>> "washington journal" continues. host: first guest is myron ebell with competitive enterprise institute. chefs as director for center for energy environment. here to talk about the recent decision by the white house on the paris climate agreement. good morning. little bit about your organization first. how would you describe yourself and what you do? guest: we're a nonpartisan nonprofit policy. issues to free market perspective. we concentrate on regulations. we accept no government funding in our annual budget is getting close to $8 million. host: who funds that budgets? guest: several thousand individual charitable foundations and few corporations. host: any of those corporations individuals tied to the energy industry at all? guest: we have a policy not to disclose who our donors are. if donors want to disclose it that's fine. host: in the markets that you do receive none from, if not from the energy, what other areas in the broad sense? guest: very broad spectrum of individuals across the country. around the world. host: what was your organization positions o. the paris climate agreement and the president's decision to move out of it? guest: we have pushed since the paris agreement, came over the horizon that it it was a treaty. it was a treaty from day one. but they are describing it as not a treaty just an executive agreement. our position has been that the president acceptance of the treaty, sending a letter saying, i accept we're now a member, was invalid because every other country went through normal, and legal constitutional procedure. every other country called it radicalization. japan called it acceptance. they accepted the underlying treaty on climate change. our view starting in 2015 is the senate needs to take this up and have a vote on it. what we see now is what can be done by executive fiat and by truth presidentpresident trump. president obama made a gamble they can get away with this. it would be a democrat elected and republican like george w. bush who would say well, if i just ignore it it will go away. unfortunately, for president obama's gamble, it failed for him. unfortunately. president trump has said, i'm going to undo this. host: this is a headline they applied to you and your organization. they said the man behind the decision to pull out the paris climate agreement. is that true? guest: no. president trump made a number of campaign commitments during the campaign. they're pretty clear. they're not based on long policy papers where you qualify everything and try to fudge the issue. he gave a number of policies speeches starting on may 26th last year in bismarck, north dakota. thatches his -- that was his energy and environment speech. he would cancel the paris climate agreement and get rid of president obama's climate agenda which was implemented by regulation and executive ordering and without congress. he promiseup promise -- he promised that. the key to the decision he's keeping his promises. host: the organization put out an ad showing promises he made. guest: yes we did. that ad was meant to remind the people in the white house and the president, how emphatic his promise was and how important it was. host: before the transition, how a role when it came to the environmental protection agency and the transition there. guest: he was the leader of the epa team. host: is it previous access that you had, did you have any of that directly tell the president basically nudging them or reminding them in a manner to pull out this agreement? guest: my work in the transition is confidential. i can tell you that basically it was the charge given to us by the transition leaders was figure out how to implement the president's campaign promises. his campaign promises have to be very close to the goals of the organization. i work for cei, which is a deregulatory agenda. if we can get some of these obstacles to out of the way, we can get resource and manufacturing going in the heartland of america. yes, i know some of these people and yes i have talked to some of them. until i went to the rose garden on thursday to watch the president speech i had never seen him live before. that's how far i am down the totem pole. host: no conversations leading up to the pull out itself and at least give your thought on that? guest: most what we did to try to influence the white house is was public. my colleagues published a long very detailed policy paper. which went into the legal arguments carefully. we did this television ad. we had a joint letter which cei organized which was signed by 44 nonprofit groups. free market conservative groups that said please mr. president, we support you in keeping your promise to withdraw from the paris climate treaty. most of what we did was public. i think that's what was affected. host: here's the phone line, for democrats 202-748-8000 for republicans rep 202-748-8001 for anyone -- for independents 202-748-8002. what was wrong with the paris agreement? guest: the paris agreement is a promise by the united states to cut our emissions greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28% below 2005 level by 2025. the executive actions and the regulatory action that president obama under took without congress would get us about half way there. president trump is undoing most of those actions. we're a long ways away from meeting our commitment. the people who wanted us to stay in said well, it's just voluntary. you don't have to do it. it's a commitment of the united states. typically international commitments can