Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

STEVE MILLOY: Did President Trump Just End The Climate Hoax?

Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour

President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of dozens of United Nations organizations, conventions and treaties, including two that are key to the international climate hoax – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Does this mean that the climate hoax is over?

The U.N. formed the IPCC in the late 1980s as an organization to research and recommend policies to prevent the presumed adverse effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. It quickly became the oracle of all things climate related. It issued periodic, highly anticipated and widely publicized reports on climate. In 1995, it began holding annual climate conferences, the 30^th and most recent one being held in Brazil in November.

The first IPCC report, hurriedly released in 1990, presumed to establish a scientific basis for apocalyptic climate alarmism. It was used as a basis for the UNFCCC, which was the first climate treaty and became the parent treaty of the subsequent treaties known as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Climate Accords. The UNFCCC is important because it is the framework for global emissions cuts, particularly by rich countries.

By pulling the U.S. out of the IPCC and the UNFCCC, Trump has signaled that the U.S. will no longer be involved in climate alarmism on an international level. Recall that last September during his speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Trump spent more than 10 minutes excoriating the climate hoax. “The carbon footprint is a hoax, made up by people with evil intentions, and they’re heading down a path of total destruction,” he stated.

Trump has also been acting at home to end the hoax. The EPA is expected in January or February to rescind the 2009 Obama EPA’s “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases. This move would officially reverse the alleged scientific basis for emissions cuts such that EPA could not regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

These are and will be monumental achievements. The only downside is that they are not permanent and, therefore, the climate hoax is not yet dead. If Republicans fail to win the White House in 2028, a Democrat president will likely race to rejoin the IPCC and UNFCCC and possibly revive the endangerment finding.

What needs to be done?

Congress should pass a law before Trump leaves office barring the U.S. from spending any money related to international climate efforts without the express authorization of Congress. This would keep the U.S. out of groups like the IPCC. This law should also bar funding for implementation of executive agreements, like the Paris Climate Accord.

President Barack Obama knew the Republican-controlled Senate would not ratify the Paris Climate Accord as a treaty, so he signed it as an executive agreement that did not require ratification. There should be no funding for efforts that dodge the Constitution.

The Senate should also pass a resolution affirming Trump’s withdrawal from the UNFCCC. While Trump likely has authority to unilaterally pull the U.S. out of treaties, it can’t hurt to have the Senate concur in this. Unless the Senate does this, a President Gavin Newsom, for example, would likely unilaterally decide that Trump had no authority to pull out of the UNFCCC. President Newsom would then resume U.S. participation as if it had never exited the treaty.

The final task concerns the EPA’s endangerment finding. The coming rescission of the endangerment finding will certainly be litigated all the way to the Supreme Court. Given the present make-up of the Court, Trump should prevail 6-3 since Congress never authorized EPA to regulate greenhouse gases in the first place.

But here’s the problem. Litigation is unpredictable. When would SCOTUS get the case? Who will be President? What will Congress look like? What could a Democrat Congress do? Recall that Obama issued his Clean Power Plan in 2015 and it was stayed by SCOTUS in 2016. But the litigation didn’t end until 2022 in the West Virginia v. EPA decision. Because the litigation circumvented the endangerment finding, the Biden EPA just went back to the drawing board and issued a new regulation that the Trump EPA is now in the process of repealing. That repeal will also be litigated. You get the picture.

The bottom line is that the climate hoax is far from over. If nothing else, there is about $500 billion worth of Green New Scam spending that was not able to be cut by the One Big Beautiful Bill. Climate activists and rent-seekers have spent almost 40 years growing the climate hoax. They are not just going to let Trump consign it to oblivion by Executive order.

Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on X at @JunkScience.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour)