Trump will outline his “thoughts” on energy policy. Here’s what he could say.
By Rebecca Leber and Clayton Aldernon May 25, 2016Share
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump will speak at the Williston Basin Petroleum conference in Bismarck, N.D., on Thursday, where he’ll emit puffs of carbon dioxide allegedly on the topic of energy policy. In preparation for the speech, Trump has been chatting with energy adviser Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and he’s presumably studying up on OPEC and energy regulations, too.
We’ve collected some of the real estate developer’s past comments on climate and energy to give you some idea of what to expect to hear on Thursday:
On the basic science of climate change: “I am not a great believer in man-made climate change,” Trump told the Washington Post editorial board in March. “If you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming.”
A panel of scientists ranked all of the then-presidential candidates’ public remarks on climate for the Associated Press last November. Trump got 15 points — out of 100.
On climate vs. weather: When it was “really cold outside” last October, Trump tweeted that we “could use a big fat dose of global warming!”
On the kind of climate change he is worried about: “I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons.” Interpretation: unclear.
On negotiating with OPEC: “We need one thing: brainpower,” Trump said in an interview with CNN in 2011. Oil prices “will go down if you say it properly,” he added. He also wouldn’t have minded strolling into Libya that year: “I would take the oil,” he said.
On coal: “I want clean coal, and we’re going to have clean coal and we’re going to have plenty of it,” Trump said earlier this month. “We’re going to have great, clean coal. We’re going to have an amazing mining business.”
“The miners of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, which was so great to me last week, Ohio and all over are going to start to work again, believe me,” he said.
(Trump endorser and coal executive Bob Murray disagrees).
On gas prices: “I will cap gas prices at $1 per gallon,” Trump told reporters in South Carolina in February. “Plus, I will take all of ISIS’s oil. I bet gas prices will be 50 cents in much of the country under my presidency.”
On liquefied natural gas: “What’s LNG?”
On the Environmental Protection Agency: “We’re going to get rid of so many different things,” Trump said in a February debate. “Environmental protection — we waste all of this money. We’re going to bring that back to the states.” But only if he can figure out what the EPA is. Trump said he would eliminate some agency called “Department of Environmental. I mean, the DEP is killing us environmentally, it’s just killing our businesses.”
On clean energy:
On clean energy when campaigning in clean energy-heavy states: Trump told an Iowa voter that he’s OK with wind subsidies. “It’s an amazing thing when you think — you know, where they can, out of nowhere, out of the wind, they make energy.”
On the Paris climate accord signed by 175 countries: “One of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard in politics — in the history of politics as I know it.”
On his hair: “You have showers where I can’t wash my hair properly, it’s a disaster!” Thanks to the EPA, Trump told a crowd in December, showerheads “have restrictors put in. The problem is you stay under the shower for five times as long.”
On his hair and the ozone layer: “Wait a minute — so if I take hairspray and if I spray it in my apartment, which is all sealed, you’re telling me that affects the ozone layer?’” Trump asked a Charleston audience in May. “I say, no way, folks. No way!”
This post was originally published May 3, 2016. It has been edited and updated.
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Original article:
Trump will outline his “thoughts” on energy policy. Here’s what he could say.
