Chevron's refinery in Richmond on Feb. 21, 2024. Trump in his order says state policies like California's cap and trade program discriminate against oil companies and raise the cost of energy. Photo by Loren Elliott for CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
President Donald Trump has issued an order that takes aim at state and local climate change laws and policies, including California’s landmark market program for reducing greenhouse gases.
Trump’s executive order directs U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify state and local acts that may be unconstitutional or preempted by federal law. Within 60 days, the attorney general must report back to the president with findings and recommendations for action.
Trump’s order singles out California’s cap and trade program, a market-based system created in 2012 that is considered one of the state’s key policies for combating climate change. The program sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions and allows companies to buy and sell credits. Twelve other states have similar trade programs for cutting greenhouse gases.
“California, for example, punishes carbon use by adopting impossible caps on the amount of carbon businesses may use, all but forcing businesses to pay large sums to 'trade' carbon credits to meet California’s radical requirements,” Trump’s order says.
The order comes as the Trump administration moves to boost domestic oil and gas production while sidelining efforts to develop wind and solar.
Trump’s order says states have mounted “illegitimate impediments” to domestic energy production for oil, natural gas, nuclear power and other energy sources. Notably, the order derisively placed the term “climate change” in quotation marks.
Some legal experts called the order an overreach, disputing the president’s claims that states are exceeding their authority or that their climate programs are unconstitutional.
“The implication that the attorney general can just go out and declare this state law is unconstitutional and that therefore it's no longer a valid law — that is the big problem with this,” said Margaret A. Coulter, a senior climate attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “It's more of an intimidation tactic.”
Amy Turner, director of the Cities Climate Law Initiative at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said the Constitution’s 10th Amendment grants states the authority to set their own rules in areas where the federal government has not acted. “In other words, the federal government cannot simply grab powers because it wants to; doing so would in no uncertain terms represent a constitutional crisis,” Turner wrote.
Still, they say the order could have an overarching effect on the states. Turner wrote that Trump’s order “does not directly challenge, prohibit, argue preempted, or enjoin any state or local law. But it is likely a forerunner to litigation, lawmaking, or the withholding of federal funds.” This, she wrote, will have “a significant chilling effect on local climate policy innovation.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta did not immediately return CalMatters’ calls seeking reaction to the Trump order.
The first Trump administration sued the state of California challenging its cap-and-trade program, which is linked to a program in Canada, on the grounds that the state was entering into an international treaty. Trump lost that lawsuit, with the judge ruling that the administration failed to provide any evidence that cap and trade undermines the federal government’s ability to conduct foreign policy.
Trump said state climate policies and laws “unduly discriminate” against fossil fuel companies and “impose arbitrary and excessive fines without legitimate justification,” which raises energy costs for Americans.
“These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy. They should not stand,” it says.
Trump also singled out laws in New York and Vermont that created climate funds requiring fossil fuel companies to contribute to a fund for climate adaptation. The goal is to cover the rising costs of extreme weather events.
In addition, the order targets civil actions against fossil fuel companies. California is leading efforts to make fossil fuel giants pay billions of dollars for the climate damage they have long denied.
Trump said these programs “extort” money from oil companies.
The oil industry has been pushing the Trump administration to take a more aggressive legal stance against these state climate accountability efforts. Industry groups are encouraging the Justice Department to either back their lawsuits or initiate federal challenges of its own against states like New York and Vermont, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
California is considering similar legislation. A bill introduced by Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat from Van Nuys, would require companies to pay for the damage that greenhouse gas emissions have caused in California since 1990.
The American Petroleum Institute, which represents oil and gas companies, applauded the new order, saying it seeks to "hold states like New York and California accountable for pursuing unconstitutional efforts that illegally penalize U.S. oil and natural gas producers for delivering the energy American consumers rely on every day."
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
