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No, Trump’s election hasn’t derailed the U.N. climate conference

In the days leading up to Election Day, climate negotiators preparing for the U.N. climate conference in Marrakech, Morocco — aka COP22 — sidestepped questions about Donald Trump with cautious smiles. Now, participants are doing their best to sidestep global panic.

Still, among post-election feelings of fear, outrage, and physical danger lies a commitment to keep the current climate talks on track. In fact, there’s even cautious optimism.

“Everybody recognizes that there may be a challenge lying ahead,” says David Waskow, who’s in Morocco as director of the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) international climate initiative. “There’s planning going on, thinking through what are the next steps and how responses might be built. But in the negotiating room, everything we’ve heard, the tone has continued to be a positive one.”

Though President-elect Donald Trump has called the historic Paris Agreement “one more bad trade deal” and promised he would “cancel” it, negotiators are plowing on with or without him. If Trump were to reject the Paris Agreement on his first day in office, it would still take four years for the United States to fully extricate itself: the three years the government must wait before exiting the agreement and a one-year withdrawal period. Trump’s transition team is currently looking for a legal work-around that could see the U.S. gone from the agreement in a year.

“It’s not a matter of simply saying, ‘Sorry, see you later,’” says Waskow.

The agreement was built for some resilience. “The Paris Agreement was designed to be durable and survive shifts in political currents. There are plenty of signs that its goals are being internalized in the economy,” says Elliot Diringer, executive vice president at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES). “Countries are acting because they feel the impacts of climate change and see the economic opportunities in a clean-energy transition. None of that’s changed.”

The United States’ domestic drivers of change may also hearten the international community. Negotiators point to the cities, states, and businesses pushing a transition to renewable energy and integrating climate action into policies and plans. According to WRI CEO and president Andrew Steer, there’s “a huge amount at the subnational and corporate level” spurring progress. Alden Meyer, at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the election won’t stall that movement. “The drive to de-carbonize the U.S. economy will continue regardless of what a President Trump does,” he said.

Waskow agrees. “That will be an important factor,” he says, “the context in which a new administration finds itself.”

Still, feelings of disappointment are palpable among conference attendees and the environmental community. “We cannot pretend that [the] election outcome was anything less than deeply disturbing,” said Nathaniel Keohane of the Environmental Defense Fund.

But that doesn’t mean all momentum is lost. Amidst the uncertainty, a renewed dedication from other countries has emerged. Celia Gautier with Climate Action Network (CAN) France points to how the European Union stepped in to the leadership vacuum left when the United States exited the Kyoto Protocol. “Regardless of how Donald Trump decides to act on climate, all countries — including the E.U. — have to step up,” she says. “The political landscape in the U.S. may have changed, but the reality of climate change hasn’t.”

Other parties at Marrakech remain hopeful that even if Trump intends to drag down global progress, he’ll be overpowered. “With the momentum we’ve seen this year, there’s no question that no one government, no one head of state — no matter how powerful — can stall the transformation unfolding before our eyes,” said Catherine Abreu, executive director of CAN Canada.

And according to Waskow of WRI, U.S. state department negotiators, led by Jonathan Pershing, are keeping their heads down in Marrakech. During the conference, the U.S. contingent will work to make good on the Obama administration’s climate commitments with the time they have left.

“The path forward has never been a straight line,” says Diringer of C2ES. Nov. 8 may have made the road through Paris more treacherous, but the international community insists it will stay the course.

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No, Trump’s election hasn’t derailed the U.N. climate conference

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Obama Urges Americans to Give Trump a Chance

Mother Jones

In his first news conference since Donald Trump’s election victory last week, President Barack Obama expressed hope that the new president-elect would “send some signals of unity” to groups around the country, especially minorities and women who remain fearful after Trump’s extreme campaign promises. Such anxieties were heightened on Sunday, after Trump announced that Stephen Bannon, who has propagated white nationalist sentiment as head of Breitbart News, would become his chief strategist and senior counsel.

“It would not be appropriate for me to comment on every appointment that the president-elect starts making,” Obama said on Monday when asked about Bannon’s appointment. “The people have spoken.”

Although he was given a number of opportunities to criticize Trump, Obama avoided any negative remarks and repeated his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition of power. “Do I have concerns?” he said. “Absolutely.” But he added that he believed the former reality television star and real estate mogul would be “pragmatic” moving forward.

