Environmentalists say Donald Trump’s highly anticipated energy speech on Thursday is a bid to woo the Koch brothers and other fossil energy supporters to his side.
Billionaire climate change activist Tom Steyer joined with other prominent environmental groups Wednesday to urge voters to see through Trump’s policies as nothing more than handouts for special interests.
“The Trump agenda is only going to make America great again for corporate polluters, which is why Americans need to come together to defeat him — and his Republican allies — in November,” Steyer said on a call with reporters.
Steyer and others on the call said to expect Trump to propose curbing the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, while rolling back its climate rules for power plants and renegotiating the international climate deal that President Obama agreed to in Paris.
Steyer said Trump’s understanding of climate change and where the clean energy market is going is based on an “ignorance of common science,” and not indicative of someone who should be president of the United States.
Steyer said the fact that the Kochs aren’t backing him, yet, doesn’t mean his policies are any different from what they support.
Van Jones, president of Green for All, told reporters that Trump “may be trying to court the Kochs with this speech.”
Jones said not to count the Kochs out from backing Trump, pointing out that there is still plenty of time for them to get behind Trump, especially since the presumptive nominee is officially out there asking for support. No one should put “wooing” the Kochs past him, Jones added.
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said the Kochs have at least acknowledged climate change. Trump has continued to make comments suggesting that global warming is a hoax.
Even so, the activists underscored reports from earlier this week that one of Trump’s affiliate companies acknowledged climate change in securing a permit to build a wall to protect against sea-level rise.
Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said “we don’t know exactly what Trump is going to say” on Thursday, but it is clear “we can’t drill our way to prosperity, we won’t burn our way out of the climate crisis and we’re not going to anchor our future in the dirty fuels of the past.”
She said the solar industry alone employs four times that of the coal industry. “Let’s talk about the jobs of tomorrow,” Suh said. “That’s what this election is about.”
Trump will be delivering his policy speech at a oil and gas conference in North Dakota. The state has become a top producer of shale oil, and is fighting EPA in the courts over its climate change regulations.
