In the wee hours of Nov. 6, Donald Trump provided a subtle but clear signal about the direction he will pursue as president regarding climate policies. In his victory speech he gave a nod to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to join forces with MAGA saying, “He wants to do some things, and we’re gonna let him go to it. I just said, but Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold, oil and gas. We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold.”
People need to understand that Trump 2.0 is a different entity. He did not build his comeback movement by pandering or watering down his priorities. He reached out and either won people over to his side or sent them packing. A major example of this was Elon Musk, who during the first Trump administration resigned from the White House business advisory council to protest Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty. Now Musk is all-in on MAGA and is set to play a lead role in a major downsizing of the administration.
When Trump secured the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy it was based on issues on which they could find agreement, including anti-corruption efforts and addressing the chronic disease burden. But Kennedy had to leave his environmentalism at the door, at least the climate activist part of it.
Trump’s remarks about energy during the campaign were unmistakeable. When he made the quip about wanting to be dictator for a day it was to close the border and “drill drill drill.” When asked how he would reduce the cost of living he said he would rapidly expand energy production with a target of cutting energy costs by at least 50 per cent. And on election night he reiterated: the United States has the oil, the liquid gold, and they’re going to use it.
U.S. climate policy will soon no longer be a thing. The Biden administration chose to focus on extravagant green energy subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act. They were easy to bring in and will be just as easy for Trump to eliminate, especially the ones targeted at Democrat special interest groups. The incoming Trump administration will not settle simply for stalling on new climate action, it’s more likely to try to dismantle the entire climate bureaucracy.
In 2016 Trump did not understand the Washington bureaucracy and its ability to thwart a president’s plans. He learned many hard lessons merely trying to survive lawfare, resistance and open insubordination. It took three years for him to get a few people installed in senior positions in the climate area who could begin to push back against the vast regulatory machinery. But they simply did not have the time nor the capacity to get anything done.
This time should be different. Trump’s team has spent years developing legal and regulatory strategies to bring full executive authority back to the Oval Office so it can execute on plans quickly and efficiently. His top priority is hydrocarbon development and his team is in no mood for compromise. As to the climate issue, Trump recently remarked “Who the hell cares?”
That’s the reality. Now policymakers in Canada must decide what will be appropriate to ask of Canadians in terms of shouldering the costs of climate policies.
There’s one legal issue that Trump has thus far not addressed but that his administration will need to confront if it wants to drill drill drill. There has been an explosion of climate liability lawsuits in U.S. courts, where states, municipalities and activist groups sue major players in the fossil fuel industry demanding massive financial damages for alleged climate harms. There’s even a new branch of climate science called Extreme Event Attribution, which was explicitly developed to promote flimsy and arbitrary statistical analyses that support climate liability cases. Such cases are also popping up in Canada, including the Mathur case in Ontario, which the appellate court recently brought back from defeat.
Both Canada and the U.S. must act at the legislative level to extinguish climate liability in law. There is no good argument for letting this play out in the courts. The cases are prima facie preposterous: the emitters of carbon dioxide are the fuel users, not the producers, so liability—if it exists—should be attached to consumers. But then we would have an unworkable situation where everyone is liable to everyone, each person equally a victim and a tortfeasor. Climate policy belongs in the legislature not the courts and the “climate liability” movement is simply a massive waste of time and resources. It must be stopped.
Canada was already out of step with the U.S. in its mad pursuit of the federal Emission Reduction Plan. While the carbon tax is top of mind for voters, it’s but a small part of a larger and costlier regulatory onslaught, most recently supplemented by a new emissions cap on the western oil and gas sector. With the U.S. poised to sharply change direction, Canada now needs a complete rethink of our own energy and climate policies.
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A majority of Americans say it is more important for the U.S. to establish energy independence than to fight climate change, according to new polling.
The poll from Napolitan News Service of 1,000 registered voters shows that 57% of voters say making America energy independent is more important than fighting climate change, while 39% feel the opposite and 4% are unsure.
Those surveyed also were asked: Which is more important, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change, or keeping the price of cars low enough for families to afford them?
Half of voters (50%) said keeping the price of cars low was more important to them than reducing emissions, while 43% said emissions reductions were more important than the price of buying a car.
When asked, “Which is more important, reducing greenhouse gas emissions or reducing the cost and improving the reliability of electricity and gas for American families?”, 59% said reducing the cost and increasing the reliability was more important compared to 35% who said reducing emissions was more important.
The survey was conducted online by pollster Scott Rasmussen on March 18-19. Field work was conducted by RMG Research. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points
Dan McCaleb is the executive editor of The Center Square. He welcomes your comments. Contact Dan at [email protected].
Canada has set ambitious climate goals, aiming to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 to 45 per cent by 2030, and to hit net-zero emissions by 2050.
Now a senior fellow at Resource Works, Jerome Gessaroli, argues that Canada is over-focusing internally on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, when we should “look at cooperating with developing countries to jointly reduce emissions.”
