Near Zero’s Danny Cullenward features in a Climate Central article about changes that may come following the 2016 federal elections:
“This is an unmitigated disaster for U.S. climate policy,” said Danny Cullenward, an energy economist and lawyer at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “President Trump alone could unwind the Clean Power Plan, the Climate Action Plan and the United States’ commitment to Paris. With a supportive Senate, he will be able to appoint anyone he likes to key agencies and cabinet positions. With support in both houses of Congress, the legislative agenda is wide open.”
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Potential state action is the only climate-related silver lining to Trump’s election, but only if states reluctant to take action on climate follow suit, Cullenward said.
“States will continue to make progress on energy and climate issues, but it is absolutely critical that pro-climate states change strategy,” he said. “Absent a national commitment, the efforts of a few key states to continue with policy won’t make much of a difference in terms of absolute emissions — those states have already made progress and their accomplishments are easily offset by other states that take the opposite approach.”
After the article’s publication, Cullenward commented: “I confess my views have changed somewhat over the course of what has to be longest week in my professional memory. Not that I think anything is fundamentally different in terms of what a Trump Administration can do, but rather what it will do. Until we know more about who is appointed to key posts (like EPA Administrator) and what the party’s top agenda items will be, it is hard to project how far the nascent progress on federal climate policy will be reversed.”
Update: Cullenward later commented on the confirmation of Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator, in articles by MIT Technology Review and Gizmodo.