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Trump and the Environment

Notice anything about these countries? We have enough problems with getting away from fossil fuels in the most technologically advanced nation in the world, what do you expect developing countries to do? Fossil fuels are cheap. Developing countries can't afford to waste valuable funds on developing or implementing renewable energy sources that will not provide energy and economic growth to their citizens and economy. It is unfortunate, but our longtime reliance of fossil fuels has hamstrung our renewable energy progress and hence, our ability to deploy technology in these situations. In 15-20 years, we would be able to provide the technology to developing nations to pop up a fusion plant or solar farm, but it isn't feasible. That is why I am concerned about Trump, we are poised to continue leading the world in renewable energy development, but Trump is a known climate change denier and is surrounding himself with a like minded cabinet.

Continue leading the world in renewable energy? Maybe in total production because we're a yuge country but by percentage we're way behind even average. And one of the 3 "developing" countries the article mentioned was Australia. We 're not helping them develop, we're making money by building shit we couldn't get away with here, to their detriment.
 
Continue leading the world in renewable energy? Maybe in total production because we're a yuge country but by percentage we're way behind even average. And one of the 3 "developing" countries the article mentioned was Australia. We 're not helping them develop, we're making money by building shit we couldn't get away with here, to their detriment.

LNG is a viable alternative fuel, especially in Australia where a vast majority of their power is generated by Brown and Black coal.
 
LNG is a viable alternative fuel, especially in Australia where a vast majority of their power is generated by Brown and Black coal.

It's better than coal, great. Baby steps I guess for two of the more powerful economies in the world, while I sit in a "developing" country that uses 99% renewable energy for their electricity.
 
It's better than coal, great. Baby steps I guess for two of the more powerful economies in the world, while I sit in a "developing" country that uses 99% renewable energy for their electricity.

73% of Australia's energy production comes from coal, 13% from LNG, and the remainder from renewables. It is a great step for Australia, I agree.

69% of India's energy production comes from fossil fuels with the remainder from renewables or nuclear.
69% of South Africa's energy production comes from coal, 15% from crude oil, 3% from LNG and the remainder from renewables.
 
73% of Australia's energy production comes from coal, 13% from LNG, and the remainder from renewables. It is a great step for Australia, I agree.

69% of India's energy production comes from fossil fuels with the remainder from renewables or nuclear.
69% of South Africa's energy production comes from coal, 15% from crude oil, 3% from LNG and the remainder from renewables.

I'm not sure what your stats are arguing. We're helping contribute to those countries' already high dependence on fossil fuels? My initial point was we as a country seem to be way behind the ball on renewable resources and our government is making money off of other countries with projects that wouldn't be acceptable in our own country. Coincidentally US companies are being paid as consultants/specialists in these same projects by those same governments we're loaning money to. It's not a matter of how developed countries are either. There are plenty of developed countries which refuse to make the effort and there are numerous developing nations who have already converted to almost entirely renewable resources. I'm no expert on this, but it seems like we as a country have made almost no investment in becoming even a follower of those who are already minimizing their CO2 footprint in the world.
 
Fuck my life.

I love rational conversations w/ Trump supporters, largely because they are so few and far between... but, ultimately they challenge my own view & help me see how this election actually happened.

This is the topic where there's ZERO rationale.

OK. Racism/bigotry/xenophobia. Not cool stuff, but an individual COULD have reasons for any of them that would be personally justified (to them). Elections in a democracy aren't based on personal afflictions, so these things shouldn't carry over in a decent society.

Fucking with decades of top-level science on something this important to future generations is monumentally stupid.

Elon Musk is so far ahead of the curve, it's almost hilarious. The argument against subsidies in new energy (vs the relative huge subsidies going into old energy) is as misguided as anything else going on right now.
 
Scott Pruitt basically seals the deal on this. What a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...r-expands-as-it-warms/?utm_term=.cc913d2357b2

Trump’s nominee to lead his environmental council isn’t sure if water expands as it warms

Hartnett White’s position is a political one. From the outset of the modern debate over climate change, uncertainty has been the watchword of those who weren’t interested in addressing greenhouse-gas emissions. That asserted uncertainty once centered on whether warming was happening. Then it focused on whether humans were involved. Now, in the Hartnett White iteration, it centers on how much humans are involved. (This was the position Trump espoused in an interview with the New York Times during the campaign.)

