DONALD TRUMP IS pulling out all the stops to get an Atlantic wall built at his golf course in Co Clare.
The billionaire mogul and presumptive Republican US presidential candidate has been engaged in an ongoing saga since he bought Doonbeg Golf Club in Clare in 2014.
The Trump-owned TIGL Ireland Enterprise Limited wants to build a 2.8km berm on a sand dune at Carrowmore Bay to protect its investment against coastal erosion and storm damage.
The move has been opposed by conservationists in Ireland – with Carrowmore dunes being designated a Special Area of Conservation and a Natura 2000 site.
Last month, the plans for the wall hit a snag after TIGL’s application to have it declared a strategic infrastructure development has been denied by An Bord Pleanála.
Now, the company has filed a planning application with Clare County Council – complete with a 242 page Environmental Impact Statement prepared by an Irish consultancy firm - for the wall to be built.
The application, first reported today by Politico, cites local regulations pertaining to “rising sea levels and increased storm frequency and wave energy associated with global warming” as cause for the wall to be built.
The company’s concern for global warming is at odds with Trump’s own views on the subject, which he has called a “con job” and a “hoax” in the past.
Global warming
Trump, who has roiled the immigration debate by proposing to build a massive wall along the Mexican border, has repeatedly taken to Twitter to express skepticism that human activity is causing the world to warm, raising sea levels as the polar ice caps melt.
He has also said he would seek to “renegotiate” the global accord to cut climate-warming carbon emissions agreed to by President Barack Obama in December.
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” Trump tweeted in 2012.
“The entire country is FREEZING – we desperately need a heavy dose of global warming, and fast! Ice caps size reaches all time high,” Trump tweeted in 2014.
Trump campaign spokesman Alan Garten did not respond today to messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Environmental groups pounced on the application as evidence of hypocrisy.
“Donald Trump clearly cares more about the fate of his golf courses than the health of the millions of families already affected by the climate crisis,” said Adam Beitman, a spokesman for the Sierra Club.
With reporting from AP
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