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Donald Trump on Energy & Oil2016 Republican incumbent President; 2000 Reform Primary Challenger for President |
TRUMP: We are energy independent for first time. We don't need all of these countries that we had to fight war over because we needed their energy. We are energy independent. I know more about wind than you do. It's extremely expensive. Kills all the birds. It's very intermittent. It's got a lot of problems and they happen to make the windmills in both Germany and China and the fumes coming up, if you're a believer in carbon emission, the fumes coming up to make these massive windmills is more than anything that we're talking about with natural gas, which is very clear.
BIDEN: Find me a scientist who says that.
Amid a global pandemic Trump and his team have prioritized fossil fuel production. The Interior Department is moving forward with fossil fuel lease sales, as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management offered up 78 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico despite environmental groups' calls to halt the sales. A spokesman for the bureau said the event was "live-streamed with only a handful of BOEM workers," with bids submitted either by mail or at the bureau's New Orleans office.
TRUMP: I did not--
CLINTON: I think it's real. I think science is real.
TRUMP: I do not say that.
CLINTON: And I think it's important that we deal with it, both at home & abroad. Here's what we can do. We can deploy a half a billion more solar panels. We can have enough clean energy to power every home. We can build a new modern electric grid. That's a lot of jobs; that's a lot of new economic activity.
TRUMP: She talks about solar panels. We invested in a solar company, our country. That was a disaster. They lost plenty of money on that one. Now, look, I'm a great believer in all forms of energy, but we're putting a lot of people out of work. Our energy policies are a disaster. Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt. You can't do what you're looking to do with $20 trillion in debt.
The most popular source of green energy is solar as several decades after installing solar panels to get your money back. That's not exactly what I would call a good investment. Even if that number is only half right, what kind of investment do you want to make that takes 20 years before you break even
Trump continued to complain about the wind-energy project planned for the waters just offshore. The British government was committed to the idea, and Scottish first minister Salmond had worked hard to get the European Union's approval for a wind- energy test field in the North Sea waters. Trump said that Salmond had assured him the windmills would not be built. He insisted that he was fighting not just for himself, but for the country, because windmills were a bad technology. "We have to save Scotland," he declared. "You cannot allow these industrial monstrosities sustained with government subsidy."
Trump's opinion of windpower stems from an unsuccessful legal battle he has fought against an off-shore windpower project near one of his golf resorts in Scotland. Just last month, Scottish courts found that Trump had no grounds for accusing Scottish ministers of illegally agreeing to license the 100MW experimental wind farm.
Trump has simply dismissed solar as an "unproven technology" despite solar's decades of rock-solid reliability. His 32 year payback assessment, even in 2012, did not take into account any of the tax incentives or rebates available to most Americans. One can only assume that his criticisms of the government tax breaks for solar are strictly political in motivation, since his real estate empire is built on the hundred of millions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies his projects receive.
A: Well, there could be some manmade, too. I mean, I'm not saying there's zero, but not nearly to the extent [others say]. When Obama gets up and said it's the number one problem of our country--and, if it is, why is it that we have to clean up our factories now, and China doesn't have to do it for another 30 or 35 years in their wonderful agreement, you know, our wonderful negotiators?
A: Ultimately what could happen to nuclear energy in terms of a worldwide feeling, is not a good thing.
Q: Are we overreacting? Germany sidelining some nuclear reactors?
A: When you see what's going on in Japan, certainly you can't say overreacting, but, look, nuclear is a way that we get what we have to get, which is energy. I think that probably there's not an overreaction, but we have to be very, very careful. I worry about terrorists. I worry about other things beyond just that. I'm very strongly in favor of nuclear energy. You know, it's sort of interesting. If a plane goes down, people keep flying. If you get into an auto crash, people keep driving. There are problems in life. Not everything is so perfect. You have to look very carefully, though, at really taking care; having the best people in terms of safeguards for nuclear energy. But we do need nuclear energy, and we need a lot of it fast.