be litigated in federal court by private citizens saying, the united states is not living up to its commitment. the second thing is, that the paris treaty, is perpetual. every five years each party is supposed to make a new commitment. by staying in, if president trump had stayed in, i think he would have been pursuing the failed postals -- policies of george w. bush. what happened was when president bush went away and president obama came in, everything that just been sitting there for eight years, pop back to life. if you recall in the first year in december of 2009 president obama's first term we had the copenhagen. which collapsed. which was a big event which had been lying there ready to go. the other thing that president trump did as he made it very clear, that the united states is not going to fund the green climate fund. that was agreed to. that was proposed by secretary clinton in 2009 and copenhagen. it was confirmed in 2010 at in cancun. the green climate fund is meant to raise a minimum $100 billion a year starting in 2020 from developed countries to help the developing countries pay for the cost of reducing emissions and adapting to climate change. the congress has made it clear they're not going to fund the climate fund. president trump wasn't breaking any new ground. what he was doing was, he was putting the developing countries on notice that the united states is not going to be transferring vast sums of money to the developing world through emissions. you guys in these countries that say you're supporting the paris treaty you better think twice because many of them are in it because they think there's a lot of money involved. host: myron ebell joining us. first call comes from baltimore on the independent line. matt, you're on. caller: hello. so glad i got on with mr. ebell. first of all, let me give you my justification. i ran three geophysical observatory satellites. we measured surface temperatures because every 45 minutes, they all made a complete circuit. we could find no, zero, man made influence upon change in climate, which is absolutely necessary. what i would hope is that people that question the one who are so wildly enthusiastic about we're killing the world, ask them to distinguish between man made and natural. we've always had climate change. as far as the paris agreement that goes back to another thing for making money by creating a new class of brokers. they will trade your ability to reduce co2 by be else's ability. they make the money in the interim. guest: matt is -- let me start with the broker comment. if you look at the most enthusiastic supporters of action through this emissions and international agreement, you find companies back at the time of enron and goldman sachs. henry paulson became the treasury secretary in the last couple of years for the george w. bush administration. he created a whole unit at treasury to develop the perfect trading system, the perfect carbon tax and that kind of thing. goldman sachs as a broker will be in the middle of every deal and will get a commission. now we have gary kohn at the white house, former head of goldman sachs, it was reported was supporter in the middle of us staying in the paris climate treaty. it seems i'm accused of representing economic interest, when i think i'm representing consumer's interest. there is an obvious conflict of interest for people who come out of organizations like goldman sachs. as for the satellite measurements, i defer on that. host: this is john from new mexico. republican line. caller: hello, thank you for taking my call. it's great to talk to you. i would just like to mention that the iscc report was wrong. they had a report to university some ten years ago. i'm telling you that the 777 climate change concert saying that al gore did the whole documentary that al gore did, it was wrong. none of that has come to past. many scientists have jumped back from climate change. said, maybe it's over time in climate. what we have done here is we have elected a president as part of his platform was not to pay the world $26 billion in blackmail over climate that we built this big industry. my ron you're funded by solar panel manufacturers, people that make cars like musk. you're financed by corporate interest that make a lot of money off this climate change rhetoric. yes, it's the climate changes it's because god decided it's time for the climate to change. you're going to say i'm an idiot because i'm invoking god. we elected a president that was going to throw all this hogwash aside. that was a big part of his agendas. it's not to be blackmailed by other countries. guest: john, i think you have me confused with the other side. i support president trump's decision. one of the reasons i do is something president trump didn't talk about, which is global warming as a hypothesis as we increase coal, oil and natural gas which produces carbon dioxide that would lead to warming. i don't think there's any doubt about that in theory. the question is how much warming and what we found is that the model predictions from the 1980's and 1990's have for over predicted. they predicted lot more warming than we've seen. i think this hypothesis has been beendisproved. the data shows modest warming. impacts of that warming are mostly beneficial. some are negative, it depends on where you are in the world. what your preference is. some people like cold away and some people like slightly warmer climate state. i think by in large the hypothesis still being pushed by the arm