President Donald Trump plans to bash the ‘Green New Deal’ in an environmental speech on Monday intended to showcase his administration’s handling of climate change in a way that’s economically efficient.
A White House advisory said Trump would tout ‘America’s environmental leadership’ in East Room remarks.
However, a call previewing the address had EPA administrator defending the president’s past irritation over global warming and an unsubstantiated claim at a GOP fundraiser that windmills cause cancer.
‘There continues to be positives and negatives for each,’ Andrew Wheeler told journalists of renewable energy after a reporter asked about Trump’s windmill remark.
President Donald Trump plans to bash the ‘Green New Deal’ in an environmental speech on Monday intended to showcase his administration’s handling of climate change in a way that’s economically efficient
The White House suggested that Trump would bash AOC’s Green New Deal in his speech
Wheeler categorized findings of a federal climate change analysis conducted every four years that was completed in 2018 as a ‘worse-case scenario’ based on a model that was established by the Obama administration.
‘We’re reexamining the models,’ Wheeler told press prior to Trump’s remarks.
The National Climate Assessment published in 2018 called for ‘more immediate and substantial global greenhouse gas emissions reductions’ to mitigate global warming.
‘Future climate change is expected to further disrupt many areas of life, exacerbating existing challenges to prosperity posed by aging and deteriorating infrastructure, stressed ecosystems, and economic inequality,’ the study found.
It noted that ‘lower-income and other marginalized communities, have lower capacity to prepare for and cope with extreme weather and climate-related events’ will be hit the hardest.
On the White House call, Wheeler acknowledged that Trump, who said previously that climate change is a hoax, is frustrated with existing climate change data.
‘I think a lot of the frustration has been the focus or the frustration on the worst case scenarios,’ he said.
Trump’s speech is not hinged to any new environmental push by the administration.
Rather, he made the decision to deliver the White House speech on his ‘environmental leadership’ after consulting with his advisers, Counsel of Environmental Quality chairwoman Mary Neumier told reporters.
The White House claimed earlier that it was because Trump wasn’t getting the credit he felt he deserved for his environmental record.
Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere, ‘The media has largely ignored the fact that the United States under President Trump’s leadership and policies has made the air, water, and environment cleaner and he’s going to share that with the American people.’
‘We are the party of conservation, environmental protection, and expanding responsible clean energy technologies while the Democrats’ radical Green New Deal would outlaw cows, cars, and planes, crippling America’s economy and crushing the poorest communities across the globe that rely solely on fossil fuels to survive.’
The speech’s theme came under immediate criticism from environmental groups.
Dan Lashof, U.S. Director for the World Resources Institute, mocked, ‘It must be opposite day at the White House if President Trump is dubbing himself an environmental leader.
‘The United States’ emissions have dropped — and clean energy has continued to grow — in spite of President Trump’s policies, certainly not because of them. Since taking office, President Trump has appointed foxes to guard the environmental hen house. His administration has made it easier for companies to dump coal ash into Americans’ drinking water, eased carbon pollution rules for power plants and announced it is walking away from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
‘That’s not an environmental record any president should be proud of,’ he said.
Green New Deal author and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was meanwhile commenting on the flooding in the District of Columbia and blaming fossil fuels
As Trump was preparing to give his White House address, lower levels of the White House, including the press office and press workspaces, filled up with water after flash floods.
Green New Deal author and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted the flooding in the District of Columbia in a tweets that identified climate change and fossil fuels as causes of extreme weather.
‘Climate change intensifies flooding, wildfires, & extreme weather. It’s more than 1 day or 1 storm; it’s all of them. Places are flooding where they haven’t before; there are 90-degree days in Alaska in June. The GOP will mock & sow confusion until it’s their home swept away,’ she said.
In another tweet, Ocasio-Cortez said, ‘Unprecedented flooding is quickly becoming a new normal. Despite that, Republicans are tripling down on fossil fuels w/no plan to transition off them, or make the critical infra investments we need to prep for the climate crisis. Each day of inaction puts more of us in danger,’ she said.
The White House was meanwhile arguing that America’s water and air has been getting cleaner every year since the 1970s and it’s a ‘strong economy’ like the one the Trump is overseeing that ‘is vital for protection.’
Confronted with claims that the quality is only growing because the White House has changed the standards, Wheeler denied that was the case.
‘We have not changed the standards for which we’ve measured air pollutants,’ he argued. ‘The air quality has in fact gotten better.’