A pair of Democratic U.S. senators pledged Saturday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan to keep fighting for climate action during Republican President-elect Donald Trump's second term, while urging President Joe Biden to act decisively against liquefied natural gas exports before the end of his presidency.
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Ed Markey of Massachusetts spoke at a press conference Saturday following a Friday joint panel discussion at COP29, where they both sounded the alarm over the dangers of Trump 2.0 and offered hope for climate action.
"With Trump and the Republicans taking their turn at the political reins, oil and gas companies will soon have their pick of lackeys to enable their destructive, polluting LNG wish list," said Markey, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Climate, Clean Air, and Nuclear Safety.
"Supercharged natural gas exports will be a new Trump energy tax on American households, costing households billions by sending fossil fuels abroad to the highest bidder," the senator continued. "Big Oil has a business plan—and is only here at COP29 to make their business deals, at the expense of working families in the U.S. and frontline communities around the globe."
"But our climate-focused, people-powered, renewable plan is better, and we're joining forces worldwide to fight for it and reject Big Oil's attempt to put private profits over the public interest—no matter who's president and no matter which cronies are at the controls," Markey added.
As the senator noted during a Friday press call, "Just like climate change won't be solved by any one president, climate action won't be stopped by any one president."
Earlier this week, Markey and Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) introduced the Targeting Environmental and Climate Recklessness Act (TECRA), legislation to "restrict access to the U.S. financial system for those individuals and companies most responsible for exacerbating climate change and deforestation."
Whitehouse said in a statement that "dark days are ahead in Washington as Donald Trump, Republicans, and their fossil fuel handlers abdicate America's leadership on climate just as the scientific and economic warnings of climate chaos grow more clear and grim."
"The world must be clear-eyed about the threat Trump's Republican Party poses to climate safety," the senator added. "At COP, I hope to reassure our foreign counterparts that Democrats will pursue climate progress at every level of government while fighting tooth and nail to expose the Big Oil-fueled corruption descending on D.C."
Markey stressed that "climate change and Donald Trump are both existential threats to our health and to our livable future—but we're not giving up on either front."
"Even if Donald Trump is ready to enact his day-one doomsday agenda and pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement yet again, we will rise up in support of ambitious climate action and climate finance targets—targets that will show that COP stands for Climate Outlasts Presidents," Markey argued.
"We must work together, both at home and in solidarity with lawmakers around the world, in order to delay and derail Trump and the fossil fuel industry's dirty agenda," he added.
The senators and green groups said one way to get a head start on fighting that agenda is for Biden to halt LNG export expansion. Although climate campaigners praised Biden's January pause on approvals for all LNG exports to non-Fair Trade Agreement countries, a Trump-appointed federal judge lifted the pause in July. In September, the Department of Energy granted LNG export approval to the company New Fortress Energy.
Under Biden's watch, the United States became the world's leading LNG exporter.
"While Trump stacks his cabinet with a carnival of corporate cronies, President Biden has just weeks to halt some of the biggest carbon bombs on Earth," Center for Biological Diversity senior climate campaigner Ben Goloff said at Saturday's press conference."
"From the Gulf Coast to Europe and Asia, U.S. LNG expansion is neither needed nor wanted. The Biden administration should urgently complete its review of LNG exports' many harms," Goloff added. "It should reject authorizations for monster polluter [Calcasieu Pass 2] LNG export terminal and other pending projects that fail to meet the public interest test required by law, science, and justice."
