CLIMATEWIRE | President-elect Donald Trump’s choose to run the division accountable for catastrophe restoration has been skeptical of local weather change, declined to simply accept federal local weather cash and been criticized for her personal dealing with of a pure disaster.
Trump named Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota on Tuesday to run the Division of Homeland Safety, which oversees the Federal Emergency Administration Company at a time when injury from excessive climate is hovering. FEMA distributes billions in catastrophe assist yearly and runs the nation’s greatest insurer in opposition to flooding — essentially the most damaging catastrophe within the U.S.
However Noem has dismissed the concept individuals are inflicting temperatures to rise.
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Requested by a reporter in March 2022 if she believes the local weather is altering, Noem replied, “I feel the science has been various on it, and it hasn’t been confirmed to me that what we’re doing is affecting the local weather.”
Noem, a Republican, is considered one of 5 governors who declined to simply accept EPA planning grants that the Biden administration supplied each state to handle local weather air pollution.
She is the one governor to choose out of a brand new $4 billion Vitality Division program that offers states cash to distribute to their residents for rebates on energy-efficient residence home equipment and enhancements. South Dakota’s share was $69 million, one of many largest quantities per capita within the nation.
“That cash would have been obtainable to industrial contractors to put in energy-efficient home equipment, which might decrease heating and cooling prices for the people who’re renting or consumers of these houses,” mentioned South Dakota state Sen. Linda Duba (D) on Tuesday.
“We’re attempting to drive down prices for people, so there was super alternative there,” Duba added.
Ian Fury, a Noem spokesperson, mentioned final yr that the governor declined the rebate cash as a result of “federal spending usually comes with strings connected, and extra of it’s usually not factor.”
Noem declined the air pollution grant as a result of “we give attention to fixing long-term issues with one-time investments reasonably than creating new authorities applications,” Fury mentioned.
Noem additionally didn’t declare many of the cash that FEMA has made obtainable to states by means of a grant program for resilience initiatives.
FEMA supplied every state $3.6 million from 2021 to 2023. South Dakota collected simply $1.3 million, FEMA data present. That’s one of many lowest assortment charges of any state.
Noem has additionally sought minimal funding from a separate FEMA grant program that pays for initiatives to decrease flood injury, FEMA data present.
She could be the eighth Homeland Safety secretary because the division was created after the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults in 2001. Two of them had additionally been governors — Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Janet Napolitano of Arizona.
Noem is anticipated to focus largely on border and immigration points if the Senate confirms her. DHS consists of Customs and Border Safety and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Noem joined authorized assaults on local weather applications
Noem’s skepticism about local weather change stands in sharp distinction to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, each of whom are at the moment serving beneath President Joe Biden. They’ve each emphasised the big injury being brought on by intensifying hurricanes, wildfires and floods, which they hyperlink to local weather change.
Trump has not but named a FEMA administrator, who requires Senate affirmation, and is more likely to wait till he has chosen his Cupboard and different high officers.
Noem, who has been governor since 2019, confronted criticism for her response in June to main flooding in southeastern South Dakota because of large rainfall overflowing streams, together with the Large Sioux River. Some native residents criticized Noem for not activating the South Dakota Nationwide Guard and for flying to Tennessee through the flooding to attend a Republican fundraiser.
When journalists requested Noem why she didn’t deploy the Nationwide Guard, she pointed to the price and mentioned no native officers requested it, based on South Dakota Searchlight. Fury, the spokesperson, mentioned on the time that county emergency managers deal with native emergencies and are supported by the state on request.
“Fairly frankly she was backwards and forwards out of the state when all of that rain was falling, and her focus ought to have been proper right here. She ought to have canceled all of her press and been right here as a result of the flooding was substantial,” mentioned Duba, the Democratic state senator.
A few weeks after the flooding, Noem requested Biden to approve federal catastrophe assist for South Dakota. Biden accepted the request, and FEMA has given $9.1 million to 1,100 residents for emergency bills and minor residence repairs.
Noem has expertise with the FEMA catastrophe system. Throughout her time in workplace, she has made 10 requests to the White Home for FEMA assist after pure disasters — 5 to Biden and 5 to Trump, who denied one request because of inadequate injury. South Dakota has acquired a complete of $142 million in FEMA assist beneath her management, company data present.
In 2023, Noem employed Navigators World, a Washington lobbying agency, “to guarantee that South Dakota is getting their fair proportion of all of the taxpayer cash they ship to the federal authorities,” lobbyist Cesar Conda mentioned on the time.
Noem met with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in early 2023. Across the similar time, her chief of employees, Mark Miller, met with Mitch Landrieu, who was then on the White Home overseeing implementation of the bipartisan infrastructure regulation.
As she sought assist from the White Home, Noem additionally attacked among the Biden administration’s actions on local weather change. She joined 15 different Republican governors to protest a transfer by the Securities and Change Fee to require publicly traded corporations to reveal their dangers from local weather change.
“Since local weather change fashions fluctuate dramatically, the notion of evaluating funding danger based mostly on such unsure variables is inherently subjective and unreliable,” the governors wrote to SEC Chair Gary Gensler in 2022. The SEC rule is tied up in a court docket problem.
Noem additionally joined a lawsuit to cease the Biden administration from placing a worth on the “social price” of carbon emissions, which companies might use to put in writing stronger local weather rules. The lawsuit was dismissed.
‘You are fired!’
A yr after turning into governor, Noem gained nationwide consideration through the pandemic for insisting that state and native companies keep open. She was the one governor to reject Trump’s supply of further unemployment advantages.
Noem has described the pandemic and the response as a life-changing occasion.
“In 2020, dysfunction mutated into dictatorship,” Noem wrote in her autobiography “No Going Again,” printed this yr.
“The COVID-19 pandemic modified our nation and adjusted me. It virtually killed us, and I’m not speaking a few virus. Many of the American inhabitants was at excessive danger for being managed,” Noem wrote.
“South Dakota,” she boasted, “was the one state within the nation that by no means as soon as closed a single enterprise.”
Earlier than then, as a member of Congress from 2011 to 2019, Noem had few dealings with local weather points or disasters and was centered on agriculture and the navy.
Noem, who’s 52, served within the South Dakota Legislature from 2007 to 2011 and grew up on a farm within the jap a part of the state.
In “Not My First Rodeo,” Noem’s memoir printed in 2022, she wrote, “If I needed to describe my total political opinions — and the political opinions of my entire household and most of my neighbors — in only one phrase, it might be: respect.”
However Noem expressed a sharper edge in her latest guide, “No Going Again.”
Close to the tip, she lists actions she would take as president on her first day. They embody “shut the border” and “construct that wall and restore the ‘Made in Mexico’ coverage.”
Noem additionally mentioned she would “rent John Kerry as local weather czar simply to have the satisfaction of trying him within the eye and saying, ‘You’re fired!'”
Reprinted from E&E Information with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E Information offers important information for vitality and surroundings professionals.
