Donald Trump

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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Trump vs. EPA

To combat the anti-environmentalism of his base, we need to stress public health issues.

Donald Trump wants to abolish EPA and leave environmental regulation to the states.  Given that many environmental problems cross state lines, it’s not clear how he thinks this would work.  But never mind that.  A more immediate problems is understanding why this position may appeal to his core voters. For candidates like Cruz, it’s not hard …

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The Top Ten Reasons Trump Should Endorse a Carbon Tax

A bold move, if Trump is brave enough to go there.

Not that he’s asked for my advice, but here are ten powerful reasons why Donald Trump should endorse a carbon tax: 10.  It would be completely inconsistent with his past positions. 9.    It would shock the GOP establishment. 8.    It would shock the media. 7.    He’s already endorsed a tax increase for …

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The Climate Issue & the 2016 Election

There are, to say the least, a broad range of views among the candidates.

We’re beginning to have a sense of where the leading candidates stand on climate change. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton announced a goal of 33% renewables by 2030, after saying that the “reality of climate change is unforgiving no matter what the deniers say.  Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is said to have the strongest record on …

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Meanwhile, On Planet Moron….

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012  

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