Hartnett-White
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1119 bak
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6/16
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/283931-restrain-the-imperial-epa
the growing power of the administrative state is the defining feature of this era. Federal regulations now touch almost every area of American life, and almost all economic activity. Aggressive regulatory bodies like the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) increasingly impose these mandates by seizing what is the exclusive legislative power of Congress.
If Americans care about restraining this lawless assertion of federal regulatory power, the most important bill in Congress right now is H.R. 3880, introduced late last year by Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.). The Stopping the EPA Overreach Act now has 147 co-sponsors. Through clear language and only four pages, the bill would deny the EPA the authority to regulate carbon dioxide, methane and three other greenhouse gasesThe EPA now treats carbon dioxide — a ubiquitous byproduct of almost all human activity — as a dangerous pollutant controlled under the authority of the 40-year-old Clean Air Act.This regulatory overreach is the root of the energy policy morass in which our country is now mired.
The EPA again and again relies on the "Endangerment Finding" to force President Obama's Climate Action Plan among new mandates, which includes the methane rule and a moratorium of coal development on federal lands. Yet the EPA's expanding climate crusade is bereft of legally meaningful justification. The agency merely asserts that the unequivocal "dictates of science" and the social cost of carbon to legitimize new rules without further explanation. Neither current findings on what is regarded as the official climate science of the U.N. nor the social benefits of atmospheric carbon dioxide are mentioned. Our president and his functionaries across the federal government, however, persist in trumpeting the view of more radical climate alarmists who declare that man-made global warming of apocalyptic proportion is upon on right now.When questioned about justification, the EPA typically defaults to a moral imperative to supplant fossil fuels regardless of costs or futility. And zap goes the rule of law.
The Supreme Court has recently rebuked the EPA for several overreaching air quality rules such as the "tailoring," mercury and Clean Power Plan rules.[mass vs epa scotus establ endangerment?!] Yet meaningful judicial restraint remains rare and mild when it occurs. Only Congress can effectively reclaim the broad, lawmaking authority that the EPA has seized over carbon dioxide. Policies of such national consequence must remain the prerogative of our elected representatives, not Washington bureaucrats, and Palmer's bill is on point.
Such a bill is necessary because although Congress has consistently rejected delegating to EPA authority to regulate carbon dioxide, the agency now exercises that authority in a host of federal actions. When the massive Waxman-Markey bill to curb greenhouse gases failed Senate passage in 2009, the EPA went ahead and made the Endangerment Finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant endangering human health and welfare — and thus subject to regulatory control under the Clean Air Act. What Congress refused to do, the EPA did on its own.
Seven years later, most people are inured to the EPA's expanding carbonagenda. But it's worth considering theunchecked authority the EPA now wields. In one of its first carbon rule-makings, the agency admitted that the Endangerment Finding would expand its regulatory universe from 14,700 to more than 6.1 million entities.Hospitals, schools, hotels, apartment complexes, office buildings and small business would now be subject to the Clean Air Act's top-down, inflexible dictates. In a later carbon rule known as the Clean Power Plan rule, the EPA arrogates the authority to re-engineer the nation's entire electric system. Under the agency’s centralized plan, cost, safety and reliability would take a back seat to reducing carbon.
It's hard to overstate the consequences of regulatory scope of this magnitude. As a result of the EPA's legal censure of carbon dioxide, major U.S. coal companies have declared bankruptcy, thousands have lost their jobs, the Keystone XL pipeline was nixed, natural gas is under assault,energy assets once valued in the trillions are now stranded and the middle class is shrinking.
Obama and his lieutenants, such as Secretary of State John Kerry, now demonize carbon as "perhaps the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction."The truth is that our bodies, blood and bones are built of carbon! Carbon dioxide is a necessary nutrient for plant life, acting as the catalyst for the most essential energy conversion process on planet earth: photosynthesis.
Carbon dioxide is an odorless, invisible, harmless and completely natural gas lacking any characteristic of a pollutant. It doesn't contaminate or defile the air, as actual pollutants do. Ambient levels of carbon dioxide in the air we breathe have zero adverse health effects, in contrast to high levels of genuine pollutants listed in the Clean Air Act like lead and mercury. With good reason, the EPA has not set health-based limits on the ambient concentration of carbon dioxide. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) does set some advisory levels for prolonged exposure to carbon dioxide in tightly enclosed spaces, but they are set at more than 10 times the current level to which humans are routinely exposed.
Carbon dioxide is also a key ingredient in our food supply, about 60 percent of which depends upon fossil fuel-based fertilizers. How do our national leaders square their public vilification of carbon dioxide with fundamental scientific and economic realities? Such political propaganda has now educated at least two generations of Americans who think carbon is a killer instead of the stuff of life on the earth.
In the second decade of the 21st century, humanity sits atop two centuries of major advances in physics, biology and chemistry that have applied hydrocarbon compounds for mankind's benefit. Yet the climate doomsayers of our age employ the term "carbon" as if it were a poison threatening the survival of civilization.
In one of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's last majority opinions, he articulated a constitutional limit to regulatory overreach: "When as Agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate a significant portion of the economy, we expect Congress to speak clearly if it wished to assign to agencies decisions of such vast economic and political significance." The EPA's expanding regulatory scheme to decarbonize our country, unquestionably, has such vast economic significance. Rep. Palmer's legislation to nullify the EPA's Endangerment Finding provides the "clarity" Scalia said would be needed when unelected bureaucrats usurp the lawmaking power held by Congress alone.
White is the distinguished senior fellow-in-residence and director of the Armstrong Center for Energy and the Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She is the co-author of "Fueling Freedom" (Regnery Publishing, May 2016) along with Steve Moore.
==
==
Search Results
Web results
H.R.3880 - 114th Congress (2015-2016): Stopping EPA ...
https://www.congress.gov › bill › house-bill › 3880
2.
Restrain the imperial EPA | TheHill
https://thehill.com › blogs › pundits-blog › energy-environment › 283931...
1.
hearing on the nominations of kathleen hartnett ... - GovInfo
https://www.govinfo.gov › content › pkg › pdf
Nov 8, 2017 - hour after hour on the Senate floor, even when there is no one on the floor to ...... and in June 2016 she promoted the bill H.R. 3880, "The. Stopping the EPA Overreach Act," while describing carbon dioxide as a. "necessary ...... Act now has 147 co-sponsors Through clear language and only four pages, the.
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omg
White House is planning to withdraw its nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality, according to The Washington Post.
Kathleen Hartnett White’s nomination failed to gather momentum, and some Senate Republicans were questioning her expertise, the Post reported, citing two administration officials briefed on the matter.
CNN’s KFile reported Hartnett White, who would have overseen environmental and energy policies across the government, had described the belief in “global warming” as a “kind of paganism” for “secular elites” during a 2016 interview.
Hartnett White appeared on “The Right Perspective,” an online conservative radio show, in September 2016 when she made the comments talking about a “dark side” to belief in global warming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Turner
“There’s a real dark side of the kind of paganism — the secular elites’ religion now — being evidently global warming,” she said.
President Donald Trump announced Hartnett White’s nomination in October and re-submitted her nomination to the Senate in January. Senators challenged her statements about climate change,which go against the scientific consensus that man-made greenhouse gases are the primary driver of rising temperatures, during her confirmation hearing in November.
White has a long history of questioning established science on climate change and once dismissed the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and calling it “the gas of life on this planet” — comments that drew criticism from environmentalists who opposed her nomination.
---
ref
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/09/politics/kfile-khw-senate-hearing/index.html
(CNN)President Donald Trump's nominee to be the White House's senior environmental adviser told a Senate committee Wednesday that controversial comments she made, including comparing the belief in global warming to paganism, were taken out of context but added there could have been some mistakes in her writings.
CNN's KFile previously reported that in 2016, Kathleen Hartnett White described the belief in global warming as a "kind of paganism" for "secular elites." She also said the goal of climate activists and the United Nations was an all powerful one-world government and "planetary management."
Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley from Oregon pressed White about her past comments at her confirmation hearing to be chair of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality.
"When you say that those who are concerned about global warming are paganists, and totalitarianists, and Marxists, when you say that, do you believe Oregon's farmers, who are concerned about three worst-ever droughts with the impact of climate changes are Marxists, or totalitarians, or pagans?" Merkley asked.
