Advisers to President-elect Donald Trump are trying to identify staff in the Energy Department who played a role in promoting President Obama’s climate agenda, Bloomberg reports.
“The transition team has asked the agency to list employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings, along with those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics, used to estimate and justify the climate benefits of new rules.”
“Former Vice President Al Gore, a leading voice in the fight against climate change, and Donald Trump, who at one point called it a hoax, met on Monday in what Gore called a ‘productive’ session,” Reuters reports.
Gore “spent about 90 minutes in meetings at the president-elect’s Trump Tower apartment and office building in Manhattan. In addition to seeing Trump, he also met briefly with the Republican’s daughter, Ivanka, who attended a series of high-level meetings since her father won the Nov. 8 election.”
President-elect Donald Trump “supports completion of the disputed Dakota Access oil pipeline in the Midwest, based on policy and not the billionaire businessman’s investments in a partnership building the $3.8 billion pipeline,” according to an aide’s memo obtained by the Associated Press.
Spokesman Bryan Lanza said in a memo this week to supporters that Trump’s backing for the pipeline “has nothing to do with his personal investments and everything to do with promoting policies that benefit all Americans.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is considering Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) for the energy secretary job, Politico reports.
The conservative Democrat “is being considered to show the coal people how serious Trump is about coal.”
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was being discussed as a potential Energy Secretary in the Trump administration, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The department is the one Perry famously forgot during a Republican primary debate in 2012.
New York Times: “Climate change, Mr. Obama often says, is the greatest long-term threat facing the world, as well as a danger already manifesting itself as droughts, storms, heat waves and flooding. More than health care, more than righting a sinking economic ship, more than the historic first of an African-American president, he believes that his efforts to slow the warming of the planet will be the most consequential legacy of his presidency.”
He added: “What makes climate change difficult is that it is not an instantaneous catastrophic event. It’s a slow-moving issue that, on a day-to-day basis, people don’t experience and don’t see.”
“President Obama hailed the landmark climate accord reached this weekend as ‘the best chance we’ve had to save the one planet that we’ve got.’ To the Republicans vying to succeed him, it was almost as if the deal never happened,” the New York Times reports.
“In a stark display of the partisan divide in the United States over climate change, the Republican presidential candidates have said almost nothing about the Paris Agreement, even though whoever succeeds Mr. Obama will be tasked with carrying it out.”
“The near-silence among Republicans is a striking illustration of the vastly different roles that climate change is playing in the presidential primaries for the two major parties. In some ways, the ardor among Democrats to address it — and the lack of interest among Republicans in discussing it — makes it seem as if the parties are on different planets.”
Donald Trump, who had so far avoided attacking rival Ted Cruz, laid into the Texas senator for opposing the Renewable Fuel Standard, the Des Moines Register reports.
“Cruz has opposed the Renewable Fuel Standard, which is widely supported in Iowa, but has favored some subsidies for oil companies — a point Trump tried to drive home to Iowans on Friday.”
Said Trump: “The oil companies give him a lot of money. But I’m with you. I’m self-funding. I have no oil company. I have no special interest.”
Politico: “On Dec. 11, Obama administration diplomats will be in Paris working to clinch a global climate deal that will hinge on whether they can back up a pledge to provide billions of dollars to help poor countries deal with climate change. That same day, Republicans back in Washington will be trying to hold that money hostage with a government shutdown hanging in the balance.”
“Congress must pass a new spending bill by Dec. 11, when a stopgap measure expires. The simultaneous deadlines on each side of the Atlantic Ocean give Republicans a tool to derail a legacy-defining pact for the president and score a rare victory on climate policy. They also significantly raise the stakes in this year’s game of shutdown chicken.”
Wonk Wire: Republican candidates receive failing grade on climate change
“The Obama administration will reject the Keystone XL pipeline, according to people familiar with the decision, capping a politically charged review of the oil project that lasted more than seven years and escalated into a broader debate on energy, climate change and the economy,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Obama is expected to cite the urgency of climate change as a key reason behind his decision, these people said. The Keystone XL pipeline would have moved as many as 830,000 barrels of oil a day, mostly from Canada’s oil sands to Steele City, Neb., where it would have connected with existing pipelines to Gulf Coast refineries.”
Wonk Wire: TransCanada fumbles its approach to pipeline
“He’s not a scientist, he’s a religious leader.”
— Jeb Bush, quoted by the Huffington Post, dismissing Pope Francis’ views on climate change.
After months of declining to take a position on the Keystone XL pipeline, Hillary Clinton says she opposes the construction of the project, NBC News reports.
Said Clinton: “I think it is imperative that we look at the Keystone XL pipeline as what I believe it is: A distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate change, and, unfortunately from my perspective, one that interferes with our ability to move forward and deal with other issues. Therefore, I oppose it. I oppose it because I don’t think it’s in the best interest of what we need to do to combat climate change.”
First Read: “Consider the political expediency: Had Hillary Clinton supported Keystone, it might have led to a donor meltdown.”
Senate Democratic leaders “plan to unveil a measure intended to signal their full-throated support of President Obama’s aggressive climate change agenda to 2016 voters and to the rest of the world,” the New York Times reports.
“The Democrats hope that the bill, sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell, of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy Committee, will demonstrate a new unity for the party on energy and climate change, and define Democrats’ approach to global warming policy in the coming years.”
“We don’t want to destroy people’s jobs based on some theory that’s not proven.”
— Gov. John Kasich, quoted by National Journal, on whether humans have caused climate change.
“The issue of climate change played almost no role in the 2012 presidential campaign. President Obama barely mentioned the topic, nor did the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. It was not raised in a single presidential debate,” the New York Times reports.
“But as Mr. Obama prepares to leave office, his own aggressive actions on climate change have thrust the issue into the 2016 campaign. Strategists now say that this battle for the White House could feature more substantive debate over global warming policy than any previous presidential race.”
“In the strongest action ever taken in the United States to combat climate change, President Obama will unveil on Monday a set of environmental regulations devised to sharply cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants and ultimately transform America’s electricity industry,” the New York Times reports.
“The rules are the final, tougher versions of proposed regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency announced in 2012 and 2014. If they withstand the expected legal challenges, the regulations will set in motion sweeping policy changes that could shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants, freeze construction of new coal plants and create a boom in the production of wind and solar power and other renewable energy sources.”
The Supreme Court “blocked one of the Obama administration’s most ambitious environmental initiatives, one meant to limit emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants,” the New York Times reports.
“Industry groups and some 20 states challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to regulate the emissions, saying the agency had failed to take into account the punishing costs its regulations would impose.”
“We need to put a price on carbon to accelerate these market trends. And in order to do that, we need to put a price on denial in politics.”
— Al Gore, quoted by the Chicago Tribune, referring to a federal cap-and-trade system that would penalize companies that exceeded their carbon-emission limits.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.