DT: I'm doing one right now. I'm doing this huge complex in Jones Beach in coordination with the State of New York. It's on the ocean and it's going to be great. I made a deal to build a regular building and all of a sudden the state wants me to do a green building. I could have challenged them, because I have my long- term lease. A new commissioner came in and just wanted a green building. It's much more expensive. The science has not been perfected yet and in some cases the savings cannot justify the huge cost. You spend a tremendous amount of money now, and it takes 40 years to get your money back. Even with the tax breaks it doesn't work financially. For example, if I use solar, I get my money back with the tax breaks in 12 years. It's a very hard thing to justify in terms of real estate right now. It's a long, long time before you get your money back. I think that will get better with technology.
BIDEN: Climate change is an existential threat to humanity. I was able to get environmental organizations--as well as people worried about jobs--to support my climate plan. Because it will create millions of new good paying jobs, we're going to take 4 million buildings and 2 million homes and retrofit them so they don't leak as much energy, saving hundreds of millions of barrels of oil in the process and creating significant number of jobs.
Trump is the only Republican listed; he failed all three tests. On the Democratic side, 2020 candidates have for the most part indicated support for environmental policies, though some appear more willing to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation than others.
Despite public sentiment [in favor of climate action], Trump and his administration have maintained a firm anti-environment agenda. The president regularly mocks the idea of climate change on Twitter, and the White House is planning to set up a panel devoted to challenging the science behind the phenomenon that includes an avowed climate skeptic.
Trump called climate change a hoax in November 2012 stating, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." He later said he was joking about the Chinese connection, but in years since continued to call global warming a hoax.
As far as climate "changing back," temperature records kept by NASA show that the world hasn't had a cooler-than-average year since 1976 or a cooler-than-normal month since 1985.
When answering the question about the impact of withdrawal on domestic greenhouse gas emissions, it's important to separate the withdrawal with Trump's other environmental policies. Even before the pullout, Trump administration had cut funding to EPA, discontinued the Clean Power Plan, greenlighted both the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines, and allowed extractive operations on public land, all of which would have significant impact on US CO2 emissions regardless of the pullout.
(VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: The Paris agreement handicaps the United States' economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country's expense. They don't put America first. I do, and I always will.
(END VIDEO) Q: And here's the argument by the EPA administrator:
(VIDEO CLIP) SCOTT PRUITT: It is a failed deal to begin with. And even if all of the targets were met by all nations across the globe, it only reduced the temperature by less than two-tenths of one degree.
(END VIDEO) Q [to former V.P. Al Gore]: Less than two-tenths of one degree, President Trump made a similar argument.
GORE: Well, first of all, it's not true. Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen much faster than you thought they could.
TRUMP: There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of "climate change." Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water. Perhaps we should focus on eliminating lingering diseases around the world like malaria. Perhaps we should focus on efforts to increase food production to keep pace with an ever-growing world population. Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels. We must decide on how best to proceed so that we can make lives better, safer and more prosperous.
CLINTON: When it comes to climate change, the science is crystal clear. Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time.
JILL STEIN: Climate change is the greatest existential threat that humanity has ever faced.
Trump does not believe climate change is real, tweeting out his skepticism with strong language and calling it a hoax on Fox News in 2014. In a 2012 Twitter post which is no longer accessible, Trump charged that the concept of climate change was created by the Chinese to suppress the U.S. economy. In addition, Trump has expressed firm opposition to wind turbines, which he sees as an environmental and aesthetic problem.
FactCheck by Reuters: Wind generates 20% of total electricity in Texas, where natural gas supplies 47%, coal supplies 20% and solar supplies 1%
FactCheck by OnTheIssues: The 2021 Texas power crisis was caused by sub-zero temperatures coupled with fossil fuel power plants that had never been winterized. It's true that some wind turbines froze, but so did coal, gas, and oil generators, which account for 70% of power generation. The same problem occurred in 2011 (and is expected every ten years or so), but the state of Texas ignored the recommendations made then.
BIDEN: I never said I oppose fracking. What I will do with fracking over time is make sure that we can capture the emissions from the fracking. We can do that by investing money in doing it, but it's a transition. I said, no fracking and/or oil on federal land.
TRUMP: Would he close down the oil industry?
BIDEN: Well if you let me finish the statement, because it has to be replaced by renewable energy over time, over time, and I'd stopped giving to the oil industry, I'd stop giving them federal subsidies. You won't get federal subsidies to the gas, oh, excuse me to solar and wind.