"I believe those words, senator, with all due respect, have been taken out of context," White responded.
"Well, they're words directly from your writings," Merkley responded.
[sound file]
merkley then noted that there are multiple quotes from White "calling environmentalists Marxist, and those who are concerned about climate change as pagans."
"I think I submitted about 100 pages of either commentaries or research studies that I have done. In that entire corpus there may be some mistakes," White responded.
White did not immediately respond to questions from CNN asking which quotes she believed were taken out of context.
Later in the exchange, White said she did believe the planet was getting warmer but did not believe carbon dioxide levels had gone up dramatically.
==
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/1/17639314/trump-science-adviser-kelvin-droegemeier-ostp
how hot is America right now? So hot that President Trump picked a science adviser named Kelvin.
With heat waves and wildfires scorching the western US, meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, an expert on extreme weather, has been nominated to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
If confirmed by the Senate, Droegemeier would end the longest vacancy in the 42-year history of the post. Currently, the highest-ranking science official in the White House is Michael Kratsios, a 31-year-old political science grad who is a deputy assistant at OSTP.
Kelvin Droegemeier is a great example of nominative determinism — where your name lines up with your job — as Kelvin is the name of a unit on the thermodynamic temperature scale (one Kelvin is equal to one degree on the Celsius scale).
He’s also is a well-respected extreme weather scientist. The 59-year-old is currently the vice president for research at the University of Oklahoma, where he’s researched storm forecasting for 30 years. His 55-page CV lists dozens of peer-reviewed papers and presentations at scientific meetings (“Identifying key parameters for anticipating tornadogenesis in simulated mesoscale storms using data mining,” reads one title).
Previously, he was nominated by Presidents George W. Bush and Obama to serve on the National Science Board, which governs the National Science Foundation. He’s also testified as an expert witness in aircraft accidents and founded a company, Weather Decision Technologies Inc.
Being the president’s science adviser isn’t a job that has precise boundaries. Mostly, it involves consulting the president on science for important policy decisions, like the future of nuclear energy in the United States or how to encourage more technology breakthroughs. The OSTP also coordinates across government, universities, and the private sector to advance the White House’s science agenda.
For climate researchers, the pick was a pleasant
surprise
hayoe twwet]
some of Trump’s other nominees for top science-related posts in government and some of the other names rumored to have been in the running for OSTP have had far less scientific credibility.
In April, Trump selected Jim Bridenstine, a Republican Congress member from Oklahoma who hedged on humanity’s role in rising temperatures, to lead NASA. Kathleen Hartnett White, a member of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, withdrew her nomination to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality in February. She said in a 2016 radio interview that “There’s a real dark side of the kind of paganism, this secular, elite religion, now evidently being global warming.”
Previous potential picks to lead OSTP included emeritus Princeton University physicist William Happer, who has said, “There is no problem from CO2.” Another rumored nominee was the Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter, who downplayed humanity’s influence on global warming.
So science advocacy groups breathed a sigh of relief when the White House announced Droegemeier as the pick Tuesday evening. “Dr. Droegemeier is an extreme weather expert, a knowledge base that is becoming more and more important with climate change loading the dice as extreme weather becomes more prevalent, costly, and deadly,” wrote Michael Halpern, the deputy director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Droegemeier’s former colleagues say his views on climate change align with those of most scientists. “I’m certain he believes in mainstream climate science,” Rosina Bierbaum, who worked on climate change issues with Droegemeier at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, told Nature.
If he gets the job, Droegemeier may have many opportunities to apply his extreme weather expertise in policymaking. Currently, many parts of the US are experiencing extreme heat. That’s led to expansive wildfires. The heat is also becoming increasingly costly for the economy.
There are other scientific policy concerns that would benefit from a fully staffed OSTP, like the ongoing opioid epidemic.
But according to John Holdren, who served as science adviser to Obama, the biggest obstacle for Droegemeier may be the president himself. “He will have many challenges in his new post, not [the] least of which that there is no evidence President Trump is interested in science,” he told E&E News.
His first order of business will be to staff the rest of his office, which experienced major personnel cuts to its energy and environment division last year.
==
Here’s how the Mercer family’s climate denial funding influenced Trump
Nearly a quarter of the Mercers' 2016 donations went to groups which deny the science on climate change.
KYLA MANDEL
:{JAN 26, 2018,
Robert and Rebekah Mercer attend the 12th International Conference on Climate Change hosted by The Heartland Institute on March 23, 2017 in Washington, D.C.
CREDIT: Oliver Contreras/Getty Images
ROBERT AND REBEKAH MERCER ATTEND THE 12TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE HOSTED BY THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE ON MARCH 23, 2017 IN WASHINGTON, D.C. CREDIT: OLIVER CONTRERAS/GETTY IMAGES
Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, powerful conservative donors with close ties to the Trump administration, donated millions of dollars to climate science denial groups, newly released 2016 tax filing details show.
According to the tax filings published by Buzzfeed and obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, nearly a quarter (23 percent) of the total $19 million donated to nonprofits by the Mercer Family Foundation in 2016 went to groups working, at least partially, on spreading misinformation around climate change and pushing to repeal environmental protections. Many of the groups that received donations have promoted carbon dioxide as nonpolluting, called for the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, and, over the past year, funneled officials into the Trump administration.
The Mercers have quickly become known as some of the most powerful and secretive donors behind President Donald Trump. The family has given millions of dollars to conservative causes through its foundation, prompting Bloomberg News to describe Robert as “the man who out-Koched the Kochs”.
As the filings show, the Mercers gave $125,000 to the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a nonprofit based in Arizona which also goes by the name CO2 Science. Another $150,000 was donated to the CO2 Coalition, a small Virginia-based nonprofit with the tagline, “Carbon dioxide, a nutrient vital for life.” This contribution makes the Mercers the CO2 Coalition’s largest donor. Both organizations work exclusively on activities that promote a false uncertainty regarding the link between carbon emissions and their impact on global temperatures.
A series of other donations also went to groups that work in part to promote climate science denial, including: $2 million to the Media Research Center, $800,000 to the Heartland Institute, $500,000 to the Heritage Foundation, $300,000 to the Cato Institute, $200,000 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and $200,000 to the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine.
Many of the organizations that received money from the Mercers have been consistently working to bring their anti-environmental agenda to the White House — from stacking the new administration with friendly faces to promoting fossil fuels and undermining the Paris climate agreement.
After the November 2016 election, Trump began assembling his transition team. One of the most influential forces in shaping its members was the Heritage Foundation, according to Politico. Rebekah Mercer, who sits on the board of the Heritage Foundation, was part of the transition team’s executive committee and, according to Politico, she worked with Heritage to recruit appointees to the transition team.
The Heritage Foundation and its affiliate, Heritage Action for America, were both signatories to an official January 2017 letter of support for Scott Pruitt, calling on the Senate to “swiftly approve his nomination” as administrator to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Heartland Institute also signed this letter. Pruitt’s nomination was approved one month later.
Kathleen Hartnett-White is also currently in the running for a top environment position as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). During her Senate confirmation hearing last November, Hartnett-White said she did not have “any kind of expertise or even much layman study” of climate change issues. On carbon dioxide she said, “CO2 in the atmosphere has none of the characteristics of a pollutant that contaminates and fouls and all of that that can have direct impact on human health. As an atmospheric gas, it is a plant nutrient.”
This last sentence echoes the CO2 Coalition’s main message on carbon emissions. Hartnett-White sits on the advisory board of the CO2 Coalition and last February spoke at a CO2 Coalition sponsored discussion panel at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference.
The idea that carbon dioxide should not be considered a pollutant is also being promoted by the Fueling Freedom project directed by Hartnett-White at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. This project seeks to “explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels” while “building a multi-state coalition to push back against the EPA’s unconstitutional efforts to take over the electric power sector by regulating CO2 via the Clean Power Plan.” In June 2016, Hartnett-White was hosted at a Heartland Institute event on “Fueling Freedom.” While her nomination has been met with resistance in the Senate, if approved, Hartnett-White will likely be another Trump administration voice calling for the repeal of key environmental regulations.
Another potential member of Trump’s team connected to the CO2 Coalition is William Happer, the group’s founder, who has long been rumored to be a front-runner for the position of Trump’s science adviser. Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Happer was reported to have met with both Trump and former adviser Steve Bannon. The Mercers funded Bannon’s Breitbart News but recently cut ties with the former White House adviser after his fallout with the Trump administration.
