The U.S. Department of Energy shared an image of coal with the message, “She is the moment,” on social media on July 31, 2025. (Image: U.S. Department of Energy/X)
“The Trump administration wants us all choking, sick, misinformed, and working ourselves to death so that a few from the luxury class can be ever more wealthy,” said one science communicator.
The U.S. Department of Energy came under fire from scientists and other climate action advocates on Thursday for a social media post celebrating coal, as President Donald Trump works to boost the fossil fuel, despite its devastating impacts on public health and the planet.
On X—the platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who left the Trump administration earlier this year—the department shared an image of coal with the message, “She’s an icon. She’s a legend. And she is the moment.”
The audio of television host Wendy Williams saying that, while speaking about rapper Lil’ Kim, often has been repurposed by social media users. However, the DOE’s use of the phrase to glamorize coal sparked swift and intense backlash.
“POV: It’s 1885 and you work for the Department of Energy,” wrote Jonas Nahm, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who served on the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Joe Biden.
Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources replied: “She is inefficient. She is dirtier air. She is higher energy bills.”
Multiple X users pointed to coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, a condition that occurs when coal dust is inhaled—including California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office, which wrote, “She’s black lung.”
The national Democratic Party account said, “In April, Trump cut a program that gave free black lung screenings to coal miners.”
After U.S. District Judge Irene Berger—appointed by former President Barack Obama in West Virginia—issued a preliminary injunction against firings at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Coal Workers Health Surveillance Program, nearly 200 workers who screen coal miners for black lung were reinstated.
Since returning to office in January, Trump has taken various steps to attack the climate and benefit the fossil fuel industry, such as picking fracking CEO Chris Wright to lead DOE, signing coal-friendly executive orders in April and issuing proclamations that provide what the White House called “regulatory relief” for a range of facilities, including coal plants, earlier this month.
“Hard to fathom this coming from the DOE if there were any sane, reasonable, rational, or thoughtful government in control,” Graham Lau, an astrobiologist and science communicator, said of the department’s pro-coal X post. “The Trump administration wants us all choking, sick, misinformed, and working ourselves to death so that a few from the luxury class can be ever more wealthy. Coal is not the moment. Coal is not going to meet U.S. energy needs. Coal is not the way forward.”
Climate and clean energy investor Ramez Naam wrote, “She is the past,” and shared the graph below, which features data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration about coal consumption since 1960.
Ryan Katz-Rosene, an associate professor at Canada’s University of Ottawa studying contentious climate debates, quipped, “Just the U.S. Department of Energy shilling for one of the most destructive industries known to humanity cool cool cool.”
In the early 1900s, coal mining in the United States often killed more than 2,000 workers per year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration. Over the past decade, it has killed roughly 10 people annually.
It’s not just coal miners who are at risk. Research published in the journal Science two years ago found that “from 1999-2020, approximately 460,000 deaths in the Medicare population were attributable to coal electricity-generating emissions.”
Genevieve Guenther, founding director of End Climate Silence, said Thursday: “The fact that they’re coding coal as female is right in line with the fact that Trump is a rapist. They take everything they want, they think the planet is like a woman they can just exploit, and fuck whomever they hurt in the process.”
Several women have accused the president of sexual assault, including journalist E. Jean Carroll, who said he raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s. Although Trump has denied the allegations, in 2023, a New York City jury found him civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.
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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announcing the plan to repeal the endangerment finding on July 29, 2025 at a truck plant in Indiana. Credit: EPA
DeSmog has been tracking the efforts of fossil fuel trade associations, policymakers, and industry backed-groups out to demolish U.S. climate policy for years.
In late July, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced at a trucking facility in Indiana that the Trump administration would be moving to rescind the “endangerment finding,” an agency declaration which provides the legal foundation for many major U.S. climate regulations.
Zeldin was joined at the press conference by U.S. Energy Secretary and former fracking executive Chris Wright, as well as Republican policymakers and representatives of auto groups including the American Trucking Associations (ATA).
This was just a small sampling of a powerful anti-climate coalition that for over a decade has attempted to overturn the endangerment finding, a 2009 scientific determination from the EPA that for the first time recognized carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases as “pollutants” that are “harmful” and therefore must be regulated.
It’s a finding that helps provide the legal justification for EPA regulations on greenhouse gases from power plants, methane pollution from oil and gas operations, and limits on tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. Now, the Trump administration will be seeking public comments and moving to officially repeal the finding by sometime next year.
DeSmog has been tracking and building databases on the anti-endangerment coalition for years. Below is our guide to the top fossil fuel groups, conservative policymakers, and climate deniers leading the effort to demolish the bedrock of American climate policy.
