US President Joe Biden speaking at COP27. Maged Helal/U.S.
Embassy/Zuma This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. This April, at a steak dinner with oil and gas executives at the Mar-a-Lago Club, in Florida, former President Donald Trump made a request backed by a hefty promise: If the CEOs in attendance raised $1 billion to support his reelection bid, he would lower their taxes and eviscerate environmental and public health protections once he became president, clearing away the “regulatory burdens” that stand in the way of their companies injecting more carbon into the atmosphere—and profiting handsomely from it. According to reporting by the Washington Post , Trump promised to reverse dozens of Biden administration policies, including a moratorium on approvals for liquefied natural gas exports, new restrictions on Arctic drilling, and many regulations of oil and gas drilling on public land.
For good measure, he’d also scrap electric vehicle mandates and bring an immediate end to all offshore wind development. Judging from Trump’s record, he fully intends to fulfill these promises, and then some. And his mission will be backed by a playbook—alarming for its extreme approach—fashioned by a right-wing coalition intent on dismantling the administrative state.
A Trump victory would bring an “immediate deceleration in support for decarbonization” and “unabated fossil generation w.
