Debating Trump, DeSantis, and GOP’s 2024 stance on climate and green agenda.
The First Republican Presidential Debate: Energy and Climate Change
The first Republican presidential debate is fast approaching on Aug. 23, when candidates will hope to close the gap on former President Donald Trump and separate from the rest of the pack. In this series, Up For Debate, the Washington Examiner will look at a key issue or policy every day up until debate day and where key candidates stand. Today’s story will examine issues of energy and climate change.
Energy and Climate Priorities in the 2024 Republican Primary Race
Energy and climate priorities will be a key focus in the 2024 Republican primary race as the candidates look to position themselves on oil and gas production, energy security, and sustainability topics such as environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, spending.
While the candidates espouse a wide range of views on these topics, each hopes to present himself or herself as a clear alternative to President Joe Biden, whose policies, they argue, are crippling U.S. economic growth, pushing up consumer prices, and threatening U.S. competitiveness while driving an outsize reliance on China for manufacturing and production.
Up For Debate: Trump, DeSantis, and 2024 GOP Hopefuls’ Stance on the Justice Department
Under the Biden administration, the United States has cracked down on transportation emissions and approved billions of dollars of spending for clean energy tax incentives, including for wind, solar, and electric vehicles. It has also introduced dozens of proposed rules to create efficiency standards for home appliances, set aside federal acres for land conservation and restoration, and cap carbon emissions from power plants.
But the debate will also take place against a backdrop of a fast-warming climate and extreme weather events that continue to play out in real time, threatening millions of people with blistering hot temperatures, extreme drought, and wildfire smoke that poured in from Canada, choking out parts of the country for days.
Ahead of the first debate, here is a look at where the candidates stand.
Donald Trump
As president, Donald Trump withdrew or scaled back more than 100 environmental rules and regulations. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels, and intervened on behalf of certain fossil fuel projects, such as the Dakota Access pipeline.
His administration repealed the Clean Power Plan, weakened protections under the Endangered Species Act, and revised the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, among many other things.
Trump vowed to reverse Biden’s clean energy policies if elected for a second term, lambasting what he described as Biden’s “Green New Deal atrocities” in a recent campaign video.
Trump has repeatedly accused Biden of “waging war” on the U.S. auto industry through the Transportation Department’s proposed fuel economy standards and the EPA’s proposed tailpipe emissions rule, which targets 60% EV adoption by 2030.
He also appears to be actively vying for support from the United Auto Workers, the largest U.S. auto union that has historically endorsed Democrats but has soured on Biden’s ambitious EV goals and what it views as a lack of commitment to workers.
“I hope United Auto Workers is listening to this because I think you better endorse Trump. Because I am going to grow your business, and they are destroying your business,” Trump said. “They are absolutely destroying your business.”
Ron DeSantis
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has styled himself as a “Teddy Roosevelt conservationist” on environmental topics, in contrast with his campaign presentation as a culture warrior and anti-“woke” conservative.
DeSantis has taken certain unorthodox steps for a Republican governor of a red state, including pouring billions into Everglades protection projects, directing the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to oppose fracking and offshore drilling in 2019, and appointing a “chief resilience officer” to help prepare the state for the “environmental, physical and economic impacts of sea level rise.” These could open him up to criticism in the primary election.
But environmental advocates in Florida say he is far from centrist, citing his refusal to use the term “climate change,” which he said he views as “left-wing stuff,” the bill he signed to crack down on the use of ESG goals in investing, and his failure as governor to set any renewable energy targets for Florida or goals to phase out fossil fuels.
When it comes to climate change, DeSantis “is an ostrich putting its head in the sand,” said Aliki Moncrief, the executive director of the Florida Conservation Voters.
Nikki Haley
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who also served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, would withdraw the U.S. once again from the Paris climate accord if elected and would roll back the Biden administration’s clean energy tax subsidies and regulations, including the proposed tailpipe emissions rule.
Haley outlined the broad strokes of her energy plan earlier this year at an oil rig in Midland, Texas, a location designed to highlight her commitment to U.S. energy producers.
As president, Haley said, she would stop the federal government’s control of how much energy is produced by U.S. oil and gas companies or where they produce it.
Haley also accused Biden of “demonizing” U.S. energy producers and noted that during her tenure as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., U.S. adversaries “didn’t want us to be energy independent.” She has stated on more than one occasion that she sees energy security and national security as inextricably linked and vowed to stop energy exports from Russia and Iran.
Haley “believes that when it comes to climate change, capitalism and economic freedom aren’t the problem — they’re the solution,” Ken Farnaso, a spokesman for Haley, told the Washington Examiner in an email.
Chris Christie
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has described climate change as an “existential crisis.” In fact, Christie was one of the first Republicans to do so, saying during a 2011 speech, “When you have over 90% of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts.”
“I think climate change is real,” he said at another event during his first term. “I don’t think that’s deniable.”
As Garden State governor, Christie also signed offshore wind legislation and took action to reduce pollution at a coal plant straddling the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border.
Christie said last year on ABC’s This Week he supported increasing domestic oil production as the U.S. moved toward a ban on Russian energy supplies, which earned criticism from others on the panel.
“You have to do two things at the same time, and you should be able to. You have to ban Russian oil, and you have to increase domestic production,” he said.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Vivek Ramaswamy is a biotech entrepreneur known for his role in leading the crusade against ESG investing and “woke” corporate policies on climate, which he skewered in his bestselling book.
Ramaswamy, 38, sees these pledges as a form of “virtue signaling” and obfuscation by the private sector that allows companies, as he claimed during a speech last year in Dublin, Ohio, to “do through the back door what our government couldn’t directly get done through the front door.”
Ramaswamy’s personal views on climate change, or possibly policy proscriptions, however, have been inconsistent at best.
While he maintains he is “not a climate denier,” he has also said limiting carbon emissions is a “flawed” goal and that “people should be proud to live a high-carbon lifestyle.”
Most recently, Ramaswamy claimed, without evidence, that climate disaster death rates have declined by 98% over the last century and asserted the average person is now “50X less likely to die of a climate-related cause than in 1920.”
“An inconvenient truth for the climate cult,” he said.
Other Candidates
Former Vice President Mike Pence has acknowledged the reality of climate change, noting during a campaign event in 2016 that “there’s no question that the activities that take place in this country, and in countries around the world, have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate.”
But as Trump’s second-in-command, Pence supported the president’s decisions to roll back or withdraw policies to improve airways and reduce emissions and publicly backed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
In an op-ed for the Washington Examiner earlier this week, Pence said he believes Biden’s energy agenda is crippling the industry and contributing to high inflation and soaring costs for the public.
“He canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, imposed drilling moratoriums, and refused to auction oil and gas leases on federal lands. Now, he wants to cripple the energy industry by forcing it to comply with capricious environmental, social, and corporate governance regulations,” Pence wrote.
He has also questioned the role that humans play in global warming, claiming earlier this month that “radical environmentalists” are exaggerating the problem.
His political organization released materials earlier this year calling for issuing more oil and gas leases in the U.S. and further increasing fossil fuel production.
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