Although a self-described climate change “skeptic” himself, Donald Trump’s newly tapped energy adviser, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), intends to tell the likely Republican presidential nominee not to dwell on the idea that it is a hoax. “He can do all that if he wants,” Cramer said in an interview with ClimateWire. “But my advice would be, while I’m a skeptic, as well, he is a product of political populism, and political populism believes that there needs [to be] some addressing of climate change.”
Trump has stated in the past that he believes climate change a hoax perpetrated to benefit the Chinese.
Cramer is noted for having claimed that the Earth is cooling, not warming, and that reported global warming trends are the result of “fraudulent science.” In a Feb. 2, 2012, radio interview, the-then congressional candidate stated: “We know the global climate is cooling, No. 1, we know that, so the idea that CO2 is somehow causing global is on its face fraudulent.”
Cramer cited the 2009 hacking of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, dubbed “Climategate,” in which thousands of documents and emails from climate scientists were released and interpreted by climate skeptics. One such email widely distributed by climate skeptic websites stated: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” The line was actually addressing what the author deemed an inadequate “observing system,” as stated later in the same message.
Speaking to ClimateWire in the May 13 article the representative also said he doesn’t “resist the reality that we’re heading toward or our goal is a more carbon-constrained world.”
Cramer, who has received significant campaign funding from the oil and gas and electric utilities industries, opposes regulation as a means to achieve a low-carbon future, however. The lawmaker has been a vocal opponent of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, and said he would recommend Trump scrap the plan in favor of a carbon fee, the proceeds of which would fund fossil energy research.
Cramer is in the process of preparing two white papers on energy policy for Trump, who is expected to release his energy plan May 26. It remains uncertain what role Cramer might play in a Trump presidency, but he told ClimateWire he would be open to the idea of being Energy Secretary.
A slight disagreement broke out following the release of the ClimateWire article and a subsequent report in The Hill newspaper, over whether Cramer’s described mechanism is a carbon tax. The Hill article apparently focused a tad too heavily on the carbon tax idea for Trump’s comfort. “Your story about me & the carbon tax is absolutely incorrect—it is just the opposite. I will not support or endorse a carbon tax!” Trump tweeted to the newspaper.
Eventually, everybody involved – ClimateWire, Cramer, The Hill, and Trump himself – denied that what Cramer described in a direct quote in the ClimateWire article as “a very, very modest carbon tax to fund, again, the solution by utilizing fossil fuels like coal,” is actually a carbon tax.
“@EEPublishing got it right. I would not advise @realDonaldTrump to support carbon tax. Fund CCUS not punish fossils,” Cramer tweeted in the aftermath.