A spokesperson for the Mercer family did not respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment. Neither did any of the eight nonprofit climate denial groups that received donations from the family.
The Heartland Institute has perhaps made one of the most concerted efforts to influence the government agenda on climate change, and not just under the current administration. In a February 2017 report, however, the group’s president Joe Bast wrote that its “primary goal over the next four years is to win the global warming war.”
Both Rebekah and Robert Mercer attended the Heartland Institute’s climate denial conference last year where the government’s regulatory rollback was celebrated. And last September, the EPA reportedly reached out to Heartland to help it identify a list of researchers who reject mainstream scientific consensus on climate change for Pruitt’s “red team” exercise, aimed at poking holes in mainstream climate science. Emails and notes obtained by E&E News revealing the closed door meetings helped to give a “broad look at skeptics’ playbook under the Trump administration.”
Then-Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt gestures as he answers a question during a news conference in 2013. CREDIT: AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
EPA is asking a climate denier think tank for help recruiting its ‘red team’
Finally, Trump’s campaign promise to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement could not be forgotten. On May 8, 2017 an open letter was sent to Trump urging him to “withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty and to stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs.” Signatories to this letter include the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the CO2 Coalition, and CO2 Science.
On June 1, Trump announced he was pulling the U.S. out of the landmark agreement (although the United States doesn’t officially exit the accord until November of 2020, and could re-enter under a new administration).
Present in the Rose Garden for Trump’s announcement was Heartland President Joe Bast, who later described this as a “sign that our efforts for the past 20 years on the climate change issue have not gone unnoticed.”
==
dingdong!
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29012018/kathleen-hartnett-white-climate-denial-nomination-trump-ceq-trouble
Update: The White House [withdrew White's nomination in early February.]
Kathleen Hartnett White, the former Texas regulator who has extolled the social benefits of carbon dioxide and asserted that coal helped end slavery, faces a difficult road to Senate confirmation as top White House environmental adviser, according to lobbyists and Capitol Hill sources.
They say that White, still awaiting a committee vote that has yet to be scheduled, is the most endangered of President Donald Trump's environmental nominees. Her embattled bid to chair the Council on Environmental Quality underscores larger problems for the White House in filling key roles throughout the federal government.
Although Trump already lags behind his three immediate predecessorsboth in making nominations and having them confirmed, he assured himself further fights by doubling down on 75 controversial nominees that the Senate returned to the White House for reconsideration before the December recess.
Trump sent the names, including White's, right back to the Senate, where he now has one fewer Republican vote to count on, since the election of Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama. If Democrats stick together, it would only take two GOP defections to sink any nominee. Environmental groups are working on swaying at least a half-dozen Republican senators who may be wavering due to White's past stances on issues important in their home states—including ethanol, renewable energy and radiation contamination in water.
The League of Conservation Voters says it has volunteers working in three key states to encourage constituents to urge their senators to oppose White's nomination: Maine, Montana and Nevada. LCV's Latino organizing affiliate, Chispa, also has been speaking out against White in Arizona. "Kathleen Hartnett White is laughably unqualified," said Sara Jordan, LCV's legislative representative. "She's an anti-science zealot with a long record of distorting science, spouting conspiracy theories and denying serious pollution problems in Texas."
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who has the strongest environmental voting record among Senate Republicans, was the only GOP senator who voted against confirmation of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and against the sole assistant administrator approved so far: William Wehrum, a former fossil fuel and chemical industry lawyer who now runs the agency's air office. Collins office did not respond to queries from InsideClimate News on her stance on White. Collins told E&E Daily earlier this month that she had "seen some excerpts" from White's confirmation hearing but had not yet seen the whole thing. "So I don't know whether they were in context or whether they represent how the hearing went in general," Collins said.
Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said: "In the 17 years I have been in the Senate, I have never sat through a hearing as excruciating as Ms. White's."
White's View of CO2: 'The Gas of Life'
White, a senior fellow at the Austin-based Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative and fossil fuel industry-funded think tank, faced a fusillade of questions about her comments over the years that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but "the gas of life"; that the human contribution to climate change is "very uncertain; and that ozone, or smog, isn't harmful unless "you put your mouth over the tailpipe of a car for eight hours every day." Senators entered into the record her essay on "the moral case for fossil fuels" and a 2014 blog post in which she theorized that "fossil fuels dissolved the economic justification for slavery."
But the most memorable exchange of the hearing was her halting parry of a series of ocean science questions lobbed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). She said she didn't know about ocean absorption of heat or carbon or even whether the law of thermodynamics applied to seawater (starting at 4:50 in the video below and at 9:40). "I do not have any kind of expertise or even much layman study of the ocean dynamics and climate change issues," she said.
vid]
In the wake of the hearing, Texas Public Policy Foundation Executive Vice President Kevin Roberts wrote an op-edon her behalf, noting that pollution levels in Texas declined during her tenure as chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. "Kathleen is an effective regulator," he wrote in The Hill. "And that's what is called for in this appointment—not a scientist."
But locally important environmental issues will be more important than climate change in deciding White's fate, said lobbyists and Congressional staffers, who asked not to be named as the politically sensitive arm-twisting continues.
One of Trump's environmental nominees already has been felled by this kind of issue. Michael Dourson, a toxicologist with close ties to the chemical industry, Trump's choice to lead EPA's chemical safety office, withdrew his nomination after North Carolina's two Republican senators voiced opposition, noting their concerns about water contamination in their state.
Drinking Water Contamination and Ethanol
In Montana and Arizona, two states that have grappled with radioactive contamination in drinking water, environmentalists are raising the issue of White's actions as a Texas regulator to lower statistical data on alpha radiation in drinking water to protect utilities from EPA scrutiny.
In states with large renewable energy industries, like Nevada and Arizona, White's opponents are focusing on her history of strong statements against solar and wind power, which she has called a "false hope."
And it's unclear whether farm-state senators are satisfied with White's attempted about-face on ethanol; she said she would support the president in his support of the Renewable Fuels Standard she once decried. Under questioning from Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), White declined to commit to keeping the RFS in place through at least 2022. Fischer said she was concerned about White's "extremist views," although she did vote to advance her nomination to the floor in November—a vote the committee will now have to reprise.
Trump's other environmental nominees, even though they are opposed by Democrats, have done better than White in avoiding the political hot-button issues that would erode support in the majority party.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted on Jan. 18 to advance the nomination of Jeffrey Bossert Clark to head the Justice Department's Environmental and Natural Resources Division, and he awaits a vote by the full Senate.
Clark is an industry lawyer who has challenged the federal government's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, and was part of the legal team that represented BP in lawsuits stemming from the nation's worst oil spill. He also was part of the legal team that successfully defended Exxon and other oil companies in a 2012 climate damages lawsuit brought by the Alaskan town of Kivalina, which is threatened by sea level rise.
Path May Be Easier for Coal Lobbyist Wheeler
Andrew Wheeler, Trump's appointee to serve as deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, seems at first glance to be in a position similar to White's—awaiting a second vote in the Environment and Public Works Committee after his nomination's quick round-trip back to the White House early this month.
But Wheeler, who served as a personal staffer for two years and committee staffer for 12 years under Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), including as the Environment and Public Works Committee's chief counsel, is well known by the senators, and lobbyists and committee staff expect that he will have an easier time gaining approval. Carper, even though he voted against the coal industry lobbyist in November, added: "He may have demonstrated a more transparent and straightforward approach to engaging with members of the committee than any other Trump administration EPA nominee thus far. Some would say that's a low bar, but that's a fact."
Inhofe was effusive in praise for his former staffer, whom he said he knew "better than anyone except maybe his mother." Inhofe credited Wheeler for bipartisan legislative accomplishments during his tenure as committee chairman, including the energy bills of 2005 and 2007, which increased vehicle fuel efficiency standards and promoted use of ethanol and energy efficiency.
"A well-qualified, experienced, and dedicated public servant," Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the committee chairman, said of Wheeler. Barrasso's support for White was notably muted in contrast: "If confirmed, Ms. White will bring her extensive experience to the job of CEQ," Barrasso said. Inhofe noted on White: "We have people out there that are singing her praises." As for himself, Inhofe said, "I don't know Kathleen White as well, obviously, as I do Andrew Wheeler."
