President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has prepared executive orders and proclamations that would withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement and open up western lands for drilling and mining, according to a report.
Trump’s energy and environment transition team – tasked with drafting these actions – includes his former Department of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler, the New York Times reported on Friday.
Trump, 78, pulled the US out of the Paris accord early in his first term, arguing that it was ineffective because it allows countries to voluntarily restrain their own pollution and seeks to hold the US and other industrialized countries to a higher standard.
President Biden re-entered the agreement shortly after taking office.
During his campaign, the president-elect routinely pledged to once again withdraw from the climate agreement immediately upon taking office.
Trump’s transition team has also readied proclamations that would redraw the boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah.
The president-elect reduced the among of land under management by the federal government at Bears Ears (by 85%) and Grand Staircase-Escalante (47%) during his first term, following an expansion under the Obama administration.
Trump argued that the expansion amounted to “a massive federal land grab” and an “egregious abuse of federal power,” and shrinking their size would “give that power back to the states and to the people where it belongs.”
Biden, 81, expanded the protected areas in 2021.
The transition team has also reportedly readied orders that would eliminate federal offices working on “environmental justice,” – a Harris-Biden administration effort to reduce the “disproportionate impacts from climate change” and pollution on poor communities.
Also being discussed is moving the EPA and its 7,000 federal workers out of Washington, DC, according to the report.
Trump also plans to appoint an “energy czar” to lead efforts aimed at promoting oil, gas and coal production and slashing regulations, the New York Times reported.
Upon taking office, Trump is also expected to terminate the Harris-Biden administration’s permit pause on new natural gas export terminals and a waiver allowing states, such as California, to set pollution standards more stringent than the federal government’s.
On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to slash energy and electricity costs by 50% within his first year in office by unleashing America’s energy sector, vowing to promote “Drill, baby, drill” policies on his first day in office.
The Post has reached out to Trump’s team for comment.