of this community has been disproved by history. the data that we've accumulated since the 1980's. host: democrats line, melvin, you're next up. caller: good morning. i like to talk to myron there. when he first came on, he nicely said he's not taking no side about anything. but then in the same statement he very clearly denounced president obama and it seems like he's not link in the chain trying to correct the mistakes that president trump made. in my opinion, all this is just another part of the conspiracy to dis dismantle that president obama did. you know trump is a dummy. lock him up. host: melvin, what do you think of the paris agreement? what do you think the value it brings? caller: i think we should stay in it. we're better together. it don't have to be just the u.s. i got sons and grandsons in the military and -- we need these people. my son when he went to iraq, he had to stop off in germany. he had to stop in all these places so they can exchange planes. host: got you. what do you think about the other countries that are left in this agreement? guest: couple of comments. the first one let me go back this idea that president trump is undoing everything that president obama did. i think you see that a lot of what president trump did was basted on the fact that his agenda was frustrated in congress. when he was elected, he did not run in 2008 on global warming agenda. he barely mentioned. neither did his opponents. as soon as he got in, he said we need cap and trade legislation to control emissions. type. that's the kind of fight that we need in this country. the political debate, congress debated it, the house passed it narrowly. blow back from the country was so strong that the senate never took it up. harry reid said we're not going to touch it. in the 2010 election many democrats lost because of that vote. the republicans took over the house. in 2010, right after the election, president said there are more ways to skin the cap. i don't need congress, i can do it through executive orders and regulations based on existing laws. that haven't worked. what happened is, what can be done by executive action can be undone by executive action. that's what's happening. if you don't like what president trump is doing, i think what you have to say is, he picked the wrong path. he should have persisted with congress maybe gotten as much as he wanted done. once something is passed in law it's much more difficult to get rid of it than some executive order or regulatory action. i think president trump is perfectly within his rights. he won the election just as president obama won the election four years ago and eight years ago. as far as other countries, i think the hysteria around the world over president trump's agenda is not all together sincere. on the one hand, we've been told that paris climate treaty is the most important agreement in the history of the world. on other hand, environmentalists included said it's really no big deal. it doesn't do that much. for example the united states commits to real emissions reduction. those are swamped by the increases in emissions that china has promised that india has promised and other major developing countries promptup prompt -- promised. if paris was totally implemented, if everybody had their promise, would hardly be effective. our emissions will be emissions and japan. china has promised their emissions will keep going up until 2030. remember, chinese emissions went surpassed u.s. emissions in 2006. they're now almost double. host: let's go to independent line from michigan mark, go ahead. caller: i think our system has -- i'm trying to figure out what who stole the tv technology. i want to take tesla machine throw it in the north and south pole, use the tv 2 technology, if you take that electricity it's actually heating the north and south pole. you take that dim that light that might allow the north and south pole to rejuvenate and recool themselves. host: up next from washington d.c. republican lane. caller: i want to point out building on you're guest comments before the last caller. democrats were very opposed to the paris agreement. president obama did not get it approved by congress. he rammed it through. democrats said it was voluntary. they were not supportive of it until president trump decided to say, the u.s. was going to take a leadership role outside of the paris agreement. then everybody on the other side said oh my god he's going to kill the planet. armageddon, everything is going to blow up. i think it's very ironic. thank you. guest: let me comment on the previous caller. i believe in technological innovation. i believe the world will innovate new technologies. i don't think we can predict it. i think where technological innovation comes from free market, free people, responding to the incentives provided by free markets. that's why the united states is lot more innovative. we are the freest. the idea i want to point out this idea we can cool down the artic. antarctica has been cooling down. temperatures have gone down slightly. i don't think that's the way argument for or against global warming. the problem is that the debate has been moved to wherever the alarmist camp supporters of paris think they can make some progress. when it was first negotiated, didn't go nearly far enough. it was entirely voluntary. nothing to worry about. then it became the most important environmental agreement in the history of the world and president trump turning his back on that and is a trader to the planet. you got to decide which side you're on here. whether it's really nothing or whether it's absolutely critical. i don't want to get involved in that. i'm just opposed to it. host: chicago tribune on the criticism. saying mr. trump stubborn approach represents opportunity -- it puts the u.s. on the sidelines for one of the most important issues. it's a risky place to be. ace puzzling position for president focused on business. lot of the conversation will be about future of green energy. guest: two points i think when you're going in the wrong direction, you're not leading. i think the united states under president trump has a tremendous opportunity to lead the world to a future of more abundant and more affordable energy. that leads to my second point. 