPA reviews them, and the agency "intends to look broadly at the entire 2016 Rule," not just the specific portions already identified, according to the notice.
EPA will have to take public comment on any proposed changes to the rule before finalizing them, and could subsequently face litigation.
WHAT'S NEXT: EPA will issue proposed changes to the rule's requirements and take public comment.
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Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906
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