By Colin Kinniburgh

On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump’s administration fired its latest broadside at climate action: an executive order aimed at “protecting American energy from state overreach.”  The order seeks to block the enforcement of essentially any state law that restricts or penalizes pollution from fossil fuels. It gives US Attorney General Pam Bondi 60 days to identify such state laws and recommend actions the federal government could take to stop them.  High on its list: New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, passed last year, which allows the state to charge the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies $3 billion annually over the next 25 years to pay for climate damages.

The order refers to the legislation as “a ‘climate change’ extortion law.”  It also targets cap and trade programs that put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, like those in California and Washington state — and the one Governor Kathy Hochul has long promised in New York.  “These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy,” the order reads. “They should not stand.”