Overall, Trump's Filling Posts at a Glacial Pace
The controversy over White has further slowed already glacial progress in filling key posts throughout the administration, particularly in environmental slots. Trump has confirmed appointees in only five of the 13 executive posts at the EPA; for seven of the positions, there are no nominees. At the Interior Department, the White House still has not chosen nominees for seven positions, including such high-profile posts as the head of the National Parks Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At the State Department, there is no nominee for undersecretary for economic growth, energy and environment.
As chair of the CEQ, White would be at the nexus of all federal interagency discussion on energy and environment issues. Carper said the importance of the post "cannot be overstated." "You're kind of like the orchestra leader—not playing an instrument but making sure everyone is playing from the same music and in harmony," he said.
But for now, the Trump administration's environmental ensemble is playing with no one at the podium, and many empty seats in the band.
---
omg
https://www.ecowatch.com/ceq-nominee-white-2524022932.html
The Trump administration re-nominated Kathleen Hartnett White on Monday to be chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) after she failed to secure a Senate confirmation last year.
The CEQ chair oversees environmental policy across all federal agencies. But during Senate hearings in November, White struggled to answer basic questions about the CEQ's role and whether she would use facts in environmental recommendations to the president. She continues to deny that carbon dioxide is harmful to the planet.
...
"White is a disastrous candidate who will have a profoundly destructive effect on our climate and wildlife if given this job in the Trump administration," said Stephanie Kurose, endangered species policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Her extreme views and disturbing record should disqualify her from this crucial leadership position."
White has previously argued there is a "moral case" for expanding fossil fuel development regardless of carbon dioxide emissions. She also claimed there is a "connection between the abolition of slavery and humanity's first widespread use of energy from fossil fuels."
In her current position at the Texas Public Policy Foundation—a conservative think tank that has received huge donations from fossil fuel interests that include Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and Chevron—White has worked to undermine the Endangered Species Act.
Nearly 50 organizations sent a letter to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works opposing White's nomination. The letter expressed support for the Endangered Species Act, which has saved more than 99 percent of species under its protection from extinction and put hundreds of species on the path to recovery.
"White is yet another Trump appointee picked to lead an agency whose conservation mission she fundamentally rejects," said Kurose. "Confirming her to this powerful position would be shortsighted and deeply irresponsible."
The Trump administration also re-nominated Susan Combs to be assistant secretary of policy management and budget within the U.S. Department of the Interior. Combs—an outspoken opponent of federal endangered species protection—built her career by favoring big corporations and special interests over the needs and survival of imperiled species.
---
letter:
350.org • Alaska Wilderness League • American Rivers • Animal Welfare Institute Bold Alliance • Center for Biological Diversity • Center for Food Safety Clean Water Action • Climate Hawks Vote • ClimateTruth.org • Defenders of Wildlife Delaware Ecumenical Council on Children and Families • Earthjustice Endangered Species Coalition • Environment America • Environmental Protection Information Center • Food & Water Watch • Friends of the Earth • Grand Canyon Trust Green for All • GreenLatinos • Hip Hop Caucus • Indivisible • Information Network for Responsible Mining • Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy • International Fund for Animal Welfare • International Marine Mammal Project, Earth Island Institute • Klamath Forest Alliance • League of Conservation Voters • Natural Resources Defense Council NextGen America • Oceana • Pesticide Action Network • Power Shift Network Public Citizen • San Juan Citizens Alliance • Save Animals Facing Extinction • Save EPA Sierra Club • Turtle Island Restoration Network • Union of Concerned Scientists Waterkeeper Alliance • Western Environmental Law Center • Western Watersheds Project WildEarth Guardians • Wilderness Workshop • Wildlands Network
November 7, 2017 The Honorable John Barrasso Chairman Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works United States Senate Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Tom Carper Ranking Member Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works United States Senate Washington, DC 2051
==
TPPF
omg book w/ moore
2 booktv :https://www.c-span.org/person/?kathleenwhite
1.16.14 testimony
Gina Mcc, vitter, crapo, barasso, inhofe, ...cardin, carper, boxer, whitehouse...change panel currey, white, sessions
KATHLEEN WHITE. >> THANK YOU. I'M PARTICULARLY GRATEFUL TO SHARE MY PERSPECTIVE AS A FORMER STATE ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATOR OF THE TEXAS COMMISSION ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY, WHICH ACCORDING TO EPA IS THE SECOND LARGEST ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY IN THE WORLD.
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AND I'D LIKE TO NOTE SEVERAL POSITIVE TRENDS. THIS IS ONE OF TWO GRAPHS IN MY WRITTEN TESTIMONY. ACCORDING TO THE EIA, ENERGY RELATED EMISSIONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE DECREASED 3.7% IN 2012, THE LOWEST EMISSION LEVEL SINCE 1994. AS THE GRAPH DEPICTS, AS A MEASURE OF THE AMOUNT OF CO2 GENERATED PER DOLLAR OF ECONOMIC OUTPUT,CARBON INTENSITY, A METRIC THAT EIA USES, THE U.S. ECONOMY HAS BEEN STEADILY LESS CARBON INTENSE SINCE1949. AND IN ONE YEAR, 2012, THAT DECLINED 6.5%. WHILE A PART OF THAT IS A WEAKER ECONOMY THAN IN PREVIOUS DECADES, AND INCREASED USE OF NATURAL GAS, I THINK IT'S REALLY A REMARKABLE TREND.
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I WOULD CREDIT IT TO THE EFFICIENCY IN PRIVATE MARKETS THAT'S ALWAYS DRIVING THE BUSINESS. THE PRESIDENT'S CLIMATE ACTION PLAN, I COUNTED A MIXTURE OF AT LEAST 50 FEDERAL PROGRAMS OR INITIATIVES THAT MOST EXIST ALREADY. SO IN MANY OF THEM ARE REINFORCING WHAT ALREADY EXISTS. SEVERAL COMPONENTS OF WHICH I THINK ARE QUITE ALARMING, PARTICULARLY WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL OF SUCH BOLD, BOLD PROJECTS, AND MY OVERALL ASSESSMENT WOULD BE THAT IN GENERAL, A PLAN OF THAT SCOPE AND INEVITABLE COST THATREALLY DEALS WITH A POLICY OF MAJOR NATIONAL CONSEQUENCE MUST BE, MUST BE SOMETHING THAT OURVOICE IN THE U.S. CONGRESS APPROVES AND IS NOT MERELY A RESULT OF EXECUTIVE ACTION. I'LL TURN THE REST OF MY COMMENTS TO THE CARBON POLLUTION STANDARDS, THE SOCALLED NEW SOURCE PERFORMANCE STANDARDS.
