Category: Environment

By the time you read this sentence, Scott Pruitt might be gone as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (or he might be Attorney General; stay tuned!).

The man who the New York Times’ Gail Collins anointed the Worst Member of the Trump Administration is now more famous for his ethically-challenged management of the Agency – from his sweetheart condo deal to his legally suspect staff pay raises to his lavish office furnishings to his abuse of his security detail in the service of grantinee a l’oignon  – than for the policies he’s tried to implement.

Should Pruitt get the axe, there’s no doubt the environmental community will rejoice. Pruitt made a name for himself as Oklahoma attorney general by suing the very agency he now leads. His fervent opposition to EPA’s core mission of protecting the environment was clear from the start. And in his time at the helm, he’s overseen the gutting of numerous rules designed to keep the air and water clean (not to mention his successful campaign to get President Trump to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accords).

The reality is that Scott Pruitt has been a remarkably effective political appointee – perhaps the most successful high-level Trump pick, measured by the extent to which he has fulfilled Trump’s campaign promises. Even as scandal has swirled around him, Pruitt is hard at work pulling back fuel mileage standards for cars and trucks, threatening Clean Water Act regulations, and rescinding Obama’s climate change-fighting Clean Power Plan.

No wonder that a lot of folks who oppose his policies would likely breathe a sigh of relief at his departure. But make no mistake: Scott Pruitt is not the reason the Trump administration has been a boon to polluters. It all starts at the top.

Remember that Donald Trump himself made antagonism towards the environment one of his core campaign features, from his longstanding belief that climate change is a Chinese hoax to his vow to revive the coal industry. Scott Pruitt may be a particularly effective foot soldier in Trump’s war on environmental protections, but he’s far from the only one.

Even if Pruitt goes, the others remain, including Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who is determined to bail out the coal industry at any cost; and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who is a one-man natural resources wrecking crew. And let’s be honest: it’s not likely that Donald Trump would select a committed environmentalist as his next EPA head should Pruitt go. There are plenty of mini-Scotts ready to take the battle to the planet.

True, a less skilled politico than Scott Pruitt may have a harder time in getting his or her way on rolling back environmental policies. But those skills simply aren’t as necessary anymore, as the President purges his inner circle of anyone who tries to moderate his policy whims. Consider that when Scott Pruitt was lobbying Trump to exit the Paris accords, he was going up against, among others, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn.

Both are now gone, and it’s a safe bet to say that their respective successors, Mike Pompeo and Larry Kudlow, would be more likely to agree with Pruitt. In fact, most of the policy guardrails are gone, leaving an administration of appointees who’ve learned that catering to Trump’s extreme whims is the fastest ticket to job security. Should Pruitt leave, the next EPA Administrator will likely find that accelerating Pruitt’s work is the best way to stay on Donald Trump’s good side.

In fact, the newt EPA administrator will face a pretty low bar on a host of fronts. So long as he or she doesn’t turn on the sirens every time they get a craving for escargot and opts for slightly less expensive office decor, they will come off as an improvement over Pruitt, giving them more leeway to pursue Trump’s agenda out of the spotlight.

Ultimately, that is the biggest reason why Pruitt’s possible departure won’t mean a brighter future for environmental protection: so long as the chaos emanating from the administration on everything from Russia to Stormy Daniels to the border wall sucks up attention, the real work of dismantling the environmental safety net that took half a century to build can move ahead in the dark.

Scott Pruitt may soon be gone, but his legacy will live on.

Photo: Gage Skidmore

Rick Perry’s War on the War on Coal continues.

The Energy Secretary, who last fall declared that among fossil fuels’ many noble attributes is the power to stop sexual assault, recently told a Texas audience this week that the worldwide shift away from fossil fuels is “immoral.” Said Perry: “Look those people in the eyes that are starving and tell them you can’t have electricity. Because as a society we decided fossil fuels were bad. I think that is immoral.”

Perry has emerged as a fairly evangelical holy warrior for fossil fuels: in addition to testifying to their morality, he also has said that the U.S. is “blessed” to be able to provide fossil fuels to the poor peoples of the planet. In discussing the rape-preventing power of fossil fuels, Perry cited the “light that shines, the righteousness, if you will” that coal-powered illumination provides.

Apparently, in Perry’s Bible, when one is anointed with oil, it’s light sweet crude.

Perry’s rhapsodizing about the piety of coal and oil would be little more than a distraction – and another testament to the quality of Donald “I Will Hire the Best People” Trump’s cabinet choices – were it not accompanied by troubling policy choices that are designed to prop up the fossil fuel industry at the expense of renewables.

As noted previously in this space, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously rejected Perry’s plan earlier this year to subsidize struggling coal and nuclear plants, rejecting DOE’s argument that safeguarding the nation’s electric guard necessitated letting coal and nuclear plants charge more for power.