In the case of Hartnett White, that insistence that there’s uncertainty — again, a view not widely held in the scientific community, as NASA points out — leads to some difficult rhetorical dead ends.

Consider this exchange from Wednesday, in which Hartnett White is questioned by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

 
the descendant of a draft dodging climate change migrant? no wonder there is so much trouble with him

It is also his sexual harassment, his money laundering, his negative civil rights history, his 3500+ fraud lawsuits, his 10+ bankruptcies and his self-exploitation of his family companies while President, Obama hypocrisy (golf, spending, etc), poor cabinet appointees, climate science...etc, etc.
 
It is also his sexual harassment, his money laundering, his negative civil rights history, his 3500+ fraud lawsuits, his 10+ bankruptcies and his self-exploitation of his family companies while President, Obama hypocrisy (golf, spending, etc), poor cabinet appointees, climate science...etc, etc.

sailor doesn't mind it at all. Her emails were much worse.
 
Trump Is Vandalizing Our Wild Heritage: By BRUCE BABBITT

Quote
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America’s wild places survive by the grace of a human promise. For more than 150 years, it has been an article of collective faith and national pride that once we protect a wild place, it is to be safeguarded for all time.

But in the coming days, President Trump will try to shatter that promise.

The president is expected to travel to Utah on Monday to announce that he is repealing protections for as many as two million acres of public land in the American West, an area more than six times the size of Grand Teton National Park, including vast portions of two national monuments in the state, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

Mr. Trump’s plans add up to the largest elimination of protected areas in American history. He is a vandal in our midst, coming in person to lay waste to the land. This theft of our heritage should awaken us to the damage being piled up across our public lands under this administration.

If he succeeds, tens of thousands of Native American sacred sites in southern Utah will be at renewed risk of looting. Red rock canyon lands will face the prospect of being stripped for coal and drilled for oil and gas. And the wild places where we hike and hunt and find solitude may not be there for future generations to do the same.

Thankfully, President Trump alone does not have the power to overturn America’s conservation laws and traditions. Congress granted presidents the authority to create national monuments, but not to eliminate them, reduce their size or sell them out to private interests. If the president attempts a unilateral attack on America’s national monuments, the courts can and should step in to restore the rule of law.

Still, President Trump’s attack on America’s national monuments is but one front in his sweeping assault on protected lands and waters.

His interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, has overturned a ban on mining on 10 million acres of wildlife habitat in the West and, against the wishes of Republican and Democratic governors there, is undermining a regionally developed plan to conserve the sagebrush steppe ecosystem. Mr. Zinke’s action will threaten habitat that protects 350 wildlife species and push at least one bird, the greater sage-grouse, closer to the brink of extinction.

His commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, has completed a secret review of national marine sanctuaries and national marine monuments to determine which protected ocean areas should be thrown open for offshore drilling and industrial-scale commercial fishing. On the chopping block: protections for coral reefs and atolls in the Pacific, seamounts and canyons in the Atlantic, and feeding grounds for whales and sharks off California.

In Congress, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, has added an environmental rider to the Republican tax plan that would require the government to lease part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. The refuge’s coastal plain, which has the largest concentration of land-based polar bear dens in the United States and is a calving ground for the Porcupine caribou herd, would be forever lost to an industrial oil field.

The architects of these attacks are aiming to help private companies make a quick buck off unspoiled lands and waters. But, more fundamentally, they are seeking to undercut the idea of permanence that is the foundation for the protection of all America’s wildlife refuges, national monuments, parks and protected areas.

Mr. Trump’s foray into the West to fan the flames of his war against the environment could mark a turning point, however. Imagine that the president, as he peers down from Air Force One at the magnificent landscapes spreading out below, could hear and heed the words of Theodore Roosevelt resonating from his 1903 visit to the Grand Canyon:

“Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it; not a bit. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children and your children’s children and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see.”

We must rise up, speak out and, in the spirit of Roosevelt, demand an end to this desecration of our national heritage.
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"Still, President Trump’s attack on America’s national monuments is but one front"

He hasn't attacked monuments that celebrate traitorous rebels.

 
Per pool reports: Trump motorcade runs into a "wall of protesters" signs include "Trump, a monumental mistake," "Tiny Hands off our lands, and many chanting "F**K You Trump!"
 
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