New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore teamed up at New York University to slam the Trump administration's off-shore drilling program and ongoing promotion of coal.
"My personal comment is going to be that offshore drilling is a really, really dumb idea," said Cuomo, who appeared with Gore at an event at New York University, The Washington Square News reported.
"It is the exact opposite direction that we should be headed as a nation. They [the Trump administration] are showing a total disregard for the science, the reality and the history."
In January, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced the new program which would open most of the country's offshore waters to drilling for oil and gas. And the administration continues to support stop coal-fired power plants.
"The job growth and efficiency in the renewables industry, batteries, electric vehicles — these are the jobs of the future," said Gore as he denounced the coal industry as environmentally and economically untenable.
"We are in the early stages of a sustainability revolution in this world. It has the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution, but it has the speed of the digital revolution, and it is transforming every sector of the market," he said.
Cuomo said: "New York is going to lead a countermovement to what this administration is doing on the environment. While Washington [D.C.] wants to return to coal, the polluting energy of the past, New York has vowed to be coal-free by 2020."
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