Here's Your Morning Stench Of Desperation: Climate Action "Golden Opportunity" For Trump's "Legacy" [View all]

[hatrack]

Ed. - I'm wondering if the author is a dentist, because it sure sounds like he's been hitting the nitrous oxide.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration unveiled two executive orders intended to bolster his green credentials. The first signals the president’s support for the One Trillion Trees initiative, creating a council to oversee its federal implementation. The second creates a so-called “water subcabinet” to modernize operations in water infrastructure and ensure universal access to clean drinking water. While small, the two new orders come at a strategic time in this election.

Surprisingly, climate change has staked an important position at the table of presidential issues, with Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden spending more time discussing the matter than during any other presidential debate in history. Yet neither of the recent executive orders mentions climate change.

The numbers don’t lie. Sixty-nine percent of likely voters say that they would have a more favorable view of Trump if he embraced a conservative approach to climate change. That number rises to 73 percent for voters between the ages of 18 and 34, and to an astounding 90 percent for GOP voters aged 18 to 54. Embracing a conservative climate platform is one of the surest ways for Trump to not only boost his personal popularity as a presidential candidate, but also the appeal of the GOP more broadly.

EDIT

And this is indeed where the golden opportunity lies for Trump. If he wins in November, he is unconstrained by the prospect of fighting for reelection four years later again and will undoubtedly start thinking about his legacy. If Trump wants to create a genuine legacy, and one that will be carried forward by generations of Republicans, then he must lean into the idea of conservative climate action. After all, nearly three-quarters of Americans would view the president more favorably if he put forward a conservative climate plan. By focusing on American global leadership, infrastructure modernization, natural solutions and energy innovation, the president has the opportunity to shape the environmental debate in a bipartisan way no president has been able to in history. A President Trump that brings Congress together on tackling climate change would not only cement his legacy for generations to come, but also represent a real reckoning of America’s greatness.

EDIT/END

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/521308-climate-change-trumps-golden-opportunity