New Trump executive order blasts California’s cap-and-trade program
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order targeting state climate change policies, including California’s landmark cap and trade program designed to reduce planet-warming gases.
Titled “Protecting American energy from state overreach,” the order directed the attorney general to identify state programs that weaken national security, drive up energy costs and undermine the country’s domestic energy supply, as well as state laws “purporting to address ‘climate change.’”
The attorney general is ordered to “take all appropriate action to stop enforcement” of such laws that the office finds to be illegal.
The executive order singled out California’s landmark cap and trade program, which “punishes carbon use by adopting impossible caps on the amount of carbon businesses may use,” according to the order.
It also claimed that policies in New York and Vermont “extort” some energy companies by creating fines for polluters.
“Many states have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” the order stated.
Established in 2013 by the California Air Resources Board, the state’s cap and trade program was created to reward companies that lower their greenhouse gas emissions.
The program created a marketplace where companies producing greenhouse gases above certain thresholds can offset those emissions by buying credits from companies that have slashed their emissions.
That threshold, or cap, is lowered annually in order to encourage the continued decline of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Air Resources Board.
The order is the latest from the Trump administration aimed at hampering environmental policies. It is certain to get pushback from California, which is deeply committed to action to slash climate-warming emissions.
This story is developing and will be updated.
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