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THE EPA -- ONE OF WHICH IS ALREADY PROPOSED FOR THE SECOND TIME. FOR NEW COAL FIRE POWER PLANTS, THE SECOND OF WHICH ISWELL UNDER WAY AS A PLAN. AND FROM THE STANDPOINTAGAIN OF SPENDING SIX YEARS IMPLEMENTING FEDERAL LAW INAIR QUALITY PERMITS IN TEXAS, IT'S FROM THAT BASIS ANDQUITE A BIT OF FAMILIARITY WITH HOW PERFORMANCESTANDARDS OPERATE. THESE STANDARDS AREUNQUESTIONABLY THE MOST AGGRESSIVE ACTION TAKENUNDER THE ENDANGERMENT FINDING THAT CO2 ENGAGESHUMAN HEALTH AND WELFARE. AND THEY ARE THE FIRST DIRECT REGULATION OF CARBON DIOXIDE. I CAN GIVE YOU EXAMPLES OF PREVIOUS INDIRECT MEANS, BUT NOT TIME. THE EPA USES, AS HAS BEEN MENTIONED BY SEVERAL TODAY,CARBON CAPTURE CONTROL TECHNOLOGY AS THE BASIS FOR WHICH TO CRAFT WITH THE NUMERIC LIMIT. IN MY JUDGMENT,THAT STANDARD IS UNQUESTIONABLY INFEASIBLE FOR COALFIRE POWER PLANTS TO OBTAIN BECAUSE CARBON CAPTURE CONTROL TECHNOLOGY IS NOT AT ALL COMMERCIALLYDEMONSTRATED. THIS IS REALLY AN UNPRECEDENTED EXPANSION OF EPA'S AUTHORITY. BECAUSE THE NET EFFECT IS TO FORCE FUEL SWITCHING FROM COAL TO NATURAL GAS OR FROM ANY FOSSIL FUEL GENERATION, SUCH AS RENEWABLES. AND I FIND NOTHING IN THE CLEAN ERA THAT CAN AUTHORIZE EPA TO ENGAGE IN WHAT BECOMES A REALLY CENTRALIZED ENERGY PLANNING. TO ME, THE CLEAN AIR ACT, WHICH IS A WONDERFUL LAW ENSHRINES ECONOMIC FREEDOM, WHICH IS AT THE BASIS OF THIS DEMOCRACY. IT ALLOWS PRIVATE ACTORS,NOT THE AND, TO CHOOSE ENERGY SOURCE, PROCESS, AND PRODUCT. THE EPA, AS HAS BEEN REPEATEDLY MENTIONED TODAY, THE EPA'S AUTHORITY IS LIMITED TO REQUIRE BEST POLLUTION CONTROL TECHNOLOGY THAT HAS BEEN COMMERCIALLY DEMONSTRATED FOR THE INDUSTRIAL PROCESS IN QUESTION. THERE'S NOT ONE SINGLE SUCCESSFULLYOPERATING POWER PLANT IN THE UNITED STATES FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME THAT HAS USED CCS. THERE HAVE BEEN A NUMBER OF PILOT PROJECTS. THEY EITHER FAILED OR AREINCOMPLETE. EPA LAYS WAIT ON THE SOUTHERN COMPANIESPROJECT IN MISSISSIPPI, WHICH IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION AND JUST WAS FORCED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THIS COST OVERRUNS WENT FROM SOMETHING LIKE 2.3 BILLION TO OVER $4 BILLION. COAL REMAINS THE LARGEST SOURCE AND A CENTRALMAINSTAY OF BASE LOAD ELECTRICITY IN THIS COUNTRY. THE INFRASTRUCTURE SURROUNDING IT HAS EVOLVED OVER A CENTURY, AND THE COAL INDUSTRY HAS SPENT PROBABLY IN THE LAST TEN YEARS AN ESTIMATED $100 BILLION TO INSTALL ALL KINDS OF ELABORATE POLLUTION CONTROL TECHNOLOGY TO REDUCE BY MANY, MANY TIMES EMISSIONS OF TRADITIONALPOLLUTANTS. AND I WOULD CALL -- THE PAIN, I THINK, IS ALREADY OCCURRING IN THIS COUNTRY AND OTHERS, AND I SEE MY TESTIMONY IS BUTT TOABOUT TO RUN OUT, BUT I HOPE THEU.S. CONGRESS AND EPA WILL LOOK VERY CAREFULLY AT WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND COUNTRIES THAT HAVE MADE A RUSH TO RENEWABLES. OVER 600 TO 700,000FAMILIES IN GERMANY ARE NOW CUT OFF FROM ELECTRICITY.ANOTHER HEADLINE IN THE UK WAS SOMETHING TO THE EFFECTAS REFERENCED IN MY TESTIMONY 24,000 ELDERLY INDIVIDUALS IN THE UK MAY DIE THIS WINTER BECAUSE THEY NO LONGERHAVE access to heat ...
https://www.c-span.org/video/?317244-1/administration-defends-climate-change-plan
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https://www.alternet.org/environment/trump-enviro-pick-displays-outrageous-level-climate-denial-senate-confirmation-hearing
Kathleen Hartnett White, President Trump’s pick to chair the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), testified at her Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday and, like many Trump nominees to date, showed herself to be an unqualified, polluter-friendly ideologue who rejects mainstream climate science.
“Your positions are so far out of the mainstream, they are not just outliers, they are outrageous,” Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey exclaimed at one point in clear exasperation. “You have a fringe voice that denies science, economics and reality.”
What Markey failed to note, however, is that White has personally experienced climate change-related extreme weather events in her home state of Texas, and scientists say they are only going to get worse.
Unqualified from the Start
White, who Trump previously considered for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, is a cattle rancher and dog breeder who chaired the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ)—the Lone Star State’s version of the EPA—from 2001 to 2007 and was a member of the Environmental Flows Study Commission, the Texas Water Development Board and the Texas Wildlife Association board.
Her qualifications for those positions? None.
White earned her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Humanities and Religion at Stanford, attended Princeton’s comparative religion doctoral program, and completed a year of law school at Texas Tech. It’s not quite the background one would expect for someone serving on environmentally related boards, let alone running the TCEQ. But in Texas, as in Florida and Wisconsin, ideology trumps science credentials, and White holds a politically correct pro-fossil fuels viewpoint.
That bias serves her well in her current job with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a libertarian think tank funded by what Texans for Public Justice characterized as a “Who’s Who of Texas polluters, giant utilities and big insurance companies.” Among TPPF’s benefactors are Chevron, Devon Energy and ExxonMobil; Koch Industries and its family foundations; and Luminant, the largest electric utility in Texas. White, who joined TPPF in January 2008, runs the nonprofit’s energy and environment program and co-heads its Fueling Freedom Project, whose mission is to “push back against the EPA’s onerous regulatory agenda that threatens America’s economy, prosperity and well-being.”
Climate Paranoia Strikes Deep
Recent media coverage of White’s nomination for the CEQ post has shined a light on her lack of scientific understanding — and her paranoia about the rationale for addressing climate change. She falsely claims that climate science is “highly uncertain,” characterizes it as the “dark side of a kind of paganism, the secular elite’s religion,” and argues that the “climate crusade,” if unchecked, would essentially destroy democracy. That’s right. White believes the United Nations and climate scientists are bent on establishing a “one-world state ruled by planetary managers.” Further, she routinely trumpets the benefits of carbon emissions, insisting that carbon dioxide “has none of the characteristics of a pollutant that could harm human health.” Carbon is a good thing, she says, because “the increased atmospheric concentration of man-made CO2 has enhanced plant growth and thus the world’s food supply.” Never mind that farmers and ranchers in her own state have been whipsawed in recent years by devastating heat waves, drought and floods, all linked to climate change.
At her confirmation hearing on Wednesday, White cited reducing ground-level ozone in Houston and Galveston when she chaired the TCEQ as her greatest accomplishment. But according to a recent editorial in the Dallas Morning News, she pushed for weaker ozone standards while she was at the helm of the agency.
“Her record is abominable,” the October 17 editorial stated. “White consistently sided with business interests at the expense of public health as chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. She lobbied for lax ozone standards and, at a time when all but the most ardent fossil fuel apologists understood that coal isn’t the nation’s future, White signed a permit for a lignite-fired power plant, ignoring evidence that emissions from the lignite plant could thwart North Texas’ efforts to meet air quality standards.”
Predictably, White also disparages renewable energy. “In spite of the billions of dollars in subsidies, retail prices for renewables are still far higher than prices for fossil fuels,” she wrote in her 2014 tract, Fossil Fuels: The Moral Case. “At any cost, renewable energy from wind, solar, and biomass remains diffuse, unreliable, and parasitic….” In fact, fossil fuels have received significantly more in federal tax breaks and subsidies for a much longer time than renewables; new wind power is now cheaper than coal, nuclear and natural gas; and the Department of Energy projects that renewable technologies available today have the potential to meet 80 percent of U.S. electricity demand by 2050.
Most of Trump’s nominees for other key science-based positions—notably EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt—agree with White’s twisted take on climate science and renewables. What sets her apart, besides her penchant for calling advocates for combating climate change “pagans,” “Marxists” and “communists,”is her up-close-and-personal experience with climate change-related extreme weather events.
Ignoring the Evidence
White and her husband, Beau Brite White, live in Bastrop County, an outlying Austin bedroom community, and own a vast cattle ranch of 118,567 acres—more than 185 square miles—in Presidio County, which sits on the state’s southwest border with Mexico.
Bastrop and Presidio counties are both struggling with drought due to low precipitation and high temperatures and, like the rest of Texas, suffered from an especially extreme drought in 2011. Part of a prolonged period of drought stretching from 2010 to 2015, the one in 2011 was the hottest and driest on record, and climate change likely played a significant role. A 2012 study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society found that the high temperatures that contribute to droughts such the one that struck Texas in 2011 are 20 times more probable now than they were 40 to 50 years ago due to human-caused climate change.
