ICYMI: TRUMP PLANS “ALL-OUT WAR” ON CLIMATE IN SECOND TERM

POLITICO expose – Trump has ‘learned to ignore the advice of political advisers who told him to soft-pedal on climate’

Washington, D.C. – A new piece from POLITICO lays out what we’ve been seeing for months: a second Trump term would be a no-holds-barred political assault on the climate progress made under President Biden. It would be nothing short of “an all-out war on climate science and policies — eclipsing even his first-term efforts that brought U.S. climate action to a virtual standstill.” 

Trump’s recent campaign trail diatribes on climate – including last night’s Iowa caucus victory speech promise to  “drill, baby, drill” on day one – have made it clear that this time, his climate denial is central to his campaign. It’s a losing prospect with voters and one that will help defeat him. In response, Climate Power communications director Alex Glass released the following statement: 

“Donald Trump’s opening argument for the general election is a losing one. In his victory speech in Iowa, Trump once again vowed to ‘drill, baby, drill’ – a policy that’s squarely out of line with a vast majority of voters. Trump’s climate denial tirades will be coming to battleground state ads throughout 2024.”

Highlights from POLITICO: 

“… as the GOP front-runner, he’s gone back to alleging that human-caused global warming is fake, is baselessly blaming whale deaths on wind turbines and said last month that if elected he would be a “ dictator for one day” — in part so he could “drill, drill, drill.”

Meanwhile, many of his former staffers are building out a comprehensive plan to decimate both climate policy and regulations on fossil fuels. And Trump allies expect that the former president would fill his next administration with officials who are even more hostile to efforts to address global warming

[…]

“We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshaling our forces,” Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, told E&E News for a story last year. “Never before has the whole conservative movement banded together to systematically prepare to take power Day 1 and deconstruct the administrative state.”

[…]

Seventy-three percent of U.S. adults want the government to do more to address climate change, according to a CNN poll released last month. Most want the government to cut emissions in half by 2030, including 50 percent of Republicans and 95 percent of Democrats, the poll found.

Read the full article here.