Trump bans drilling off state coast
President visits Florida, touts record on the environment
President Donald Trump kicked off the home stretch of the 2020 campaign with a trip to South Florida, where he promoted himself as a champion of the environment and announced a ban on oil drilling off the state’s Atlantic coast.
“My administration is proving every day that we can improve our environment while creating millions of high paying jobs,” Trump said. “To my administration, environmental protection is a sacred obligation.”
He claimed Democrats would use the environment as an excuse to pursue a socialist agenda. And, Trump said, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would be bad for both the environment and the economy. “Joe Biden’s plan would destroy America’s middle class while giving a free pass to the world’s foreign polluters,” he said.
Trump’s announcement — eight weeks before Election Day in a state where voters overwhelmingly oppose offshore drilling — is a reversal of the president’s previous support for offshore drilling.
Biden wrote on Twitter that Trump “conveniently says that he changed his mind” 56 days before the election. And U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat who represents most of coastal Palm Beach County, said Trump can’t be trusted and predicted he would abandon the drilling ban he announced Tuesday if he’s reelected.
Trump made his drilling announcement during a 20-minute speech at Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse, joined by his most prominent supporter in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis. He spoke on a stage festooned with American and Florida flags with the iconic lighthouse in the background.
For most of the speech, Trump focused on the environment, but also criticized the “fake news,” said his actions on the coronavirus saved “millions” of lives, and said his re-election is the only way gun owners would continue to enjoy the Second Amendment.
He said he has a special affinity for the Florida environment because the state is now its home. The president declared his Mara-Lago Club along the Atlantic Ocean in Palm Beach as his legal residence last year when he got mad at his lifelong home of New York City. One of the state’s features he praised: “All those beautiful marshes and marshlands.”
At one point he was speaking about the environment, then suddenly brought up COVID-19. “We’re rapidly restoring the greatest economy in history. We created the greatest economy in the history of our country. And then we had to close it up when the China plague came in. We closed it up. We saved millions of lives. We banned highly infected China from coming in. It was highly infected. The people were highly infected. Wuhan province. We banned them. Nobody said do it. Everybody said I shouldn’t do it,” Trump said, before turning back to the environment.
Democrats and environmental activists dismissed the notion of Trump as a friend of the environment as a joke. Biden, in a statement on Tuesday, highlighted the 11,000 Florida deaths and 600,000 Florida coronavirus cases said the way the president handled the crisis shows a lamentable pattern of ignoring scientists and other experts.
“When it comes to the coronavirus, it’s no surprise that President Trump has refused to listen to the experts and the scientists — just look at his environmental record. Trump has called the climate crisis a ‘hoax.’ He has eliminated rules designed to keep our air and water clean. And, dangerously, he has opened up additional public lands, both on land and offshore, to the possibility of new oil and gas drilling, a deeply unpopular threat to Florida’s natural environment and tourismbased economy,” Biden said.
Offshore drilling
Trump said he was extending the existing ban on offshore oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida’s west coast and expanding it to the Atlantic coast and Georgia and South Carolina for 10 years. The existing Gulf moratorium is contained in a law originally passed in 2006 that expires in 2022. The order he signed on Tuesday continues that moratorium for 10 years and adds the additional territory through 2032. It doesn’t carry the force of law and could be reversed at any time.
Trump has championed increased production of fossil fuels, and the administration pushed to expand most of the U.S. coastline to offshore oil and gas drilling. Residents of Florida, wary of accidents and oil spills that could damage the state’s beaches and tourism industry, have generally opposed drilling off the state’s coast. Leading Republican elected officials are opponents of offshore drilling.
A March 2019 Quinnipiac University Poll found 64% of Florida voters opposed drilling in the ocean off the coasts, with 29% supporting it. All political, gender, education, age and racial groups were opposed to offshore drilling — except Florida Republicans, who supported offshore drilling, 54% to 38%.
The longstanding opposition to offshore drilling among Floridians intensified after the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, better known to many as the BP oil spill. In addition to the 11 lives lost in the accident, the massive oil spill cause environmental damage and economic wreckage in many Gulf Coast states, including Florida.
