President-elect Trump has made some interesting choices in keeping an “open mind” on climate change in the last week, from meeting with climate advocate Al Gore one day to outraging environmental activists the next.
Trump told a group of reporters at the New York Times late last month that he has an “open mind” about global warming and hasn’t decided whether or not to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate change agreement.
But energy and environmental experts are wondering what that means when most of his transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, along with his nominee to head the agency, are well-known opponents of the Paris deal and EPA’s climate regulations under President Obama.
Part of it is the “personality of Donald Trump,” said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at the Bracewell law firm in Washington. Bracewell partner Jeff Holmstead had been a top contender to run the EPA before Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt was chosen for the job Thursday.
“He’s playing a game in this political environment that most people didn’t give him much credit for” during the campaign, Maisano said. Part of it is a public relations game, and part of it is taking a serious look at what people such as Al Gore have to say about climate change. But most of all, Trump knows people will remember the meetings, more so than some of his more policy-oriented picks.
“He was playing chess when most people thought he was playing checkers,” Maisano said.
For example, Trump continues to talk to climate advocates, while simultaneously moving down the path of decreased regulations and more support for the fossil fuel industry.
The night before Trump nominated Pruitt to head the EPA, which caused Democrats and climate activists to reel in horror, Trump was in New York meeting with Oscar-winning actor and climate change advocate Leonardo DiCaprio on a plan to create millions of clean energy jobs.
Some of Trump’s moves are pure public relations, Maisano said. Trump “knows how to grab attention,” and DiCaprio and Gore “fit into the celebrity model” that he has become accustomed to, being a reality television personality. “He senses the PR value in having Gore and DiCaprio come in. I am sure he listened intently” to what they both had to say.
“In my mind it’s good strategy” to invite them to discuss climate change action, Maisano added. “And in my mind I think he’s serious.”
Terry Tamminen, the head of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, said after the meeting that “our conversation focused on how to create millions of secure, American jobs in the construction and operation of commercial and residential clean, renewable energy generation.”
Only days earlier did Trump meet with former Vice President Al Gore to discuss climate change. Neither Gore nor DiCaprio had anything negative to say about the meetings.
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, a week earlier had said she wanted to make climate change her signature issue. Gore also met with her.
Gore “did not outright discount [the meeting],” which says a lot, Maisano said, while adding that some of the people heading Trump’s energy and environment transition teams most likely would have opposed everything DiCaprio had to say.
But Trump isn’t a “typical Republican,” which “gives him the ability to meet with an Al Gore” while still being able to talk about rolling back environmental regulations, Maisano said.
He doesn’t come from the conservative free-market camp that would have pre-conceived notions about what and what not to support, he said.
For environmental groups, the meetings don’t represent anything meaningful.
In between the climate change meetings, Trump has been busy putting in place a transition team formed from groups that oppose climate change regulations and renewable energy development, and would not seriously entertain most of what DiCaprio or Gore had to say.
On Friday, a list of questions leaked by the Energy Department transition team indicated that the president-elect may be intent on purging climate change advocates from the agency’s ranks, according to the environmental group Sierra Club.
The questions, which were leaked to Bloomberg, asked for the names of Energy Department staff who have directly participated in United Nations climate change conferences.
Green groups were outraged for what they said the list of questions suggested.
“It looks like Trump and his administration are planning a political witch hunt, which has no place in American government: purging or marginalizing anyone who has worked on the issue of climate change,” said John Coequyt, Sierra Club’s climate policy director. “And that’s at the same time they are looking for ways to eliminate the very scientific infrastructure we need to monitor changes to our planet and its climate,” he said, referring to reports that Trump wants to gut NASA’s climate change programs.
“You can’t purge physics from planet earth, and seas will keep rising regardless.”
Groups also rejected Trump’s expected pick to lead the Interior Department, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., the top Republican female lawmaker in the House.
McMorris Rodgers has avoided commenting on climate change, but her record shows that she would set the U.S. on “a collision course with catastrophic” global warming, said the consumer watchdog Public Citizen.
“She has supported every form of power that’s dirty, expensive and harmful to humans,” said David Arkush, managing director of Public Citizen’s climate program. “This pick, like that of Scott Pruitt, puts Trump directly at odds with what the American people want.”
Arkush said recent polls show as much as 70 percent of Americans are concerned about climate change, and more than that support President Obama’s climate regulations. “In addition, 75 percent of Trump’s own supporters want to speed up the deployment of clean energy,” he said.
Maisano pointed out that more than half the states are opposing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which the Supreme Court stayed, in federal appeals court.
So, “Scott Pruitt is in the majority,” he said. “He is not out on a limb here.”
Maisano added that Pruitt was most likely chosen for the job at EPA because he is intimately familiar with the arguments against the Clean Power Plan, and Trump believes the plan for power plants is on shaky legal ground both constitutionally and with the Clean Air Act.
Still, when someone outside of Washington looks back on the week, they most likely will not remember Pruitt, Maisano said. They will, however, remember that Trump met with Gore.
“I see it as a brilliant PR move,” he said.
