Fareed Zakaria interviews Tom Steyer
Tom Steyer is putting together a strategy that will “engage voters and citizens to fight back.”
From an Article by Richard Valdmanis, Huffington Post, November 16, 2016
Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, who has spent more than $140 million on fighting climate change, said on Tuesday he will spend whatever it takes to fight President-elect Donald Trump’s pro-drilling and anti-regulation agenda.
The former hedge fund manager from California is putting together a strategy that will “engage voters and citizens to fight back” once Trump takes the White House in January, he told Reuters in an interview. However, he stressed he was not planning to fight Trump through the courts.
Instead, he would focus on “trying to present an opposite point of view and trying to get that point of view expressed, and communicated to citizens.”
Steyer’s pledge to fight Trump suggests an intensifying battle for U.S. public opinion on global climate change, an issue that has already divided many Americans, lawmakers, and companies between those who consider it a major global threat and those who doubt its existence.
Other U.S. environmental groups are also preparing to resist Trump’s agenda, with some vowing street protests and more established organizations that helped draft some of President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations preparing to defend them in court.
“We have always been willing to do whatever is necessary,” Steyer said, when asked how much money he was willing to spend to oppose Trump’s agenda.
Trump campaigned on a promise to drastically reduce environmental regulation and ease permitting for infrastructure, moves he said would breathe life into an oil and gas industry ailing from low prices, without harming U.S. air and water quality.
He has also called climate change a hoax and has promised to “cancel” the Paris Climate Accord between nearly 200 nations to slow global warming, a deal he said would cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars and put it at a disadvantage.
While the approach has cheered the industry, it has sent shockwaves through the environmental movement, which is confronting the prospect of losing all progress it made during the Obama administration.
Steyer, who had endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, called Trump’s policies dangerous.
“Every single one of these things, whether it was getting rid of Paris or cutting back the EPA, we think are extremely dangerous to the security of every American,” Steyer said. “We think it is based on willful ignorance of the facts and flies in the face of the realities facing the world.”
Arctic Drilling is also very controversial
Steyer’s main political vehicle, NextGen Climate, has called on the Obama administration to defy Trump’s pro-drilling agenda by issuing an order permanently blocking all new drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.
Trump has also promised to ask Canadian oil pipeline company, TransCanada Corp, to resubmit its application to build a pipeline into the United States that would link Alberta’s vast oil sands to American refineries and ports on the Gulf Coast. The project, Keystone XL, had been rejected by the Obama administration after years of mass protests and lobbying by environmental organizations.
Steyer said the project may no longer make sense since a slump in oil prices has reduced the profitability of oil sands production.
Steyer, who four years ago left the hedge fund firm he co-founded to devote himself full-time to environmental activism, said young voter turnout in areas where NextGen focused its mobilization efforts during the 2016 campaign was up more than 20 percent from the last presidential election in 2012.
“Did we get the president we want, absolutely not. Did we get a majority of clean energy supporters in the senate, no,” Steyer said. “But in terms of what we did, and the strategy we took, we wouldn’t do anything differently.”
NextGen poured nearly $69 million into its elections related programs during the presidential campaign, according to federal records compiled by OpenSecrets.org, slightly lower than the $74 million it spent during the mid-term congressional elections in 2014, when only two of the six candidates it supported won.
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Tom Steyer: Clean energy actually creates more jobs
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US Government Blocks Offshore Drilling in the Arctic Ocean
From the Associated Press, November 18, 2016
A victory for environmentalists
The Obama administration is blocking new oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean, handing a victory to environmentalists who say industrial activity in the icy waters will harm whales, walruses and other wildlife and exacerbate global warming.
A five-year offshore drilling plan announced on Friday blocks the planned sale of new oil and gas drilling rights in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska. The plan allows drilling to go forward in Alaska’s Cook Inlet southwest of Anchorage.
The blueprint for drilling from 2017 to 2022 can be rewritten by President-elect Donald Trump, in a process that could take months or years.
Besides Cook Inlet, the plan also allows drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, long the center of U.S. offshore oil production. Ten of the 11 lease sales proposed in the five-year plan are in the Gulf, mostly off the coasts of Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Alabama.
Confirming a decision announced this spring, the five-year plan also bars drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.
“The plan focuses lease sales in the best places—those with the highest resource potential, lowest conflict and established infrastructure—and removes regions that are simply not right to lease,” said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. “Given the unique and challenging Arctic environment and industry’s declining interest in the area, forgoing lease sales in the Arctic is the right path forward,” Jewell said.
The decision follows an announcement last year by Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the only company in the last decade to drill in federal waters, that it would cease exploration in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas after spending upward of $7 billion. The company cited disappointing results from a well drilled in the Chukchi and the unpredictable federal regulatory environment.
Despite that, industry representatives reacted bitterly to the latest announcement, calling the decision political and not supported by the facts.
“The arrogance of the decision is unfathomable, but unfortunately not surprising,” said Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, an industry group. “Once again, we see the attitude that Washington knows best—an attitude that contributed to last week’s election results,” Luthi said, referring to Trump’s victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
More than 70% of Alaskans, including a majority of Alaska Natives, support offshore drilling, Luthi said. The state’s three Republican members of Congress also blasted the decision.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she was “infuriated” that Obama “has once again ignored our voices to side with the factions who oppose” offshore drilling in Alaska. “Arctic development is one of the best ways to create jobs, generate revenues and refill the Trans-Alaska Pipeline,” said Murkowski, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Why the president is willing to send all of those benefits overseas is beyond explanation.”
As he prepares to leave office in two months, Obama has worked to build an environmental legacy that includes a global agreement to curb climate change and an ambitious plan to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. He also has imposed stricter limits on smog-causing pollution linked to asthma and rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.
All of those accomplishments and others are at risk from Trump’s presidency. Trump loathes regulation and wants to increase oil and gas drilling and the use of coal.
Trump has said he believes climate change is a hoax and has vowed to “cancel” U.S. involvement in the landmark Paris Agreement on global warming. While he has been vague about precise policies, Trump is likely to seek to weaken or kill the Clean Power Plan, a cornerstone Obama policy meant to reduce carbon pollution from the nation’s power plants as part of an effort to combat climate change
The decision to block Arctic drilling follows a decision this spring to block drilling in the Atlantic. Republican governors in North and South Carolina back drilling off their states’ coasts, as does the Democratic governor of Virginia. The state’s two Democratic senators also support drilling.
Jacqueline Savitz, senior vice president of Oceana, an environmental group, hailed the Arctic announcement and praised Obama and Jewell for “protecting our coasts from dirty and dangerous offshore drilling.” Rejection of drilling in the Artic and Atlantic “demonstrates a commitment to prioritizing common sense, economics and science ahead of industry favoritism and politics as usual,” Savitz said.
Nearly 400 scientists signed a letter this summer urging Obama to eliminate the possibility of Arctic offshore drilling.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said the Obama administration was “once again capitulating to the demands of extreme environmental groups over Alaskans and their fellow Americans who want good-paying jobs, energy independence and a strong economy.” “For nearly eight years this administration has given lip service to an ‘all of the above energy strategy,’ when their actions say the opposite,” Sullivan said.
Source: http://fortune.com/2016/11/18/barack-obama-arctic-drilling/
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