American Petroleum Institute
When the EPA first issued the endangerment finding in 2009, the American Petroleum Institute (API), the main lobby group for U.S. oil and gas producers, was immediately opposed. “[It] poses an endangerment to the American economy and to every American family,” the institute’s then-president Jack Gerardclaimed.
API joined with other fossil fuel and industrial lobby organizations, including the National Association of Manufacturers, to wage an unsuccessful legal challenge against the finding. It recently applauded Zeldin’s announcement of rescinding endangerment and rolling back auto emissions regulations, arguing that the Trump administration is “protecting the freedom of all Americans to decide what they drive.”
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Another early business opponent of the endangerment finding was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobby group representing millions of businesses whose membership has included oil and gas majors, fossil fuel utilities, and coal companies. Like API, it helped lead an unsuccessful legal action against the finding.
The Chamber of Commerce has a long record of climate obstruction, including being a member of an infamous climate denial organization known as the Global Climate Coalition. Yet its leadership is now trying to distance itself from Zeldin’s proposed repeal of endangerment, telling Reuters that, “While we did not call for this proposal, we are reviewing it and will consult with members so we can provide constructive feedback to the agency.”
Project 2025
The radical plan for dismantling the U.S. government published by the Heritage Foundation contains specific proposals for the EPA, calling for “a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding.” One of the contributors to the EPA chapter is Aaron Szabo, now an assistant administrator at the agency.
Szabo was an advisor to a pro-Trump think tank known as the America First Policy Institute. He was also a former lobbyist “who pushed the interests of major polluters like members of the American Petroleum Institute,” according to Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who spoke against Szabo at his EPA confirmation hearing.
One of Project 2025’s top architects, Russ Vought, now leads the White House Office of Management and Budget. He has also called for the repeal of the endangerment finding. “It’s long overdue to look at the impacts on our people of the underlying Obama endangerment finding,” he said in an EPA press release in March.
Trump’s Climate Working Group
The EPA has justified its repeal of the endangerment finding — which states unequivocally that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and the climate — by citing a recent Department of Energy report written by five prominent climate crisis deniers.
This so-called “Climate Working Group” includes Steve Koonin, John Christy, Ross McKitrick, Judith Curry, and Roy Spencer, all of whom have worked for years to publicly downplay the urgency of the climate crisis or deny that it exists. They argue in their report that carbon dioxide is good for humankind because it boosts “agricultural productivity,” an assessment that isn’t shared by actual climate scientists warning of dire threats to the global food supply from higher global temperatures.
Heartland Institute
One of the longest-running U.S. climate denial groups, the Heartland Institute was a partner of Project 2025, and for years has advocated against the endangerment finding. It applauded Zeldin’s announcement, saying in a statement that “President Trump is doing the right thing for the economy, the environment, and the American people.”
The Heartland Institute has a major UK ally in Nigel Farage, head of the right-wing political party Reform UK, who last year helped launch a European branch of the denial group. At the Jordan Peterson conference known as the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) earlier this year, Farage invoked a frequent climate denier talking point about endangerment, claiming that it’s “absolutely nuts” that carbon dioxide is considered a pollutant.
Koch Network
Climate denial groups that have received funding from foundations linked to the oil and gas billionaires Charles and David Koch are some of the most stalwart opponents of the EPA’s greenhouse gas finding. They include the CO2 Coalition, whose co-founder William Happer was on the National Security Council in Trump’s first administration, as well as the American Energy Alliance and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Koch-backed groups have achieved key U.S. Supreme Court victories that have paved way to undo the endangerment finding, including the case West Virginia vs. EPA, which weakened the agency’s ability to address climate change.
Zeldin cited that legal precedent explicitly in his announcement on Tuesday, saying, “would you want the administrator of the EPA to be ignoring the Supreme Court decisions in West Virginia vs. EPA?” He also cited the court’s rejection of the Chevron Deference — a long-standing doctrine giving federal agencies power to interpret the law where vague — which was the result of legal efforts backed in part by Charles Koch.
Critics argue this powerful anti-climate coalition ultimately serves the interest of companies profiting from polluting and warming our atmosphere. Senator Whitehouse said in a statement that “the Trump Administration’s repeal [of the endangerment finding] has the fossil fuel industry’s oily fingerprints all over it.” He added that “Trump chose his fossil fuel megadonors over the American people.”
