President Trump’s Executive Orders Signify Return To Common Sense Energy Agenda

With the signing of six executive orders on the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump has ushered in a new era of climate realism and energy security.

In electing President Trump, the American people have rejected the Left’s virtue-signaling climate policies that crush consumers, stifle innovation, and forfeit energy independence and abundant natural resources. So long, increased energy prices, overbearing regulations, and reliance on hostile foreign countries.

The president’s emphasis on undoing these destructive energy and climate policies signifies a long overdue shift from climate alarmism to commonsense policy. Gone are the days of moralistic global climate alliances and vacuous Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) programs that function as thinly veiled fronts for woke corporate capitalism.

The Declaring a National Energy Emergency executive order allows the administration to expand the nation’s plentiful energy infrastructure and develop a “reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy” to bolster national and economic security.

Dependence on other nations for energy allows them to weaponize our reliance for coercive purposes and wreak havoc on our markets. Germany provides an example of what to avoid. Dependence on Russian natural gas resulted in electricity surging more than 600 percent in the months following the invasion of Ukraine. Although prices have now returned to pre-invasion levels, “green” energy policies such as decommissioning its last remaining nuclear power plants in 2023 are largely responsible for electricity prices being more than 3x the cost in 2019. Energy independence prevents this threat while unleashing supply diversity and competition, leading to greater affordability, accessibility, and innovation while stimulating job growth and exports to trade partners.

A second order, “Unleashing American Energy” outlines a comprehensive energy strategy to promote energy production on Federal lands and waters, increase mineral processing, examine current energy regulations to ensure proper legal grounding, eliminate the “electric vehicle mandate” and restrictions on household appliances which burdened consumers, raised prices, and prohibited free market competition, and ensure public access to and scientific analysis of executive agency energy decisions.

His other orders include freeing Alaska’s natural resources from oppressive restrictions and encouraging exploration of the state’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) potential, restricting inefficient and expensive wind power projects, cutting “coercive” federal climate policies and oppressive regulations that only burden consumers through increased cost of transportation, housing, food, and fuel, and formally withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, an international alliance that disproportionately affected the United States and steered “American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance.”

These orders do not represent the rash, inflammatory actions of a climate denier, but the calculated, prudent strategies of a strong, sensible leader. Together, the president’s energy policies show a clear commitment to putting American taxpayers’ financial and physical security first while projecting a strong, independent national image on the world stage.

And most taxpayers agree that it’s time for change on climate policy. Climate change is a low priority for the American people, but energy affordability and stability is an absolute necessity. In 2023, 75% of Americans surveyed said strengthening the economy was the most important policy objective to them and 52% said improving the energy system was their top priority. This also compares to how almost two-thirds of Americans said dealing with climate change is not important to them.

Even America’s largest banking establishments, at times strong proponents of climate wokeism, began pulling away from climate alliances in the weeks leading up to President Trump’s inauguration. While they have much more to do along these lines, such actions are indicative of the shifting arc.

These trends reflect what many scientists have been arguing for years despite resistance from the Left. Most climate fearmongering has never materialized. Indeed, catastrophic predictions from the past 50 years have not been fulfilled, as the Wrong Again Report by Myron Ebell and Steve Milloy demonstrates. Climate alarmists consistently continue to be wrong and have truly never been able to make any scientific connections between what they are asking America and the world to do. To put it bluntly, as 2022 Nobel Physics laureate John Clauser declared, climate change is not and has never been an existential threat.

President Trump’s climate policy agenda recognizes this reality and promises to enact commonsense change grounded in science, realism, and prudence, putting American consumers first and challenging the misguided ideological conformity prevalent among climate-forward countries. His executive orders are sending a strong message to American companies engaging in climate moralism and ESG practices: disrupting the American economy for virtue-signaling programs is unnecessary, unacceptable, and immoral.

But there is still much to be done to overcome the drastic effects the previous administration’s climate extremism had on the economy and the American consumer. Congress will have to work alongside the president to swiftly pass legislation that adequately protects American citizens and promotes U.S. energy stability and prosperity.

The president is right – America is in the middle of an energy crisis caused by an epidemic of climate moralism and extremism. Yet thanks to this new crusade of commonsense policy, American energy has the chance to reach its full potential – making it secure, independent, and prosperous once again.

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Paul Teller is the Executive Vice President of Advancing American Freedom.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.