Presidential nominee Donald Trump vowed to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and dramatically reduce the EPA’s budget and its regulatory stranglehold during yesterday’s energy policy speech in North Dakota. Within hours, the usual suspects called his policies calamitous for planet Earth. That’s because under the current administration, the EPA has become the largest single source of grants and monies funding the catastrophic global warming narrative. If elected, Trump would not send a single taxpayer dime to the United Nations to support the Paris Climate Agreement.
It’s not a secret that under President Obama, fossil fuel companies have been hampered at every turn. Thousands of coal workers have lost their jobs, and hundreds of coal-fired power plants have been shuttered. Entire regions of the country now live in abject poverty.
Trump reminded voters that “Crooked Hillary” will continue Obama’s job-killing policies. She already vowed to put the coal industry out of business, and both Bernie and Hillary have promised to end fracking. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, 67 percent of all natural gas extracted in the United States now comes from hydraulic fracturing,
Trump also took aim at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which churned out the expansive Clean Power Plan, now on hold by the Supreme Court. The EPA even wants to regulate fracking out of existence through onerous methane rules, despite a recent study showing that the largest source of methane emissions comes primarily from agriculture, and not fossil fuel extraction or production.
Trump also said that our vast reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas are a valuable asset in growing our economy and are not being utilized to their fullest potential. He cited case after case in which the president has inserted his regulatory authority to shut down non-preferred energy sources. While allowing the free flow of oil out of Iran, Trump noted, Obama turned off the tap in the United States by killing new oil leases, the Keystone pipeline, and further exploration.
When a reporter asked a question on renewables at a pre-speech press conference, Trump said they would promote good energy policies. Trump said that wind and solar simply can’t compete with fossil fuels. Not without being being heavily subsidized.
