While Rishi Sunak’s decision to U-turn on net zero policies drew criticism from within his own party as well as opposition MPs and environmental activists, his plans have received the endorsement of disgraced former US President Donald Trump.
Trump praised Sunak for being ‘smart’ in taking on ‘climate alarmists’.
Writing on his own social media platform Truth Social, he said: “Prime minister Sunak of the United Kingdom has very substantially rolled back the ridiculous “Climate Mandates” that the United States is pushing on everyone, especially itself.
“I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue.”
He added: “Congratulations to Prime Minister Sunak for recognising this SCAM before it was too late!”
Rightwing groups penned a conservative wish list of proposals for the next conservative president to gut environmental protections
An alliance of rightwing groups has crafted an extensive presidential proposal to bolster the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hamstring the energy transition, it has emerged.
Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch.
Called the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican president. Climate experts and advocates criticized planning that would dismantle US climate policy.
The nearly 1,000-page transition guide was written by more than 350 rightwingers and is full of sweeping recommendations to deconstruct all sectors of the federal government– – including environmental policy.
Very rich US right-wing interests intent on destroying a transition to sustainable energy. UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and UK Labour leader Keir Starmer are aligned with and not in any way opposing these interests. There is little doubt that climate denier – I think that it’s just beyond his abilities to understand tbh – Trump will go along with this. Charles Koch is involved with this initiative.
Image of Climate-change denier and Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg. Chris McAndrew public-domain image via WikiMedia. Please see Notes.
An episode of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State of the Nation GB News show faces an Ofcom investigation on whether it complied with the rules of the broadcast regulator.
The programme in question covered a breaking news story about the civil trial verdict involving Donald Trump, which led to 40 complaints being made to Ofcom. The investigation will focus on whether the programme complied with rules which prevent politicians acting as newsreaders.
The regulator said, “our investigation will look at the programme’s compliance with our rules which prevent politicians from acting as newsreaders in any news programmes, unless exceptionally, it is editorially justified”.
The right-wing news channel that boasts Nigel Farage as a presenter and most recently Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson, is no stranger to Ofcom scrutiny. An investigation remains ongoing into the Saturday Morning show with Esther and Philip broadcast on GB News, related to the same rule.
1. Environment. This is the biggest single issue. Trump is a real-life world-destroying Thanos from the Avengers, and is trying his best to commit planeticide. His policies will kill the earth. The human race has a window of about 20 years to avoid the worst impacts of the climate emergency. We should have swung into action years ago to vastly reduce our use of coal, gasoline and natural gas. Trump has presided over an increase in our annual carbon dioxide emissions rather than, as he should have, greatly reducing them. If Americans give him another four years to wreak this kind of destruction, it will be game over for normal human life on the planet. We will see gargantuan disruptions, with turbocharged hurricanes, massive wildfires, raging sea level rise, coastal flooding, and mass extinctions. These disasters can be light or heavy. Trump is doing his best to ensure they are heavy.
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2. Trump’s second biggest failure was in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. For the most part, he adopted an ostrich policy of burying his head in the ground and pretending that it wasn’t there, or would abruptly disappear “like a miracle,” or that its consequences were not grave.
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3. Trump’s failure on the coronavirus is also a failure on the economy. China dealt with the pandemic in a scientific way, and is now past the crisis. It will grow 1.2 percent this year, whereas US GDP will be in negative territory. Trump blames governors’ shutdown orders for harming businesses.
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4. Health Care. Trump has tried to kneecap Obamacare, which had allowed an extra 22 million Americans to afford health care insurance. Trump has undermined the program at every turn. He is presently in court attempting get rid of the Affordable Care Act entirely. He has also consistently challenged the requirement that insurers insure people with pre-existing conditions. Trump brazenly lies about his opposition to health care for people and his attempt to get rid of the provision about pre-existing conditions. But you have to look at what he does, not what he says. What he has done is to sue to get rid of them and to get rid of the ACA. He lies and says he has a better plan in mind, but the Republicans have had a decade to produce an alternative and they never have given us a bill to examine.
5. Under Trump, the US trade deficit has climbed 14% from where it was in Obama’s last year. It skyrocketed with China, but then Trump used tariffs (paid for by Americans) to wrestle it back down to just about where it was in 2016. It then just grew with other countries.
“Trump’s lies and his rejection of science have cost us tens of thousands of lives. We need a new president,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. by Jake Johnson, staff writer
President Donald Trump speaks during his campaign event on October 23, 2020 in The Villages, Florida. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump late Friday repeated his lie that the United States is on its way to defeating the coronavirus pandemic just before the country reported a single-day record of more than 85,000 new Covid-19 infections, nearly 10,000 more cases than were tallied at the height of the devastating surge in mid-July.
But the president’s remarks during a campaign rally Friday at The Villages, a Florida retirement community, conveyed zero indication that the U.S. is entering what could be the worst phase of the pandemic yet.
“It’s true that country is rounding the turn of the pandemic. We are spiraling out of control.” —Dr. Zoë McLaren,School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County
“I mean, you look at what’s going on and we’re rounding the turn. We’re rounding the corner. We’re rounding the corner beautifully,” Trump said, recycling an egregious falsehood that has become a staple of his stump speech even as infections and hospitalizations surge nationwide.
The New York Timesreported late Friday that “since the start of October, the rise in cases has been steady and inexorable, with no plateau in sight… By that measure, Friday was the worst day of the pandemic, and health experts warned of a further surge as cold weather sets in. The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 has already risen 40 percent in the past month.”
Consistent with his reckless downplaying of the pandemic from the very start, Trump once again peddled the lie that the U.S. is “rounding the turn” during a late Friday rally in Pensacola, one of many largely maskless and closely packed in-person campaign events the president has held in recent days against the warnings of public health officials.
Watch:
Just hours after news broke that the US set a single-day record today for new coronavirus cases, Trump absurdly claims in Pensacola that the country is “rounding the turn” of the pandemic pic.twitter.com/fG0uXxluPu
“It’s true that country is rounding the turn of the pandemic,” responded Dr. Zoë McLaren, associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “We are spiraling out of control.”
In addition to the record number of cases, the U.S. also reported more than 940 coronavirus deaths on Friday, bringing the nation’s death toll to nearly 224,000—the highest in the world.
“This is only getting worse,” tweeted epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, warning that the U.S. could soon reach 100,000 new cases per day as the winter months approach.
With the November 3 election less than two weeks away, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday that “Trump’s lies and his rejection of science have cost us tens of thousands of lives.”
“We need a new president,” Sanders said.
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