“I’m not looking to put our companies out of business [over CO2 regulation] …. We have the cleanest air we’ve ever had.”

“Wind doesn’t work for the most part without subsidy. The United States is paying tremendous amounts of subsidies for wind. I don’t like it, I don’t like it.”

– President Donald Trump, G-20 Summit, Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019

Chalk up another small victory for the US effort to reset the global agenda on climate change. The anti-growth Malthusians have quite a foe in President Trump, and his forceful consistency just might put the global-government climate crusade out of its misery sooner than otherwise.

Trump refused to sign the G-20 declaration on climate change as written (see below), and he lobbied Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Australia, and Turkey to do likewise.…

“I believe there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways. Don’t forget, it used to be called ‘global warming,’ that wasn’t working, then it was called ‘climate change.’ Now it’s actually called ‘extreme weather,’ because with extreme weather you can’t miss.”  (Donald Trump to Piers Morgan, “ITV Good Morning Britain Show,” June 5, 2019)

President Donald Trump deserves a prize from classical liberals for his position on climate change. In fact, I challenge any conservative, libertarian, or classical liberal to offer a better example of courage in the face of government activism and political correctness in recent times.

In terms of energy policy, despite negative international trade issues (see
(here, here, and here for my tariff misgivings), President Trump is arguably the most free-market energy President in U.S.…

… under the Green New Deal, they don’t like clean, beautiful natural gas. They don’t like anything. They don’t know what they like. They sort of like wind, even though it kills all the birds. You want to see a bird cemetery? Go under a windmill sometime….

You know, in California, you go to jail for five years if you kill a bald eagle. If you go under a windmill, you see them all over the place.

– Donald Trump, “Remarks on Promoting Energy Infrastructure and Economic Growth,” Hackberry, Louisiana, May 14, 2019

Back in 1997, I published a long Policy Analysis for the Cato Institute, “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’.” A section of that study, “The ‘Avian Mortality’ Problem,” addressed what President Trump recently said (above) 22 years later.…

“The golden era of American energy is now underway.” (President Donald Trump, The White House, May 14, 2019)

… under the Green New Deal, they don’t like clean, beautiful natural gas. They don’t like anything. (President Donald Trump, “Remarks on Promoting Energy Infrastructure and Economic Growth,” Hackberry, LA, May 14, 2019)

Who has been the most free-market energy President in U.S. history? In modern times, Ronald Reagan comes to mind. He decontrolled crude oil and petroleum products in his first week of office (January 1981), although Jimmy Carter’s phase-out of such regulation had just six months to go. Reagan did some other things to undo a decade of energy statism but fell short of his election goal of abolishing the US Department of Energy. [1]

Enter Donald Trump.…