President Donald Trump doubled down on his clean energy attacks Wednesday, a day after China pitched itself as a leader in a greener future.
The contrasting approaches, delivered to global leaders attending the World Economic Forum, punctuated the divergent paths of the world’s two largest economies — and its biggest climate polluters — as floods, heat waves and other disasters are being sharpened by rising temperatures.
“Instead of closing down energy plants, we’re opening them up. Instead of building ineffective, money-losing windmills, we’re taking them down and not approving any,” Trump said in Davos, Switzerland. He argued that other countries could see their economies improve “by following what we’re doing.”
Trump’s energy message repeated attacks he made in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last September, where he dubbed climate change a “scam” and a “con job” and urged other nations to abandon their pursuit of clean energy in favor of more American oil and gas.
