Trump Unveiled His Fossil Fuel Agenda. We’ll Fight for a Clean Energy Future Instead.

“We will be a rich country once again,” incoming President Donald Trump said just after he was sworn in to lead the United States, already the richest country on Earth, when measured by gross domestic product. “And it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”

He was of course referring to oil — the same substance that heats the atmosphere and intensifies the climate crisis when extracted and burned. As things stand, the United States produces more oil than any other country, at any point in history.

Still, the new president went on to issue a flurry of executive actions targeting public lands and waters for fossil fuel extraction. Taken together, these orders seek to rob the American people of millions of acres that belong to them so they can be auctioned off to the fossil fuel industry. This sweeping “energy dominance” agency imperils lands in the western United States and Alaska, as well as federal waters off coastal communities across the U.S.

Earthjustice and our clients will not stand by while Trump forces this “energy dominance” agenda on the public. In the previous Trump administration, we filed dozens of lawsuits to defend federal lands and waters from fossil fuel extraction, including one that thwarted the administration’s attempt to undo a permanent ban on Arctic offshore drilling. This win, plus work over a five-year period spanning both Trump and Biden administrations, stopped oil and gas development across 250 million acres of public lands and waters.

“The United States already produces more crude oil than any other country in the world, so pushing for even more drilling on public lands simply makes the oil industry richer while the rest of us pay the price of climate-fueled wildfires, extreme storm events, and insurance cancellations,” said Drew Caputo, Vice President of Litigation for Lands, Wildlife and Oceans at Earthjustice. “Declaring an energy emergency and using it to enrich a few industries does nothing to create real solutions and affordable, clean energy for everyone.”

According to multiple news reports last year, fossil fuel executives who Trump invited to Mar-a-Lago were promised special favors such as environmental rollbacks to clear the way for energy production, in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions. (According to the New York Times, the oil and gas industry donated more than $75 million to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and Mr. Trump.)

But according to a recent report in Politico, this : >“While the oil and gas industry has embraced Trump’s plan to strip away environmental regulations, it hasn’t joined in his call for increased production or lower prices.”

At the end of the day, the losers in this plan to drill everywhere are the American people. They collectively own the public lands that Trump’s orders would auction off to fossil fuel companies and can visit these special places for exploration and refuge on any day. Moving ahead with a drilling bonanza will destroy these special places and accelerate the worsening climate crisis. From powerful storm events like the hurricanes that hit Eastern states last year, to the Los Angeles wildfires, to heat waves and concerns about oil spills for coastal communities, the true emergencies are the ones unfolding daily in individuals’ lives as they contend with climate disasters.

Some details of the Day One executive orders relating to fossil fuel drilling on public lands are included below.

• An executive order targeting Alaska attempts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil-and-gas drilling. Located in an extremely remote landscape with no roads or infrastructure, the Refuge is already undergoing changes like permafrost thaw caused by rising temperatures. Drilling there would be expensive, dangerous, and devastating to wildlife. Zero oil companies bid on Refuge leases offered by Interior earlier this month.
• The Alaska executive order also targets the Western Arctic — a wildlife reserve with extraordinary ecological value — for expanded oil and gas development. Expanded drilling in this remote Arctic landscape would threaten wildlife, generate hazardous pollution, and emit a staggering volume of greenhouse gases.
• Another executive order seeks to reverse recent protections of offshore waters from oil-and-gas drilling enacted under outgoing President Biden and undoes long-standing protections for even more offshore territories. The most recently enacted protections, in line with the two-thirds of American voters who support protecting coastlines from new offshore drilling, include 625 million acres of public waters off the Atlantic, Pacific, Alaska, and Gulf coasts.

While the orders reveal the Trump administration’s plans, it’s important to note that the president cannot enact many of them unilaterally. He will need cooperation from government agencies, Congress, and other authorities. And Earthjustice is prepared to hold his administration accountable as it tries to back away from climate action. We will fight for the clean energy future our planet needs, even if this administration won’t.