Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Trump Twirls the Windmills of Doom: The Guardian’s Theatrical Take

From Watts Up With That?

Ah, The Guardian, ever the beacon of balanced journalism, has outdone itself yet again. With a flourish of melodramatic despair, they’ve painted a portrait of Donald Trump as an eco-villain, brandishing policies like a black cape in a horror show of environmental doom. Let’s dive into their latest apocalyptic prophecy.

Donald Trump has vowed to immediately halt offshore wind energy projects “on day one” of a new term as US president, in his most explicit threat yet to the industry and the latest in a series of promises to undo key aspects of the transition to cleaner energy.

The drama unfolds with Trump, the presumed puppet master of planetary destruction, vowing to dismantle the beloved wind projects. Never mind that the industry might warrant a critical inspection of its impacts; The Guardian is more interested in framing this as an opening scene of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Trump repeated false accusations about wind projects as being lethal to whales during a rally on Saturday in Wildwood, a resort city on New Jersey’s coast, promising to stamp out an industry that has been enthusiastically backed by Joe Biden.

Here, Trump is almost comically vilified, conjuring images of dead whales washing up by the dozens, courtesy of those nefarious wind farms. The Guardian, in its infinite wisdom, assures us these claims are “false,” brushing aside any pesky nuances about the environmental cost of these structures.

“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said of the wind turbines. “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”

One can almost hear the ominous music swell as Trump lists the crimes of these whirling dervishes of doom. Of course, The Guardian couldn’t possibly entertain the thought that he might be exaggerating but not entirely fabricating. Instead, they prefer their villains cartoonish and their plots black and white.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get more theatrical:

McLeod said that there has been a concerted misinformation campaign, funded by oil and gas interests, to mislead voters. “Big oil is benefiting from all of this fear mongering,” she said.

The plot thickens with the introduction of Big Oil, the shadowy antagonist lurking behind the curtain. According to The Guardian’s script, anyone who questions the sanctity of wind power must be a marionette dancing on petroleum-coated strings.

Finally, Trump’s distaste for the Paris Agreement is presented not as a policy position but as a nefarious scheme to single-handedly warm the globe:

“In one of the most vivid illustrations of his stance towards the climate crisis, Trump removed the US from the Paris climate agreement during his first White House term.”

“The Paris climate accord does nothing to actually improve the environment here in the United States or globally,” Mandy Gunasekara, Trump’s former EPA chief of staff, told the Guardian in February.

In the world according to The Guardian, this statement is less a legitimate argument and more a declaration of war against Mother Earth, conveniently ignoring any substantive issues with the agreement.

In this latest piece The Guardian crafts a narrative so richly woven with bias that one could mistake it for a tapestry of fiction. Trump’s environmental policy positions, whether one agrees with them or not, deserve a platform for discussion rather than dismissal as the raving of a would-be planet plunderer.

So here’s to The Guardian, our tireless sentinel against the apocalypse, ever vigilant, ever fearful, ever entertaining. If journalism ever tires them, there’s always a spot open in Hollywood script writing. Cheers to that!

Trump’s advisers vow to decimate climate policy and go all-out on fossil fuels

By Jo Nova

Now that the Billionaire-Green mask is off, conservatives are getting serious

Scott Waldman at Politico outlines the nightmare scenario where if Trump wins, he might “rewrite federal climate reports” or “install loyalists atop key science agencies” without seeming to realize that’s the Democrats modus operandi of science for thirty years.

No more going wobbly in climate fight, Trump supporters vow

Trump’s campaign utterances, and the policy proposals being drafted by hundreds of his supporters, point to the likelihood that his return to the White House would bring 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. Those could include steps that aides shrank back from taking last time, such as meddling in the findings of federal climate reports.

“The approach is to go back to all-out fossil fuel production and sit on the EPA,” said Steve Milloy, a former Trump transition team adviser who is well known for his industry-backed attacks on climate science.

But 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.”

Robert Gottleibsen points out that if the Trump plans are carried out Australian green policies will be wildly out of whack with the US. Even the presence of Trump 2.0 on the campaign trail can put a break on climate-ambition:

Trump aims for the US to have the lowest-cost energy and electricity of any nation in the world, including China, by reversing the Biden carbon policies. He will ramp up oil drilling on public lands; and offer tax breaks to oil, gas, and coal producers; roll back current efforts to encourage the adoption of electric cars; and reverse the proposed pollution limits that would require at least 54 per cent of new vehicles sold in the US to be electric by 2030.

That will make Australia out of step with the US, and it means that the world is going to reduce carbon emissions at a much slower pace. We will need to take that into consideration in our policies.