80% of the world energy comes from coal, oil and natural gas. the demand is going up every year. up about 2%. if you look at renewable energy, winds mill and solar panels after all decades of subsidies and mandates and all the government action to force utilities to increase power rates ininin order to pay for solar panels, they supply less than one percent of the world energy. this is not the future. winds mill and solar panels are a dead end. you want to talk the innovation that will get us off coal oil and gas eventually, it's either going to be nuclear power, which many of the environmentalists say, the planet is threatened, we'll do anything except we won't allow nuclear power. there's a contradiction. if this is a truly crisis, then we have to do whatever is necessary. some technology that we have not dreamed of yet. for example, the shell oil and gas revolution was not something the government dreamed up. it was something private individuals like george mitchell down in texas spent decades tinkering with until he made it work. that is the biggest energy revolution in our lifetime. that's the kind of thing that we cannot predict. nobody thought he could do it. he did it. i believe in the future. i don't think the future is windmill and solar panels. host: our guest is myron ebell. you heard him heading mr. trump trump's epa transition team. talking about issues concerning the paris agreement and the president's decision to pull the u.s. out of that. from north carolina, democrats line. hi. caller: 53 million people voted for donald trump. donald trump will do something for 53 million people and nobody else. i do know it will lead to carbon footprint. the problem with me is that until we study, i don't think donald trump has the i.q. to study the science behind global warming. president obama, he's not president anymore. it's racist and using obamacare and say something about donald trump. he's the president now. stop blaming president obama. you said about president obama came. stop using bush. host: you made your point. guest: unfortunately in politics we have to look back and see what's been done and what needs to be done. i personally am going to keep blaming the obama administration for the things that i think they did wrong and supporting him for the things i think they did right. i think they did a lot more things wrong. i think your caller has the opposite view. what we need to do is to be respectful of president obama. he was president and he tried to lead the country in the direction he thought was right. i disagree with that. i don't try to trash him or denigrate him. host: we'll hear next from the independent line lexington kentucky, this is christian. caller: from the paris accord is the most short sighted decision that trump could have done. here in kentucky, we have the most lung cancer deaths. we have the most wood river in the united states. after california, we're tops for worst polluted air. we have the most life long minors which by the way big coal thrived john hopkins denied every single case of black lung disease. they shut down that unit and they're under a class action lawsuit. mr. myron ebell according to the truth backers documents housed at the university of california, this is one of the tobacco lobbyist who lobbied congress through the con frontiers of freedom lobby group. to allow advertising cigarettes to kids. he's taking a page how of that play book and doing the same thing with cancer, coal. there are over 300 high hazard coal ash damns in the united states. any one of which would ruin a state's drinking water. host: christian, we'll let the guest respond. guest: christian is misinformed. i don't blame, i blame the left wing campaign that hides behind academic credentials and studies. i'm proud to say, i workedder frontiers of freedom. i have never lobby on a single tobacco issue. i never said anything about a single tobacco issue in public or private. these are not my issues. they're not what i'm concerned with. when i worked at cei, they filed lawsuits which i had nothing to do with, filed a lawsuit try to overturn the agreement between the state attorney general's and the big coback coe company -- tobacco companies on the grounds of collusion. the big tobacco companies opposed that lawsuit. if anything, i've been against by association i've been more against big tobacco than for it. i never lobbied for even a minute. host: myron ebell with competitive enterprises joining us to talk about the issues of climate change and paris agreement. thank you for your time. coming up, we're going to hear about a new effort that attempts to reach progressive democrats and an effort to revitalize the democratic party. we'll

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