The European Environment Agency, which monitors Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions, has fined Donald Trump for failing to adhere to pollution emission rules in the United Kingdom
Trump faces a financial penalty of around $2,152 — an insignificant sum for the billionaire real estate mogul — for a chartered flight to the U.K. in 2012 by one of the Trump Organization’s massive private airplanes
According to The Guardian, the Republican presidential front-runner’s business conglomerate is one of 25 companies currently being penalized because they failed to obtain carbon permits issued by the European Union’s Emissions Trading System. The ETS requires all flights operating to and from airports in the EU to give up a carbon permit for every ton of carbon pollution emitted or pay a fine of $100 per every ton.
Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox and the Bahraini Royal Family are among others who’ve been fined for failing “to surrender sufficient allowances” to the ETS by its April 30 deadline in 2013.
“The EU Emissions Trading System is an important means of regulating emissions from aviation operators,” Liz Parkes, the EEA’s deputy director of climate change and business services, told The Guardian.
Trump, who’s second in the Washington Examiner’s presidential power rankings, has previously said climate change was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
In January 2014, the business mogul tweeted: “This very expensive global warming bulls— has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our [global warming] scientists are stuck in ice.”
Trump’s campaign did not return the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