“We’re writing a battle plan”:

[Politico] Dozens of conservative groups have banded together to write climate policy goals that would devastate virtually every regulation of the fossil fuel industry. The Project 2025 effort, led by the Heritage Foundation and partially authored by former Trump administration officials, also would turn key government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, toward increasing fossil fuel production rather than public health protections.

“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.”

It’s excellent to hear conservatives are banding together and planning ahead on climate policy. We just hope they are also banding together on election reform to get rid of electronic machines, fix dodgy software, reduce ballot harvesting and teach voters why fraud is not The American Way. Polling effectively shows 13 million voters in the US would admit casting fraudulent ballots if asked by a pollster. One fifth of US voters don’t seem to know that polling is meant to be done in the privacy of a ballot booth, not watched by coercive friends, or handed to middle men…

Climate bullying doesn’t work anymore

The experts have noticed that Trump is not “tempering” his language. The climate bullies are irrelevant.

Dana Fisher, director of American University’s Center for Environment, Community and Equity, called the change in tone both notable and dangerous — showing that Trump is no longer concerned about reaching moderate and independent voters with his approach to climate policy.

“He doesn’t feel like he has to temper his language,” Fisher said. “The rhetoric means that he’s much more likely to empower these efforts and initiatives than when he was concerned about how they would play the last time.”

And after 91 indictments, it’s not like anyone would care about being called a climate denier. Indeed, he is probably hoping they’ll do it more.

To reassure himself, the Politico writer doesn’t think Trump’s full throated “denial” will sit well with the voters (boy is he in for a surprise).  He quotes the usual mindless apple-pie climate poll, where people are asked if they don’t mind if the government uses other people’s money to solve climate change.

The Daily Mail asked the voters instead, and found it was a winner:

‘Drill, baby, drill.’ Americans by wide margin back Trump’s greenlighting of oil and gas projects

Daily Mail

Americans by a wide margin endorse President Donald Trump’s pledge to ‘Drill, baby, drill’ and allow oil and gas schemes on federal lands, despite fears of global warming after 2023’s searing temperatures, our poll shows.

A DailyMail.com/TIPP Poll reveals that 49 percent of US adults support the former president’s pro-fossil fuel policy, while only 40 percent disagree. Another 11 percent said they were not sure.

Trump instead vows to slash US energy and electricity costs by ramping up domestic production of fossil fuels, with tax breaks for producers of oil, gas, and coal, even as scientists warn about man-made global warming.

He also wants to scrap much of Biden’s $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate measure in US history.

US oil production broke records last year, and it’s on track to surge to a new high of 13.21 million barrels per day this year, says a forecast from the government’s Energy Information Administration.

Steve Milloy, mentioned as a Trump advisor at the top of the Politico article, has written the skeptical JunkScience.com blog for years. If he’s ever put in charge of the EPA, it will be toast. Which is exactly why the grifters of government will fight to the death to stop Trump 2.0. They can’t let him win.

Trump photo by Gage Skidmore

US Flag photo adapted from Wikimedia: Image Clément Bardot

Government Department Head: “Is climate change too hard for democracy?”

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… Donald Trump is an absolute master at getting people to believe extraordinary things.  … President Xi Jinping has claimed the Chinese system is superior …”

Is climate change too hard for democracy?

By Ralph Evans Jan 21, 2024

We have all heard that 2023 was the warmest year ever for the world, by some margin.

Yet all indications are that Donald Trump will be elected once more as US President. He has announced that from Day 1 it will be “Drill, drill, drill!”. He will sweep away all sorts of regulation that protects the environment or aims to limit climate change. It would be no surprise if he withdraws the United States from the Paris Agreement once again.

Donald Trump is an absolute master at getting people to believe extraordinary things. Tens of millions think he will Make America Great Again. Millions apparently think he was sent by God.

In a world like this, I fear democratic government is not up to the challenge of climate change.

The country that emits by far the most greenhouse gases is China, which of course is not a democracy. It is building wind and solar farms at a very rapid pace, accounting for more than half of such construction in the world. … President Xi Jinping has claimed the Chinese system is superior to that of the West. It would be ironic if, after all the scientific and technical work, all the conferences and all the political argy-bargy in the West it was China and not the democracies that did the most to put a brake on climate change.

…Read more: https://johnmenadue.com/is-climate-change-too-hard-for-democracy/

The author, Ralph Evans, is a retired high flying Aussie government worker, he was head of Austrade, the Aussie government’s international trade promotion body, and co-founded the Boston Consulting Group. He is also the author of Toast: Climate change is doing enormous harm. Why do many Australians deny it? Can we avoid the worst effects?

Ralph Evans published on a blog named after (and presumably created by) John Menadue, another and even more senior retired Aussie government worker.

I guess we should thank Ralph for his honesty. No doubt Xi Jinping will send Ralph a nice appreciation card for this effort.