by PAM MARTENS & RUSS MARTENS
On October 21, 2020, during Donald Trump’s first term as President, former President Barack Obama delivered a speech at a Democratic campaign rally in Philadelphia. During the remarks, Obama got to the core of how the fossil fuel industry had shaped the Trump administration. He stated:
“The Environmental Protection Agency, that’s supposed to protect our air and our water, is right now run by an energy lobbyist that gives polluters free reign to dump unlimited poison into our air and water…
“The Interior Department, that’s supposed to protect our public lands and wild spaces, our wildlife and our wilderness. And right now, that’s run by an oil lobbyist who’s determined to sell them to the highest bidder.”
During Trump’s first term, the fossil fuels industry and particularly Charles Koch, Chairman and CEO of the fossil fuels conglomerate, Koch Industries, were brazen in their control of the Trump agenda.
In November of 2017, the respected watchdog, Public Citizen, reported that 44 Koch allies were staffing the White House and other agencies. And as we reported at Wall Street On Parade, that’s on top of the 12 lawyers from Jones Day, Koch Industries’ long-time outside law firm, who took their seats in the Trump administration on January 20, 2017 – the day of Trump’s inauguration.
Trump had barely sat down at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office when a Koch front group, Freedom Partners, issued a list of regulations it wanted gutted – like the Paris Climate accord (which Trump revoked on June 1, 2017) and numerous EPA rules – and threatened those lawmakers who didn’t get on board, writing that “Freedom Partners will hold lawmakers who oppose regulatory relief accountable for their positions.” That meant that they would run a challenger against them in the next Republican primary.
Two other nonprofits that actively engaged in the 2016 presidential election were Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners Action Fund. Not only did the Koch network fund Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners Action Fund to run ads portraying Democrats as reckless tax and spend bureaucrats but the Koch-controlled i360 voter database and voter-targeting operations may have tipped the scales in voter turnout.
This time around, the fossil fuel industry has tried to hide in the background and make it appear to the public that all those Executive Orders from Donald Trump in subservience to their industry are a mandate from his followers.
The reality that the fossil fuel industry is again cracking the whip in Trump 2.0 is underscored by the fact that Trump took more than four months to announce the U.S. was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord in his first term. In Trump 2.0, he signed an Executive Order to that effect on his first day in office, along with a slew of other shocking giveaways to Big Oil.
During Trump’s inaugural speech on January 20, he said: “We will drill, baby, drill. We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have – the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it. We’re going to use it.”
Trump then issued an Executive Order on day one declaring a state of emergency on energy, which carried this dangerous directive:
“The heads of executive departments and agencies (‘agencies’) shall identify and exercise any lawful emergency authorities available to them, as well as all other lawful authorities they may possess, to facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources, including, but not limited to, on Federal lands. If an agency assesses that use of either Federal eminent domain authorities or authorities afforded under the Defense Production Act (Public Law 81-774, 50 U.S.C. 4501 et seq.) are necessary to achieve this objective, the agency shall submit recommendations for a course of action to the President, through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.”
At the time of this Executive Order, there was no energy emergency in the U.S. but there was clearly a climate emergency as thousands of homes were lying in smoldering ruins in the second largest city in America – Los Angeles.
Another day one Executive Order seeks to open up highly controversial areas of Alaska to fossil fuel exploration. It reads in part:
“It is the policy of the United States to:
“(a) fully avail itself of Alaska’s vast lands and resources for the benefit of the Nation and the American citizens who call Alaska home;
“(b) efficiently and effectively maximize the development and production of the natural resources located on both Federal and State lands within Alaska;
“(c) expedite the permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska; and
“(d) prioritize the development of Alaska’s liquified natural gas (LNG) potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations within the Pacific region….”
Another order directs the Environmental Protection Agency to revisit its finding that climate change poses a health risk and should be regulated.
Not only did Trump’s day one Executive Orders boost the fossil fuel industry but they brazenly constrained renewable energy. One executive order barred the U.S. government from auctioning the rights to build wind farms offshore and also temporarily blocked new rights for wind on public lands. Trump also directed the U.S. Department of the Interior to halt the construction of a wind farm in Idaho that was previously approved under President Biden.
These orders come at a dangerous time for the fossil fuel industry in America – which might explain this overt coup d’etat in the Executive Branch. Dozens of state and local lawsuits have been filed against fossil fuel companies, some by the Attorneys General of the states, and are now inching closer to trial.
According to bombshell testimony delivered to a House Committee in 2019 by Sharon Eubanks, the former Director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Tobacco Litigation Team, not only has ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies known for decades that fossil fuels have put the planet on a catastrophic course, but they engaged in the same type of RICO conspiracy as Big Tobacco to hide this information from the American people.
Eubanks served as lead counsel in the federal government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, which played out in 2004 and 2005 in the federal courtroom of Judge Gladys Kessler in the District Court in Washington, D.C.
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