Don Trump joined a group of oil and gas executives on Thursday to lay out the Trump plan for Trumping energy. Trump is not exactly known for showing up where he’s not guaranteed cheers, so his chosen audience for this speech is a pretty good indicator of the contents. And no doubt, the champions of fossil fuel were not disappointed.
Donald J. Trump traveled Thursday to the heart of America’s oil and gas boom, where he called for more fossil fuel drilling and fewer environmental regulations while vowing to “cancel the Paris climate agreement,” the 2015 accord committing nearly every nation to taking action to curb climate change.
Laying out his positions on energy and the environment at an oil industry conference in North Dakota, he vowed to rescind President Obama’s signature climate change rules and revive construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring petroleum from Canada’s oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries.
If there is a person in America for whom the Supreme Court nominations are not enough leverage to send them to the polls, surely this action list from Trump should be a motivator.
Build Keystone XL. “Cancel” the Paris accords. Destroy the first small attempts to regulate greenhouse gases. But wait! There’s more. Trump also promised to restore the coal industry at the same time as he called for more oil and gas drilling. It’s a one-two punch that has even the energy analysts reeling.
But experts remain skeptical of Mr. Trump’s command of the complexities of the global energy economy. And he made claims, such as a promise to restore jobs lost in coal mining, that essentially defy free-market forces.
Trump did miss calling for bringing back jobs in the whale oil business, but if someone on Drudge would remind him...
Note that Trump was at the heart of a region where so much drilling has occurred that it’s driven the cost of oil and gas down to a point where no one can afford to drill. Trump’s solution? Drill more.
And Trump made statements about coal that pointed at regulations…
“Regulations that shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants and block the construction of new ones — how stupid is that?” Mr. Trump said.
Without acknowledging for a moment what everyone in the room knew: they put coal out of business. The availability of low-cost natural gas is what sent the coal industry tumbling over the last decade. Many of those coal-fired plants haven’t been “shut down,” they’ve been converted to burn gas. But in Trump’s mind, it’s not possible that the market itself might have done something that caused an industry to decline. It has to be Obama.
Of course, as with every speech, what was mainly revealed was Trump’s astounding level of sheer ignorance on every aspect of the topic.
Mr. Trump’s threats to unravel the Paris Agreement could carry more weight.
In his speech, he complained, inaccurately: “This agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use on our land, in our country. No way.”
In fact, at the heart of the Paris Agreement are voluntary pledges put forward by the governments of over 190 nations, laying out plans to lower emissions. No government has control over the emissions-reduction plans of other governments.
Trump is campaigning on restoring coal. Which can’t happen.
He’s campaigning on more drilling. Which won’t happen.
But he’s also campaigning on purposely destroying the last, best hope to do something about climate change. And that, unfortunately, is in his power to smash.