Want to Save the Planet? Easy! Just “Be More Like Donald”

My weird conversation with the author of the book “Donald J. Trump: An Environmental Hero.”

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

President Trump is reading a book, and he would very much like you to know about it. It’s a book about himself, called Donald J. Trump: An Environmental Hero, self-published in 2016 by his former environmental consultant, Edward Russo. Beginning in 2002, Russo consulted on the Trump Organization’s golf courses on matters like landscaping and meeting local zoning requirements.

It’s not entirely clear how long Russo worked for Trump—his book says it was 15 years, some media outlets say it was 17. But during that time, Russo claims he spoke with Trump two or three times a week about more than a dozen projects. Back in early 2017, I thought maybe I could get another window into Trump’s environmental record by interviewing Russo. He spoke to me from Key West, Florida, where he now lives, and we had a wide-ranging conversation on the consulting practice he was hoping to get going, after a career serving local New Jersey environmental and planning boards.

It was a weird experience: He told me how Trump’s early executive orders were really all about clean air and water and that his use of “hoax” to describe climate change was really a more nuanced criticism that climate change is just a distraction from the more important priorities, like cleaning up toxic sites. Later, when E&E News profiled him, he claimed to have turned down a position as Trump’s White House environmental adviser

At the time, I hesitated to write about my conversation with Russo because frankly, I didn’t see why I should take seriously his claims about Trump’s environmentalism. His book didn’t provide a real window into the policy and industry interests Trump had backed. So his slim 88-pager sat on my desk for more than three years, collecting dust until I returned to it after a few recent events. 

First, there was a White House presser in early January announcing Trump’s monumental rollback of environmental standards for new fossil fuel infrastructure. During a briefing, Trump noted, “Somebody wrote a book that I’m an environmentalist and actually called [it] The Environmentalist—actually, before I did this. But they wrote a book. I’d like to get it.”  

But what really jogged my memory about Russo was the president’s sudden interest in trees. As The New York Times‘ Lisa Friedman reported Wednesday, “The president’s commitment to a global effort to plant one trillion trees by 2030 surprised even White House officials who work on environment policy.”

When I interviewed Russo in 2017, he told me, “There is more of a frenzy to demonize Donald Trump than to expose the environmental achievements that he has created.” When I pressed him to list those achievements, Russo praised Trump’s interest in landscaping on his golf courses, dealing with issues like erosion control and creating “specific and sometimes spectacular habitats.” He wrote in his book, “If I wanted to put in a pond to the left side to the left side of the fairway of hole six at Trump Philadelphia, he would remind me that there was a red maple close by and tell me to make sure we didn’t damage the root zone.” (Sometimes, Trump’s golf course environmentalism involves clearing land of wildlife and trees, which a Trump Organization golf course was caught doing just last year.) 

In the book, Russo lionizes Trump as a green hero, even as he dismisses environmental advocates’ work as ineffective bureaucracy. While the environmentalists “promote meetings and seminars to develop visioning for some amorphous nebulous future response, Donald has been concentrating on clean air and clean water by stabilizing river banks, planting millions of dollars of trees, and establishing and enhancing important habitats.” (Yeah, sure, conferences are definitely all environmentalists do.)  Russo wonders, “I wonder how much effort Donald’s media critics are making to clean up the environment?”

He goes on to urge readers to “be more like Donald” in their own environmental efforts: 

If people really want to do something constructive, start by cleaning up the landfills in your town, create important wildlife habitats, and promote water quality initiatives. You know, be more like Donald, because that is precisely what he does. Because if we concentrate on cleaning the air and water, the result will be reduced CO2 emissions. That is the point that Donald has been making. While others promote meetings and seminars to develop visioning for some amorphous nebulous future response, Donald has been concentrating on clean air and clean water by stabilizing river banks, planing millions of dollars of trees, and establishing and enhancing important habitats.

Trump has been repeating Russo’s claim that he cares about clean air and water—but the public has definitely not been buying it: Surveys of voters have consistently shown that climate change and the environment are his most unpopular positions, even among some Republicans. Small wonder, since wildlife, water quality, public lands, air pollution, enforcement, and oceans have all been targeted in the work of this “environmental hero:” 96 regulatory rollbacks and proposed budget cuts. And counting.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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