Donald Trump Reaffirms Attacks On Climate & Environment
Since his win in the US Presidential Election, many observers have been watching and waiting to see which way President-Elect Donald Trump would turn with regards to his energy and climate policies. A fortnight after the election, it looks as if the many baseless and fear-induced, ignorant claims Donald Trump made on the campaign road are set to be prioritized for his first 100 days in office.
A President’s first 100 days in office are the most valuable, and will make or break everything that follows. It sets the tone for the remainder of the 4 years, or 8 — depending on how the next election goes. We’re not there yet, but on Monday, Donald Trump published a video to YouTube updating the American people on the current transition, as well as his plans for the first 100 days of his Presidency.
Donald Trump explained that he tasked his “transition team to develop a list of executive actions we can take on day one to restore our laws and bring back out jobs.” This is not an unusual decision for an incoming President-Elect to make, and signals the overall intention of their Presidency. True to form, and in blatant disregard of the scientific, economic, and common sense facts, regarding energy, Donald Trump said:
“On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy – including shale energy and clean coal – creating many millions of high-paying jobs. That’s what we want, that’s what we’ve been waiting for.”
We have known of the possibility of this for some time, and it was further solidified earlier this month when Donald Trump named Myron Ebell, a climate skeptic who willfully and repeatedly dismisses what he calls alarmist hype over global warming, to oversee the transition of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — essentially placing him in charge of working out how to repeal and roll-back numerous environmental- and climate-related policies.
Ebell is not a scientist, has no scientific degrees or qualifications, but nevertheless serves as Director of Global Warming and Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian advocacy group in Washington, DC, and spends his time refuting and trying to discredit climate scientists. Speaking to Business Insider earlier this year, Ebell had this to say:
“I think that the global warming movement has three parts: One is to exaggerate the rate of warming, one is to exaggerate the potential impacts of warming, and how soon they may occur, and the third is to underestimate wildly the costs of reducing our emissions by the magical amount that they have picked.”
Among the items on the chopping block are President Obama’s Clean Power Plan — intended to reduce power plant emissions — as well as anything hindering coal mining. In fact, according to Robert McNally, the president of the Rapidan Group, the energy consulting firm, and former official in the George W. Bush administration, speaking to Fox News:
“I think 80 percent of President Obama’s policies will be reversed very soon after Trump moves into the White House. The Trump administration will reverse the global warming principles enacted under Obama and he will stop the politicization of infrastructure. This will definitely spur on the growth of the oil and gas industries.”
And in what is surely a blatant attempt to simply throw oil onto a fire, Donald Trump recently met with Nigel Farage and his entourage, and encouraged them to oppose offshore wind farms in the UK — including the development of the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWDC), an offshore wind farm being developed in Aberdeen Bay, within site of Trump International Golf Club — a fight Donald Trump already lost in the UK’s highest court, back in December of 2015.
Because why not?
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