President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team for climate and the environment is considering relocating the E.P.A. out of Washington and other drastic changes.

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Whether this is effective at all depends very much on who wins the House. If Republicans win, they can use the Congressional Review Act to instantly wipe any regulation that Biden put in place in the last few months. If the Democrats win there, legally rescinding regulations like this will take years.

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IMHO, probably not; musk seems interested in his own finances, and on pitting people against minorities so that they don't see him stealing from them.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What Trump can do to reverse US climate policy − and what he probably can’t change

Donald Trump tours a liquefied natural gas terminal under construction in Louisiana in 2019. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Gautam Jain, Columbia University

As the U.S. prepares for another Trump administration, one area unambiguously in the incoming president’s crosshairs is climate policy.

Although he has not released an official climate agenda, Donald Trump’s playbook from his last stint in the Oval Office and his frequent complaints about clean energy offer some clues to what’s ahead.

Exiting the Paris climate agreement

Less than six months into his first presidency, Trump in 2017 formally announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord – the 2015 international agreement signed by nearly every country as a pledge to work toward keeping rising temperatures and other impacts of climate change in check.

This time, a greater but underappreciated risk is that Trump will not stop at the Paris Agreement.

In addition to exiting the Paris Agreement again, Trump could try to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The 1992 treaty is the foundation for international climate talks. A withdrawal from that treaty would make it nearly impossible for a future administration to reenter the UNFCCC treaty because doing so would require the consent of two-thirds of the Senate.

The reverberation of such a step would be felt around the world. While the Paris Agreement is not legally binding and is based on trust and leadership, the stance taken by the world’s largest economy affects what other countries are willing to do.

It would also hand the climate leadership mantle to China.

U.S. funding to help other countries scale up clean energy and adapt to climate change rose significantly during the Biden administration. The first U.S. International Climate Finance Plan provided US$11 billion in 2024 to help emerging and developing economies. And commitments from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation surged to almost $14 billion in the first two years of Biden’s presidency, versus $12 billion during the four years of Trump. Biden also pledged $3 billion to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund.

Under President Trump, all these efforts will likely be scaled back again.

Targeting clean energy might not be so simple

In other areas, however, Trump may be less successful.

He has been vocal about rolling back clean energy policies. However, it may be harder for him to eliminate the Biden administration’s massive investments in clean energy, which are interwoven with much-needed investments in infrastructure and manufacturing in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Since both are laws that Congress passed, Trump would need majorities in both Houses to repeal them.

Even if Republicans end up with a trifecta – controlling both houses of Congress and the White House – repealing these laws will be challenging. That’s because the laws’ benefits are flowing heavily to red states. Trump’s allies in the oil and gas industry also benefit from the law’s tax credits for carbon capture, advanced biofuels and hydrogen.

However, while the Inflation Reduction Act may not be repealed, it will almost certainly be tweaked. The tax credit to consumers who buy electric vehicles is likely on the chopping block, as is the EPA regulation tightening tailpipe pollution standards, making battery-powered cars uneconomical for many.

Trump may also slow the work of the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, which has helped boost several clean energy industries. Again, this is not a surprise – he did it in the first term – except that the impact would be greater given that the office’s lending capacity has since skyrocketed to over $200 billion, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. So far, only about a quarter of the total has been doled out, so there is a rush to ramp up the pace before the new administration starts in January.

Drill, baby, drill?

Trump also talks about increasing fossil fuel production, and he almost certainly will take steps to boost the industry via deregulation and opening up more federal lands for drilling. But prospects of massively ramping up oil and gas production seem dim.

The United States is already producing more crude oil than any country ever. Oil and gas companies are buying back stocks and paying dividends to shareholders at a record pace, which they wouldn’t do if they saw better investment opportunities.

The futures curve indicates lower oil prices ahead, which could be further weighed down by slowing demand from any resulting economic weakness if Trump follows through on his threat to impose tariffs on all imports, leading to the risk of lower profitability.

Trump will likely try to roll back climate policies related to fossil fuels and emissions, which are the leading source of climate change, as he did with dozens of policies in his first administration.

That includes eliminating a new federal charge for methane emissions from certain facilities – the first attempt by the U.S. government to impose a fee or tax on greenhouse gas emissions. Methane is the primary component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas.

Trump has also promised to support approvals of new liquefied natural gas, or LNG, export terminals, which the Biden administration tried to pause and is still working to slow down.

The markets have a say in clean energy’s future

One clean energy source that Trump is likely to rally behind is nuclear energy.

And despite his criticism of wind and solar power, investments in renewable energy will likely continue rising because of market dynamics, especially with onshore wind and utility-scale solar projects becoming more cost effective than coal or gas.

