President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks include oil and gas industry executive Chris Wright, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, and ex-congressman Lee Zeldin.
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Climate experts, environmental organizations and advocacy groups are reacting to Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, which include climate deniers, fossil fuel advocates and people with no political experience.
Doug Burgum
The president-elect on Friday announced he is nominating Republican governor Doug Burgum as the interior secretary and “energy czar.” The new position was created to carry out the administration’s sweeping plans to scale back energy and climate rules implemented under President Joe Biden and boost oil and gas production on millions of acres of federal lands nationwide, including national parks and wildlife refuges.
Burgum was elected in 2016 as the governor of North Dakota, the third largest oil and natural gas producer in the US, and made oil and natural gas production a priority.
In a statement, Trump said that the proposed National Energy Council that Burgum will helm “will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy.”
The nomination has prompted swift backlash from environmental advocacy groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and the Center for Western Priorities.
The Sierra Club, the country’s largest non-profit environmental organization, said Burgum’s ties with the fossil fuel industry “run deep” and he has “long advocated for rolling back critical environmental safeguards in order to let polluters profit.”
“[I]f confirmed to this position, he will surely continue Donald Trump’s efforts to sell out our public lands to his polluter pals. Our lands are our nation’s greatest treasure, and the interior department is charged with their protection,” the organization said in a statement.
“Doug Burgum comes from an oil state, but North Dakota is not a public lands state. His cozy relationship with oil billionaires may endear him to Donald Trump, but he has no experience that qualifies him to oversee the management of 20 percent of America’s lands,” said Center for Western Priorities’ Executive Director Jennifer Rokala.
“Running the Interior department requires someone who can find balance between recreation, conservation, hunting, ranching, mining, and—yes—oil drilling. If Doug Burgum tries to turn America’s public lands into an even bigger cash cow for the oil and gas industry, or tries to shrink America’s parks and national monuments, he’ll quickly discover he’s on the wrong side of history,” Rokala added.
Chris Wright
Trump on Saturday announced oil and gas industry executive and campaign donor Chris Wright as his pick to lead the US Department of Energy. In a statement, Wright said he was “honored and grateful” to be picked to lead the energy department.
Wright won support from many conservative figures from the fossil fuel industry in recent weeks, including Oklahoma oil and gas billionaire Harold Hamm, a major Trump donor and informal advisor, and Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute.
Wright, a staunch defender of fossil fuel use and vocal critic of climate alarmism, is expected to fulfil Trump’s campaign promise to “drill, baby, drill” and undo many of his predecessor’s biggest clean energy achievements, steering the department back to America’s roots in oil and gas production.
The burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the single-largest source of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These are the primary drivers of global warming as they trap heat in the atmosphere and raising Earth’s surface temperature.
In a video posted on LinkedIn last year, Wright, who is the CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy and has no political experience, denied that there is a climate crisis or that we are in the midst of an energy transition .
“Carbon dioxide does indeed absorb infrared radiation, contributing to warming,” Wright said. “But calling carbon dioxide ‘pollution’ is like calling out water and oxygen, the other two irreplaceable molecules for life on earth,” he said in the video.
Several environmental advocates have condemned Trump’s choice. Jackie Wong, senior vice president for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called Wright’s nomination a “disastrous mistake,” describing him as “a champion of dirty fossil fuels.”
“The Energy Department should be doing all it can to develop and expand the energy sources of the 21st century, not trying to promote the dirty fuels of the last century. Given the devastating impacts of climate-fuelled disasters, DOE’s core mission of researching and promoting cleaner energy solutions is more important now than ever,” Wong said.
Lee Zeldin
On Monday, Trump said he will appoint Republican former congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA works to protect the environment in the country, particularly as it relates to human health.
The president-elect said Zeldin “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”
During his time in Congress between 2015 and 2023, Zeldin supported just 14% of key pieces of environmental legislation, according to a scorecard by environmental group the League of Conservation Voters.
The former Representative from New York voted against Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate bill in US history. He also opposed clean water and clean air protections and the EPA’s methane pollution safeguards, and he campaigned against a ban on petrol cars in New York by 2035 that Trump threatened to terminate.
In a statement issued by the League of Conservation Voters, Senior Vice President for Government Affairs, Tiernan Sittenfeld said the stakes for the climate and future generations “could not be higher.”
“Trump made his anti-climate action, anti-environment agenda very clear during his first term and again during his 2024 campaign. During the confirmation process, we would challenge Lee Zeldin to show how he would be better than Trump’s campaign promises or his own failing 14% environmental score if he wants to be charged with protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink, and finding solutions to climate change,” Sittenfeld said.
In a post on social media X (formerly Twitter), Zeldin said he is “looking forward” to take up the position “to unleash US energy dominance, make America the AI capital of the world, bring American auto jobs back home, and so much more.”
Featured image: Gage Skidmore.
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