Trump Can Stop States From Doing Something About Climate Doom Or Something

Who says he wants to? Doing Something about climate doom is not a duty of the Legislative Branch, who make the laws. Hence, reserved for the states and the people

Why Trump can’t stop states from fighting climate change

The United States has never really cared much about tackling climate change, at least at the federal level. Up until the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA — which handed out billions of dollars for people to electrify their homes and pumped billions more into the clean energy economy — neither Congress nor the executive branch advanced truly meaningful climate policy, given the scale of the crisis.

Lots of people care, right up till they have to pay for it. The Elites care, and expect Other People to pay for it

Yet carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have fallen from 6 billion tons annually in 2000 to less than 5 billion today. For that, the country can largely thank its states and cities, which have embarked on ambitious campaigns to, among other things, electrify transportation, set automobile pollution standards, and incentivize the deployment of renewable energy. At the same time, wind and solar are now cheaper to build than new fossil fuel infrastructure, and there’s little President Trump can do to stop those market forces from driving down emissions further.

Let them do it. Also, let them pay for it themselves.

Accordingly, Trump has set his sights on states during the first 100 days of his administration. He has tried to kill New York City’s congestion pricing, though last week the Department of Justice accidentally filed a document outlining the legal flaws with the administration’s plan. On April 8, he signed an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify and halt any state climate laws that she deems illegal, including California’s pioneering cap-and-trade program. That directive, though, is probably illegal itself, because the Constitution guarantees states broad authority to enact their own laws, legal experts told Grist. “This is the world the Trump administration wants your kids to live in,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “California’s efforts to cut harmful pollution won’t be derailed by a glorified press release masquerading as an executive order.”

Some things are the power of Los Federales, because of inter-state commerce.

“States have been saying since the election that they retain the authority and the ability and the ambition to drive down pollution and keep America on track to meet its goals,” said Casey Katims, executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 governors (just one of them a Republican) focused on climate action. “This order is an indication that the president and this administration know that all of that is true.”

Have at it. Every experiment needs an experimental group. Just leave those of us in other states out of it. It is hilarious that they discovered States’ Rights.

Ultimately, climate action is increasingly popular among voters. A spokesperson for Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois pointed to polling that shows 65 percent of people in the state are worried about climate change and 70 percent support fully transitioning to clean energy by 2050. “Voters are smart,” the spokesperson said, “and the more the Trump administration tries to kill clean energy policies that are giving us cleaner air, good-paying jobs, and lower energy bills, the more pushback you’re going to see, because those policies are popular for a reason.”

Again, popular until they have to pay for it and their own lives are negatively affected.

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