He continues: “And we do that in a way that helps ourselves. It helps meet our own goals. That’s through Article 6 of the Paris Accord, allowing countries to share emission reduction credits from jointly developed projects.”
Reduction on a global scale
Article 6, says Gessaroli, means this: “We can work towards meeting our own emission goals, and can help developing countries meet theirs. We can do it in a way that’s much more efficient. We get a lot more bang for our buck than if we are trying to just do it domestically on our own.”
The point is that, in the end, emissions are reduced on a global scale — as he stressed in a five-part series that he wrote for Resource Works last November.
And in a study for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (where he is a senior fellow) he wrote: “The benefits could be large. Canada could reduce emissions by 50 per cent more if it carried out methane reduction projects both internationally and domestically, rather than solely in Canada.”
But is Ottawa interested?
Gessaroli says the federal government expressed interest in Article 6 in 2019 — but has not moved since then.
“They barely looked at it. Since this requires government-to-government coordination, it needs Ottawa’s initiative. But there doesn’t seem to be too much interest, too much appetite in that.”
All Ottawa has said so far is: “Going forward, Canada will explore these and other similar options to strengthen international co-operation and generate incentives for further emission reductions.”
Gessaroli on Resource Works
Gessaroli has been working with Resource Works since he first spoke with our Stewart Muir, following a letter that Muir wrote in The Vancouver Sun in 2022: ‘Gas has key role to play in meeting 1.5C climate targets.’
Gessaroli saw in Resource Works advocacy for responsible resource development “for the people, the citizens of BC, in an environmentally responsible manner and in a manner that’s efficient, driven by the private sector.”
And: “Resource Works supports responsible resource development, not uncritical expansion. We have these resources. We should develop them, but in a way that benefits society, respects nature, respects the local peoples, and so that wide elements of society can benefit from that resource development.”
Gessaroli on electric vehicles
Gessaroli hit a shared interest with Resource Works in a 2024 paper for its Energy Futures Institute, critiquing BC’s plan to require that all new vehicles sold in the province must be electric zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2035.
For one thing, he wrote, BC would need to spend $1.8 billion to provide electric charging points for the vehicles. And billions more would be required to provide expanded power generation and transmission systems.
“The Government of BC should adjust or rescind its mandated targets for new minimum zero-emission vehicle sales.”
And on ZEV subsidies
Stewart Muir and Barry Penner, chair of the Energy Futures Institute, wrote a guest column last October in Business in Vancouver. They cited Gessaroli’s paper above, and noted: “According to Gessaroli, meeting BC’s ZEV targets will require an additional 2,700 gigawatt hours of electricity by 2030, and 9,700 gigawatt hours by 2040—almost equal to the output of two Site C dams.”
Gessaroli has also looked at the subsidies BC offers (up to $4,000) to people who buy an electric vehicle.
“The subsidies do help. They do incentivize people to buy EVs. But it’s a very costly way to reduce carbon emissions, anywhere upwards of $600, $700, even $800 a tonne to eliminate one tonne of carbon.
“When you look at the social cost of carbon, the government uses a figure around $170 a tonne. That’s the damage done from every tonne of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. So we’re paying $800 to remove one tonne of carbon when that same tonne of carbon does damage of about $170. That doesn’t sound like a very cost-effective way of getting rid of carbon, does it?”
Gessaroli on Donald Trump’s policies
Gessaroli says tariffs on imports are not the only benefit that Donald Trump plans for U.S. industry that will hurt Canada.
“He also wants to reduce tax rates, 15% for US manufacturers, and allow full deductibility for equipment purchases. You reduce regulations and red tape on companies while lowering their tax rates. They’re already competitive to begin with. Well, they’re going to be even more competitive, more innovative.”
For Canada, he says: “Get rid of the government heavy hand of overtaxing and enforcing inefficient and ineffective regulations. Get rid of all of that. Encourage competition in the marketplace. And over time, we’d find Canadians can be quite innovative and quite competitive in our own right. And we can hold our own. We can be better off.
“And there’d be more tax revenues being generated by the government. With the tax revenue, you can build the roads, build the hospitals, improve the healthcare system, things like that.
“But without this type of vibrant economic type activity, you’re going to get the stagnation we’re seeing right now.”
About Jerome Gessaroli
Gessaroli leads the Sound Economic Policy Project at the B.C. Institute of Technology. He is the lead Canadian co-author of Financial Management: Theory and Practice, a widely used textbook. His writing has appeared in many Canadian newspapers.
Stewart Muir, CEO of Resource Works, highlights Gessaroli’s impact: “Jerome brings a level of economic and policy analysis that cuts through the noise. His research doesn’t just challenge assumptions—it provides a roadmap for smarter, more effective climate and energy policies.
“Canada needs more thinkers like him, who focus on pragmatic solutions that benefit both the environment and the economy.”
Gessaroli and Karen, his wife of 34 years, live in Vancouver and enjoy cruising to unwind. In his downtime, Gessaroli reads about market ethics and political economy — which he calls his idea of relaxation.
