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past Judith Curry

With the Republicans in majority for both Houses of the 114th Congress, what are the implications for U.South. climate and energy policy?

The coming climate onslaught

Politico has an commodity The coming climate onslaught. Subtitle:President Obama readies a sweeping listing of executive actions. Excerpts:

The Obama administration is gear up to scroll out a series of climate and pollution measures that rivals any president's ecology actions of the past quarter-century — a reality check for Republicans who call up terminal week'south ballot gave them a mandate to end what they phone call the White House's "War on Coal."

Tied to court-ordered deadlines, legal mandates and international climate talks, the efforts scheduled for the next ii months show that President Barack Obama is prepared to spend the remainder of his term unleashing sweeping executive deportment to combat global warming. And incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will have few options for stopping the onslaught, though Republicans may be able to slow pieces of it.

The coming rollout includes a Dec. one proposal by EPA to tighten limits on smog-causing ozone, which business groups say could be the costliest federal regulation of all time; a final rule Dec. 19 for clamping down on disposal of power plants' toxic coal ash; the Jan. one outset date for a long-debated dominion prohibiting states from polluting the air of their downwind neighbors; and a Jan. eight deadline for issuing a final rule restricting greenhouse gas emissions from futurity power plants. That last rule is a centerpiece of Obama's most aggressive environmental effort, the large program for combating climate modify that he appear at Georgetown Academy in June 2013.

The kicker for Republicans eager to stomp all over the president'due south agenda: Congress has piffling firsthand recourse, despite McConnell's pledges to use "the spending process" to rein in EPA. With then much action rolling through the pipeline, Republicans volition have to choose their battles carefully if they want to make headway while proving they can govern.

In an interview subsequently Election Day, McConnell best-selling that stopping Obama will be difficult, given the president's veto power. McConnell has likewise promised a return to regular order, and Republicans probably won't want to repeat last year's government shutdown in hopes of forcing the president's paw.

Christine Todd Whitman, who served as George W. Bush-league's first EPA administrator, said the Republicans' new Senate leaders volition at least try to hobble the bureau.

"It's going to get harder for EPA," she said. "With Jim Inhofe every bit chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I think what they're going to do is starve the bureau."

Can Congress derail Obama'south climate and energy policies?

From the Washington Post:  Congress tin can derail Obama'due south global warming fantasies.  Excerpts:

The White House would take us believe that the president is unfazed by the midterm ballot debacle. There is plenty of coverage of President Obama's upcoming unilateral actions on clearing and his yawner of an announcement of a non-binding agreement on global warming with the Chinese, only another executive overreach may exist nigh to take place that volition do a lot to reinforce voters' reasons for voting confronting the Democrats and emphasize the notion that the president doesn't get it. The New York Times revealed today that the president is about to announce that three billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer coin volition be given to other countries to help "the globe's poorest adapt to the ravages of climate change."

The new Republican majorities in the House and Senate could seize on this latest blatant tone-deaf overreach and use information technology to build serious opposition to the Democrats' dream of a wealth transfer from America to who knows where.Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) already said the president'south agreement with the Chinese "is the latest instance of the president's crusade against affordable, reliable energy that is already pain jobs and squeezing middle-class families." Republicans in the House and Senate are going to be focused on passing the Keystone Xl Pipeline, rolling back onerous EPA regulations and increasing American energy security in the 114th Congress – not on helping the president raise Americans' ability bills and sending money we don't have to foreign lands.

The New Congress and U.S. Free energy Policy

A forthcoming event at the George Marshall Constitute lists the post-obit energy policy bug for the new Congress to deal with:

* The future of the proposed Keystone pipeline.
* U.South. oil and gas exports.
* Federal subsidies of renewable energy.
* The state of U.S. energy infrastructure.
* Maximizing the benefits of the shale revolution.
* The implications of falling oil prices on policy issues
* Regulatory impediments to free energy development

Fourth dimension has an article GOP Prepares for an free energy battle.  Excerpts:

Consider that a starting gun on the coming season of free energy debates, when everything is probable to be placed once again on the legislative table: pipeline development, oil and gas exports, carbon regulation, renewable free energy and drilling on public lands, to name a few problems. Polls show stiff support for increased domestic production, and environmentalists are playing defense after a about rout at the ballot box.  McConnell, non surprisingly, plans to seize the moment.