“Drilling off the shores of Florida is a non-starter — not worth the risk of endangering our environment, fishing, boating or tourism. President Trump’s plan to extend the moratorium is the right one, and it proves that our voices are being heard. We must
never tolerate drilling near our beautiful coastline,” U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican who represents Jupiter, said in said in a statement issued while while Trump was still speaking.
Frankel agreed restricting offshore drilling is “a good thing … We should not be drilling off the coast.”
But, she said, there’s no reason to believe a Trump promise would last past Election Day. “He obviously knows it is a politically devastating issue to support drilling off of Florida,” Frankel said. “You can’t believe anything he says.”
Environmental groups also questioned Trump’s motives and ultimate intentions. Oceana, a coalition of major foundations aimed at restoring the world’s oceans, pointed to the administration’s years-long pro-offshore drilling position. “Trump’s message sounds more like political speech than a move toward permanent protection. These coasts do need real protections.”
The American Petroleum Institute also criticized the order from a different perspective. “Extending the moratorium in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and expanding it to the South Atlantic is the wrong approach at the wrong time. Offshore access is critical for growing U.S. energy leadership and providing affordable energy for American families for decades to come.”
Final campaign push
The trip signals both that the campaign began its home stretch the day after Labor Day, eight weeks before Election Day, and that Florida is a critically important state.
With 29 electoral votes, Florida awards more than 10% of the number needed to win the presidency, and it’s the biggest state that could go for either Democratic nominee Joe Biden or President Donald Trump.
The race is tight. An NBC News/Marist College poll released Tuesday found Biden and Trump tied, with each having support from 48% of Florida likely voters.
Time is also tight. In three weeks, many of the millions of Florida voters will be receiving, and start filling out, their vote-bymail ballots.
Besides the Florida visit, the president is traveling this week to North Carolina (Tuesday night), Michigan (Thursday) and Nevada (Saturday), states that were close in 2016.
Also Tuesday, the Democratic nominee’s wife, Jill Biden, hosted a virtual roundtable about school reopenings with parents, teachers and a school board member from Jacksonville, discussing Biden’s plan to reopen schools safely. On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will campaign in Miami.
Trump’s South Florida trip was clearly political — and the president described it as the first of a two-stop day on the campaign trail — but was labeled an official government trip, which meant it was arranged by government em
ployees and paid for by taxpayers.
Democrats
In a video news conference, state Sen. Bobby Powell delivered a broad indictment of Trump’s performance.
“To come here to Palm Beach County and to claim a record of environmental advocacy and championing environmental issues is not only disingenuous, it’s disrespectful and it’s downright preposterous,” Powell said. “We’ve seen nothing from this president that would even indicate that he’s for the environment..”
He also took credit for funding for improvements to the Herbert Hoover Dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee, the efforts to combat toxic algae and red tide, and Everglades restoration. Frankel said Trump doesn’t get special credit for going along with efforts that have bipartisan support.
She and other Democrats and environmental activists said Trump’s years in office show he isn’t supportive of the environment, pointing to his rollback of environmental rules and proposed reductions in environmental spending. At his speech in Jupiter, Trump began by praising his interior secretary, a former oil and gas industry lobbyist, and his environmental protection administrator, a former coal industry lobbyist.
Dave King, 68, of West Palm Beach was in Jupiter to show his opposition to Trump. He said he thinks Trump supports banning drilling so he can get re-elected, but doesn’t trust what happens if he’s re-elected. “He says one thing and then does another. He’s wrecking our economy, our beautiful beaches. Florida knows about election-year environmentalists.”
Supporters
Trump praised DeSantis for doing a “great job” as a candidate, and then as governor. Then he hedged, ever so slightly, saying the true test would be in November, presumably based on how the president does in Florida. “I’ll let you know if he did a good job.”
As Trump left the stage, giving a thumbs up sign as the song YMCA played over the loudspeakers, DeSantis grabbed a handful of presidential Sharpies from the table Trump used to sign the order and tossed them to people in the crowd of about 200 that had gathered for the event. Most of the people weren’t wearing masks at the outdoor event, and the seating didn’t allow for social distancing.
Nearby, at the corner of U.S. 1 and State Road A1A, Valerie Techentin, 34, held a Trump banner with her daughter,14. “I am all about conservation and the environment, and so is Trump. He’s practical and down to earth, and you get the truth from him.”