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U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright handpicked the five contrarian scientists who authored a controversial new climate report.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Researchers say DOE report cherry-picks data to downplay threat of greenhouse gases
The last assessment of the state of climate science from the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in its final form 2 years ago, was a monumental effort, with 721 volunteer scientists synthesizing all available published research. Yesterday, the Department of Energy (DOE) released its own climate assessment, as part of a campaign by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to overturn its landmark endangerment finding from 2009, which found that burning fossil fuels endangers public health and established carbon dioxide as a pollutant EPA could regulate. But the DOE report—called A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate—had fewer authors than IPCC’s: just five.
Handpicked by DOE Secretary Chris Wright, a fossil fuel entrepreneur, the authors are well known to climate scientists. Although the members of this Climate Working Group all hold scientific doctorates, they hold contrarian views on climate science that are out of step with the mainstream. The report, assembled in months, argues that some of the warming attributed to fossil fuel burning is instead driven by natural cycles or variability in the Sun, and that sea level rise has not been accelerating. Climate researchers say the authors cherry-picked evidence and highlighted uncertainties to achieve the net effect of downplaying the impacts of climate change. “This shows how far we have sunk,” says Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University. “Climate denial is now the official policy of the U.S. government.”
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U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks to ARC by video. Credit: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
In exclusive interviews, they called the Trump administration official “terrific,” “very smart,” and someone who “gets it.”
In mid-February, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright described the global effort to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in dark and conspiratorial terms.
“Net zero 2050 is a sinister goal,” he told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), an international gathering of conservatives convened by Canadian podcaster, author, and anti-climate powerbroker Jordan Peterson. “It’s certainly been a powerful tool used to grow government power [and], top-down control, and shrink human freedom.”
Then in March, Wright did a speech at the 43rd annual CERAWeek where he attacked the Biden administration’s climate policies as a “quasi-religious” agenda “that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.”
Those views put Wright, formerly a CEO with the fracking company Liberty Energy, far outside the Paris Agreement consensus among many world leaders and heads of major corporations that climate change is an urgent issue that requires fundamental changes to our global energy system.
But Wright’s reactionary statements are winning him praise from fossil fuel advocates who acknowledge that human-caused climate change is real but deny that it presents existential threats to civilization – what watchdog nonprofits such as the Center for Countering Digital Hate refers to as “the new denial.”
In exclusive interviews with DeSmog and Canada’s National Observer conducted during the ARC conference, three prominent figures who deny there is a climate emergency explained why they’re excited that Wright holds one of the most consequential cabinet posts in the Trump administration, with one referring to the U.S. energy secretary as “a good friend.”
Bjorn Lomborg speaks about his most recent book during a press briefing at ARC. Credit: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
Bjorn Lomborg
One particularly influential climate crisis denier is Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist who for decades has been trying to convince policymakers and the public that there are more important global challenges to address than climate change. This is the subject of his most recent book, Best Things First, which Lomborg was promoting at ARC. Last year, Peterson personally presented a copy of the book to Elon Musk.
“We’ll have to wait and see if he actually reads it,” Lomborg said of Musk in an interview with DeSmog and Canada’s National Observer at the conference.
Lomborg, who is an advisor to ARC, said during a keynote speech that efforts to transition off fossil fuels are a “green fantasy.” Lomborg acknowledges that climate change is real but claims, contrary to decades of scientific and economic evidence, that it will be relatively easy and painless for humankind to adapt.
Those arguments have resonated with Wright, who during a 2020 podcast referred to Lomborg’s previous book False Alarm as “fantastic,” and earlier this year described him as a “friend” on LinkedIn.
Asked what he thinks about Trump’s pick for energy secretary, Lomborg replied: “Look, Chris Wright is a great guy and he’s very smart. And I’m very happy that we can get a more sense-based approach to how we do energy.”
Part of that, according to Lomborg, is acknowledging — despite low-carbon investment surpassing $2 trillion in 2024 — that a transformative global shift to green energy isn’t happening anytime soon. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “And that, I think, is what Chris Wright can help us to do, which is to say, ‘let’s be realistic now and let’s find smarter ways to have greener energy sources in the future.’”
Scott Tinker does a speech at ARC. Credit: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
Scott Tinker
During his 13-minute presentation at ARC, Scott Tinker outlined his view that energy has to be affordable, reliable, and clean, criteria that in his view disadvantages renewable energy. “If you want 100 percent clean you don’t get much of these other things,” he told the conference. “There are trade-offs in the real world.”
Tinker runs an organization called Switch Energy Alliance that creates videos about energy and climate change for classrooms, museums, and professional training sessions. The organization says that it wants an “energy-educated future that is objective, nonpartisan, and sensible.”
