If Donald Trump pushes ahead with his promises to dismantle President Obama’s climate-change policies, he’ll face tough fights from environmental groups. But Trump has a few tactics he can use to outmaneuver the opposition, reports The New York Times.
“One of them is the little-known Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a small outpost within the executive branch that has, since the Clinton administration, been the last stop for many regulations before they go into effect,” says the Times.
The office meticulously reviews the fine print on federal regulations, even if it takes months or years to do so. If Trump wanted to, he could stall implementation of Obama’s climate regulations by sending the paperwork back for additional consideration.
The surest way for Trump to weaken environmental regulations would be to block funding to the EPA. “Congress can always pass an appropriations rider that for one year prevents any funding for the implementation or enforcement of a particular regulation,” Scott H. Segal, a partner and director of the policy resolution group at Bracewell, told the Times.
Likewise, Trump could rescind regulations proposed by the Obama administration that have not yet been finalized, including a United-Nations backed program to reduce airline emissions by 2020, which the U.S. has only informally agreed to participate in. If a rule is final, the new administration could order agencies to revisit it. Although doing so would open the rule up to public comment and “any revisions or replacement regulations must have a basis in facts and a cost-benefit analysis, not politics or ideology,” says the Times.
That said, for certain pieces of regulation, like the Clean Power Plan, which “is completed but not yet in effect because of a judicial stay imposed while legal action against it plays out in a federal appeals court in Washington,” Trump could turn to the Justice Department for help, says the Times. “If there is no ruling by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, Mr. Trump’s Justice Department can ask the court to put the case in abeyance, effectively extending the stay indefinitely.”
Meanwhile, as politics play out, scientists in the Arctic say that the northern ocean’s production of algae — “the base of the food web … increased an estimated 47 percent between 1997 and 2015,” says the Times. Arctic algae production also is happening earlier than ever, which could have major implications for marine animals higher up the food chain, from whales to birds to polar bears.
“This month, temperatures in the high Arctic have been as much as 36 degrees above average, according to records kept by the Danish Meteorological Institute,” says the Times.