Shackled minds, shackled markets
Trump is determined to kill the wind industry. It's a perversion of American values, and let's refuse to forget it.
I’ve seen variations of this type of statement so often it’s basically cliché: Imagine how Fox News would react if Joe Biden did anything like what Donald Trump just did.
Or: Can you imagine how long this kind of scandal would haunt Barack Obama? Republicans would never let it go.
Like I said, cliché. Still, it’s a useful framework for President Trump’s latest attack on the renewable energy industry. Via the New York Times:
Trump Administration to Pay $1 Billion to Energy Giant to Cancel Wind Farms
The Trump administration will pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast, the Interior Department said on Monday at an energy conference in Houston.
Under the unusual deal, TotalEnergies would forfeit its leases in federal waters for two wind farms, which would have been built off New York and North Carolina. The Justice Department would then reimburse TotalEnergies $928 million, the amount it paid for the leases during the Biden administration.
In exchange, TotalEnergies would invest that money in oil and gas projects in the United States, including a facility in Texas that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. The company would also commit to producing more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and said it was developing some additional gas-burning power plants to meet rising electricity demand from data centers.
The deal is an extraordinary transfer of taxpayer dollars to a foreign company for the purposes of boosting the production of fossil fuels, a main driver of climate change, while throttling offshore wind power.
Extraordinary? Yeah, no kidding. Having failed to block construction of five coastal wind farms already nearing completion — turns out the rule of law does still apply in this country, at least sometimes — Trump’s appointees turned their attention to wind farms that hadn’t started construction. As a result, U.S. taxpayers will spend nearly $1 billion to cancel two projects that would have supplied badly needed electricity.
Whatever claim the GOP might once have had to being a party of free markets has long since died an ignoble death. It’s hard to do justice to the irony: Trump and his allies continue to bash liberals for “picking winners and losers” in the energy market, even as they themselves all but bribe a private company to switch from wind to fossil fuels. And the company is almost certainly accepting the bribe only because it knows Trump would have tried to block its wind farms anyway.
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Yes, Democrats have approved laws and regulations incentivizing renewable energy, and raising costs for the fossil fuel industry. But what would the political fallout look like if a Democratic president pressured an oil giant into accepting a $1-billion payoff in exchange for the company canceling a fracking project in Texas and building a big wind farm in, say, California?
Seriously, what would the fallout look like? I’ve been trying to imagine it. Here’s what I’m coming up with:
Immediate congressional oversight hearings, with some Republicans calling for the Democratic president to be investigated and impeached
Weeks if not months of nonstop coverage on Fox News, Newsmax, the Free Press and other left-bashing media outlets, with a long tail lasting years
A social media feeding frenzy led by influential figures in the MAGA movement, ultimately making life very scary for executives at the wind company
A cavalcade of lawsuits by conservative think tanks, attorneys general and fossil fuel companies to overturn the $1-billion payoff
Suffice to say, none of that is happening in the opposite direction.
I also suspect the legacy media coverage might look a little different if the shoe were on the other foot. Can you imagine a world where Kamala Harris is president, and she pays an oil company $1 billion to shift gears from fracking to wind, and the New York Times doesn’t feel compelled to run a story on the front page?
Well, Trump did his version, and The Times’ story ran on Page B3. The Washington Post’s story ran on A16. The Wall Street Journal, so far as I can tell, didn’t run a story in print yesterday. Print newspaper placement is not the be-all, end-all, but it’s a good measure of the importance that editors place on a story.
Meanwhile, leading Democrats aren’t quite shrugging off the whole thing, but it’s not like they’re gearing up for battle either.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul — who last week proposed weakening the state’s climate law — described Trump’s deal with TotalEnergies as “an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars” before pivoting to her commitment to an “all-of-the-above approach that includes renewables, nuclear and other energy sources.”
Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse — a well-meaning climate warrior who’s spent years working with Republicans on bipartisan “permitting reform” legislation to speed up construction of all energy infrastructure, including wind farms — called the $1-billion deal “stupid” and “not good,” E&E News reported. But even though he previously halted bipartisan negotiations when Trump tried to block construction of five offshore wind projects — because what good is a speedier permit if your project might get blocked later? — this time Whitehouse was more forgiving. He said the $1-billion agreement wasn’t a deal-breaker.
“It’s not per se illegal,” Whitehouse explained.
This whole episode is a case study in how Trump keeps shifting the Overton window — the range of ideas and arguments that are considered politically acceptable. It’s not per se illegal, so we shrug and accept our fate and move on. The story doesn’t make the front page. Permitting reform negotiations continue. Just another Monday.
And you know, I get it. It’s hard to maintain the capacity to be outraged when there are so many things to be outraged about — and when so many of them involve direct violence and human rights abuses. Trump and his cronies are good at this. They flood the zone and don’t care what their critics will say.
But how about we try to push the Overton window back in the other direction? When the president blows $1 billion to kill a wind project, it’s not just another Monday. It’s a perversion of American values. Let’s think like it, talk like it, act like it.
As John Oliver said in 2016, when Trump was first elected: “Keep reminding yourself, this is not normal. Write it on a Post-it note and stick it on your refrigerator.”
Good advice then, good advice now.
Temps keep rising, climate journalism keeps falling
In October, I broke the story that CBS News — fresh off its acquisition by the family of Trump-friendly billionaire Larry Ellison — had gutted its excellent climate team. I reported that four of the team’s six journalists had lost their jobs as part of a round of network-wide layoffs. I later learned that a fifth journalist was reassigned.
Last week, the final shoe dropped. The L.A. Times’ Stephen Battaglio reported that the final member of CBS’ core climate team — national environment correspondent David Schechter — lost his job during another round of layoffs.
The legacy media’s continued contraction of climate coverage couldn’t come at a worse time for the American public. Just last week, a blistering heat waved torched records across the Western U.S. Here’s a thorough news roundup from Bob Henson and Jeff Masters at Yale Climate Connections. A few highlights:
Fourteen states set all-time heat records for March
California broke its March heat record — first on Wednesday, then on Thursday, then again on Friday, ultimately topping the original record by five degrees
San Francisco hit 90 degrees for the first time ever in March
Iowa hit 97 degrees, breaking the state’s March record by 5 degrees
Flagstaff reached 84 degrees on March 19, four degrees warmer than the city has ever measured in April. Half a dozen other places also beat their April records
California, by the way, topped out at 112 degrees, as did Arizona — both states beating the entire country’s previous March heat record of 107 degrees, set in 1954.
I didn’t recognize either California locality to mark a 112-degree reading, so I looked up the weather stations and learned they’re down by the U.S.-Mexico border in my old haunt, Imperial County. It’s a broiling place that can ill afford to get any hotter.
Speaking of Imperial, I’m hard at work on “Death in the Desert, Part 3.” Stay tuned.
Hey, I actually wrote Totalenergies about this very news and asked them how they could cowtow to this type of coercion. Got a note saying they received it, no other reply.
Appreciate your reporting and candor.
Let's all be climate Cassandras/budget watchdogs - and not leave these tall orders on Sammy's shoulders alone. Thank you for penning another good one, Sammy.