For Strength and Profit: Staying Away from Boosters Has a Dark and Dangerous Underside – CleanTechnica

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The current climate crisis that confronts us requires political and policy solutions that disempower the oil industry and their government allies. Unfortunately, the current US presidential election season is full of hyperbole, controversy and misinformation. Talks like these threaten to reverse the pushback from renewables in favor of the continued burning of fossil fuels, which have far-reaching and devastating impacts on the climate and our ecosystems.

It is time to hold the oil companies accountable for their part in environmental degradation. However, addressing the effects of fossil fuel decisions at various levels of governance is a difficult task for policy makers.

On the positive side, balancing domestic energy in a new energy system that does not use fossil fuels can channel energy sufficiency through smart grids based on innovative market mechanisms. Such changes, however, would require initial regulatory measures where standardization of sustainability disclosures and sustainability benchmarking practices would become the norm.

Protecting the environment and human rights, consumer interests, and investor interests requires a threshold of duty of care that is at risk in the United States due to pressure from Big Oil to maintain its power and profits.

As writers in 2023 Energy Research and Social Change The article explains, public health impacts and disproportionate impacts exist throughout the life cycles of coal, oil and gas in the United States.

“Each stage of the oil life cycle – extraction, processing, transportation, and combustion – produces toxic air and water pollution, as well as greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) that contribute to the global climate crisis.”

Big Oil is well aware that federal incentives for alternative use “eat their profits and threaten their hold on energy use,” as LA Times The Editorial Board was discussed earlier this summer. Former President Donald Trump and other Republican politicians want to use consumer concerns for “disinformation” that is “in the service of the oil agenda” – which they add “is not surprising from the oil industry or from Trump .”

Since the 1990 election cycle, more than two-thirds of oil and gas industry donations to candidates and party committees have gone to Republicans, according to Open Secrets. The electric utility industry is another major contributor. Less generous, but more privileged, is the mining industry. Trump has received more cash donations than any other federal candidate during this election cycle, fueling “easily debunked misogyny designed to incite anger and confusion among voters,” LA Times Editor’s Forum says. The efforts of some of the most powerful companies in the world are used “to sow confusion and harm our concerns in the pursuit of power and profit.”

Trump’s allegiance to Big Oil, as a spring meeting with industry leaders made a promise that a $1 billion campaign contribution would pave the way for all oil and gas production systems. “Dig, baby, dig” is Trump’s driving mantra.

The historic levels of investment in domestic auto manufacturing and batteries under the Biden–Harris Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have been left unspoken by Republicans. Their only narrative is a return to the Gilded Age where the fossil fuel industry dominates. In doing so, as the Center for American Progress puts it, they aim to “spread misinformation and obstruct elected government efforts on climate, promote anti-democratic movements and candidates, and even undermine democratic rights.”

In the book of 2024 called Autocracy, Inc.: Dictators Who Want to Rule the WorldJournalist Anne Applebaum examines how today’s rulers are working together to undermine democracy. He says that “the language of the democratic world, meaning justice, law, the rule of law, justice, accountability, [and] clarity…[is] harmful to them,” especially as language about equality and equality for all questions worldly view. And so they need to undermine people who use such oppositional language, “and, if they can, discredit it.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it, when we listen to Trump’s diatribes?

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Be Careful What You Wish For: Trump’s Withdrawal From Renewables

It has been made clear over the past several months that Trump is not a fan of renewable energy. If re-elected, he has promised to defeat the Inflation Act so that “all new spending subsidies and handouts” make way for federal savings – or so he says. While Trump also favors tariffs on Chinese goods, his promises to weaken the Anti-Inflation Act could set back US efforts to catch up with China on solar panel and EV production.

Climate change? Deception. Trump says that climate change does not affect extreme weather. Five months into his administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were without leaders. And while Trump has offered federal aid to relief efforts after several powerful storms, he has been slow to respond to many weather disasters, most notably Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

The Paris climate agreement? He withdrew once, and has promised to do so again. There is no way he would accept voluntary GHG targets, especially when they are customized to each country’s build-out, capacity, and climate pollution record.

Trump previously said EVs were too expensive and had too little range. Say goodbye, Trump has threatened, to EVs — that is, unless the billionaire donates to his campaign, and then Trump will tone down his stance for a while. Ever since Tesla CEO Elon Musk endorsed him, Trump has said he likes all kinds of cars, including EVs. It’s sad to think that Musk could be a key player after the November election.

Still, Trump wants to eliminate tax credits for EV tax credits that are part of the Inflation Reduction Act. This could mean rolling back the EV law’s subsidies and incentives that encourage small businesses to install charging stations. Most of the investments benefiting from IRAs are in Republican states, however, and targeting those projects may be politically unpopular with Trump’s base.

The Trump administration repealed more than 100 environmental protection regulations, and all indications are that he will continue that process if re-elected. A 2020 analysis estimated 1.8 billion tons more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2035 than would have been without the rule-breaking. A 2022 report from researchers at Yale and Columbia found that the US’s environmental performance had declined as a result of the Trump administration’s actions.

Lest we forget, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), which seemed destined for greenwashing, adopted an 11,000-page document that was seen as the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. The international agreement calls for “the transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a fair, orderly and equitable manner” – it includes clear language looking at the end of Big Oil. The victory gave activists a base of language to use as a means of leverage to try and win all the battles ahead to reduce the oil regime.

Trump could use his promise of dictator-for-a-day to reject such developments.