In the wake of an Iowa primary election chilled in a record blast of cold weather – which scientists say may, counterintuitively, have been worsened by global heating – Republican presidential candidates are embracing the fossil fuel industry tighter than ever, with little to say about the growing toll the climate crisis is taking upon Americans.
The remaining contenders for the US presidential nomination – frontrunner Donald Trump, along with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis – all used the Iowa caucus to promise surging levels of oil and gas drilling if elected, along with the wholesale abolition of Joe Biden’s climate change policies.
Trump, who comfortably won the Iowa poll, said “we are going to drill, baby, drill” once elected, in a Fox News town hall on the eve of the primary. “We have more liquid gold under our feet; energy, oil and gas than any other country in the world,” the multiply indicted former president said. “We have a lot of potential income.”
Trump also called clean energy a “new scam business” and went on a lengthy digression on how energy is important in the making of donuts and hamburgers.
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Last year was, globally, the hottest ever recorded, and scientists have warned of mounting calamities as the world barrels through agreed temperature limits. Last year, the US suffered a record number of disasters costing at least $1bn in damages, with the climate crisis spurring fiercer wildfires, storms and extreme heat.
Such concerns were largely unvoiced in frigid Iowa, however, apart from by young climate activists who disrupted rallies held by Trump, Haley and DeSantis. On Sunday, a 17-year-old activist from the Sunrise climate group interrupted a Trump speech to shout: “Mr Trump your campaign is funded by fossil fuel millionaires. Do you represent them, or ordinary people like me?”
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump spoke to supporters near the White House on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president,” the state’s highest court found, citing his role in fomenting the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
This is a breaking news story… Please check back for possible updates.
Colorado’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that former U.S. President Donald Trump—the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner—is barred from holding future office under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause due to his incitement of the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
In a decision likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Colorado justices ruled 4-3 that Trump’s effort to thwart the peaceful transition of presidential power for the first time in the nation’s history rendered him constitutionally ineligible to hold elected office.
The majority found that a state court “did not err in concluding that President Trump engaged in… insurrection through his personal action” before and on January 6.
Enacted after the Civil War, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars from public office any “officer of the United States” who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and subsequently participates in an insurrection or rebellion against the U.S. government.
“President Trump asks us to hold that Section 3 disqualifies every oath-breaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath-breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land,” the court said.
“The sum of these parts is this: President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president… because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the [secretary of state] to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot,” the ruling states.
BREAKING: The Colorado Supreme Court holds, 4-3, that Trump "is disqualified" to be president under the Fourteenth Amendment, and "it would be a wrongful act" for him to be listed on the Colorado presidential primary ballot. More to come at Law Dork: https://t.co/oFbD0ZqThapic.twitter.com/REMOI7kpvm
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the court stressed. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.
Last month, Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace ruled that Trump “engaged in insurrection” but allowed him to remain on the state’s 2024 presidential ballot because she determined he was not “an officer of the United States,” and therefore could not be proscribed from holding office under the insurrection clause.
This, despite Wallace citing examples in her ruling of times when the president has been considered an “officer of the United States.”
BIG NEWS! Colorado's Supreme Court has banned Trump from the state's primary ballot because the 14th Amendment bars insurrectionists from running for office. This will surely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's what you need to know about the underlying argument. pic.twitter.com/bQGxVFnh23
The pro-democracy group Free Speech for People said in a statement that “this is a victory for the principle that a president who loses his re-election bid must step down peacefully, not launch a bloody insurrection to intimidate Congress, disrupt the electoral count, and remain in power after his term ends.”
Noah Bookbinder, president of the government accountability watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement that “the court’s decision today affirms what our clients alleged in this lawsuit: that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist who disqualified himself from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment based on his role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and that [Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold] must keep him off of Colorado’s primary ballot.”
“It is not only historic and justified,” he added, “but is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country.”
The Biden administration announced plans for three offshore fossil fuel lease sales for the Gulf of Mexico in 2025, 2027, and 2029. (Photo: nightman1965/Getty Images)
“Offshore oil and gas drilling is not only dirty and dangerous, but it also supercharges the existing climate crisis,” said one campaigner.
The Biden administration on Friday finalized a five-year plan for offshore fossil fuel leasing that was initially released in September and sharply condemned as a “climate nightmare.”
The Department of the Interior (DOI) highlighted in a statement Friday that the 2024-29 National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program has the fewest sales in history, with just three for the Gulf of Mexico set to be held in 2025, 2027, and 2029.
The DOI also stressed that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed last year by President Joe Biden “prohibits the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) from issuing a lease for offshore wind development unless the agency has offered at least 60 million acres for oil and gas leasing on the OCS in the previous year.”
