Oil Industry’s Investment in Trump Pays Off in a Big Way

Nearly two years ago, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump summoned a group of oil executives and lobbyists to Mar-a-Lago make them an offer: If they donated $1 billion to his campaign, he would richly reward them once he was back in the White House.

Democrats were outraged and described the proposed arrangement as an “unvarnished quid pro quo offer” and a “corrupt bargain.”

We imagine that the executives simply called it a good deal.

And while they ultimately didn’t pony up anywhere close to that amount (although we cannot be sure because of lax campaign finance rules), these fossil fuel moguls ended up giving untold millions to Trump and the GOP. To be fair, in light of the Biden administration’s policies of promoting renewable energy sources and putting in place environmental regulations meant to curb their industry’s destruction of the planet, they probably didn’t need much convincing.

Their investment paid off immediately.

In the first year of his second term, the president rewarded his fossil fuel backers by giving them billions of dollars in tax benefits (while eliminating similar incentives for green energy), fast-tracking drilling projects, undoing environmental rules, and making former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a major proponent of the oil and gas industry, his secretary of the interior.

And, while fossil fuel companies reaped the rewards of this alliance, the entire world is suffering.

There is no way to quantify yet how much damage Trump’s policies and his climate change denialism will cause, but it is going to be substantial.

For example, Patrick Drupp, director of climate policy for the Sierra Club, called the GOP’s grab-all legislation that Trump signed last year “the most anti-environment bill in history.”

And the president is just getting started.

On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has become the Environmental Destruction Agency, proudly announced that it is undertaking the “single largest deregulatory action in US history.”

Specifically, it eliminated the “endangerment finding,” an EPA ruling from 2009 that determined that greenhouse gases (GHG) pose a threat to public health. It was the foundation for regulations seeking to curb GHG emissions in order to ward off a global catastrophe.

Now, it is no more.

“Referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’ the endangerment finding is now eliminated,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin proudly declared at a White House ceremony.

The move will make it much easier for the administration to roll back even more environmental rules in the future.

Environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers were aghast and vowed to challenge the EPA’s rule in court.

The Sierra Club called it a “brazen assault on the health and welfare of the American public,” and its executive director Loren Blackford painted a gloomy picture of the consequences of the administration’s move.

“Communities will suffer as extreme weather continues to threaten us all, costs will continue to rise, and we will saddle future generations with a world that grows increasingly unlivable and endangers the life we know,” Blackford said. “Donald Trump is abandoning his job to help the American people, and we will do everything in our power to block this misguided effort that puts polluters before people.”

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the ranking member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, issued a joint statement in which they blasted “Trump’s fossil fuel corruption,” and noted that the EPA’s decision would make life less affordable for Americans.

“The cascading failures have begun: Climate change is disrupting weather and destabilizing insurance markets, and it threatens to upend mortgage markets, crash home values, and trash the entire economy,” the lawmakers said. “As climate change drives up insurance premiums, grocery prices, energy costs, and health care spending, American families will be left holding the bill.”

The numbers back them up, especially when it comes to the increasing number of natural disasters that are becoming more severe and costly.

According to the Brookings Institution, they already cost American families hundreds of dollars annually with more to come in the future.

Of course, that has never been a concern of the fossil fuel industry, which is now doing what it always does: laugh all the way to the bank.