“Campaigning is different from governing,” Obama said. “I think he recognizes that. I think he’s sincere in wanting to be a successful president.”

On the eve of his final trip abroad as president, Obama also called on Democrats to reflect on the party’s loss and prepare to be better organized for future elections.

“I believe we have better ideas, but good ideas don’t matter if people don’t hear them,” Obama said. “Given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have to show up everywhere, we have to work at a grassroots level.”

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Obama Urges Americans to Give Trump a Chance

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A Trump Administration Could Gut a Key Federal Policy That Helps Trans People

Mother Jones

In 2010, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she implemented a revolutionary new policy to make it easier for transgender people to codify their gender identity on their passports. With Trump now preparing for his new administration, transgender advocates are concerned that this State Department policy could be in jeopardy—and are urging trans people to apply for their passports as soon as possible.

“The current policy that’s in place, it’s a really good one,” says Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Minter emphasizes that even though the Trump campaign has not explicitly targeted the current passport rule for change, “we’re urging people to go ahead and get that done just to be safe and sure. Take advantage of the protection that we know is there now and could be changed in the future.”

The State Department rule, enacted in June 2010, marked an unprecedented shift in the federal government’s treatment of transgender people. The Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing same-sex marriage was five years away, and the Pentagon’s policy allowing transgender troops to serve openly would not come for another six.

Before 2010, a passport gender change required proof of sexual reassignment surgery. Under Clinton’s new policy, those seeking to change their gender on their passport would only need to provide a note from their physician saying they’d undergone “clinical treatment for gender transition,” according to the State Department’s announcement of the change. In practical terms, this meant that Clinton had helped create one of the only ways for transgender people to obtain federal ID that properly acknowledges their gender—a passport has weight everywhere, even in conservative states that otherwise might make it difficult for trans people to change the gender on, for example, driver’s licenses.

Given this history, LGBT-focused legal advocacy groups are concerned about what it could mean for the trans community if this important avenue is shut down.

“I don’t know if transgender people are their highest priority, but certainly the State Department regulations could be changed.” says Jillian Weiss, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It will take some time to undo the tremendous progress of the Obama administration, but there’s no doubt that we will lose some rights.”

To be clear, there has been no official movement yet on this front. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on Wednesday that the State Department has not yet been contacted by Trump’s transition team.

But Trump has indicated he may not be an advocate of the LGBT community as president. During the campaign, he told Fox News that he would “strongly consider” appointing conservative Supreme Court justices who would consider overturning Obergefell v. Hodges—a move that could affect trans rights for years to come by eliminating the right to marry for some transgender people. (He has since distanced himself from that position, telling 60 Minutes during his first formal interview as president-elect that he was “fine” with gay marriage.) Trans rights advocates are also concerned about a court that will be unsympathetic in matters that deal with trans equality, such as the upcoming case challenging Obama administration guidelines requiring that schools permit transgender students to use the bathroom of their chosen gender.

So LGBT advocates aren’t taking any chances by waiting around to see what might happen. Twitter user Riley (@dtwps) started the hashtag #translawhelp, along with a corresponding website, to connect trans folks with legal advice and funding for the passport process and other questions post-election. Tied to that is a crowdfunding effort to help raise money for the necessary passport fees trans people will need. Kendra Albert of the law firm Zeitgeist Law is also coordinating an effort to match trans people in need of passport funds with donors. Albert told Mother Jones that “for a lot of people, gaining correct documentation has gained a sense of urgency that it didn’t have before.”

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A Trump Administration Could Gut a Key Federal Policy That Helps Trans People

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Trump will be the fossil fuel industry’s greatest gift

Among climate hawks, the reactions to Donald Trump’s election have ranged from hopeless to Pollyannaish and everything in between. Former Vice President Al Gore expresses hope that Trump will work with the “overwhelming majority of us who believe that the climate crisis is the greatest threat we face as a nation,” while the New York Times’ Andy Revkin argues that the U.S. president doesn’t make a huge amount of difference when it comes to climate anyway.

Going by his campaign promises, though, the Trump era is shaping up as an open season for the fossil fuel industry. Coal stocks are soaring, and there are strong indications that TransCanada might put the Keystone XL pipeline back on the table.

