Donald Trump’s New Energy Adviser Kevin Cramer?? Loves Fracking, Doubts Climate Change
Donald Trump seems to be shaking off vestiges of the “Never Trump” movement and intra-party squabbles as he surrounds himself with seasoned political advisers as he heads towards the next phase of his run for the White House. But while his recent choice of political insider Kevin Cramer as a key energy adviser will likely appeal to Trump’s far right-leaning base of supporters, some of Cramer’s key positions may not appeal to a broader swath of the electorate.
Kevin Cramer, a Republican Representative from North Dakota, is currently preparing at least two reports on energy policy for the Trump campaign ahead of the GOP front-runner’s forthcoming appearance at an oil and gas conference. While Cramer is a self-described skeptic on the matter of climate change, he has hinted that part of his advice to Donald Trump will be to use a bit of political finesse in how he addresses global warming.
“[M]y advice would be, while I’m a skeptic, as well, he is a product of political populism, and political populism believes that there needs [to be] some addressing of climate change,” Kevin Cramer said in a quote provided by Scientific American.
Indeed, while climate change is undoubtedly a controversial topic particularly in the arena of American politics, Donald Trump’s previous statements on the subject have gone well beyond conventional naysaying. In 2012, Trump asserted via Twitter that the “concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
As reported by Business Insider, Trump’s tweet was raised by Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders earlier this year when Sanders suggested that the billionaire’s sentiments made it difficult to take him seriously as a candidate for high office. Donald Trump later backtracked on the tone of his assertions, telling Fox television personalities that his words were intended as a “joke.” He added that he personally knows “much about climate change.”
While Trump energy adviser Kevin Cramer has not gone so far as to call global warming a hoax, he has opposed a number of Obama policies regarding the environment, including efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, Cramer believes that the Earth is presently in the midst of a cooling trend, according to the Straits Times. A number of scientific studies by prominent agencies and institutions, including NASA, run contrary to Kevin Cramer’s position on climate change.
Trump’s new energy adviser is also an enthusiastic proponent of fracking, an industry that has brought about an economic boon to Cramer’s home state of North Dakota. Last year, Kevin Cramer praised new rules that supported “safe (and) responsible hydraulic fracturing activities on public and tribal lands.”
“It is my hope these new rules will give adequate deference to states, like North Dakota, who have been effectively regulating oil and gas production for decades in a safe and environmentally friendly manner,” Cramer said in his 2015 statement on fracking. “We cannot let misguided bureaucrats under the influence of extreme environmentalists derail the energy security fracking has brought to the United States. North Dakota has been at the forefront of this American energy renaissance revitalizing rural America and driving our economy all across our great country,” said Cramer.
Like the topic of climate change, the practice of fracking is also controversial. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, a U.S. Geological study has explicitly indicated that hydraulic fracturing is “almost certainly” behind a rise in minor and frequent earthquakes in a number of states. Nevertheless, Donald Trump shares Kevin Cramer’s enthusiasm for the practice, once hailing fracking as the pretext for “American energy independence.”
[Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