But Tinker tends to promote the benefits of fossil fuels while downplaying the urgency of addressing global temperature rise. During a podcast interview in March, Tinker said it was “a very strange form of economic colonialism” to argue against developing world countries burning fossil fuels “because we’ll wreck the climate.” We shouldn’t fear a bit of atmospheric warming, Tinker added, urging listeners to instead consider “all the positive things” countries gain from oil, gas, and coal.
Wright has used similar language, telling a gathering of African leaders in March that it would be “a paternalistic post-colonial attitude” for the U.S. to stand in the way of their fossil fuel resources.
The similarities between Wright’s and Tinker’s views aren’t a coincidence. Tinker told DeSmog in an interview at ARC that he and the U.S. energy secretary have known each other for years. “Chris is a good friend,” Tinker said. “We’ve bounced a lot back and forth.”
One other area they seem to agree on is rejecting carbon dioxide’s legal status as a pollutant in the U.S., which helps provide the basis for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions. That’s been a long-time goal of climate denial organizations such as the CO2 Coalition and Heartland Institute.
“We shouldn’t confuse [CO2] with being a pollutant,” Tinker said.
Robert Bryce speaks at ARC. Credit: ARC / YouTube
Robert Bryce
For years Robert Bryce has been on a mission to convince the world that renewable energy can never replace or out-compete coal, gas, and oil. Previously a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute— a think tank with a long history of accepting fossil fuel money and questioning the scientific consensus on climate change — Bryce now attacks climate solutions as an author, speaker, and filmmaker.
During his speech at ARC, he claimed that “we are inundated with climate catastrophism,” and argued without evidence that the primary motivation for environmentalists to be opposed to fossil fuels is because their organizations have “enormous” budgets, saying “it’s a big business.”
Bryce is a long-time proponent of nuclear energy, something he shares in common with Wright, who stepped down as a member of the board of directors at the nuclear company Oklo after he was confirmed as energy secretary in February.
“Chris gets it,” Bryce said in an interview with DeSmog. “Chris knows what the score is. He’s a natural gas guy, a hydrocarbon guy. He’s promoting nuclear power. Hopefully this administration, now that they’re actually talking about nuclear, can actually move the ball forward, it’s overdue.”
Bryce and Wright also seem to share opposition to carbon capture and storage, a technology widely favored by oil and gas producers, which tout it as key to reducing emissions from their operations despite it being widely used to pull more oil from the ground. Under Wright, the U.S. Department of Energy is considering cutting billions of dollars’ worth of funding for projects utilizing the technology.
“There is only one reason why any of these hydrocarbon companies are doing carbon capture,” Bryce said. “Subsidies, that’s it.”
“It will never work at scale,” he added. “Once you get that CO2 super-compressed and you’re pushing it down underground, there are very few places where you can actually sequester it. So it’s a lot of money wasted.”
This special investigation between Canada’s National Observer and DeSmog was produced in collaboration with the I-SEA and TRACE Foundation.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Trump boasted about withdrawing from the “one-sided” Paris Agreement, saying, “It was a disaster.” Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Conservative conference featured global right-wing speakers from Liz Truss to JD Vance calling for an end to climate protections.
Just a month into President Donald Trump’s chaotic administration, American and international conservatives swooped into the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Washington, D.C., in mid-February, and took a knee to the president, non-elected billionaire Elon Musk, and their fossil fuel deregulation agenda.
After numerous speeches heralding the MAGA movement by major figures on the right, including Vice President JD Vance, DOGE chief Elon Musk, ex-Trump aide Steve Bannon, and Speaker of the House Republican Mike Johnson, on the last day of the four-day event, Trump himself spoke to the faithful. Basking in chants of “USA, USA,” Trump boasted about withdrawing from the “one-sided” Paris Agreement, saying, “It was a disaster, it was a disaster.”
“I terminated the Green New Scam,” he went on, referring to the Green New Deal, which was never enacted or proposed as an actual bill. “One of the greatest hoaxes ever played on this country is the Green New Scam. We spent trillions of dollars on this nonsense … It really set back our country.”
In a rambling speech bereft of solid policy or facts, Trump also said he “canceled Joe Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate, where everybody has to have an electric,” again referring to non-existent legislation. Biden did not mandate people to switch to electric cars; he had progressively stricter pollution standards.
Trump’s final reference to the environment in his speech was that “people can buy any type of car they want, except for hydrogen. The only thing you can’t do is buy a hydrogen-powered car. You know why? They said it really works great, but when it doesn’t work, you never find a body. It’s a bet that’s a bad sign.” As of this publication date, no one has been disintegrated by a hydrogen car explosion. He then ended with his signature dance as the Village People’s “YMCA” blared over the loudspeakers.
