Jonathan Zasloff at Legal Planet offers “Donald Trump creates the Green New Deal”. The closing excerpt:

But what goes around comes around. A President Harris, or Warren, or Booker, etc. etc. can just as easily declare a National Emergency on Climate Change — one that would have a far better factual predicate than Trump’s patently false border emergency — and he or she will a lot more money to move around. After all, a lot of the climate crisis is about infrastructure, and if the relevant statute allows the President to move money from one project to another, then it is very easy to do that. Or the $100 billion that DOD has for national security emergencies: given that both the Pentagon and the heads of the national intelligence agencies have already said that climate represents a serious national security challenge, it’s not a hard legal lift (assuming intellectually honest and consistent judges, which of course we cannot). This fund must be for a military purpose, and a smarter, more energy efficient energy grid could do the trick.

It’s no way to run a democracy. But Trump and the GOP have made it clear that they do not believe in democracy, and as Robert Axelrod demonstrated years ago in his classic book The Evolution of Cooperation, the best strategy in repeat-player games to facilitate cooperation is playing Tit-For-Tat.

See also Generous Tit-For-Tat.

Update, 2019-02-18

Dan Farber writes on “National Security, Climate Change, and Emergency Declarations” at Legal Planet that:

One reason why it would be hard for the Supreme Court to overturn a climate change declaration is that some attributes of climate change and immigration are similar. Both issues involve the country’s relations with the outside world, an area where presidential powers are strong. But it isn’t as if we suddenly found out about border crossings or climate change. Given these similarities, it would be very difficult for the conservative majority to explain why it was deferring to the President in one case but not the other.

The only major difference actually cuts strongly in favor of an emergency declaration for climate change: The U.S. government has already classified climate change as a serious threat to national security, and it is a threat that is getting stronger daily. Recent science indicates that climate action is even more urgent than we thought.

Trump’s stated justification in his proclamation is that “the problem of large-scale unlawful migration through the southern border is long-standing, and despite the executive branch’s exercise of existing statutory authorities, the situation has worsened in certain respects in recent years.” Trump’s stated justification in his proclamation is that “the problem of large-scale unlawful migration through the southern border is long-standing, and despite the executive branch’s exercise of existing statutory authorities, the situation has worsened in certain respects in recent years.” Climate change, too, is a “longstanding problem,” and it certainly has gotten worse despite the effort of the executive branch (Obama) to address the problem. Federal agencies, as well as Congress, have made it clear that climate is a serious threat to our nation.