“Good news indeed! Energy cuts are easy cuts compared to the hard budget choices that lie ahead in the transition from statism and stagnation to a vibrant, coordinated, expanding entrepreneurial economy.”

Rome is not burning, but Joe Romm at Climate Progress is.

“Will Trump go down in history as the man who pulled the plug on a livable climate?” he writes, with the subtitle, “The fate of humanity is in the hands of a denier who pledged to kill domestic and global climate action and all clean energy research.

Really, Joe?

But Romm goes on to (usefully) report:

The Australian journalist Graham Readfearn notes that while you can’t find Trump’s original “100 day action plan” for energy and climate on the campaign website anymore, “it was archived by Wayback Machine”.

“This election was about ‘draining the swamp’ and changing the way Washington works. Neonics and other US EPA actions would be a good place to begin.”

Canadian regulators have followed the EU’s (flawed) lead. For years, environmentalists and beekeepers in Ontario and Quebec Provinces have battled farmers and beekeepers in the rest of Canada over whether neonics pose a threat to bees. It’s the tail wagging the dog, since 80 percent of beekeeping is in these other provinces.

Canadian law requires that every incidence of beehive losses be described in an exhaustive examination and reported to HealthCanada. Reports filed from the beginning of record-keeping through 2012 show that the majority of bee-kill incidents reported in Canada occurred in 2012, and most came from one province (Ontario), where many beekeepers are hobbyists.…

(* Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, 2017 – WIIN Act)

“There is no drought….If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water so that your farmers can survive” – Candidate Donald J. Trump, May 27, 2016, Fresno, California

“If we don’t move now, we run the real risk of legislation that opens up the Endangered Species Act in the future, when Congress will again be under Republican control, this time backed by a Trump administration.”  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), “Latest Compromise Drought Relief Bill Receives Praise, Opposition”, Capital Press, December 7, 2016.

President-Elect Donald J. Trump is poised to score a win-WIIN deal in the California water war as Congress has passed the bi-partisan Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN Act – Senate Bill 612). …

“[Climate change is] a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know…. they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the [Climategate] scientists…. Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about. I absolutely have an open mind.”

– President-elect Donald Trump, “Donald Trump’s New York Times Interview: Full Transcript,” November 23, 2016. Quoted in Joe Romm, “Trump Fools the New York Times on Climate Change, ThinkProgress, November 23, 2016.

It has been seven years this month since the intellectual scandal erupted called Climategate. With President-elect Trump’s recent reference to the scandal, it is timely to recall some of the more salient quotations.…