This story was originally published in High Country News. It is reproduced as part of a Climate Desk collaboration. In April, Donald Trump, the former president, made a request backed up by a hefty guarantee at a dinner with oil and energy executives at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
[[{“value”:”This article was first published by High Country News, and it is now available for viewing as a result of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Former president Donald Trump made a promise at a steak dinner with oil and gas executives at the Mar- a- Lago Club in Florida this April that he would lower their taxes and eviscerate economic and public health protections if the CEOs in attendance raised$ 1 billion to support his reelection bid, clearing aside the “regulatory burdens” that stand in the way of their companies putting more carbon into the atmosphere and reaping significant profits from it.
Trump reportedly promised to reverse dozens of Biden administration decisions, including a moratorium on liquefied natural gas exports, fresh restrictions on Arctic drilling, and numerous laws governing oil and gas drilling on public land. He’d even rescind the regulations for electric vehicles and put an end to all offshore wind development right away.
Judging from Trump’s record, he thoroughly intends to fulfill these promises, and then some. And a right-wing coalition that is determined to end the managerial state will support his mission, which is alarming because of its intense approach.
A Trump victory would bring an “immediate deceleration in support for decarbonization” and “unabated geological generation would expand”.
It is incredible that the Republican nominee for president can demand a billion dollars in bribes to sell out America’s public lands without being soon disqualified or actually tried in court. After all, Albert B. was a once Secretary of the Interior. In an incident known as the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s, Fall was disgraced and sentenced to prison for doing the same thing. The fact that, in some polls, President Biden and Trump are mathematically tied among younger voters on the subject of climate change is actually more perplexing.
The reason for this is simple—and, I might add, superficial. In a Democratic political debate in March 2020, then-candidate Biden claimed that his climate policy included” no more drilling on national land.” He made a similar statement at a 2019 town hall. Still, the Bureau of Land Management issued 969 permits to drill during the first four months of 2024. So many for” no more drilling”. And that’s not all: In 2023, the administration approved a scaled- back—yet also large and extremely destructive—version of the questionable Willow drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope.
Biden’s actions are rightly condemned by climate activists as being offensive and leave his record as a dark mark. But it is stupid, dumb, and dangerous to let these missteps obscure the administration’s more gentle, but unfortunately more important, actions to protect the climate and public lands from the fossil fuel industry. It is just uneducated to discern no distinction between Trump and Biden.
Biden’s open land and climate policies were all over the place during his first two years in office, but more recently he has cemented his legacy as a conservationist. I wrote about a number of new people lands protections that the administration passed in late April. In the weeks since, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency has implemented new rules limiting coal power plants ‘ emissions of greenhouse gasses, mercury, and other harmful air pollutants, tightening regulations on coal ash disposal, and clamping down on wastewater releases by power plants. Moreover, the BLM proposed ending national coal leasing in America’s largest coal field, Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which signals a possible death knell for a declining industry. The BLM even canceled 25 oil and gas leases in a 40, 000- acre area of southern Utah that is rich with historical resources.
Since a Donald Trump” climate policy” is a contradiction in terms, we’ll look instead at Trump’s energy aims, which consist of little more than “unlock ( ing ) our country’s God- given abundance of oil, natural gas, and clean coal” by shredding environmental and public health protections at the behest of billionaire petroleum executives. Never mind that those exact executives have gushed about achieving record-high private oil output and liquefied natural gas exports while the Biden administration is in power. Never mind that ExxonMobil generated$ 8.6 billion in after-tax profits in the first three months of the year, which is not too bad for an industry that is apparently being under the control of extreme environmentalists.
A group of right-wing organizations calling themselves Project 2025 have taken it upon themselves to create an agenda and also hire staff for the next administration to “rescue the country from the grip of the extreme Left” because the Trump campaign lacks a practical platform. A playbook for each government sector is provided by the coalition in a document called” Mandate for Leadership,” which provides an eerie glimpse into a second Trump presidency.
William Perry Pendley, a famous anti-public lands zealot who was Trump’s acting director of the BLM, was the author of the chapter on the Department of the Interior, illegitimately. Pendley unwaveringly advocates for a return to the BLM’s former glory days, when it was known as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. He calls for the immediate “rollback of Biden’s orders” and the reinstatement of” the Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda” and reiterates the absurd claim that wild horses pose an existential threat to public lands. Per the playbook, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the rest of the region would be reopened to drilling, the whole Holly project ( five drill sites rather than the scaled- up three ) would be approved, coal leasing would be restored, drilling permits would be expedited, methane emissions rules and other pollution limits would be rescinded, national monuments would be shrunk or eliminated, protections for sage grouse, grizzlies, wolves and other endangered species would be removed, and the administration would try to repeal the Antiquities Act of 1906.
And that’s just the DOI chapter. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which have both helped to shift the focus of the departments to renewable energy and climate change, end greenhouse gas emissions reporting for all but a limited few facilities, and roll up coal plant pollution regulations, are all addressed by the Energy Department and EPA sections, which also call on Trump to” stop the war on oil and natural gas.”
The damage inflicted during Trump’s second term was somewhat mitigated by the administration’s incompetence.
The damage inflicted during Trump’s second term was somewhat reduced by the administration’s incompetence. Project 2025’s 920- page playbook looks to remedy that, supplementing Trump’s greed and power- hunger with commercial- backed ideology and expertise. In his place, Trump would establish a dictatorship that vilifies immigrants, criminalizes immigrants, and strengthens the police state while also allowing commercial interests to flourish at the expense of the planet and its most resilient citizens.
A recent report from Wood Mackenzie, a normal resource analytics firm, predicts that a Trump victory in November would bring an “immediate deceleration in support for decarbonization” and “unabated geological generation would expand”. The report warns that” these actions would lead to a net zero emissions pathway for the US.”
Biden may have broken a promise, but when it comes to Trump vs. Biden on the climate, the contrast could n’t be more stark.”}]] High Country News previously published this story, which is now available as a result of the Climate Desk collaboration. This April, at a steak dinner with oil and gas executives at the Mar- a- Lago Club, in Florida, original President Donald Trump made a request backed by a massive promise: If the CEOs in attendance raised$ 1 billion to support
This story was originally published in High Country News. It is reproduced as part of a Climate Desk collaboration. In April, Donald Trump, the former president, made a request backed up by a hefty guarantee at a dinner with oil and energy executives at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
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