As soon as fossil-fuel financed Donald Trump was sworn into office, he got busy destroying the nation’s climate progress. In June 2017, Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, shamefully walking away from a global commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the only signatory country to do so.
Among Trump’s early steps to halt climate progress, Scott Pruitt, his Environmental Protection Agency director, scrubbed climate science information off the U.S. agency’s website. Pruitt, who resigned under a cloud of scandal the following year, “cleansed” (read: removed) information about fossil fuels and carbon emissions from agency web pages that had been educating the public on climate science since the late 1990s.
In further proof that the party of Trump is funded by an unbridled oligarchy, Trump recently offered to sell the environment to Big Oil execs for a cool billion. The real story is that no one is surprised.
Trump’s lowly $1 billion price tag
At a shockingly under-reported event in April, the presumptive Republican nominee invited fossil fuel representatives to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago where he served up a foul tasting entrée of quid pro quo. More than 20 oil executives from Chevron, Exxon, Occidental Petroleum and other fossil fuel concerns attended. Over a steak dinner, Trump offered attendees $110 billion in tax breaks and a reversal of Biden’s environmental protections, if they agreed to donate a billion dollars to his campaign to pay his legal bills put him back in the White House.
In exchange for the cool billion, Trump pledged to let the planet burn baby burn by scrapping President Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy and other initiatives opposed by the fossil fuel industry, including legal barriers to drilling and rules designed to cut car pollution.
Trump told his dinner guests he was offering them a good “deal.” Ponying up $1 billion to Trump would be advantageous for Big Oil because the value of the tax and regulation cuts he’d give them in return would far exceed that amount.
There was apparently no mention of the projected $38 trillion a year to mitigate climate destruction to homes, habitats and infrastructure. Presumably Trump will sell contracts to rebuild coastal regions and sea walls to real estate tycoons in exchange for $2 billion.
Conservative media claim Democrats are pearl clutching about Trump’s blatant extortion because, under Citizens United, that’s how sausage is made and “everyone does it.” While it is true that many Democrats are now promising donors they will protect abortion access, there’s a vast moral and legal chasm between accepting money to protect a fundamental human right —- healthcare —- and accepting money to destroy a fundamental human right —- a livable planet.
Trump embraces Big Oil’s disinformation
Climate disinformation from the fossil fuel lobby is legion, and has gone on for decades. American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers are currently running an extremely well-financed campaign against Biden’s EPA’s tailpipe rules, misleading consumers and voters by calling the rules a “ban” on “gas cars.” The lobby has purchased ads in battleground states to lie to voters about Biden’s efforts to increase the manufacture of EVs, claiming that increasing EVs and adopting the charging station infrastructure to support them will restrict consumer choice.
Fossil fuel disinformation efforts are obscene because the profits they are protecting are obscene.
Last year, ExxonMobil and Chevron reported their biggest annual profits in a decade. Three of the largest U.S. oil and gas producers reported combined profits of $85.6 billion in 2023. Exxon Mobil reported $36 billion, while Chevron reported $21.4 billion. Shell’s reported profits were down from 2022 but still reflected the second-largest profits in a decade.
A tale of two countries
Scientists’ warnings are clear: global temperatures are now hovering at a precarious tipping point that could soon- sooner than predicted- endanger human habitability.
Biden, like other educated world leaders, refers to global warming as an “existential threat.” He has engaged in over 300 actions aimed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce air pollution, restrict toxic chemicals, and preserve public lands and waters. Although these policies will take years to deliver climate results, and have been complicated by world events, by one early assessment, they have already resulted in a 3% cut in energy emissions.
Trump, amplifying Big Oil’s fraudulent claim, has called climate change a “hoax.” At his New Jersey rally last week, Trump vowed to stop offshore wind “on day one.” He claims without evidence that wind energy causes cancer, and that he knows “windmills very much,” because he has “studied it better than anybody I know.” Flexing the principles of Darwinism, Trump eliminated more than 125 environmental rules and policies during his time in office and is now promising even more.
In November, we will elect the President we deserve. Whether Trump or Biden wins, both men are elderly. That means they will be gone, relegated to history, by the time bees stop pollinating.
The choice is simple. One of these candidates promises his grandchildren will eat from a golden plate. The other promises there will be something on the plate.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake, is free.