Conservative groups that have long rejected the science underpinning climate action are lining up behind a policy wish list that calls on the incoming Trump team to ax climate agreements, make coal a “preferred means of electricity” and immediately freeze spending tied to the 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act.
The multipronged strategy, which has been delivered to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, is coming from groups that were elevated during Trump’s first term in office: the Heartland Institute, the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Truth in Energy and Climate, and the American Energy Institute.
Steve Milloy, a lawyer who served on Trump’s EPA transition team in 2016 and now a senior policy fellow with the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, said policies in the memo would combine boosting coal-fired generation and exports of natural gas with regulatory rollbacks, all of which he said will make the U.S. less susceptible to the whims of the global market.
“The way to implement the MAGA [energy plan] is to burn coal for electricity and then export natural gas to Europe and Asia, where they pay six times more for it,” said Milloy. “It would also make us less susceptible electricity-wise to the vagaries of the global markets.”
