Trump to Fossil Fuel Execs: 'You Will Like Me So Much'
The same day as a new report highlighted the carbon emissions calamity that would accompany new fossil fuel extraction, Donald Trump promised an audience of fossil fuel executives that is the very agenda he would pursue if elected to the White House.
“Oh, you will like me so much,” the Republican presidential candidate said in his address to the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh on Thursday.
He promised to lift regulations, open up more federal lands for fossil fuel extraction—including coal and fracking—and ease the way for new fossil fuel infrastructure projects including pipelines.
Trump said he would get rid of “all unnecessary regulations, and [place] a temporary moratorium on new regulations not compelled by Congress or public safety.” He also called anti-coal regulations “unfair to our people and our workers.”
New fossil fuel projects the executives would like to advance would be no problem under a Trump presidency, he said. “If I’m president, they’ll happen quickly. You’ll be amazed how quickly,” he said.
Reacting on Thursday to Trump’s agenda, Rhea Suh, president of Natural Resources Defense Council, called it a “a wish list for big polluters” that “would be a nightmare for our communities and climate.”
Trump “would be a belligerent catalyst of catastrophic climate change if he were elected president.”Greenpeace USA spokesperson Cassady Sharp offered scathing remarks following the speech, saying that “Trump proved again that he is an unfit leader with no grasp on reality” who sang “the praises of a dangerous energy extraction process that threatens the health and safety of families and communities all over this country, and promis[ed] to slash critical regulations and the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency].”
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