Outside of Pittsburgh
conference, activists declare, "We need to step up today and protect our
water! Because without water there is no life."
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Ahead of President Donald
Trump's speech Wednesday at a natural gas conference, climate campaigners said
Trump's trip marked a "desperate re-election scheme" to promote his
and the industry's "nightmare" fracking agenda.
The forum is the Shale Insight
conference in Pittsburgh, but it's not the first time Trump has been a keynote
speaker for the gathering.
It's the same conference,
where, in 2016 as a presidential candidate, he told the
audience, "Oh, you will like me so much," and vowed to lift
regulations to allow for more fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure.
Food & Water Action
executive director Wenonah Hauter said Trump will be "speaking to his base
today–the fracking companies whose profits he has put above
the health and safety of the planet."
"This polluting industry
sees Trump as its savior, along with an administration that
rejects science and cheers on climate destruction," Hauter continued.
"The industry has hundreds of infrastructure projects in the
works that would double down on fracking and generate more
plastics and petrochemical pollution, lock in decades of fossil fuel power
generation, and export gas overseas at local communities' expense. This
nightmare can and must be stopped."
In an op-ed published
Tuesday at Common Dreams, Hauter said the trip to the conference
"underscores his administration's vision for long-term fossil fuel
dependence, along with increased pollution and plastics production" and
called it a "preview of one part of the White House's desperate
re-election scheme."
"The gas industry has the
exact same agenda" on fossil fuels as Trump, "and it desperately
needs a Trump re-election to maintain profitability," she said.
Hauter's group wasn't alone in
voicing criticism of the event.
The People Over Petro Coalition,
which counts Food & Water Action among its two dozen members, led a protest
outside the Pittsburgh conference.
"We're marching, led by
Native leaders, to defend our water and say no to the fracking, cracking, and
plastics promoted at #ShaleInsight2019!" the group said on social media.
"It's our water, we will fight!"
Trump also used his speech at
the fracking conference to again bash the Paris climate accord—an agreement he
called "terrible."
Though the president announced in
2017 his intention to take the U.S. out of the global agreement, no
country can
actually give the U.N. formal notice of its intention to the deal
until November 4, 2019, and only after November 4, 2020 can a country formally
leave the agreement. Trump's comments Wednesday were seen as
a reiteration of his commitment to ditch the accord.
Alden Meyer, director of
strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, on Wednesday called the
expected withdrawal "irresponsible and shortsighted."
"All too many
people," said Meyer, "are already experiencing the costly and harmful
impacts of climate change in the form of rising seas, more hurricane activity,
record-breaking temperatures, and large wildfires."
"From the hearty
handshakes between the president and fossil fuel industry executives, to the
toxic masculinity exuding from the president as he heckled protesters, to
Trump's rambling description of catastrophic deregulation at the expense of our
climate and communities," said David Turnbull, strategic communications
director at Oil Change U.S., "this speech was a classic Trump dumpster
fire."
While the Trump administration
has sidelined science and pushed the expansion of fossil fuels, "Our next
president must do precisely the opposite," said Turnbull. "We need a
president who will not shake hands with industry executives, but will instead
take them to court for their crimes. We need a president who gets serious about
a just transition away from fossil fuel production, not one attempting to bring
back the past and resurrect a dirty industry."
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