The Trump administration’s only official event at COP23 took place yesterday, and boy was it a show. Just not the type they had wanted.
We could predict the pro-pollution argument the speakers from the coal, gas and nuclear industries took before they were seated on the podium: yay status quo, boo renewables. (It’s worth noting the pro-pollution “CO2 is good” stance is yet another thing for which shadow EPA administrator Steve Milloy claims credit.) Fortunately, the response from the COP23 audience drowned out the administration’s nonsense.
That’s not just a figure of speech: at one point most of the audience stood up to sing a parody of “God Bless the USA” that skewered the panel’s positions. Once the protesters left, joining the indigenous, frontline and communities of color protesting outside the room, the audience looked pretty empty. We’re told the room had a capacity of 180, there were “about 100 people” protesting, and that 50 members of the press were there. Some basic math suggests only a handful of audience members were there to actually take the presentations at face value (though we heard there was quite a bit of interest in rubbernecking at the wreckage of a pro-fossil fuels event at the climate conference).
So how did the pro-climate politicians and leaders respond? In quotes sent to press, Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse described the administration as bound “to the interests of fossil fuel polluters,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee wanted to make it clear that “Donald Trump cannot stop” climate action. “The U.S. Climate Alliance states make up 40 percent of the economy,” Inslee continued, describing the Trump administration’s push of fossil fuels as “trying to sell 8-track tapes in a Spotify streaming music world.” That sentiment was also expressed by Michael Bloomberg and Rachel Cleetus of UCS, who likened the move it to “promoting tobacco at a cancer summit” and “cigarettes as the cure for cancer,” respectively.
“Exploiting poor, disadvantaged populations to justify continued fossil fuel usage in climate mitigation is a despicable breach of humanity,” Kathy Egland of NAACP told press. “The Trump team promoting this abomination at COP 23 in Bonn are exhibiting the depth of greed, lack of morality and lengths the fossil Industry will go to maintain their wealth.” (If there’s anyone who knows about fighting fossil fuel greed to help communities on the ground, it’s Egland.)
Despite seemingly everyone noting how glaringly out-of-touch the presentation was, a curious moment happened when the panel’s official White House representative, George David Banks, claimed that the “panel is only controversial if we choose to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the realities of the global energy system.”
Banks’s position, by the way, is that renewables aren’t ready for prime time. We’re sure this stance is in no way informed by his former role as an aide to Senator Jim “Snowball” Inhofe’s Environment and Public Works committee, his past work for an anti-wind lobby group, or his current position as the Executive VP of an industry lobby group. We’re sure his defense of Trump’s infamous “Chinese hoax” tweet was made in a similar vacuum.
Like the panel’s pro-pollution stance in the name of reducing pollution, or Scott Pruitt’s inversion of conflict of interest on EPA panels, Banks’ quote about denying global realities is a prime example of a Big Lie. It’s so incredibly backwards, impressively wrong and intentionally dishonest that it’s hard to even imagine someone saying it outside the realm of satire.
But here we are. And boy are we satired of it.
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