Paul Krugman: Trump’s Energy, Low and Dirty

King Coal has a scary soul:

Trump’s Energy, Low and Dirty, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Donald Trump has two false beliefs about energy, one personal, one political. …

On the personal side, Trump reportedly disdains exercise of any kind except golf. He believes that raising a sweat depletes the finite reserves of precious bodily fluids, I mean energy, that a person is born with, and should therefore be avoided.

Many years of acting on this belief may or may not explain the weird and embarrassing scene at the G-7 summit in Taormina, in which six of the advanced world’s leaders strolled together a few hundred yards through the historic city, but Trump followed behind, driven in an electric golf cart.

More consequential, however, is Trump’s false belief that lifting environmental restrictions … will bring back the days when the coal-mining industry employed hundreds of thousands of blue-collar Americans. …

These days…, those who take energy policy seriously see a future that belongs largely to renewables… But that’s not what voters from what used to be coal country want to hear. They enthusiastically backed Trump, who promised to bring those coal jobs back, even though his real agenda would punish those voters with savage cuts in programs they depend on. And Trump cares a lot more about public adulation than he does about serious policy advice.

Which brings me … to Trump’s European trip…

First, in Brussels, he declined to endorse NATO’s Article 5, which says that an attack on any NATO member is an attack on all. In effect, he repudiated the central plank of America’s most important alliance. Why, it was almost as if he’s more interested in appeasing Vladimir Putin than he is in defending democracy.

Then, in Taormina, he was the only leader who refused to endorse the Paris climate accord … that may be our last good chance to avoid catastrophic climate change. … But Trump isn’t offering coal country real help, just a fantasy about turning back the clock. …

So am I suggesting that the world’s most powerful leader might put the whole planet’s future at risk so that he can keep telling politically convenient lies…? Yes. …

Now, maybe Trump won’t really pull the plug on Paris; or maybe he’ll be gone from the scene before the damage is irreversible. But there’s a real possibility that last week was a pivotal moment in human history, the moment when an irresponsible leader sent the whole world careening off to hell in a golf cart.