But Bloomberg is now reporting that Perry is not letting go. Now the Energy Department is contemplating letting Perry “use his authority as U.S. energy secretary to spur emergency compensation for coal plants run by FirstEnergy Solutions that may be at risk of shutting.” According to Bloomberg, Perry has the authority under the Federal Power Act to order a power company to keep a plant online and provide compensation, if doing so would “serve the public interest.”

And Perry has allies in his battle: a number of lawmakers from Ohio and surrounding states – from both parties – are now pushing the administration to trigger the FPA’s provisions to save FirstEnergy. As the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reports, their argument rests on national security: “[O]ne argument links the nation’s current competitive edge in nuclear weapons to the health of its commercial atomic energy industry.”

To sum up: fossil fuel is not only a moral imperative that protects young girls from sexual assault, but bailing out struggling coal plants also protects us from our nuclear annihilation.

That’s a pretty powerful argument. It is also ridiculous and, worse, dangerous.

To suggest that keeping coal plants open serves the public interest ignores the reality that coal severely harms the public’s health. Coal production releases toxins into the air and water – poisons that are widely known to cause cancer, delayed childhood development and other health issues. And burning coal adds tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, making the effects of a changing climate even worse. As for national security, the Pentagon itself maintains that “climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security.”

The only thing worse than Perry’s effort to save coal is the fact it’s happening at the very same time the Trump administration wants to slash DOE’s energy efficiency and renewable energy programs by a whopping 65 percent, while increasing spending on fossil fuel programs. At a time when the rest of the world is investing in the energy technologies of the future, the White House’s budget looks like something from the 18th century.

If Rick Perry is truly concerned about the well-being of all those “starving” people lacking electricity, he would direct his Department to double down on supporting energy technologies that don’t worsen climate change and poison the environment – particularly at a time when the cost of renewables continues to drop.

Policymakers can identify ways to help the developing world with the costs of transitioning to a low-carbon economy. What the U.S. government should not do, however, is go to battle on behalf of polluting sources of energy. That’s a war we ultimately will lose.

Despite the Trump administration’s hostility towards renewable energy, momentum is increasingly on its side.

Last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously rejected a plan from Energy Secretary Rick Perry to subsidize struggling coal and nuclear plants, giving them a competitive advantage over other sources of energy.

DOE’s proposal argued that recent natural disasters and extreme weather events exposed threats to the nation’s electric grid that need to be addressed by allowing coal and nuclear plants to “[recover] fully allocated costs and thereby continue to provide the energy security on which our nation relies.” In essence, Perry’s department argued that ensuring the reliability of the electrical grid demands letting coal and nuclear plants charge more for power, helping them stay on line.

Putting aside for a moment the irony that dependence on coal and other fossil fuels increases greenhouse gases, which in turn makes extreme weather events more extreme, the plan was viewed by many energy experts as a blatant effort to give the struggling coal industry a leg up over natural gas and renewables. As the Washington Post noted:

The plan, however, was widely seen as an effort to alter the balance of competitive electricity markets that federal regulators have been cultivating since the late 1980s. Critics said it would have largely helped a handful of coal and nuclear companies, including the utility FirstEnergy and coal-mining firm Murray Energy, while raising rates for consumers.

Surprisingly, that view was apparently shared by the FERC – including four members appointed by President Trump – which rejected the proposal, opting instead to maintain competition in energy markets.

It’s no secret that President Trump wants to help coal country; during the 2016 campaign he promised to bring coal jobs back. The fact that DOE’s plan to achieve this was so roundly rejected by the FERC shows how hard it will be for Trump to keep that promise. If Perry’s proposal was Plan A, Plan B must not be any more realistic. The fact is, if coal cannot remain competitive in electricity markets without artificial government subsidies, its path forward is bleak.

Meanwhile, the cost of renewables continues to decline. The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that the costs of wind and solar projects in the western U.S. are so low that that

. . . it is cheaper to build a new wind or solar project than to operate most existing coal plants in the West. It’s also significantly cheaper than the cost of a new gas plant, often considered the most significant competitor of coal, and renewables provide long-term price stability that gas plants don’t.

At the same time, elected officials increasingly are seeing the policy and political benefits of talking up renewables. This month, New York Governor (and possible 2020 Democratic Presidential contender) Andrew Cuomo announced his “2018 Clean Energy Jobs and Climate Agenda,”  which seeks to end the use of coal in the state’s power plants by 2020 while expanding renewable energy through wind and solar investments and “clean energy” workforce development.

In other words, while President Trump is feverishly working to save jobs in the coal industry, New York is looking to create jobs in renewables. It’s as if in the early 1800s the federal government tried to prop up canal building while the railroads were taking over.

None of this is to suggest that it’s smooth sailing for renewables: White House budget proposals continue to go after clean energy programs, and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is continuing his crusade to undermine climate regulations. And around the world, far too much carbon is being spewed into the atmosphere. But the tide is turning.

Opponents of federal investments in clean energy have always argued that policymakers should let the market work. Hopefully they won’t abandon that principle when the fossil fuel industry comes knocking.