Trump Is Powerless To Inflict Damage Everywhere
When I was a little boy my mother told me, “One of the reasons it’s important to get a good education is that it’s the one thing no one can take away from you.”
Fifty years later, we have a pretty cool analogy brewing with Donald Trump and the renewable energy industry. As close as Trump’s connection is to the expansion of fossil fuel extraction and consumption, he’s powerless to put a spear through clean energy.
6.5 million families worldwide are flourishing via paychecks coming from the solar industry alone. 51,000 new jobs were created in designing manufacturing, selling and installing solar PV in the U.S. by itself last year, meaning that it’s growing at 17 times the rate of the economy as a whole.
As much as Trump and his friends in Big Oil would love to destroy their competitors in renewables, they’re totally incapable of doing so. Clean energy was here before Trump, and it will be even bigger and stronger by the time he leaves (and goes back to bankrupting casinos, defrauding and ripping off students with sham universities, or whatever else he’ll do).
I also read recently that the fastest growing job in the US is as a wind turbine technician.
But I have no doubt that a vindictive or clueless president could do a great deal to harm a thriving industry all the while saying he is “preserving (coal mining) jobs.”