Republican candidate for US president Donald Trump has promised to get miners back to work if he wins election to the White House in November.
In a speech accepting his nomination as the party’s candidate for the White House, Trump delivered a veiled threat to US plans to wean itself off fossil fuels.
“Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and we will end it. We are going to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy,” he said.
“This will produce more than $20 trillion in job-creating economic activity over the next four decades.”
Tilting at his opponent Hillary Clinton, due to be formally accepted as Democrat candidate in Philadelphia next week, Trump suggested her climate-friendly policies would wreck the US economy.
“My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steel workers of our country out of work – that will never happen when I am President,” he said.
“With these new economic policies, trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country.”
Democrats are expected to support a set of carbon-cutting policies at their annual convention, broadly in line with president Barack Obama’s plan to cut coal use through his Clean Power Plan.
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Other proposals include cuts to subsidies for oil and gas, tougher regulations for new pipelines and more incentives for wind and solar energy.
In contrast, a Republican platform on energy and climate agreed this week rejects the 2015 Paris climate agreement, brands coal ‘clean’ and promises cuts to renewable energy funding.
“Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue,” it said. “This is the triumph of extremism over common sense, and Congress must stop it…
“We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, which represent only the personal commitments of their signatories.”