TRUMP: If you look at the Paris Accord, it was a disaster from our standpoint. And people are actually very happy about what's going on because our businesses are doing well.
Q: Do you believe that human greenhouse gas emissions contribute to the global warming of this planet?
TRUMP: I think a lot of things do, but I think to an extent, yes. But I also think we have to do better management of our forest. Every year I get the call, "California's burning!" If you had good forest management, you wouldn't be getting those calls.
Q: If you believe in the science of climate change, why have you rolled back the Obama Clean Power Plan which limited carbon emissions?
TRUMP: Because it was driving energy prices through the sky.
Fact -Check: The U.S energy boom started more than a decade ago, driven by market forces and advanced technology such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. became the world's leading producer of natural gas in 2009. More recently it surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia in crude oil production. That was helped in part after President Obama signed a bill to lift a 40-year ban on most oil exports.
We have unleashed a revolution in American energy--the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world. And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy.
Short Answer: Yes, mines are opening, including a new one in Pennsylvania.
Long answer: That doesn't reverse the overall decline of the coal mining industry from its glory days. The mines that are opening produce a special kind of coal used in steelmaking and are opening largely because of events unrelated to federal policy, experts say. The market for the kind of coal used in electricity--the biggest use for coal--remains down relative to where it was several years ago. In other words, the industry has rebounded slightly after years of layoffs and closures caused mainly by competition from cheap natural gas.
Trump made clear that the United States had no intention of meeting the commitments that his predecessor had made to curb planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution, turning denials of climate change into national policy. Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency to start the complex and lengthy legal process of withdrawing and rewriting the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which would have closed hundreds of coal-fired power plants, frozen construction of new plants and replaced them with vast new wind and solar farms.
"C'mon, fellas. You know what this is? You know what this says?" Trump said to the miners. "You're going back to work."
Trump writes, "The natural gas reserves we have in the United States could power America's energy needs for the next 110 years," and there is enough crude oil to last for decades. He supports a dramatic escalation of domestic drilling to provide jobs and minimize dependency on foreign cartels. "Fracking will lead to American energy independence. With price of natural gas continuing to drop, we can be at a tremendous advantage."
Clinton's State Department took steps to try and facilitate the export of hydraulic fracturing technology, to enable allies with promising shale geologies to replicate the U.S. oil and gas production boom; referred to natural gas as a "bridge fuel" as part of the transition from coal to renewable energy; Her energy diplomacy platform included vocal concern about geopolitical and economic risks driven by climate change. Source
Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have estimated we might have two trillion barrels of recoverable oil, enough to last the next 285 years. Technology has changed so much in the last few years that a Goldman-Sachs study has estimated that by 2017 or 2019, we could overtake both Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's largest oil producer.
The oil is there for the taking; we just have to take it.
I've never understood why, with all of our own reserves, we've allowed this country to be held hostage by OPEC, the cartel of oil- producing countries, some of which are hostile to America.
Remember Cap-and-Tax (or as they called it Cap and Trade)? [In 2008], Obama outright admitted that his plan to tax businesses on carbon emissions that exceeded his arbitrary cap would drive energy prices sky high. Here's what he said:
"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, even regardless of what I say about coal, because I'm capping greenhouse gases. Whatever the plants were, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that on to consumers."
Most of us shake our heads in disbelief at this stuff.
Until we get this country's lifeblood--oil--back down to reasonable rates, America's economy will continue to slump, jobs won't get created, and American consumers will face ever-increasing prices.
Obama promised he was going to create millions of so-called "green collar" jobs. He used that promise to justify his massive government giveaway of billions and billions of taxpayers' dollars to green energy companies. We're now seeing the results of Obama's promise and big government scheme.
It's not the market [raising the price], it's OPEC. They set the price of oil. If they did it in this country, it would be called illegal.
I think it's incredible that we're going slow on drilling. I think it's beyond anything I've ever seen that we're going slow on drilling.
there are always going to be problems. You're going to have an oil spill. You clean it up and you fix it up and it'll be fine.
I have people in the business and they say it's almost impossible to get a permit to drill. So you can imagine how hard it is to get nuclear and other things but they say it's almost impossible. If you look at natural gas, we're the Saudi Arabia times 100 of natural gas--but we don't use it.