Trump certainly can’t dismantle climate action and the clean energy economy as quickly as he’s promised (day one), and in some cases, he won’t be able to do it at all. But here’s what’s on his hit list, along with an analysis of what he can and can’t do.

Gutting the Paris climate deal

Trump promised to “cancel” the international climate change accord in his first 100 days of office. Seeing that the deal went into effect last week, he will have to wait a little longer. There’s a three-year period before any country can give notice to withdraw, plus one year before that pullout takes effect. But in the meantime, the United States could severely handicap the deal by not following through on emissions cuts and reneging on promised funds for global climate adaptation.

Trump, though, doesn’t determine whether other countries will stay the course. Most of the world remains committed, for the time being. He will, however, be able to severely undermine the next round of international climate negotiations in 2020, which were supposed to bring about an even stronger, more ambitious agreement than the one signed in Paris. Without the United States involved — much less leading climate diplomacy, as Obama did — the effort may be doomed. That’s even more true if Trump follows through on his promise to eliminate all U.S. contributions to global climate finance.

Scrapping the Clean Power Plan

Trump has promised to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency regulations that would curtail carbon dioxide emissions from power plants — the single biggest domestic accomplishment of the Obama administration on climate. Bureaucratically, reversing the regulations isn’t as easy as promised by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (who thinks “day one would be a good idea”), but Trump’s EPA could choose not to enforce the rule by giving states waivers. The Supreme Court has ruled that EPA has the legal obligation to regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, so environmental organizations and liberal states can sue the Trump administration to try to force it to regulate once again. But a court system stacked with Trump appointees would be far less friendly to those kinds of lawsuits. The Clean Power Plan already appears headed for the Supreme Court — which would soon include a Trump appointee in addition to four judges consistently hostile to environmental regs.

Rolling back smog and mercury standards and coal ash regulations

Trump promised to repeal every new rule imposed by the Obama administration that harms coal. All three of these fit the bill. Smog, mercury, and coal ash are conventional air or water pollutants that can sicken people who live near coal-burning or processing facilities. Under Obama, the EPA updated and strengthened these rules (though not always to the satisfaction of environmental advocates).

Based on the latest science, the agency lowered the allowable levels of mercury and smog and regulated the disposal of coal ash. The coal ash rules were weak, and the smog rules were both weak and long-overdue. But it was still bad news for the coal industry. The good news for environmentalists is that, while the executive branch can reverse these rules on its own, it will require a new rulemaking process. That takes time, requiring a public comment period, and it’s also — like any rulemaking — subject to legal challenge. Green groups will likely go after all these moves, arguing that they violate laws like the Clean Air Act that charge the EPA with protecting public health.

Bringing back the coal industry

Trump pledged on the campaign trail to essentially wish the coal industry back into existence on day one. Unless he’s got a genie in a bottle (maybe that explains Tuesday’s results?), this is a complete fantasy. Coal employment is plummeting for a few reasons: Strip mining and mechanization have reduced the number of miners needed, Appalachian mines have essentially been tapped out, and it’s more expensive to unearth the remaining coal than to burn natural gas or convert to wind and solar. It’s a myth that the Obama administration regulated coal out of existence; that was happening anyway. Reversing Obama’s rules would have a very marginal on coal employment and would only temporarily boost coal use, since economic factors are against it.

Filling the White House with fossil fuel execs

Trump has already named the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell, a noted climate science denier, to head his environmental policy transition team. Trump’s favorite for leading the Department of Energy is oil and gas executive Harold Hamm. His other energy advisers include coal magnate Robert Murray, and pro-fossil fuel Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. The specter has been raised of Sarah Palin as Secretary of the Interior (which manages much of the federal government’s public land).  Although Democrats can filibuster cabinet appointments, there’s a good chance that most Trump nominees will get confirmed.

Approving pipelines and more drilling permits

The Keystone XL pipeline is back from the grave. With Trump’s election, TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline that would bring Canadian tar sands oil to the Gulf, is ready to finally get the greenlight after the Obama administration’s refusal. The Dakota Access pipeline is also a sure bet, says Trump’s energy adviser Cramer. The president-elect has promised that “private sector energy infrastructure projects” — namely, pipelines and coal export terminals — will get a rubber stamp. Trump has also promised to open more of the oceans and federal lands to mining and drilling. The president has wide latitude to fulfill those promises, with only public opinion standing in the way.