Near the top of his to-practise list is bringing the Keystone Forty pipeline to a vote. Climate activists take fabricated a priority of killing the proposed pipeline from oil sands in Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, but information technology may presently become their Alamo. With the cooperation of a handful of centrist Democrats, the GOP could have a filibuster-proof bulk on the question, forcing President Obama to approve or veto the projection. Either way, he will be forced to show his manus on a question about which he'southward been coy to date. "They can force the President to accept to make some hard decisions," says Philip Wallach, a boyfriend in governance studies at the Brookings Establishment. Obama's willingness to become to the mat on the issue is annihilation only certain. "I've always felt the President was keeping Keystone effectually as something he could trade for something else," Wallach says.

One item the President may trade for is continued back up for renewable-energy subsidies like the solar-investment and air current-product revenue enhancement credits, primal components of his "all of the above" energy strategy. Those incentives–which help stimulate demand for pricey home solar panels, for example–remain a lifeline for America's nascent renewables manufacture. "Our energy sector is booming, and I'1000 happy to engage Republicans with additional ideas for how we can raise that," Obama said at a press conference after Election Day.

Ezra Klein has a good article:  How much does the Keystone pipeline really matter?

Senate EPW Committee

From the Time commodity:

The return of Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe to chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Commission will also be a gene. A longtime bogeyman for environmentalists, he has made himself the face of opposition to taking action on climatic change. Like McConnell, who campaigned as a champion of the Kentucky coal manufacture, Inhofe has in his sights contempo Ecology Protection Agency rules that limit greenhouse-gas emissions. "Pretty much no Republican officer has supported the clean-power plan the fashion it'due south been proposed," Wallach says. "They're going to set for a pretty bruising fight on that."

The putative Chair of the Senate EPW Committee James Inhofe has written a 2012 book The Greatest Hoax:  How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.  I oasis't read the book, but it seems to play to conspiracy theory and confident idiot memes.  Withal, if nosotros are going to label politicians as confident idiots on the global warming upshot, how nearly:

John Kerry: "climatic change" is perhaps "the world'due south almost fearsome weapon of mass destruction."

Hillary Clinton: climatic change is "the almost consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world."

Far more interesting and insightful is the Senate EPW Minority Written report (from the Republicans) Critical Thinking on Climate Modify, recently updated last December (a previous version was discussed at CE [here].)  The document doesn't pay much attention to the IPCC, only rather to U.S. politicians, the U.S. mainstream media, U.Southward. assessment reports, and Congressional testimony.

The format of the document is to lay out  Predictions, Claims, The Latest Science, and Questions for Critical Thinking.  About one-half of the Questions are practiced ones; the others are either non very relevant or 'gotcha' type questions.  But my point is that this is not a document written by 'confident idiots' but rather by politicians who enhance legitimate political concerns (and a few scientific  concerns too).

JC reflections

Well the climatic change upshot certainly seems to be front and heart of Us political debate, although in that location are arguably more than urgent issues facing the Usa and the world.  It will be interesting to see how this will play out, and whether Obama can manage both policy changes at dwelling and influencing the UNFCCC deliberations.

My chief hope is that the 114th Congress will become more functional, and actually put legislation on the President'due south desk so that some progress tin can perhaps be fabricated on some of the free energy and climate issues where robust policy options have been identified that make sense independently of whether or non climate change is an urgent or unsafe problem.

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Source: https://judithcurry.com/2014/11/16/climateenergy-policy-and-the-gop-congress/

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