The Fourth National Climate Assessment report, released on November 3, agreed. “The absence of moisture during the 2011 Texas/Oklahoma drought and heat wave was found to be an event whose likelihood was enhanced by the La Niña state of the ocean,” the report, authored by scientists at 13 federal agencies, concluded, “but the human interference in the climate system still doubled the chances of reaching such high temperatures [emphasis added].”
The 2011 heat wave was particularly intense in Presidio County. According to Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, a meteorology professor at Texas A&M University, the county “achieved the triple-triple: at least 100 days reaching at least 100 degrees.”
Bastrop County, meanwhile, has become a tinderbox. Wildfires are happening there with greater frequency and intensity for a variety of reasons, including rising temperatures and worsening drought as well as population growth and development. In 2011, the county experienced the worst wildfire in Texas history, which destroyed more than 1,600 homes and caused $325 million in damage. Two years ago, in October 2015, the Hidden Pines Fire torched 7 square miles in the county and burned down 64 buildings.
White’s Neighbors Know Better
White may refuse to acknowledge what is happening in her own backyard, but most of her neighbors realize that human-caused climate change is indeed a problem, according to polling data released last March by the Yale Program on Climate Communication. The survey, conducted in 2016 in every county nationwide, found that a majority of residents in Bastrop and Presidio counties—67 percent and 78 percent respectively—understand that global warming is happening, while more than half of the respondents in both counties (52 percent in Bastrop and 62 percent in Presidio) know it is mainly caused by human activity.
Majorities in both counties also want something done about it. More than 70 percent want carbon dioxide regulated as a pollutant and at least 65 percent in both counties want states to require utilities to produce 20 percent of their electricity from renewables.
Given their responses, White’s neighbors in Bastrop and Presidio counties make it clear that if they were polled on whether she should become the next chair of a little-known but powerful White House office that oversees federal environmental and energy policies, a majority would likely say no—and with good reason: Unlike White, for them, seeing is believing.
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https://www.alternet.org/environment/trumps-pick-top-environmental-job-has-said-some-really-nutty-things-about-climate-change
From EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, President Trump has filled his administration with a rogue's gallery of fossil fuel-loving climate deniers. Now he's set to have another: Kathleen Hartnett White.
Last week, Trump nominated Hartnett White, a longtime critic of climate change policy, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which advises the administration on environmental policy. If she is confirmed by the Senate, America will have yet another fox in charge of the henhouse, putting the global environment further at risk.
On Thursday, CNN reported on particularly incredulous remarks that she made last year during an interview with the conservative online talk show "The Right Perspective."
During that appearance, Hartnett White claimed that environmental leaders were using climate policy "to undermine the system of economic growth and industrialization."
She added, "There's a real dark side of the kind of paganism—the secular elites' religion now being, evidently, global warming."
Listen:
A staunch supporter of the fossil fuel industry who served as a Texas environmental regulator, Hartnett White is currently on the staff at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that fights against environmental regulation and clean energy.
While at the TPPF, she was tasked to "explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels," arguing that carbon dioxide "makes life possible on the earth and naturally fertilizes plant growth."
Energy & Policy Inst @EnergyandPolicy
Kathleen Hartnett-White: Trump's pick to chair CEQ fought to "End regulation of CO2 as a pollutant" #protectcpp http://www.energyandpolicy.org/kathleen-hartnett-white/ …
"Whether emitted from the human use of fossil fuels or as a natural (and necessary) gas in the atmosphere surrounding the earth, carbon dioxide has none of the attributes of a pollutant," she wrote in a 2014 paper in which she argued that "global warming alarmists are misleading the public about carbon dioxide emissions."
In a tweet, Earthjustice called on followers to not let the "frack first, ask questions later" climate denier "undermine science."
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13102017/trump-kathleen-hartnett-white-ceq-nominee-climate-change-fossil-fuels-supporter-texas
President Donald Trump has picked Kathleen Hartnett White, a former Texas regulator and unapologetic advocate of expanding U.S. fossil fuel production regardless of carbon dioxide emissions, for the top White House environment post.
Putting her in charge of the Council on Environmental Quality, which has been rudderless since Trump took office, would place an extreme denier of mainstream climate science, a hero of those who oppose urgent action on global warming, at the fulcrum of federal interagency policy discussions on energy and environmental matters.
White has argued against the federal government's "endangerment finding" that carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas feeding worldwide climate change, is a danger to human health and the environment. If confirmed to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, she would be coordinating environmental efforts across the federal agencies.
As a fellow of the conservative Austin-based think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, White leaves a long paper trail that will surely be fodder for her confirmation hearing. The group has been funded by fossil fuel interests, including Exxon and the Koch brothers.
She has decried regulation of carbon dioxide, which she calls "the gas of life," and co-authored last year's paean to the fracking boom, "Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy." Her co-author, economist Stephen Moore, founded the Club for Growth, the political action group that weaponized the primary process to successfully move the Republican party to the right over the past two decades.
"An invisible, harmless trace gas in the Earth's atmosphere, CO2 is a plant food," White said last year in a Q&A with the Orlando Sentinel.
In her 2014 monograph, "Fossil Fuels: The Moral Case," she wrote: "Humanity's use of fossil fuels has released whole populations from abject poverty. ... Until energy sources fully comparable or superior to fossil fuels are securely available, policies to reduce emissions of CO2 should proceed with caution lest they prematurely exhaust the well-springs of mankind's greatest advance."
She has also promoted tactics for undermining the Endangered Species Act, claiming its protections for endangered wildlife imperil prosperity.
In its announcement Thursday of Trump's intent to nominate White, the White House highlighted her role on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (2001-2007) and as a former director of the Lower Colorado River Authority.
White's appointment to a top position in the administration has long been rumored; she met with the president-elect in Trump Tower while he was mulling his choice for Environmental Protection Agency administrator. But her supporters betrayed no sense of disappointment when Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt was named to that post instead.
At an energy policy summit that the Texas Public Policy Foundation co-hosted with the Heritage Foundationin Washington, D.C., last December, the group's president Brooke Rollins, said she expected that there would be "something very special" ahead for White in the Trump administration.
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Texas Public Policy Foundation
Doug Domenech
Backstory: The Austin, Texas-based conservative think tank was founded in 1989 by James Leininger, a physician and investor. Leininger is a devout Christian conservative with close ties to Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry, according to The Texas Tribune.
Key staff: Doug Domenech, who led the Trump administration's transition team for the Interior Department and is now a political aide at that agency, hails from TPPF. He was director of the think tank's Fueling Freedom Project before joining the Trump team. He was also secretary of natural resources in Virginia under then-Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and an Interior official during the Bush administration.
Kathleen Hartnett White of TPPF's Armstrong Center for Energy and the Environment, who was rumored to be in the mix for Trump's EPA administrator and is considered a possible pick to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality. White, a former Texas regulator, was a Trump adviser on the campaign trail. She has argued that treating carbon dioxide like a pollutant is damaging to the U.S. energy sector (Greenwire, Nov. 28, 2016).
Energy/environmental platform: The group advocates for a pivot toward state autonomy and "less burdensome" regulations. Views pushed by TPPF's personalities — like support for fossil fuels, questions about climate change and calls for regulatory changes — have spurred attacks from critics including environmental and consumer groups (Energywire, Dec. 6, 2016).