Gutting the EPA, rather than abolishing it

Right-wing Republican candidates always propose eliminating disfavored cabinet departments. But creating and abolishing federal agencies is actually the prerogative of Congress. And although there might be enough votes in the extremely anti-government, anti-environment House GOP caucus to get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency, it would be unlikely to pass the closely divided Senate. Dirty air and dirty water poll terribly, after all. Instead, the death by a thousand cuts imposed on the agency since Republicans took control of Congress in 2011 will likely continue. Republicans will reduce the EPA’s budget and pass laws restricting its powers — like the ones the House Republicans have passed repeatedly for the last six years. Whether the Senate will still have enough votes to reject them remains to be seen.


Trump’s most measured comments on climate and the environment came in his written questionnaire to the group Science Debate: “Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels,” his campaign wrote. The above list, however, doesn’t instill confidence that Trump will follow through on a “perhaps.”

Over the course of his campaign, Trump showed himself to be a wildcard on a few other energy issues, like when he said he would protect public lands. “I am for energy exploration, as long as we don’t do anything to damage the land,” he said earlier this year. “And right now we don’t need too much — there’s a lot of energy.”

In August, Trump thought local fracking bans should be upheld. But his energy advisers have walked back many of these comments since then. Considering the fossil fuel team he will put in place, the chances are nil that Trump follows through on a few stray remarks.

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Trump will be the fossil fuel industry’s greatest gift

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The World Reacts to America’s Climate Denier-in-Chief

Mother Jones

This story was originally published by the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

MARRAKECH, Morocco―Attendees at the climate conference here are grappling with a reality few expected: America’s next president will almost certainly be openly hostile to efforts to address the biggest environmental threat of our day.

Representatives of more than 200 countries are currently gathered in Morocco for the 22nd Conference of the Parties, where they are hashing out the details of the landmark Paris Agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the worst effects linked to global warming.

Officials from environmental and scientific groups gathered at the United Nations climate change conference tried not to dwell on the prospect of a doomsday scenario, but were clear that a climate change-denying Donald Trump would not be in the best interest of America, or the world. But they tried to remain positive.

“It’s clear that Donald Trump is about to be one of the most powerful people in the world, but even he does not have the power to amend and change the laws of physics, to stop the impacts of climate change,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union for Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy group based in the US, at a press conference held shortly after the election was called early Wednesday. “He has to acknowledge the reality of climate change, he has a responsibility as president-elect now.”

The US presidential election results came as a surprise to many who on Tuesday thought Hillary Clinton would be elected and plans to continue the Obama administration’s work on climate change would make press conferences a relative non-event. But Trump’s name is on everyone’s lips as many wonder where America will stand in future negotiations.

Some groups have not been as diplomatic.

“The election of Trump is a disaster for our continent,” Geoffrey Kamese, a senior program officer for the group Friends of the Earth Africa, said in a statement. “The United States, if it follows through on its new president’s rash words about withdrawing from the international climate regime, will become a pariah state in global efforts for climate action.”

The US delegation had previously planned to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the amount released in 2005, by between 26 and 28 percent by 2025. The prospect of a presidency helmed by Trump, who has said that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, throws that into question. He has threatened to ignore those pledges and leave the Paris deal, end all funding on the issue, appoint climate deniers to lead major government agencies and roll back President Barack Obama’s sweeping environmental legacy. His election won’t help the fight against climate change.

The previous climate pact, the Kyoto Protocol, failed to meaningfully address climate change because the United States backed out, a move that set back climate change progress two decades.

But climate advocates tried to spin the fallout from Trump’s election positively, arguing that other nations aren’t likely to wait for the US―the world’s second largest polluter―to take action.

“Other major countries in this process will continue to go ahead with the climate commitments that they have made under Paris, not because they’re trying to please the United States, but because it’s in their own self interest to protect their people from the impacts of climate change,” Meyer said. However, he continued to note inaction on behalf of America could certainly impact other international negotiations.

Katherine Egland, chairman of environmental and climate justice for the NAACP, stressed that for the Paris Agreement to succeed, “no one country can be perceived as not doing its fair share.”

“We remain a nation of honor―our word is our bond,” she said. “We have signed a binding agreement along with scores of other countries and we will demand that agreement be honored.”

