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As hundreds of international climate scientists predict global warming will blaze past a dangerous threshold, the oil and gas industry is preparing for a potential second Donald Trump presidency with a slate of executive orders ready to be signed on Day One.
Political spoke with a half-dozen lawyers and lobbyists within the fossil fuel industry who said executive orders were being drafted in case Trump is re-elected. The goal of the orders would be to roll back some of the Biden administration’s most progressive environmental regulations, such as halting natural gas export permits, slashing vehicle carbon emissions, and penalizing gas companies for methane leaks.
Frank Maisano, a senior principal at government relations firm Bracewell, told Political that “other than what Donald Trump says off the cuff, I don’t think [Trump’s campaign is] “taking a lot of advice on energy strategy.” While the ex-president routinely complains about gas prices and mocks clean-energy initiatives at his rallies, he otherwise fails to discuss environmental policy.
Oil industry lawyers have taken it upon themselves to fill the gap, drafting executive orders undoing Biden’s policies if Trump’s put back in the White House, according to Stephen Brown, a former lobbyist and director of energy consulting firm RBJ Strategies.
“You’ll see a lot of Biden regulations that have come out in the past six months checked one way or another,” Brown told Political.
The Trump campaign’s policy website, Agenda 47, states Trump wants to “drill, baby, drill” to increase oil and natural gas production domestically in order to lower consumer energy costs, regardless of the environmental impact. The website also states that “President Trump will once again exit the horrendously unfair Paris Climate Accords,” referring to the 2015 Paris Agreement which set a goal of capping global temperature increase to below 2°C, and aiming for a limit of 1.5°C .
A poll published by Guardian on Wednesday, which included responses from 380 of 843 climate scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, found that more than three-quarters believe we will not only fail to meet that goal, but we will be far above it.
Only 22 of the 380 experts, about six percent, said they expected global temperatures to remain at or below 1.5°C, which was chosen as a target goal to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. Meanwhile, 77 percent of the surveyed scientists predict Earth will remain on pace for 2.5°C warming or greater by 2100, which could cause widespread famine, flooding, wildfires, and other natural disasters all over the world, forcing millions to become climate refugees.
The poll also asked the scientists why they thought the global response to climate change was not measuring up to stated goals. Nearly 75 percent cited a lack of political will, while 60 percent cited vested corporate interests — like the oil and gas industry insiders setting the table for a second Trump term.
