RUTHFULLY YOURS

The White House is attempting to overload the bandwidth of its successor with a surge of new regulation, and the latest is a ban on oil drilling in much of the Arctic and Atlantic. This rule even purports to be “permanent,” unchangeable by any future President for all time. We’ll see about that, but in the meantime spare us the liberal panic about Donald Trump’s supposed authoritarianism.

The last-gasp executive action prohibits federal offshore drilling and mineral leases on some 3.8 million acres from Virginia to Maine and 115 million acres off the coast of Alaska, including some of the world’s great untapped repositories of hydrocarbons. President Obama rolled out the rule in concert with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and the greens are cheering that still more fossil-fuel regions will be walled off from exploration.

For years federal regulators have obstructed oil production on already leased lands. Royal Dutch Shell holds the sole drilling permit in Alaska and in 2015 suspended operations in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas despite $7 billion of sunk investment. So in a sense the new rule is merely truth in advertising.

But the press corps is rushing to euphemize Mr. Obama’s “creative” interpretation of a “rarely used” provision of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Ocsla allows that the President “may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the Outer Continental Shelf.” Because the law does not explicitly give the President the power to un-withdraw lands, the White House touts the rule as a forever condition. In other words, this is Mr. Obama’s typically illegal M.O.

Congress passed Ocsla, as the law’s preamble states, in order to make the “vital national resource reserve” that is the continental shelf “available for expeditious and orderly development.” The power to lock is also the power to unlock. Bill Clinton used Ocsla to withdraw 300 million offshore acres from an area that was already a designated marine sanctuary, but George W. Bush reinstated about 50 million.

Several commentators have characterized the selection of Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to become the next EPA Administrator as a sharp stick in the eye to the agency and its employees. They’re right — and seldom has any herd of federal bureaucrats been more deserving of it. For decades, in administrations Democratic and Republican alike, the EPA has been relentlessly ideological, politicized, corrupt, and incompetent.

When I joined the Food and Drug Administration in 1979, I was essentially apolitical and knew next to nothing about federal regulation. I was a science nerd who had spent the previous 16 years in college, graduate school, medical school, and postdoctoral training. It didn’t take long until I learned about the jungle of government bureaucracies, and one of the harshest lessons concerned the perfidy and incompetence of one of the FDA’s siblings, the EPA.

I found the EPA to be relentlessly anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-industry. The only thing it seemed to be for was the Europeans’ innovation-busting “precautionary principle,” the view that until a product or activity has been definitively proven safe, it should be banned or at least smothered with regulation. In fact, during international discussions and negotiations over the harmonization of biotechnology regulations in which I participated, the EPA often seemed allied with the European Union and committed to working against U.S. interests.

To my astonishment, I found that there were entire groups within the EPA whose function it was to lie to the Office of Management and Budget and to Congress about the rationale for and impacts of their proposed regulations. And over the years, I discovered that there is a kind of underground railway by which the most incompetent, disaffected, and anti-industry employees from other regulatory agencies find their way to the EPA, creating a miasma of dysfunctional governance.

During the two decades since I left government service, I’ve continued to watch the EPA’s shenanigans with a mixture of awe and vexation. Policy by policy and decision by decision, the EPA has decimated the nation’s competitiveness, ability to innovate, and capacity to create wealth. Its policies and decisions have single-handedly killed off entire once-promising sectors of biotechnology, including bioremediation (the use of microorganisms to clean up toxic wastes, including oil spills) and microorganisms that when sprayed on plants could prevent frost damage.

The EPA’s expansive and ever-expanding regulations impose huge costs on American businesses and, ultimately, on consumers. An analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute estimated that the annual cost of compliance with EPA regulations alone is more than a third of a trillion dollars. Ideology is one thing, but corruption and abuse are quite another. A scheme was exposed some years ago that would have diverted EPA “research” funds to pay outside public-relations consultants. This payola scheme is similar to the agency’s longstanding practice of buying influence by doling out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to certain favored nonprofit organizations — money that, according to the inspector general and Government Accountability Office, is dispersed with no public notice, competition, or accountability. The GAO investigators documented systematic malfeasance by regulators, including: 1) making grants to grantees who were unable to fulfill the terms of the grants; 2) favoring an exclusive clique of grantees without opening the grants to competition; 3) funding “environmental” grants for activities that lack any apparent environmental benefit; and 4) failing to ensure that grantees performed the objectives identified in the grants.

Speaking of fake news, the political scientists at the EPA have rewritten the conclusion of a report in order to cast doubt on the safety of hydraulic fracturing. Consider this EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s parting gift to Donald Trump.

Last week the EPA issued the final version of a five-year study evaluating the impact of hydraulic fracturing, the oil and gas drilling method known as fracking, on groundwater contamination. The draft report released last year for public comment concluded that fracking has not “led to widespread, systemic impact on drinking water resources in the United States.” The EPA’s findings haven’t changed, but its conclusion has.

