You have all just lived through the hottest year on record (2024). No matter where you are, the planet continues to heat up, and we surpassed 2023, which was the previous warmest year. Hotter summers, more frequent and severe droughts and water shortages, drier vegetation and more wildfires, are all on the horizon as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. If we continue to burn massive amounts of fossil fuels, we are going to remain on this dangerous path into the future.
According to the latest data from the U.S. Energy Administration, 84% of all U.S. energy production comes from fossil fuels — 38% natural gas, 34% oil and 11% coal. And this president is pushing for clean coal, and “drill, baby, drill.” Sorry, Donald, coal is the dirtiest fuel we have and there is no such thing as clean coal. The real world of energy economics is leading to closures of coal-fired power plants.
Shouting “drill, baby, drill” into a microphone doesn’t make this happen. U.S. oil and gas production was at an all-time high during the last administration, and decisions about more offshore petroleum production are based primarily on economics, not political speeches. A large offshore oil production platform can cost from $500 million to $1 billion, and take between three and five years to build after an order is placed. This isn’t like deciding if you can afford to buy a new car — an oil platform is a huge investment.
Contrary to what Trump said in his inaugural address, the U.S. doesn’t have “the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth.” It may be producing more oil than any other country right now, but it’s pulling it from reserves about a third the size of Saudi Arabia’s. And the production from the nation’s oil reservoirs is staring to dwindle and will likely level off soon. You can only squeeze so much oil out of a rock and still make a profit, and the oil companies know this all too well.
Trump also named an oil and gas industry advocate to lead the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees approximately 245 million acres of federal land, about one-tenth of the country’s land mass. They are also responsible for all commercial use, such as energy production on public land.
At the same time this president is promoting more production of fossil fuels. He is clawing back all funding approved by Congress during the last administration for clean energy and killing any efforts to develop offshore wind, a sustainable resource.
Congressional Republicans have introduced legislation to roll back the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s fee on methane emissions from oil and gas drilling. Methane is right behind carbon dioxide in its heat trapping capacity as a greenhouse gas. The acting director of the Securities and Exchange Commission is moving to roll back a rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose their climate impacts and risks.
There is now Republican legislation under consideration that would eliminate all electric vehicle tax credits, and instead, add a $1,000 tax on all EV sales. At the same time, they want to reduce auto emission standards. The federal funding freeze is throwing electric vehicle, battery and other clean energy manufacturing investments spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act — most of which were headed to Republican congressional districts — into uncertainty.
Some state officials say they’re halting construction on federally funded electric vehicle chargers after the Trump administration revoked already-allocated dollars. The Federal Highway Administration recently told the states that they can no longer spend $5 billion allocated for a national electric vehicle-charging network until new guidance is issued.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has decided to stop enforcing rules designed to prevent flood damage to schools, libraries, fire stations and other public buildings. Experts say the move, which has not been publicly announced, could endanger public safety and may be in violation of federal law.
Trump has ended all climate work inside the Department of Homeland Security and also says he will order the Environmental Protection Agency to reverse Biden administration rules that increased efficiency standards for appliances and lightbulbs. Just last week, Trump signed an executive order to bring back plastic straws, claiming paper ones don’t work. This order reverses a Biden administration policy to get single-use plastics, including straws, plastic cutlery and packaging, out of federal food service operations by 2035 in an effort to tackle the growing threat of plastic pollution.
“These things (paper straws) don’t work,” Trump proclaims, “I’ve had them many times and on occasion they break, they explode. It’s a ridiculous situation so we are going back to plastics.” The world generates 440 million tons of plastic waste every year, and only 9% is recycled. The amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the global production of plastic is comparable to the emissions of the entire aviation industry. In the U.S., the annual carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of the plastic industry is equal to that of 116 coal-fired power plants, but the president doesn’t like paper straws? Why do we even need straws?
Trump downplayed the impacts of plastic on marine life by saying — “I don’t think that plastic is going to affect a shark very much as they’re … munching their way through the ocean.” Science suggests a different reality, however, with a study by the World Wildlife Fund estimating that at least 100,000 marine mammals die from plastic every year, either my ingestion or entanglement.
Decisions made and actions taken over the past several weeks in Washington, D.C. by the new administration are going to have a profound, negative and lasting impact on the health of the oceans and the Earth as a whole. For me personally, having spent over 50 years working on ocean and environmental issues, these actions are sad, discouraging and quite honestly, appalling. I normally try to focus on positive stories in these columns. Times like these, however, require us to be clear and honest about just what is happening and its long-term impacts on all of us.
Bertrand Russell, a Nobel Prize winning British philosopher, logician, mathematician and public intellectual, was once asked how fascism starts. He replied, “First, they fascinate the fools. Then, they the muzzle the intelligent.” Does this sound familiar? We cannot sit on the sidelines for the next four years.
This article was previously published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on February 22 (online) and February 23 (print), 2025.