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http://www.desmogblog.com/kathleen-hartnett-white
Credentials
“White received her bachelor cum laude and master degrees from Stanford University where for three years she held the Elizabeth Wheeler Lyman Scholarship for an Outstanding Woman in the Humanities. She was also awarded a Danforth National Fellowship for doctoral work at Princeton University in Comparative Religion and there won the Jonathan Edwards Award for Academic Excellence. She also studied law under a Lineberry Foundation Fellowship at Texas Tech University.” [1]
Background
Kathleen Hartnett-White is thedistinguished senior fellow-in-residenceand director of the Armstrong Center for Energy &the Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. [1] Hartnett-White is also a member of the Advisory Committee for the CO2 Coalition, [2]formerly known as the George C. Marshall Institute. [3]
Kathleen Hartnett-White previously worked as Chairman and Commissioner of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Prior to 2001, she served as then-Governor George W. Bush's appointee to the Texas Water Development Board where she sat until appointed to TCEQ. Her publications have included articles in National Review, Investors’ Business Daily, Washington Examiner, Forbes, Daily Caller, The Hill, and a number of other Texas newspapers. [1]
Hartnett-White has also held positions as the Director of Private Lands and the Environment for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in Washington, D.C. She has served as director of the Ranching Heritage Association, and was a special assistant in the White House Office of the First Lady Nancy Reagan. [1]
She is co-author, with Stephen Moore, of Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy published by Regnery, May 2016. [1]
Stance on Climate Change
2015
“Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the gas of life on this planet, an essential nutrient for plant growth on which human life depends. How craftily our government has masked these fundamental realities and the environmental benefits of fossil fuels! […]
Notwithstanding the unscientificdeclaration of absolute certainty surrounding the politically official science, the climate’s sensitivity to the relatively small increment of human-induced CO2 remains thecentral unsettled question surrounding the climate issue.” [4]
2014
“IPCC science claims of 95 percent certainty that human activity is causing climate calamity are more like the dogmatic claims of ideologues and clerics than scientific conclusions. ” [16]
Key Quotes
May, 2016
“Green energy remains an inconsequential source of energy in America despite more than $80 billion in direct federal taxpayer subsidies under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.” [5]
March, 2016
”[…] mounting evidence invalidates the modeled predictions of the IPCC — the official scientific anchor of the crusade. For decades, the IPCC models have failed to accurately forecast temperature as observed by the most sophisticated technology: NASA’s remote sensing satellites and balloons.” [6]
“Like it or not,prosperous countries are utterly dependent on the abundant, affordable, versatile, reliable, concentrated, controllable, and portable energy available from fossil fuels.At this point in time, the intermittent, and far more expensive, renewable energies cannot provide the countless energy services on which our long, healthy, affluent, and comfortable lives with personal freedom depend.” [6]
November, 2015
“The official science driving global warmingalarmismis based on models built to assume that natural climate variables are extremely sensitive to a relatively small increase in atmospheric CO2 from human activity. But facts on the ground contradict the climate models’ assumption.
Temperatures have not warmed as predicted by the models over the last 18 years. And extreme weather events have not been more frequent or more intense than in the 20th century.”[7]
March, 2008
“Lost in the outcry over carbon dioxide are these considerations:
CO2 represents only 5 percent of global greenhouse gas. CO2 added by human activity such as power plants constitutes only 3.4 percent of all CO2.
As predicted by the reigning science of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the risk of global warming from human-induced greenhouse gases such as CO2 is an uncertain, remote, gradual risk with impacts predicted in 100 years or more.” [8]
Key Deeds
August, 2016
Kathleen Hartnett-White was named as a new member of Donald Trump's “economic advisory team” which promises to “get the American economy back on track.” [19]
Trump, who also addedfellow climate change denier Myron Ebellto his team in September 2016, has called global warming “bullshit” and promised he would “cancel” the Paris climate agreement as well as roll back President Obama's actions on climate change.[20]
June 17, 2016
Kathleen Hartnett-White wrote an article in The Hillcalling for restraint of the “imperial EPA.” White promotes bill H.R. 3880, “The Stopping the EPA Overreach Act.” The bill would prevent the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide, methane and three other greenhouse gases. According to White, the EPA's treatment of carbon dioxide as a pollutant is an example of “regulatory overreach.”[9]
“The truth is that our bodies, blood and bones are built of carbon! Carbon dioxide is a necessary nutrient for plant life, acting as the catalyst for the most essential energy conversion process on planet earth: photosynthesis,” she writes. “[…] How do our national leaders square their public vilification of carbon dioxide with fundamental scientific and economic realities? Such political propaganda has now educated at least two generations of Americans who think carbon is a killer instead of the stuff of life on the earth.” [9]
May 26, 2016
Kathleen Hartnett-White, director of the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment at the TPPF, went on the One America News Network's Tipping Point to discus
. [10]
“A significant part of [Hillary's] party is at a predominately extreme position on energy,” Hartnett-White says. [10]
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May 23, 2016
Kathleen Hartnett-White is the co-author, with Stephen Moore, of Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy. The Amazon description of the book reads as follows: [11]
“Fossil fuel energy is the lifeblood of the modern world. Before the Industrial Revolution, humanity depended on burning wood and candle wax. But with the ability to harness the energy in oil and other fossil fuels, quality of life and capacity for progress increased exponentially. Thanks to incredible innovations in the energy industry, fossil fuels are as promising, safe, and clean an energy resource as has ever existed in history. Yet, highly politicized climate policies are pushing a grand-scale shift to unreliable, impractical, incredibly expensive, and far less efficient energy sources. Today, 'fossil fuel' has become such a dirty word that even fossil fuel companies feel compelled to apologize for their products. In Fueling Freedom, energy experts Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White make an unapologetic case for fossil fuels, turning around progressives' protestations to prove that if fossil fuel energy is supplanted by 'green' alternatives for political reasons, humanity will take a giant step backwards and the planet will be less safe, less clean, and less free.” [11]
The Heartland Institute, which hosted Stephen Moore for a talk on his book, describes how the authors “argue that if fossil fuel energy is supplanted by 'green' alternatives for political reasons, humanity will take a giant step backwards and the planet will be less safe, less clean, and less free.” [12]
April 21, 2016
Kathleen Hartnett-White gave a talk at the April Luncheon of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), Fort Worth Section. Her talk was titled “The Great Energy Enrichment.”[13]
November 18, 2015
Shortly before the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) Kathleen Hartnett White was interviewed by The Daily Signalwhere she “outlines important climate questions.” According to Hartnett White, there hasn't been significant global warming in 18 years:
“Temperatures have not warmed as predicted by the models over the last 18 years. And extreme weather events have not been more frequent or more intense than in the 20th century.” [7]
She argues coal, natural gas, and nuclear power are superior to wind and solar, claiming they have a smaller “physical footprint” and that the EPA's Clean Power Plan would “disfigure millions of acres of open space” with wind turbines. [7]
“The kind of energy available in fossil fuels – abundant, affordable, concentrated, versatile, reliable, controllable, storable – was and remains a necessary condition of monumental improvements in human welfare and economic growth that emerged around 1800,” she said. “Policies to supplant fossil fuels – without a fully comparable substitute proven at scale – are immoral.” [7]
With reference to the UN COP21 climate conference, she writes that “We don’t need to supplant fossil fuels at this point in time. We need to help developing countries increase energy availability for their people and use emission control technologies to manage real pollutants.” She concludes that the U.S. Congress should recognize that “CO2 is not a pollutant within the regulatory jurisdiction of the Clean Air Act.” [7]
September 29, 2015
Kathleen Hartnett-White writes in *Townhall*that Pope Francis's visit to America “is a reminder of the extent to which pure propaganda now circumscribes public discourse about climate change.” [4]
“The climate issue, in all its many dimensions, is not about air pollution as Pope Francis’s recent speeches labeled the issue and as the media parroted his words. The climate change issue is about energy derived from fossil fuels,” White writes.
