Republican presidential
candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Williston Basin Petroleum
Conference, Thursday, May 26, 2016, in Bismarck, North Dakota. (AP
Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump unveiled
his energy plan. If he takes office, he will cut funding to the United
Nations fund to reduce the effects of global warming, he said in a
speech in North Dakota on May 26, 2016.
Trump revealed his “American first” energy plan just hours after
initial reports stating he had won the number of delegates needed to
secure the Republican presidential nomination.
The real estate mogul said he will unleash unrestrained production of
oil, coal, natural gas and other energy sources to push the United
States toward energy independence.
Trump said he would do everything he could to “free up the coal” and
bring back thousands of coal jobs that were lost as the industry
competed with cheaper natural gas and struggled against regulations
designed to reduce air pollution and lower greenhouse emissions.
“They love it,” Trump said of people who work in coal mines.
“We’re going to bring it back and we’re going to help those people because that’s what they want to do,” he said.
Trump also used his energy speech to fiercely attack Democratic
candidate Hillary Clinton, in which he repeatedly referred to her as
“crooked Hillary.”
“She will shut down energy production across this country,” Trump said.
The Republican presidential hopeful says President Obama has been
doing “everything he can to get in the way of American energy,” but that
Clinton will be even worse for the United States.
“She’s declared war on the American worker,” he said of Clinton as he read from a teleprompter.
His attack comes after Clinton said in March, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
After her remarks she said her comments were a “misstatement” and
outlined a proposal to help coal workers who had lost their jobs.
Despite Trump’s recent speech, he didn’t always support coal mining.
In an interview with Playboy Magazine in 1990, he compared his real estate career to “the story of the coal miner’s son.”
“The coal miner gets black-lung disease. His son gets it, then his
son. If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn
mines,” Trump told Playboy.
“But most people don’t have the imagination—or whatever—to leave their mine,” he said.
Trump responded to the ’90s interview in an email to the Associated
Press, saying, “I never had the imagination to leave the real estate
industry, until I recently decided to make America great again.”
“We tend to follow up our father’s footsteps, and that’s the
lifestyle we want, even if it’s tougher than other alternatives. … Being
a coal miner is really tough, but that’s what they love, and unlike
Hillary Clinton, I am going to make sure they have they have their jobs
for many years to come.”
A non-believer in global warming, Trump vowed to cancel the Paris
climate agreement and stop all funds from U.S. tax money to U.N. global
warming programs.
Trump also said he would approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was vetoed by President Obama.
Trump, like many Republicans, has lashed out against climate science, saying global warming is a con job and a hoax:
Ironically, one of Trump’s companies has cited sea level rise and
increased storminess triggered by global warming as a reason for
coastal work. In its paperwork the company sought permission to build an
estimated two-mile-long stone wall to secure the shoreline at one of
his golf courses in Ireland.
Reaction to Trump’s speech came quickly. The executive director of
the Sierra Club, Michael Brune, said Trump’s “so-called energy plan”
was “an unmitigated disaster. It’s clear that Donald Trump would
bankrupt our air, water, and climate just like he’s bankrupted his
businesses.”
“Trump’s divisive language has made him a shocking candidate, but
today he just pandered to the fossil fuel industry with a carbon-copy
energy plan that could have been lifted directly from Mitch McConnell,”
said David Willett, spokesman for the League of Conservation Voters, in a
statement.
“Trump sure did cut a deal today, a bad one for American families,
offering to trade away protections for the health of our families and a
clean energy future just so he could give big oil exactly what they
wanted to hear,” he added.
Tom Seyer, a billionaire environmentalist also lashed out on Trump via Twitter saying his energy ideas were “all wrong!”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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