A daughter can make a man do almost anything. I know: I’ve got one and I am putty in her hands.
If she wants a pony and bats her eyelashes at me, I’ll be off in a trice to buy her a herd. Baby unicorn ponies, if that’s what she prefers. With jewels inlaid in their spiral horns and maybe some magical attachment that plays the collected works of Taylor Swift while she rides.
So I totally get where President Trump is coming from when I read reports that, under the influence of Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, he has toned the phrasing of an Executive Order so that it no longer includes derogatory comments about the utterly useless and pointless climate deal signed in Paris in 2015 by Barack Obama.
Kushner and Ivanka “intervened to strike language about the climate deal from an earlier draft of the executive order,” sources familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
Ivanka and her husband “have been considered a moderating influence on the White House’s position on climate change and environmental issues,” WSJ reports. Now, the executive order will have no mention of the so-called Paris agreement.
If it’s just a case of casual daughter-pleasing, fine. But if he actually means it than we should all start to worry.
I’ve said it before but it’s worth saying again: if President Trump proves to be as radical on energy and climate as he promised to be on the campaign trail, then this, even if he achieves nothing else, will more than qualify him for a place next to the greats on Mt Rushmore.
He will go down in history as the hero who slew ManBearPig: the president who, unlike his pusillanimous, career-safe, Establishment predecessors from Clinton and the Bushes to the ultimate horror that was Obama, finally had the courage, integrity and honesty to point out that the Climate Emperor is wearing no clothes; the guy who brought to the end the greatest scientific scandal ever; who saved Western Industrial Civilisation from the Watermelons.
But it’s all very well having good instincts and good intentions. The hard part will be dealing with all the obstacles thrown in his way by the monstrously large group of special interests sometimes known as the Green Blob and sometimes as the Climate Industrial Complex.
Ivanka and Jared Kushner are part of that Green Blob. So is Hollywood. So is most of the mainstream media. So are most of the colleges, corporations, law firms, NGOs, local governments, schoolteachers, and even significant elements of the Republican party, like the GOP grandees currently agitating to introduce a Carbon Tax.
To get an idea of how big the problem is you should have been there at CPAC at the weekend, as I was, when Scott Pruitt – the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was asked what he thought about man-made climate change.
He just didn’t dare say.
Here he was, in the seductive and friendly company of conservative interviewer Dr Gina Loudon, in front of a 100 per cent sympathetic audience of GOP faithful, and still he fudged the question with a waffling, awkward, embarrassed, fence-sitting, evasive, non-answer.
And Scott Pruitt is one of the good guys ‚Äì as we know from the fact that one of the main things he was known for doing when he was Oklahoma attorney general was suing the Agency of which he is now the head. I’ve little doubt that he will do sterling work reining in the EPA’s excesses and unravelling the environmentalists’ anti-business, anti-property-rights, anti-liberty agenda. But judging on his public appearances in the fortnight since he was confirmed in the post, I’d say he’s sounding too much the cautious, career-safe politician and not enough the fearless and refreshing Trump-style radical.
His first speech as administrator was all about what a thorough and competent technocrat he’s going to be.
“Regulations ought to make things regular,” said Mr. Pruitt, repeating a line he used at his confirmation hearing in January. “Those that we regulate ought to know what they can expect from us.”
At CPAC, his main theme was the importance of restoring federalism and states’ rights.
All sensible stuff. But if this Administration is really serious about slaying the Green Blob it’s going to have to do better than merely hiding behind the Constitution and due process. It’s going to need make a convincing case as to why all this stuff needs doing. Otherwise, the Trump Administration’s best efforts are going to be swamped by green propaganda aimed at making it look uncaring and anti-environment and unscientific.
What’s so stupid is that making this case is really, really easy.
I know because I did it at my three speaker events at CPAC. And if I can do it, anyone can.
First, was this brilliant panel, expertly moderated by John Fund, in which blogger Tony Heller (aka Steven Goddard) and lawyer, blogger and EPA scourge Steve Milloy dealt with the basics: the climate data has been rigged by a corrupt, untrustworthy scientific establishment; there has been little global warming and what there has been is entirely within natural boundaries; the reason that this global scam appeals to so many different interest groups – politicians, activists, (mostly second-rate) scientists, rent-seekers etc – is that it caters to such a variety of motivations (political; religious; follow-the-money).
Second was a talk on energy economics with the fascinating Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute who explained why renewables are such an inadequate and unnecessarily expensive response to the massively increasing global demand for energy; and why fossil fuels – especially shale gas and oil – are by far the most effective solution for at least the next few hundred years.
Third was an equally enlightening talk with Dr Craig Idso of the Energy & Environment Legal Institute on how increased atmospheric CO2 is greening the planet – thus more than counteracting all the disasters the greenies have been predicting as CO2 levels rise.
