2. Trump and Fossil Fuel Industry Ravaging the World

Part 2 of Series

We’re all aware of the worsening climate crisis, but this summer’s wildfires, searing heat, droughts, toxic smoke, and widespread deaths of humans and other species seemed to represent an explosive escalation.

"Far beyond the fires raging across Europe and North America, the smoke, dangerous to breathe, hangs in the air, dimming the view, changing the very color of sunlight into something grimly unsettling.... Summer was the sweet season celebrated in poetry and song, often pictured as a gentle goddess; now it is too often a threat and a misery.” -- Rebecca Solnit’s lament for summer, and she was in New Mexico.(1)

Europe was worse. The New Yorker’s “Taking the Heat” chronicles the grim story of this summer in Europe, which is warming at more than twice the rate of the global average. 117 in Gascony, a nuclear plant closed because the river that was supposed to cool it was too warm.... “And this summer is only a preview of the treacherous weather that lies ahead.”(2)

Unsurprisingly, the Trump Administration seems not to have noticed. “Unsurprising” because Trump and the Heritage Foundation took office with an express commitment to overturning the environmentalist movement and turning America back to coal and oil. Global warming “is a hoax!”(3) The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 laid out a detailed plan for executing this pivot: “dismantling federal climate change research, rolling back the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory powers, expanding fossil fuel leasing on public lands, and repealing major clean energy and conservation laws....”(4)

It’s working surprisingly well, unlike Trump’s plan to dominate the world. The secretive and savvy Russell Vought (unlike Pete Hegseth) works from behind the scenes directing the OMB, where all the executive offices intersect. The reason he’s so effective is the powerful autocratic Presidency that Trump’s ego and Project 2025’s planning have forged, abetted by a supine Congress and a supportive Supreme Court.

One example of Trump’s success: “The Trump administration has moved to remove or reduce protections from more than 86 million acres of federal public lands and national forests. Major actions include proposing to repeal the 25-year-old Roadless Rule across 45 million acres of national forests and slashing Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments to a fraction of their original size.”(5)

It will only get worse as global warming proceeds apace.

• The ever-grifting Trump, his family, and his cronies have an incentive to keep it going. They are making millions as tax-payer money is transferred from Congressionally funded preservation & environmental programs to fossil fuel barons. A recent example: The Trump Administration is transferring the funds from cancelled offshore wind projects – estimated to be around a billion dollars – to a billionaire who lives near Mar-a-Lago and who has donated a million dollars to Trump campaigns. “Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee estimated this week that the president’s holdings in oil and gas companies have jumped in value from a range of $13-$46 million at the start of this year, to $17-$61 million by mid-Aug.”(6)

• This year the Tech Oligarchs entered the fray with their billions of dollars and insatiable demand for Data Centers to support their quest to move us all into an AI-dominated world. Data Centers consume unimaginable amounts of water and energy. A post dedicated to this topic will appear soon.

To avoid ending on a depressing note, here’s a quote from Paul Krugman:

“Yet here’s the irony: Donald Trump’s disastrous Iran war has delivered a huge boost for renewable energy around the world — except in the U.S. Trump has so far done more to shift the global economy away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy than any other single individual in history.”(7)

Citations to Follow