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Trump Speech on Environment Doesn't Pass Smell Test with Activists

Steve Herman

   VOA's Patsy Widakuswara and Elizabeth Cherneff contributed to this
   report.

   WHITE HOUSE -- In remarks widely panned by environmental organizations,
   U.S. President Donald Trump defended his record on the environment in a
   White House speech Monday.

   "A strong economy is vital to maintaining a healthy environment," Trump
   said.

   Radical environmental plans would not make the world cleaner, according
   to Trump -- who pulled the United States out of the Paris climate
   accord -- but rather, he claimed, would put many Americans out of work.

   Trump took another shot of the Green New Deal environmental plan,
   backed by a number of Democratic Party lawmakers, saying it would "cost
   our economy $100 trillion."

   The president added that "I will not stand for it."

   Trump did claim some environmental progress for his administration,
   predicting carbon emissions in the United States would drop this year
   and in 2020 and stating the government is now strengthening standards
   of lead and copper in drinking water for the first time in nearly 30
   years.

   The U.S. ranking for "access to clean drinking water" is now No. 1
   globally, he noted.

   Trump called several members of his Cabinet to the lectern in the East
   Room to praise his administration's policies on the environment.

   "Today we have the cleanest air on record," said Andrew Wheeler,
   administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and a former
   lobbyist for the country's largest privately-owned coal company. "When
   other nations need help cleaning up their land, water and air they turn
   to us -- not China, not Russia."

   Trump received credit from his interior secretary, David Bernhardt, who
   is a former oil industry lobbyist, for repairing frayed federal-state
   relations on wildlife conservation.

   Technological breakthroughs on clean energy are "literally cascading"
   across the country and around the world, according to Energy Secretary
   Rick Perry.

   "That's your record, President Trump," said Perry, a 2016 presidential
   primary rival of his boss.

   Among others called to the podium by Trump was the owner of a
   bait-and-tackle shop in Port St. Lucie, Florida.

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