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us department of interior
Trump Picks Big Oil Ally and Drilling Enthusiast Doug Burgum for Interior
"Burgum is an oligarch completely out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who cherish our natural heritage," said the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Nov 15, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has chosen billionaire North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry and vocal proponent of oil drilling, to serve as head of the Interior Department in the incoming administration, a critical post tasked with overseeing hundreds of millions of acres of federal land and water.
Burgum, a friend of oil billionaire Harold Hamm, served as a kind of middleman between Trump's presidential campaign and the fossil fuel industry during the 2024 race. The Washington Postreported that Burgum's selection as interior secretary will "give Hamm expansive influence over policy related to drilling on public lands, at a time his company stands to benefit from the rule changes Trump envisions."
Burgum and Hamm have already worked to shape Trump's energy policy during the presidential transition, with Reutersreporting Thursday that the pair is leading the push for a repeal of electric vehicle tax credits—a key component of the Biden administration's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act.
During a fundraiser over the summer, Burgum said Trump could "on day one" move to unleash "liquid fuels," accusing the Biden administration of waging war on "American energy."
"Whether it's baseload electricity, whether it's oil, whether it's gas, whether it's ethanol, there is an attack on liquid fuels," Burgum declared.
"We're ready to fight Burgum and Trump's extreme agenda every step of the way."
Trump campaigned on a pledge to "drill, baby, drill" in the face of a fossil fuel-driven climate emergency that is wreaking deadly havoc in the United States and around the world. While the Biden administration has presided over record oil and gas production and approved many new drilling permits to the dismay of climate advocates, Trump has made clear that he intends to take a sledgehammer to any guardrails constraining the fossil fuel industry.
In Burgum, Trump will have an enthusiastic champion of oil and gas drilling in a Cabinet that is shaping up to be a boon for the fossil fuel industry. Burgum helped organize the dinner at which Trump urged the oil and gas industry to raise $1 billion for his campaign in exchange for tax breaks and large-scale deregulation.
"We're going do things with energy and with land—Interior—that is going to be incredible," Trump said late Thursday.
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that "Burgum is an oligarch completely out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who cherish our natural heritage and don't want our parks, wildlife refuges, and other special places carved up and destroyed."
"We're ready to fight Burgum and Trump's extreme agenda every step of the way," Suckling added.
In his current capacity as North Dakota governor, Burgum is pushing a 2,000-mile carbon pipeline project set to be built by Summit Carbon Solutions with the stated goal of capturing planet-warming CO2 and storing it underground. Climate advocates have long derided carbon capture and storage—a method boosted by the fossil fuel industry—as a dangerous scam that can actually result in more emissions.
The Associated Pressreported earlier this year that "the blowback in North Dakota to the Summit project has been intense with Burgum caught in the crossfire."
"There are fears a pipeline rupture would unleash a lethal cloud of CO2," the outlet noted. "Landowners worry their property values will plummet if the pipeline passes under their land."
The North Dakota Public Service Commission is planning to meet Friday to vote on the project.
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'Catastrophic': EPA Workers Union Slams Trump Pledge to Gut Climate Agencies
"Donald Trump has made it clear that a second Trump term would look worse than his first—with broader attacks on science and the environment driving the day."
Jun 05, 2024
A union representing thousands of Environmental Protection Agency workers raised alarm Tuesday over former President Donald Trump's pledge to slash key federal climate departments if he's reelected in November and condemned his attempt to downplay concerns about the planetary emergency, which is fueling destructive extreme weather and
pushing global temperatures to record highs.
"Donald Trump has made it clear that a second Trump term would look worse than his first—with broader attacks on science and the environment driving the day," Marie Owens Powell, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council 238, said in a statement.
"His first four years were a fiasco for the agency bargaining unit workers whose mission it is to protect human health and the environment during this climate emergency, with cuts to the workforce, rollbacks of regulations, and more," Powell added. "Trump has made it clear that a second term would be catastrophic for the environment and reverse the progress made against climate change."
The union's statement came in response to a Sunday Fox Newsinterview in which Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, said that federal environmental agencies have been "so bad for us," claiming they've "stopped you from doing business in this country."
"We're going to do, like, Department of Interior," Trump said, naming one of the agencies he plans to target. "There's so many things you can do."
The former president, whose administration dismantled more than 100 federal environmental rules during its four years in power, also mocked President Joe Biden's description of the climate crisis as an existential threat and ridiculed fears about rising sea levels.
Trump falsely claimed that rising sea levels mean "you have a little more beachfront property," ignoring catastrophic flooding and other disastrous impacts of ever-rising seas. The U.S. experienced a record number of billion-dollar extreme weather events last year, including destructive flooding.
