Environmentalists gear up, strategize for Trump war

The groups are calling on donors to beef up their “war chests” in preparation for increased litigation, new social media campaigns, and increased lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill and in the states, along with an international effort to oppose President-elect Trump globally.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the greens’ leading national groups, and often the target of Republicans, issued a “plan” outlining how it intends to meet the Trump administration and the GOP’s congressional leaders head-on in battle next year.

Rhea Suh, the group’s president, said the outpouring from donors has been impressive since the Nov. 8 “shock” of Trump’s election, which has shifted to a war footing. “In the 24 days since the election, you’ve turned shock into hard-hitting action,” said Suh in an email to donors, outlining the group’s plan while setting a goal of raising $1.5 million by Dec. 31 to support the effort to oppose Trump’s environmental agenda.

Nearly 50,000 people have donated “to build our war chest to defend the environment from the Trump administration,” she said. Another 13,000 supporters said they would begin making monthly donations to support the group’s effort, “pledging to make critically important … donations to help sustain the long, tough fight ahead.”

Environmentalists also face a new Congress in 2017 that Suh described as being led by “fossil fuel industry allies” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “They’ll be leading a powerful contingent of climate deniers and anti-environment extremists who will be chairing key committees with oversight of climate, clean energy and conservation programs,” she said.

McConnell already has called on Trump to approve the Keystone XL pipeline in his first 100 days in office. President Obama “sat on the Keystone [XL] pipeline throughout his entire eight years, even though his own State Department said it had no measurable impact on climate,” McConnell said soon after the election. He added that approving the pipeline would “immediately” create as many as 20,000 jobs.

“That prospect is truly alarming,” Suh said. But strong support from a growing anti-Trump base is helping to develop “a far-reaching strategy for our counterattack.”

Trump has said he is looking to repeal the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate agenda, the Clean Power Plan, in his first 100 days in office. He also said during the campaign that he plans to leave the Paris climate change agreement, but recently said he hasn’t made up his mind on that and has an “open mind.”

Most environmental groups are saying they will believe he has an “open mind” when they see evidence of it. For now they are taking him on what he said during the campaign. Trump also plans to roll back a number of regulations that he views as imposing burdens on coal miners and the oil and gas industry.

Other groups are taking a similar footing as Suh’s and have begun to coordinate before January’s inauguration, officials tell the Washington Examiner, outlining four core pieces to a plan to oppose Trump’s agenda.

First, the groups plan to use increased litigation to hold the new administration to task. Suh said the federal court system will be “one of our most potent weapons” when the Trump administration “tramples our environmental laws or sacrifices our public lands to the fossil fuel industry.” The environmental groups are already in court defending the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature climate change regulation, which Trump has vowed to repeal.

Second will be lobbying their case on Capitol Hill and using the Senate to hold up Trump’s Cabinet appointees and urging Democrats to make use of the filibuster to stop anti-environmental laws and the administration’s repeal agenda, say officials with the groups.

“There’s the filibuster,” Erich Pica, the president of national environmental group Friends of the Earth, referring to the use of endless speeches to obstruct legislation. “We will be using the filibuster to block some of the more egregious laws that the Republicans that control Congress want to implement.”

Pica says “there is still plenty of opportunity on the Hill to both defend against what the Trump administration might do, as well as to fight against some of the more egregious environmental” attacks, Pica said in an interview with the Examiner.

“I think we have 30-plus senators on the Democratic side in the Senate,” he added, underscoring the fact that the GOP is holding onto a slim majority in the upper chamber and is vulnerable, with Republicans occupying 52 seats to the Democrats’ 48. Some Democrats are from energy-producing states such as Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who have opposed the Obama administration’s climate agenda. That would mean not all Democrats would oppose Trump.

Pica’s group was the first to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in his bid for the presidency. It plans to use Sanders’ newly gained leadership position in the Democratic caucus as leverage in the Senate.

Another area where they plan to create difficulties is by challenging Trump’s appointees throughout the confirmation process, Pica said.

“Trump’s appointees still have to go through Senate confirmation and hearing processes and we will be using those to really extract out information that the public needs to know about these appointees, who are abusing climate change and the environment, public health, and use that to hold folks accountable.”

Trump last week nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA. Pruitt joined with nearly 30 other attorneys general to oppose EPA’s climate regulations and is an ardent foe of the agency’s overreach. Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer with his group NextGen Climate said the choice “represents a serious attack on American values” as an affront to public health and the environment.

A third component of the environmentalists’ offensive will be conducting more studies to rapidly counter Trump’s policy decisions and regulatory repeal efforts.

Suh’s group and others will be using social media to engage grassroots supporters in rallying against federal and state efforts that benefit polluters, according to the NRDC plan.

Fourth, the groups will use their global affiliates to level offensives against Trump in other countries and against the administration pulling out of international accords.

The international component of Friends of the Earth passed a formal resolution last week at its general meeting in Indonesia about Trump’s election. Affiliates from 75 nations resolved “to challenge, reject and resist the perverse and offensive policies and inflammatory rhetoric of Donald Trump.”

The Trump transition team did not respond for comment on the upcoming fight.

“You can expect wherever Trump shows up on the international scene that there will be Friends of the Earth groups that will be working with their members in that country to show Trump that the whole world wants him to work on climate change and we don’t accept his campaign rhetoric that got him elected,” Pica said.

Pica points out that Trump could pull out of several international climate accords, including the United Nations framework that dictates the United States’ participation in any climate-related agreement. Those agreements would include the Montreal Protocol on refrigerants, the International Civil Aviation Organization agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft, and last year’s Paris climate change agreement to cut countries’ greenhouse gas emissions.

“His climate denialism, and that of his deputies, threatens to undo decades of progress in the U.S. and around the world,” the resolution reads. “Drawing on the power of our grassroots base, and the strength of our global federation, we are fiercely committed to not let one man, nor one country, deny the validity of climate science and the popular will to stop momentum on climate action.”

Trump’s daughter Ivanka wants to reach out on climate change, and she and the president-elect met with former Vice President Al Gore to discuss the issue last week at Trump Tower in New York. Gore said it was an “interesting” meeting, but Pica is skeptical. What is certain from Trump are the people he is looking at to head the EPA and Interior and Energy departments. “If you look at those in sum, the directions aren’t good,” he said. “You have Myron Ebell who has been leading the transition team” at EPA, who is “one of the lead climate change denier, hoax people.

“The meeting with Al Gore was great, but let’s not mistake a singular meeting with the overall directionality that he’s pointing the administration in,” Pica added.

Other groups underscored that point in responding to Trump’s nomination of Pruitt. “While Trump may send signals to the media he has an ‘open mind’ about climate change, this appointment and the rest of his proposed Cabinet confirm he doesn’t understand the stakes of the game he’s playing,” Greenpeace said.

Pica added that Trump has to respect the law and the processes that have been created to approve or disapprove a project or environmental regulation.

“He’s got to follow rules and processes for everything he needs to do,” Pica said. “So, he can’t just come in and order the approval of Dakota Access pipeline. He can’t come in order the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. He just can’t eliminate Clean Power Plan. There are rules and processes in place that he has to abide by.”

And for the times when Trump seeks to undermine environmental law, the groups said they will use the court system to hold the White House accountable. Pica said environmental groups helped hold former President George W. Bush accountable in the courts, which eventually helped give the EPA the authority to regulate carbon pollution, which Republicans have been railing against ever since.

“It should be reminded that Trump is president. He is not the emperor,” Pica said.