Mariana Panuncio-Feldman, senior director of international climate cooperation for the World Wildlife Fund, said despite the outcome, “the momentum for climate action has never been greater.”

“At this point, given the progress that we have seen, we are confident that the nations of the world will keep focusing on the work that needs to go ahead,” she said at a press conference. “With the momentum that we have behind us we need to remain confident that the arc of climate justice will bend towards solutions.”

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The World Reacts to America’s Climate Denier-in-Chief

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A big earthquake hit Oklahoma’s oil hub, and the oil industry likely has itself to blame.

Responding to the mass arrests of protesters last week, Greenpeace called on President Obama to “revoke all permits and halt construction of the pipeline,” send Justice Department observers to protect the civil rights of protesters, and order North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple to remove the National Guard from protest encampments along the pipeline’s planned route.

The Sierra Club, the nation’s largest green group, made the same demands in slightly more cautious terms.

The issue is now resonating beyond the environmental movement. CREDO Action, a progressive advocacy network, has gathered 386,000 signatures for a petition telling Obama to stop the project and 184,000 signatures on their petition asking Obama to prevent Gov. Dalrymple’s suppression of Native American pipeline opponents.

The push to stop the pipeline is likely to intensify after the election. On Nov. 15, CREDO will join with anti-fossil fuel and environmental justice organizations such as 350.org and the Indigenous Environmental Network for a day of action at Army Corps of Engineers offices around the country.

Protesters from Standing Rock have recently begun taking their demands directly to Hillary Clinton, who has avoided taking a position for or against the pipeline.

Read Grist’s previous coverage of the fight over the proposed pipeline.

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A big earthquake hit Oklahoma’s oil hub, and the oil industry likely has itself to blame.

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Poll Averagers Are Having the Wonk Version of a Knife Fight. Choose Your Side!

Mother Jones

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With 2 days left until our long national nightmare ends, we are now arguing about the statistical models underlying poll averaging. Seriously. Last night, Nate Silver got into a massive war with Huffington Post writer Ryan Grim after Grim published an article headlined “Nate Silver Is Unskewing Polls — All Of Them — In Trump’s Direction.” Grim basically accused Silver of applying an ad hoc correction to his polling model so that it would show a tighter race. Silver responded pithily: “This article is so fucking idiotic and irresponsible….The article made clear you have **no fucking idea** what you’re talking about.”

Well. I guess it’s not surprising that a historically nasty presidential race has also produced a historically nasty wonk war. This morning, however, Silver was on This Week, where he defended himself in more family-friendly terms:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Another variability that we’ve seen here right now. There have been a lot of other forecasts out there, Princeton Election Consortium, Huffington Post, several others — and The New York Times. Yours is much more bullish for Donald Trump and more cautious on Hillary Clinton than theirs are. Why?

SILVER: Because we think we have a good process and, presumably, the other guys have lousy processes. –ed….Look, you have some forecasts that show Clinton with a 98 or 99 percent chance of winning. That doesn’t pass a commonsense test, which is we’ve seen lots of elections where there’s about a three-point polling error. In 2012, in fact, Obama beat his polls in many states by about three points. If Clinton were to beat her polls by three points and you see something we call a borderline landslide, but if it goes the other way, and all of a sudden Trump could very easily win the electoral college.

I have a couple of comments. First, I don’t get the point of making a prediction about the percentage chance that a candidate will win. It’s useless. If Hillary Clinton wins, every pollster will be able to say they called it, because every pollster has her with more than a 50 percent chance. What’s the point of this? Better to just tell us the national and state averages, and leave it at that. I think everyone is smart enough to tell a tight race from a blowout.

Second, Silver is being a little disingenuous here. Have we really seen a “lot” of elections where there’s a three-point polling error in the poll averages? Sure, in some state contests, where there aren’t very many polls. But in a presidential election, where there are dozens? In the case of Obama 2012, Silver had Obama ahead of Romney by 2.1 points a couple of days before the election. Obama won by 3.9 points. Pollster was farther off, showing Obama ahead by 1.5 points. But even that’s still an error of only 2.4 points.

