Donald Trump

Trump Embraces His Inner Denialist

Nobody loves coal, oil and gas more than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has pledged to wipe out Obama’s climate change efforts, including the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Agreement.  His choice to head the transition team for EPA shows how little his view of climate change has evolved since he tweeted that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to …

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How to Hedge Your Portfolio Against a Possible Trump Victory

Place your financial bets on having LESS renewable energy and MORE climate change.

If you’re worried about the economic impact of a Trump victory, you should be thinking of hedging your risk. One hedging strategy is to place a bet on climate change. By undoing Obama’s climate regulations and scuttling the Paris Agreement, Trump will set back climate policy, here and around the world by years, maybe decades, He’ll …

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“We’re Not, You Know, People That Don’t Want Those Things”

Trump promises clean air, clean water, safety, and a free lunch.

Every now and then, you see a car with one bumper sticker that says “Support Our Troops” and another that says “Abolish the IRS.”  It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the car’s owner that supporting our troops includes paying and equipping them, and that someone is going to have to collect the taxes to …

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Has Environmental Law Hurt Trump Supports? Could It Help Them?

A major study sheds new light on these issues.

It’s time to update our image of Trump voters.  We thought that Trump voters were less affluent, lived in areas that were losing jobs in manufacturing and in areas impacted by immigrants.  All of that turns out to be wrong, according to a massive new study from Gallup based on surveys of over eighty thousand …

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The Miracle Elixir for Economic Growth: More Pollution!

Trump claims allowing more water and air pollution will boost the economy through the stratosphere.

Is increased pollution the key to economic growth? Can we increase economic growth by dropping restrictions on air and water pollution and ramping up climate change? Donald Trump believes that the answer is yes – indeed, if that if we just get rid of those pesky environmental regulations, we can create 500,000 new jobs every year, …

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A Clash of Visions

The two parties couldn’t disagree more about energy policy.

In every election, there are people who claim that both parties are alike. That’s certainly not true about energy policy this year.The distance between the tickets can be expressed numerically: Kaine has a 91% lifetime score of from the League of Conservation Voters, while Pence’s is 4%. And the differences between the presidential candidates are equally …

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Pence’s Environmental Record

Pence is strongly anti-environmental — but there’s one notable recent deviation.

In some ways, Mike Pence is just what you’d expect of the GOP vice-presidential candidate.  He’s said that the climate change is a myth, opposed the Clean Power Plan,defended fossil fuels, and allowed a bill to end Indiana’s energy efficiency program to become law. In Congress, he voted to allow destruction of critical habitat for endangered species, expand …

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Trump, Clinton, and the Environment

Your Handy Guide to the Differences

Here’s a handy chart comparing Trump and Clinton on environmental and energy issues. I’ve assembled the relevant statements by the candidates below the summary table. Issue Clinton  Trump Is climate change real? Yes, an urgent threat.  No, it’s a hoax. Support Clean Power Plan?  Yes.  No. Support Keystone XL pipeline?  No.  Yes. Drill in Arctic? …

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Trump’s 2009 Call for Serious Climate Action

No, I’m not making this up.

On the eve of the Copenhagen conference, business leaders published an open letter demanding urgent climate action. The letter was  signed by Donald Trump along with Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.  Here’s some of the language of the letter: “We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate …

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Is Protecting Public Health Now a Partisan Issue?

Congress’s failure to deal with the Zika threat is a symptom of a bigger problem.

Congress seems to be unable to come up with funding for an effort to combat the zika virus.  Instead, congressional leaders told the government to use existing funding, so it has been forced to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from fighting ebola. (You remember that Congress was completely frenzied about the risk of ebola in …

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