After being barraged by plaintiff attorneys and Hollywood celebrities, the EPA in its final report substituted its determination of no “widespread, systemic impact” with the hypothetical that fracking “can impact drinking water resources under some circumstances” and that “impacts can range in frequency and severity” depending on the circumstances.

Any technology has the potential to inflict some damage—self-driving cars can be hacked to go haywire—and the EPA explains that drinking-water contamination could occur if wastewater is incorrectly disposed or wells are poorly sealed. In Pavillion, Wyo., the EPA’s faulty construction of a monitoring well caused contamination.

Yet after reviewing more than 1,000 studies, the EPA couldn’t find more than limited evidence—mostly alleged by plaintiff attorneys—of operational failures causing contamination. That the EPA uncovered only a few instances of contamination among a million some wells reinforces its prior conclusion that fracking doesn’t threaten the drinking-water supply.

The EPA now asserts that “significant data gaps and uncertainties” prevent it from “calculating or estimating the national frequency of impacts.” For instance, water-quality data was not collected everywhere prior to the introduction of fracking, which has allowed plaintiff attorneys to ascribe any contamination to oil and gas companies.

Methane can leak into groundwater naturally, and the EPA even notes that “site-specific cases of alleged impacts” are “particularly challenging to understand” because “the subsurface environment is complex.” Scientists have documented methane in the shallow subsurface of Susquehanna County, Pa.—one area of alleged fracking contamination—dating back more than 200 years.

California Gov. Jerry Brown wants President Barack Obama to permanently ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in the state – except of course, on Brown’s personal land.

In an attempt to lock in environmental protections before President-Elect Donald Trump takes office in January, Brown sent a letter this week to the president saying that allowing any new oil and gas drilling would be detrimental to climate change goals and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

President Barack Obama last month released a plan to ban any new drilling off the coasts of California, Oregon or Washington until 2022.

A six-year ban on oil and gas drilling wasn’t enough for California Gov. Jerry Brown, who will be gone from the Governor’s office in 2018.

Brown’s latest ploy is another in a long line of maneuvers to set California apart from the rest of the country on climate change policy, and is an end-run at Trump, who has said he plans environmental policy roll backs at the Environmental Protections Agency.

Brown’s demand was announced at the luxurious and historic Hotel del Coronado, near San Diego, where he and other government and nonprofit leaders launched the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification. The alliance, made up of California, Oregon, Washington, France, Chile and numerous environmental groups, plans to fast track environmental regulations to fight against “ocean acidification.”

“The health of the ocean is at great risk,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. “The food security of the planet is at risk. Whether my grand kids can fish for salmon when they grow up is at great risk.”

Brown said he didn’t know if Trump would have the authority to overturn a permanent prohibition. “I’m not waiting for what Washington may or may not do,” Brown said. “I’m doing whatever I can for the resources of California, and any other state or country that will join with us. This is not about politics. It’s about survival within the lifetime of the people of this room.”

Brown’s Go-It-Alone Plan

This isn’t Gov. Jerry Brown’s first scheme to set California apart from the rest of the nation on energy policy.

June 30, 2008, the governors of Alaska, British Columbia, California, Oregon, and Washington signed the Pacific Coast Collaborative Agreement, amounting to a ‘compact,’ which is prohibited between states without Congressional approval.

As the Trump transition team prepares to take power in Washington, they should be making the conservative case for nuclear energy.

During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump declared: “Nuclear power is a valuable source of energy and should be part of an all-the-above program for providing power for America long into the future. We can make nuclear power safer, and its outputs are extraordinary given the investment we should make.”

Being pro-nuclear doesn’t require adhering to any particular orthodoxy on climate change or greenhouse gases. Conservatives should support America’s nuclear-energy sector for three reasons: generation diversity, technological leadership, and land sparing.

Before going further, let’s be clear: The U.S. nuclear sector is in crisis. Over the past three years, utilities from Vermont to California have shuttered six reactors, and another five are slated to close. The most recent announced closure, of the 800-megawatt Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, came just days after Illinois legislators passed a bill that will provide subsidies to keep three reactors in that state in operation. While it’s unclear how many reactors may ultimately be prematurely shuttered, the Center for Energy Economics at the University of Texas has estimated that up to 40 percent of all U.S. nuclear capacity could be closed over the next decade or so.

Many factors are to blame for the nuclear sector’s woes, including low natural-gas prices, aging reactors, post-Fukushima regulations, and heavily subsidized wind and solar. The result is that many reactors can’t make money selling their electricity into wholesale markets, where prices are at, or near, 15-year lows.