“BOEM continues to treat the Gulf as a region where community health and well-being can be sacrificed to allow continued oil and gas production.”
That part of the IRA is one of the key reasons it has been criticized by climate campaigners, who continue to warn that the landmark package is far from enough to meet the U.S. goal of halving planet-heating emissions by the end of this decade.
The DOI’s plan outraged the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) for not being friendly enough to the fossil fuel industry while advocates for the planet warned that it’s not bold enough given the worsening climate emergency.
“Offshore oil and gas drilling is not only dirty and dangerous, but it also supercharges the existing climate crisis,” Beth Lowell, Oceana’s vice president for the United States, declared in a Friday statement about the finalized program. She pointed out that the process actually began under former President Donald Trump, who proposed 47 leasing sales.
“This five-year plan started with President Trump proposing to open nearly all U.S. waters to offshore oil drilling and ends with President Biden’s final plan that is the smallest to date,” she said. “The footprint of offshore drilling was not expanded, but the dangerous cycle of drilling and spilling must end.”
After the Biden administration released its proposal in September, Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Irene Gutierrez wrote the following month that “BOEM continues to treat the Gulf as a region where community health and well-being can be sacrificed to allow continued oil and gas production.”
“BOEM also fails to account for the severe risks from additional oil and gas leasing to the Gulf ecosystem and species like the critically endangered Rice’s whale,” Gutierrez charged. “BOEM’s analysis also treats catastrophic oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon disaster as events that are speculative and unlikely to repeat again, and the program excludes such spills from its analysis.”
“In our comments to the proposed program and in other advocacy, we urged BOEM to issue a program with no new lease sales. The agency has ample authority to do so,” she noted. “Further, declining fossil fuel demand and existing energy reserves mean that no new offshore leasing is needed for at least the next 30 years to meet national energy needs. BOEM could have issued a zero-lease sale plan, but declined to do so, despite calls from a wide range of community and environmental groups for no new leasing in the Gulf.”
Last month, another large, disastrous and preventable oil spill hit the Gulf of Mexico. This spill serves as a reminder of the risks that ongoing offshore drilling poses to coastal communities and marine ecosystems. https://t.co/4xOa8YF4Qt
The DOI plan comes near the end of what experts have said will be the hottest year on record. It also comes on the heels of United Nations climate talks that scientists called “a tragedy for the planet,” given that the final deal out of COP28 called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels,” but did not endorse the “phaseout” demanded by civil society and most participating countries.
Biden—who is seeking reelection next year and may face off against Trump—has previously come under fire from frontline communities and climate organizations for skipping that U.N. summit, supporting the Willow oil project and Mountain Valley Pipeline, enabling the expansion of liquefied natural gas exports, and refusing to declare a national climate emergency.
On Thursday, the Biden administration released new proposed guidance on clean energy tax credits from the IRA.
“President Biden must do so much more if he wants to be taken seriously by young voters,” Michele Weindling, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said in response to the guidance. “He is overseeing an explosion in oil and gas production that has resulted in the U.S. producing more fossil fuels than ever before.”
While Rishi Sunak’s decision to U-turn on net zero policies drew criticism from within his own party as well as opposition MPs and environmental activists, his plans have received the endorsement of disgraced former US President Donald Trump.
Trump praised Sunak for being ‘smart’ in taking on ‘climate alarmists’.
Writing on his own social media platform Truth Social, he said: “Prime minister Sunak of the United Kingdom has very substantially rolled back the ridiculous “Climate Mandates” that the United States is pushing on everyone, especially itself.
“I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue.”
He added: “Congratulations to Prime Minister Sunak for recognising this SCAM before it was too late!”
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. “Some people said we were in too much of a rush – and it is certainly true that I didn’t just try to fatten the pig on market day, I tried to rear the pig and slaughter it as well. I confess to that.”
The former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has taken apart the arguments of Brexiteers as well as the economic policies of Liz Truss during a speech at the Global Progress Action Summit in Montreal, where he praised “progressive” policies while attacking “far-right populists”.
Carney, who was governor between 2013 to 2020, accused those who backed quitting the European Union of wanting to “tear down the future” and also launched a scathing attack on the disastrous economic policies of Liz Truss.
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Turning his attention to Truss, Carney said that when Brexiteers tried to create Singapore on the Thames, the Truss government instead delivered Argentina on the Channel – and that was a year ago.
“Those with little experience in the private sector – lifelong politicians masquerading as free marketeers – grossly under-value the importance of mission, of institutions, and of discipline to a strong economy.
“And the bad news is that while these tactics never work economically, they can work politically. Brexit happened, Donald Trump was elected. So we can’t dismiss the impact of anger, but we must resist its power.”