June 11, 2015
Kathleen Hartnett-White was a speaker at theHeartland Institute's Tenth International Conference on Climate Changein Washington, DC where she discussed “ the economic impacts of federal climate policy” on a panel titled “Energy Realities.”[14]
Video below:
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June, 2014
Kathleen Hartnett-White authored a study at the Texas Public Policy Foundation titled “Fossil Fuels: The Moral Case.” [16]
White says that her research was inspired by a “comprehensively researched monograph” written by fellow climate change denier Indur Goklany titled “Humanity Unbound.” [16]
White describes the thesis of her paper as that “fossil fuels, as a necessary condition of the Industrial Revolution, made modern living standards possible and vastly improved living conditions across the world.” [16]
”[…] the greatest beneficiaries of this energy revolution known as the Industrial Revolution were average workers and the most impoverished. Increasing emission of man-made CO2 is tightly correlated with this monumental achievement.” [16]
According to White, ”[fossil ]fuels are superior on many levels to the current alternatives.” With reference to climate change, she claims that evidence for dangerous climate change “weakens” over time. [16]
“Mandates to force an abrupt energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources are naïve and fraught with peril for highly industrialized economies. As this paper detailed, energy sources are not necessarily interchangeable. In energy density, abundance, reliability, versatility, and other advantages, fossil fuels are far superior to wind, solar, and biomass. […]”
“IPCC science claims of 95 percent certainty that human activity is causing climate calamity are more like the dogmatic claims of ideologues and clerics than scientific conclusions. “ she writes. [16]
Hartnett-White spoke about the study at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation. See video below:
[vid] March 14, 2008
Kathleen Hartnett-White published an article in the opinion pages ofThe Hays Daily News[18]where she claims that she made the decision to approve the first coal-fired power plant in texas in 20 years because “[…] equipped with groundbreaking emission controls [the new plant], was a net environmental benefit for Texas,” reports Desmog. [8]
The Wichita Eagle's Editorial blog responded:
She [Harnett White] also makes misleading, unsupported assertions on science, claiming that the U.N.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change portrays global warming as an 'uncertain, remote, gradual risk with impacts predicted in 100 years or more.' To the contrary, the panel’s study is unequivocal on the high risks of warming, the environmental damage already under way, and the urgency of controlling carbon and greenhouse gases now.” [8]
July 23, 2007
The Dallas Morning Newswrote an editorial discussing Hartnett-White's departure as chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality: [15]
“She [Harnett White] has been an apologist for polluters, consistently siding with business interests instead of protecting public health. Ms. White worked to set a low bar as she lobbied for lax ozone standards and pushed through an inadequate anti-pollution plan. She also voted to approve TXU's pollution-intensive Oak Grove coal units, ignoring evidence that emissions from the lignite plant could thwart North Texas' efforts to meet air quality standards,” the editorial reads. [15]
Affiliations
- Texas Public Policy Foundation— Senior fellow-in-residence. Director, Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment. [1]
- CO2 Coalition — Membor, Advisory Committee. [2]
- Donald Trump presidential campaign (2016)— Member, Economic Advisory Team. [19]
Publications
A TPPF “Media Expert” backgrounder of Kathleen Hartnett-White lists the following “Select Publications” and media appearances:[17]
Select Publications
- “The Fracas on Fracking” National Review print
- “EPA’s Approaching Regulatory Avalanche”
- “Taming the Fourth Branch” Daily Caller
- “The Ruse of Regulatory Reform” National Review online
- “Environmental Policy Constraints on U.S. Oil Supply”
- “EPA’s Pretense of Science: Regulating Phantom Risks”
- “Fossil Fuels: The Moral Case”
Media Appearances
- National Review (print and online)
- Investors’ Business Daily
- Washington Examiner
- Daily Caller
- Forbes
- Houston Chronicle
- Dallas Morning News
Resources
- “Kathleen Hartnett White, Distinguished Senior Fellow-In-Residence & Director, Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment,” Texas Public Policy Foundation. Archived July 4, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6iksxaTJj
- “About,” Co2Coalition. Archived April 14, 2016.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan. “Think tank that cast doubt on climate change science morphs into smaller one,” ClimateWire, December 10, 2015. Archived July 4, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6iksoLWt9
- Kathleen Hartnett White. “Clearing the Air on Climate Change,” Townhall, September 29, 2015. Archived July 4, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6il1AI6iq
- Ken Blackwell. “Green Energy Policies May Haunt Democrats This Fall,” The Patriot Post, July 2, 2016. Archived July 4, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6ikxTMqu8
- Kathleen Hartnett White. “Is the Climate Crusade Stalling?” National Review, March 3, 2016. Archived July 4, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6ikwiZkNE
- “Here's What Will Not Be Discussed at the Upcoming U.N. Climate Conference in Paris,” The Daily Signal, November 18, 2015. Republished by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Archived December 1, 2015. WebCiteURL:http://www.webcitation.org/6dShEpvHO
- Kevin Grandia. “Texas Pollution Apologist Weighs in on Kansas Coal Fight,”Desmog, March 13, 2008.
- Kathleen Hartnett White. “Restrain the imperial EPA,” The Hill, June 17, 2016. Archived July 4, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6ikr92qdV
- ,” YouTube video uploaded by Javelin DC, May 26, 2016
- “Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy Hardcover – May 23 2016,” Amazon.ca. Archived July 4, 2016. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.
- Nancy Thorner. “Stephen Moore Exposes the Mad War on Energy,” The Heartland Institute, July 1, 2016. Archived July 4, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6ikxdx2uz
- “April Luncheon - Kathleen Hartnett White, 'The Great Energy Enrichment',” SPE International Fort Worth Section. Archived July 4, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6ikwyhFnE
- “TPPF's Kathleen Hartnett White to Participate in International Conference on Climate Change,” Texas Public Policy Foundation, June 11, 2015. Archived July 4, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6il1SKO3P
- “Clean Air Awaits: Gov. Perry should seize this chance to reshape TCEQ,” The Dallas Morning News, July 23, 2007. Archived August 27, 2007. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.
- Kathleen Hartnett-White.“Fossil Fuels: The Moral Case” (PDF), Texas Public Policy Foundation, June 2014. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.
- “Media Expert: Kathleen Hartnett White” (PDF), Texas Public Policy Foundation. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.
- Kathleen White. “Holcom holds environmental promise” (PDF), The Hays Daily News. Retrieved from Newspapers.com. Archived .pdf on file at Desmogblog.
- (Press Release). “EXPANSION OF TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISORY COUNCIL,” PR2016.org, August 11, 2016. Archived September 28, 2016. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/5h88Y
- “Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition,” Scientific American, September 26, 2016.
Other Resources
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http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/27/climate-science-denialist-myron-ebell-named-trump-adviser
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s energy policy to dig, drill, and frack as much fossil fuel out of the ground as possible only really works by denying two realities.
The first reality denied is that there is no global agreement to move the world away from the fuels that Trump thinks are the future.
The second reality denied, of course, is the existence of decades of scientific evidence linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change.
So with this in mind, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s(CEI) Myron Ebell seems a perfect addition to Trump’s team.
As the U.S. media picks through the entrails from the first presidential debate, a few hours earlier it was revealed that should Trump win,:{ Ebell would lead the Republican’s “EPA transition team” that would strip the agency of key powers.}:
Ebell has long fought the legitimacy of climate science while promoting fossil fuels — epitomizing Trump’s current approach to energy and climate science.
For the best part of 20 years, Ebell has been actively working in favor of the fossil fuel industry by attempting to undermine climate science.
In 1998, Ebell joined with the American Petroleum Institute and staff from fossil fuel companies Exxon, Chevron, and Southern Company to try to reshape how the U.S. people understood the risks of climate change.
In a multi-million dollar plan that was leaked, Ebell and others concluded that a “victory” would be theirs only when the public doubted the links between dangerous global warming and fossil fuel burning.
Over the years, the CEI, where Ebell works as the director of the Center for Energy and Environment, has accepted cash from fossil fuel interests including oil giant ExxonMobil and foundations funded and controlled by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.
Bad Company
Ebell looks to be in good company in the Republican nominee’s camp.
In August, Trump’s team announced Kathleen Hartnett-White as one of several new additions to its “economic advisory team.”
Hartnett-White is another who doubts the well-established link between fossil fuel burning and climate change.
In a column last year, Hartnett-White lauded the “environmental benefits” of fossil fuel burning, while claiming the evidence for climate change was waning.
Hartnett-White is director of an energy and environment project at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) — another group that has taken money from the Koch brothers.
In July, the TPPF released a “research booklet” written by contrarian Dr. Roy Spencer that attempted to undermine findings related to sea level rise, extreme temperatures, and other impacts from burning fossil fuels.
Hartnett-White is also an adviser to the CO2 Coalition — a group that includes extreme climate science denier Patrick Moore, who rejects any evidence for human-caused climate change.
Trump’s key energy adviser, Republican congressman Kevin Cramer, is also a self-confessed “skeptic.”
Another Trump aide and potential energy secretary in a Trump presidency is Harold Hamm, the founder and CEO of major oil producer Continental Resources. Hamm has also been a donor to Cramer's political campaigns. As DeSmog has reported, Hamm's company could gain from any future decisions to allow the Keystone XL pipeline.
Trump's Climate Hoax
During the presidential debate, climate change was barely mentioned. At one point, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton taunted Trump, saying that he “thinks climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.”
Trump interjected, saying “I do not say that,” going on to disparage solar power. He has claimed a tweet saying global warming was a concept “created by and for the Chinese” was a joke, but has continued to refer to climate change using terms like “hoax” since.
Given the “advisers” Trump is surrounding himself with so far, it seems unlikely he will get in touch with reality ahead of the November election.
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