What is to be done? President-elect Trump and Congress should move to preserve existing reactors and pave the way for the next generation of safer, cheaper reactors. To be sure, keeping existing reactors will require some of them to get financial help. But those subsidies will help the U.S. maintain a diverse set of generation assets. The polar vortex in early 2014, when extreme cold led to a surge in electricity demand, proved the importance of that diversity. During that time, numerous coal- and natural gas-fired plants faltered, but America’s reactor fleet operated at 95 percent of its capacity. Without those plants, large parts of the country could have been hit by blackouts.

The measure of Trump’s picks for his cabinet, including Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, is the reaction of the left. Oh, sure, a main objection is to his business dealings with Russia, as if energy producing companies should have nothing to do with energy producing countries. But many on the left oppose him as a fossil fuel advocate who thinks climate change is an overhyped scam designed to deny us growth and job opportunities through the use of our abundant fossil fuel reserves.

As Andrew Freedman comments on Yahoo News:

If it weren’t real, it might read like a dark climate change comedy. …

Environmental groups were quick to criticize Tillerson. After all, the State Department is tasked with leading America’s diplomacy on climate change.

“This is unfathomable. We can’t let Trump put the world’s largest oil company in charge of our international climate policy,” said Mary Boeve, the executive director of 350.org.

“ExxonMobil is still a leading funder of climate denial and is pursuing a business plan that will destroy our future. Tillerson deserves a federal investigation, not federal office,” she said.

Speaking to reporters after the annual meeting of Exxon stockholders in May, 2008, Tillerson shoved political correctness aside and insisted the science on climate change is not settled and “to not have a debate on it is irresponsible” and that to “suggest we know everything about these issues is irresponsible.” As the Financial Post reported:

Avoiding the political correctness that many oil executives are now showing on global warming, Mr. Tillerson called for a continuation of the debate, rather than acceptance that it is occurring, with the potential consequence that governments will implement policies that put world economies at risk.

“My view is that this is so extraordinarily important to people the world over, that to not have a debate on it is irresponsible,” he said. “To suggest that we know everything we need to know about these issues is irresponsible….

Looking out 25 to 30 years, “everyone agrees that notwithstanding the growth in all other options for supplying energy, renewables, nuclear, biomass alternatives, you are still going to require substantial fossil fuels to meet energy needs, and two-thirds is going to come from oil and natural gas,” he said.

Climate-change skeptic Tillerson spoke of Exxon spending $8 billion of its profits on the Kearl oil sands project in Alberta, Canada. This project alone is aimed at recovering between 4.5 and 6.5 billion barrels of oil. Finding such oil takes money and expensive technology. That money comes from profits.

Kearl is part of the Athabasca oil sands located in the northeastern corner of Alberta, near the city of Fort McMurray. The Alberta government’s Energy and Utilities Board estimated in 2007 that about 173 billion barrels of crude were economically recoverable based on current technology and 2006 prices. But oil prices keep rising and technology keeps advancing. These oil sand deposits cover about 54,000 square mile and contain about 1.7 trillion barrels. Tillerson knows we will always need fossil fuels, as much as we can get, to promote the economic growth America needs. Trump knows it too.

It is the Albert oil sands that produce the oil that would flow through the Keystone XL pipeline that President Donald Trump is expected to approve. Environmentalists opposed Keystone XL because it encouraged oil sands extraction of crude, releasing so-called greenhouse gases in the process. Never mind that the oil would be extracted anyway, only to be shipped to an energy-hungry China via a pipeline to Canada’s west coast.

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, who has represented Montana’s at-large congressional seat for one term, to serve as secretary of the Department of the Interior, according to an individual with firsthand knowledge of the decision.

Zinke, who studied geology as an undergraduate at the University of Oregon and served as a Navy SEAL from 1986 to 2008 before entering politics, campaigned for his House seat on a platform of achieving North American energy independence. He sits on the House Natural Resources Committee as well as the Armed Services Committee.

A lifelong hunter and fisherman, the 55-year-old Zinke has defended public access to federal lands even though he frequently votes against environmentalists on issues ranging from coal extraction to oil and gas drilling. This summer, he quit his post as a member of the GOP platform-writing committee after the group included language that would have transferred federal land ownership to the states.

“What I saw was a platform that was more divisive than uniting,” Zinke said at the time. “At this point, I think it’s better to show leadership.”

Trump also opposes such land transfers, but the provision made it into the official Republican platform.

Zinke recently criticized an Interior Department rule aimed at curbing inadvertent releases of methane from oil and gas operations on federal land as “duplicative and unnecessary.”

“You wouldn’t know he’s a congressman,” Tawney said. “He really prides himself on being a Theodore Roosevelt Republican, and he lives that a little bit more than other people.”

[Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump]

Outdoors activities such as mountain biking and skiing are a major economic driver in Whitefish as well as in Montana overall, where roughly 200,000 residents have big-game hunting licenses and 300,000 have fishing licenses. Zinke, who has been endorsed by the Outdoor Industry Association, has embraced that sector of the state’s economy.