Nevertheless, a U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the regulatory and policy uncertainty under Trump would likely slow the pace of investments. The expected inflationary impact of his economic policies is likely to negate the benefits of lower cost of capital that were expected to flow through with central banks lowering interest rates this year. It’s an outcome that the warming planet can ill afford.

Gautam Jain, Senior Research Scholar in Financing the Energy Transition, Columbia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Its not getting any better. dont know what to do. I cant live in a future like this. All of the work we have put out is now gone. Ita going to get worse

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15007372

Billionaires were “ultimate beneficiaries” linked to €3.3bn (£2.76bn) of EU farming handouts over the four-year period even as thousands of small farms were closed down, according to the analysis of official but opaque data from EU member states.

Watch: Secret footage shows COP29's chief Elnur Soltanov discussing gas and oil deals

Oil and gas accounts for about half of Azerbaijan's total economy and more than 90% of its exports, according to US figures.

this is the second year in a row the BBC has revealed alleged wrongdoing by the host government.

These events are supposed to be about reducing the world's use of fossil fuels – the main driver of climate change – not selling more.

Leaders at COP29 must listen to demands for climate justice by putting human rights at the heart of all decision making and commit to massively scaling up needs-based climate financing and a full, fast, fair, and funded phase-out of fossil fuels across all sectors, said Amnesty International ahead of the UN climate summit in Azerbaijan.

“The high-income countries who share the greatest responsibility for the climate crisis must negotiate in good faith to achieve an ambitious and adequate target and deliver on their commitments. They must also substantially increase financing for adaptation to the significant climate harm that’s already here and will worsen very quickly, and to the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage to help the people worst impacted by the effects of global heating.”

Amnesty International will have delegates at COP29 from 9 to 24 November, who will be available for interviews about the need to centre climate-action decisions in human rights, and the Azerbaijani government’s ongoing assault on civil society.

“In light of the inadequate human rights protections in the Host Country Agreement, states must also take steps to protect freedom of expression and peaceful protest for all participants at COP29 and to limit the pernicious influence of fossil fuel lobbyists who will be ubiquitous at COP.

Diplomats and leaders from around the world are gathering for annual climate negotiations. Here’s what they’re all about and what Donald Trump’s victory means for the meeting.

I'll note that these negotiations require consensus to act, which means that much of what we would need (eg: binding cuts to extraction and use of fossil fuels) are basically not attainable through them.

Talks take place in Azerbaijan amid an escalating crackdown on dissent.

Between 40,000 and 50,000 delegates are expected to attend COP29. This will include government representatives from all UN member states, as well as the State of Palestine, the Holy See, Niue, the Cook Islands, and the European Union. All of these are parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and most have also joined the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. COP29 will also host diplomats, UN officials, journalists, climate scientists, trade union leaders, and policy experts. NGOs, activists, and Indigenous leaders are also planning to participate – although the involvement of independent media workers and human rights defenders from Azerbaijan itself has been curbed by an ongoing government crackdown.

Like previous climate summits, COP29 will host many participants whose agendas are seriously at odds with climate justice. Thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists, along with the heads of oil giants like Shell and BP, are expected to be in attendance. These participants have used previous summits to advance their own interests, opposing essential efforts to phase out fossil fuels and pushing for false solutions like carbon offsetting. Amnesty International is calling for a robust conflict of interest policy to prevent fossil fuel lobbyists undermining the aims of global climate treaties.

11. What is Amnesty calling for at COP29?

• Human rights must be at the heart of all climate action decision-making;
• States in a position to do so must massively scale up climate finance and funding for loss and damage; All states must commit to fully phasing out fossil fuels, in a way that is fast and fair;
• COP29 participants must not chase risky technologies, like carbon capture and storage and removals, or push gas as a “transition fuel”, as a means of distracting from the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels;
• The UNFCCC Secretariat, the government of Azerbaijan, and other governments must protect civic space, and guarantee the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

The letter below was submitted by Transparency International EU and the undersigned organisations to European Climate Commission Wopke Hoekstra.

Subject: excluding fossil fuel lobbyists from EU delegations at UN climate talks (...)

A new report, urging rich nations to give more climate aid to poorer ones, comes as Donald Trump’s election throws global climate talks into disarray.

“Everything,” says Angélica Choc, “depends on the vital liquid – water.” Choc is a Maya Q’eqchi’ land defender from El Estor in eastern Guatemala. For years, she and other Q’eqchi’ villagers have opposed the development of the nearby Fenix mine, a massive mountain-top nickel complex in El Estor’s Izabal Department. In early May 2024, I joined a delegation visiting several communities that are fighting against Canadian mining projects in Guatemala.