Silver’s point about a 99 percent chance of winning defying common sense is well taken. Stuff happens. Maybe all the polls are missing something. Even if Clinton were five points ahead, I’d probably still operate under the assumption that Trump had a one in twenty chance of winning. That said, a three-point lead with two days left really is pretty overwhelming. You can make a case that maybe Clinton will only win the popular vote by one point, but will then lose all the swing states and lose the Electoral College. But even that strikes me as a one-in-twenty kind of deal. If Al Gore had won the popular vote by 1 percent in 2000, he would have won the Electoral College handily.

Anyway, Hillary Clinton has been ahead of Trump by a steady 3-4 points for the past year, and I’ve come to believe that most of the variability in the polling averages is fictitious. On Tuesday, I’ll bet she wins by a solid 3-4 points, maybe a bit more because Trump’s ground game is so amateurish. That’s my prediction.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, the latest ABC and NBC polls have Clinton up by 5 points.

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Poll Averagers Are Having the Wonk Version of a Knife Fight. Choose Your Side!

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Obama Defends Clinton Protester, Tells Crowd to "Respect" His Right to Free Speech

Mother Jones

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Speaking at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday, President Barack Obama came to the defense of a man protesting Hillary Clinton.

At first, attendees ignored the president’s calls to stop heckling the demonstrator. “Hey everybody, listen up!” Obama said, trying to regain control of the crowd. “I told you to be focused and you’re not focused right now. Hold up. Everybody be quiet for a second!”

“You’ve got an older gentleman who is supporting his candidate,” he explained. “He’s not doing nothing, you don’t have to worry about him. You don’t have to worry about him. This is what I mean about not being focused. First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech. Second of all, it looks maybe like he maybe served in our military and we gotta respect that. Third of all, he was elderly and we gotta respect our elders.”

And then the famous Obama rejoinder: “Fourth of all, don’t boo. Vote!

The moment stood in stark contrast to the sometimes vitriolic scenes at Trump rallies, where attendees have been dragged out and roughed up after protesting. “Get him out of here,” Trump said at one rally last November. “Throw him out!”

At another campaign event in February, Trump said: “So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of ’em, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell—I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.”

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Obama Defends Clinton Protester, Tells Crowd to "Respect" His Right to Free Speech

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What’s going on with the Dakota Access pipeline? Let us explain.

With only 25 percent of construction left to go on the contentious Dakota Access pipeline and more than 140 arrests this weekend, the Sioux and their allies are calling for reinforcements to continue blocking the proposed pipeline that could destroy sacred sites and contaminate drinking water.

Let’s rewind a little: After the Standing Rock Sioux lost their legal case against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in September, the Department of Justice announced it would withhold final permits needed for the pipeline to cross under the river near the primary source of drinking water for the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. These permits could still be granted, pending further review of the Sioux’s complaints.

The Obama administration also stepped in to ask Dakota Access LLC to voluntarily stop work on the pipeline. Needless to say, the company declined, and construction continues while tribal members and activists seek to delay them by holding prayer ceremonies and cuffing themselves together with PVC pipe.

In a recent interview, Obama said the pipeline may be rerouted to protect the Sioux’s water and land. But that decision — if it comes — won’t happen for weeks. Meanwhile, Dakota Access continues to creep toward the Missouri River.

What will happen next? Stay tuned.

Watch our video to learn more, and check out our ongoing coverage of Dakota Access here.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this election

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What’s going on with the Dakota Access pipeline? Let us explain.

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The Bundy bros are back at it.

The Republican candidate on Monday promoted his plan to purportedly save the government $100 billion over eight years. It involves cutting all federal spending on climate change programs, both domestic and international.

“We’re going to put America first,” Trump said at a Michigan rally. “That includes canceling billions in climate change spending for the United Nations, a number Hillary wants to increase, and instead use that money to provide for American infrastructure including clean water, clean air, and safety.”

As Bloomberg BNA reports, Trump didn’t give a precise tally for how he got to $100 billion:

[The] campaign press office said that the figure combined an estimate of what the Obama administration had spent on climate-related programs, the amount of U.S. contributions to an international climate fund that Trump would cancel, and a calculation of what Trump believes would be savings to the economy if Obama’s and Clinton’s climate policies were reversed.

That math, however, doesn’t work out: According to a 2014 report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, a global temperature increase of just 3 degrees C would cost the United States 1 percent of GDP, or $150 billion a yearby damaging public health and infrastructure and battling sea-level rise, stronger storms, declining crop yields, and increased drought and wildfires.

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The Bundy bros are back at it.

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