{"id":7312,"date":"2016-11-11T17:12:04","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T16:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7312"},"modified":"2016-11-11T17:15:16","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T16:15:16","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-president-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7312","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week – President Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"382px-us_flag_15_stars_e-svg\"<\/a>President Trump.\u00a0 Two words I find it difficult but not surprising to type.\u00a0 After Brexit I have thought it was highly likely he would win for some months.\u00a0 There are two reasons for this one of which is covered below and the other is the polls which simply cannot be trusted anywhere at the moment.\u00a0 There are two questions raised by President Trump.\u00a0 The first is the implications for policy change and the second is why and what can we do about it?<\/p>\n

On policy change the most worrying as far as this site is concerned, climate change and energy policy.\u00a0 Trump thinks that climate change is a Chinese plot to destroy America’s economy.\u00a0 Where to start?\u00a0 This view alone shows he is serially unsuited to be president.\u00a0 Apart from the complete (wilful?) ignorance about the history of climate change perhaps its best to say if the Chinese are plotting why do they have the largest renewables programme<\/a> in history, which is costing them billions of dollars?\u00a0 We have just ratified the Paris treaty and now its at risk.\u00a0 The second area of concern is Trump’s vision of resurrecting the coal industry (just as the pesky Chinese are doing the exact opposite).\u00a0 As the Chinese have found coal fired power has a whole heap of pollution problems apart from CO2<\/sub>.\u00a0 The big problem for Trump is that soon, if not already on the best sites, wind\/solar\/storage will be cheaper than coal (and probably create more jobs too).\u00a0 This leaves the question of what he will do?\u00a0 Tax solar like Spain<\/a>, or subsidise coal and fracking (which I assume is also in the mix).<\/p>\n

This site has always taken an interest in politics as does our book<\/a> since our view was we need to change the way we live radically to cope with energy security and climate issues and that is by its very nature political.\u00a0 In all the Western world people are hurting.\u00a0 Neoliberalism and globalisation have meant only the very wealthiest<\/a> have got wealthier over the last 30 years. \u00a0 Where jobs have been created they have tended to be insecure and poorly paid (I know something of this myself).\u00a0 Both Brexit and the US election are a kickback against this.\u00a0 Electoral commentators and traditional political parties still have not come to terms with this which has manifested itself in the rise of nationalism and nationalistic parties pretty much everywhere.\u00a0 Its highly debatable whether a billionaire with very simplistic solutions will solve the very real problems caused by globalisation.\u00a0 Last time large scale protectionism was tried we had a world war.\u00a0 Quite what the solutions to this are I don’t know, but we need to start finding them fast as automation<\/a> is going to make this far worse.<\/p>\n

Like Brexit its hard to see anything good coming out of the Trump victory.\u00a0 It won’t achieve what those who voted for it want and do real damage.\u00a0 I cannot condemn those voted for either though, even if I think they have disadvantaged themselves by doing so.\u00a0 However, we who do not agree with these outcomes really need to think about solutions for a way forward, fast.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Trump.\u00a0 Two words I find it difficult but not surprising to type.\u00a0 After Brexit I have thought it was highly likely he would win for some months.\u00a0 There are two reasons for this one of which is covered below … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week - President Trump - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7312\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7312\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7312\",\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week - 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