Trump says he supports climate change and rising sea levels because it “means basically you have a little more beachfront property” pic.twitter.com/qLh0Y1yu6Q
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) June 2, 2024
Powell said Tuesday that Trump's "all-out assault on science and our employees" during his first four years in the White House "led us to issue an EPA Workers' Bill of Rights, which had over 10,000 signatures, many of which were agency employees, and was endorsed by nearly fifty members of Congress and partners in the science community."
"And the prospect of a second Trump term is why we fought so hard to win a first-of-its-kind Scientific Integrity Article in our new contract that will help protect our work from political interference," Powell continued. "Our contract win means workers can stand up for scientific integrity without fear of retaliation, and sends any disputes related to scientific integrity to an independent arbitrator instead of a political appointee."
"The climate emergency we are facing hurts everyone, regardless of political party," the union leader added, "and the EPA and its employees protect everyone's health and the environment, regardless of their political agenda."
Trump and his right-wing allies have repeatedly expressed their intention to aggressively target federal environmental agencies and rules if the former president wins the November election against Biden.
During an April fundraiser attended by major fossil fuel executives, Trump—who was convicted last week on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records—pledged to swiftly roll back climate regulations if the industry most responsible for the climate emergency forks over $1 billion to support his presidential bid.
"He will sacrifice our planet for the profits of fossil fuel executives. We cannot let that happen."
Politicoreported last month that oil and gas industry lobbyists and lawyers are already in the process of "drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs, and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term."
Meanwhile, the right-wing Project 2025 initiative spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation is pushing "a sweeping battle plan to dismantle federal agencies and public health standards, including vital environmental protections," freelance climate journalist Dana Drugmand wrote last week.
A recent study by Carbon Brief estimated that a second Trump term would unleash an extra 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere, imperiling global efforts to rein in planet-warming emissions.
"He will sacrifice our planet for the profits of fossil fuel executives," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned Tuesday. "We cannot let that happen."
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Climate Groups Plan to Appeal as Judge Upholds Biden Approval of Willow Drilling Project
"Beyond the illegality of Willow's approval, Interior's decision to greenlight the project in the first place moved us in the opposite direction of our national climate goals in the face of the worsening climate crisis."
Nov 10, 2023
A federal judge in Anchorage ruled Thursday that ConocoPhillips' $8 billion oil drilling project on Alaska's North Slope can proceed, rejecting a pair of lawsuits arguing that the Biden administration failed to adequately consider the initiative's impact on the climate, local communities, and wildlife before approving it earlier this year.
Willow is the largest proposed oil and gas drilling project on public lands in U.S. history, and it comes at a time when scientists are warning that any new fossil fuel extraction is incompatible with preventing catastrophic planetary warming.
But despite warnings about Willow's potentially devastating impact, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason—an Obama appointee—deemed the Biden administration's environmental assessments of the project sufficient and in line with federal law. The ruling was handed down a day after a U.N.-backed report cautioned that fossil fuel expansion plans by the world's top producers are "throwing humanity's future into question."
Climate groups voiced strong disagreement and outrage in response to Gleason's decision, which gives ConocoPhillips a green light to resume construction of the massive project next month.
"This decision is bad news not just for our clients, but for anyone who cares about the climate and future generations," said Bridget Psarianos, senior staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska, which sued the Biden Interior Department on behalf of the Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic and others.
"The Biden administration added a little more window dressing when it rubber-stamped the previous Trump approvals, but Interior handed out permits without even looking at options that would reduce the impact on local people or preclude drilling in sensitive ecosystems," Psarianos added. "It again did not consider the accumulation of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, nor the way those accumulations harm people, animals, habitat, and the planet in deep and tangible ways."
"While today's ruling is disappointing, we are entirely confident in our claims, and plan to appeal to the higher court."
In March, the Biden Interior Department—headed by Deb Haaland, who criticized the proposed Willow project when she was in Congress—approved what it characterized as a scaled-back version of the ConocoPhillips drilling initiative, drawing protests and criticism from environmentalists, Indigenous groups, and the United Nations.
The administration approved the project with three drilling sites instead of the five that ConocoPhillips wanted. But even the smaller version of Willow will be disastrous for the climate, green groups argued.
According to Earthjustice, which sued the administration on behalf of several climate organizations, the approved project "will still add about 260 million metric tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere over the next 30 years, the equivalent of an extra two million cars on the road each year for 30 years."
"While today's ruling is disappointing, we are entirely confident in our claims, and plan to appeal to the higher court," Erik Grafe, deputy managing attorney in Earthjustice's Alaska regional office, said in a statement Thursday. "Beyond the illegality of Willow's approval, Interior's decision to greenlight the project in the first place moved us in the opposite direction of our national climate goals in the face of the worsening climate crisis."
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