Trump dances to the song, “YMCA” at CPAC 2025. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Trump’s references to fake climate policy was emblematic of this year’s CPAC discussions on the environment. In past years, the conference’s environmental speakers were more “scientific,” with conservative climate denialists showing graphs and data to prove their theories that climate change seemingly does not exist. But with no breakout sessions this year, the gathering was all anti-climate talk and pro-MAGA with zero attempts at science.
Take former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’s talk on Thursday, Feb. 20, the second day of CPAC. Truss, who had previously served as the UK’s environment secretary, expressed her anger that her move to end the ban on fracking in Great Britain was brought back in 2022 by her predecessor, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Truss was famously only in office for 45 days. “Sadly, I wasn’t in office long enough to actually make [the fracking ban] happen,” she told the conference crowd.
“We have net-zero policies that have decimated our oil and gas industry,” she said. “The net result is we have the highest energy prices in the developed world. And in Britain, we’ve just seen the last steel plant close down last year. We cannot produce our own steel anymore.”
Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss echoed Trump’s disdain for big government. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
The former Prime Minister, who spent much of her adult life in government, then repeated Trump’s disdain for the “deep state,” saying, “We want to dismantle the British deep state, which is older and more entrenched than the American one.”
“We need a great restoration bill to repeal all of the terrible laws, from the Equality Act to the Climate Change Act, the Human Rights Act to the Constitutional Reform Act,” she said. “We need to eradicate judicial activism in Britain and restore parliamentary sovereignty.”
CPAC has expanded its international influence and speakers over the last few years with annual South Korea and Hungary meetings. Leader of the Reform UK party Nigel Farage, who also attended, has spoken at the conference for many years, and is considered a bit of a celebrity here.
Wright Vows to Axe Regulations
On the first day of the conference, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s speech pushed Trump’s “drill baby drill and build baby build” philosophy. The former fracking CEO of Liberty Energy promised that his and Trump’s other cabinet departments would be “working feverishly” to remove regulations to pave the way for higher energy production. He also emphasized removing restrictions the Biden Administration put on fossil fuel appliances like gas stoves.
Last year, gas stoves were the new “plastic straws” in the world of right-wing media as conservative news outlets claimed the Democratic administration was looking to ban them fully, which it was not.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright talked about the amount of energy needed for AI data centers. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Economic competition with China has been a running theme through many of the speeches at CPAC for years. But now, with the massively successful launch of DeepSeek, finding energy for artificial intelligence operations is a priority. Wright’s speech emphasized the energy use that AI technology will demand and claimed that it will lead to “enormous benefits” in drug discovery and national security. “We want China to lead the way in AI? I would feel naked if their AI was better than ours,” he said.
AI and tech companies donated huge amounts to the Trump campaign, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. That investment has paid off as the closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Trump’s changes at the FTC and FCC to reign in their powers will benefit the tech world immensely. Trump has even rescinded Biden’s executive order warning people about AI.
Dunleavy’s Political Ambitions
One of Trump’s first executive orders demanded the nation “unleash Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential.”Environmental rights organization, EarthJustice replied, “While the Trump administration’s plans were made clear in the orders, it’s important to note that the vast bulk of the actions cannot be made unilaterally by the President without cooperation from government agencies, Congress, or other authorities.”
Running throughout CPAC on the big screens in the main ballroom amounted to campaign ads for Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who wants to leave his job in the 49th state. Called the “worst-kept-secret,” Dunleavy had been auditioning for a gig in the Trump administration, but now that that doesn’t seem to be happening, he’s likely looking at running for Senator against one of his fellow Republicans, Dan Sullivan, who is up for reelection in 2026, or Lisa Murkowski, who is up in 2028. The ad, which features Trump prominently, has the President speaking about how he will work with Dunleavy to provide “energy to Alaska and allies around the world.”
A campaign ad screened at CPAC for Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s Senate campaign. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
From the CPAC stage, Gov. Dunleavy told the audience that Trump “sees us [Alaska] as a solution to many of America’s problems.” A $44 billion liquified natural gas pipeline project that both Trump and Dunleavy are pushing is oddly not planned to send energy to the lower 48, but to Asian customers. Japan has been trying to curry favor with Trump for access since that could help the nation diversify supplies away from riskier sources like Russia.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum
President Trump has commanded the new Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, to find new ways to exploit public lands. The goal, Burgum explained in his CPAC speech, is to “sell to our friends and allies.” He claims that doing so will “end our trade deficits” and “the wars abroad.” Ultimately, Burgum claims this work will set up President Trump to “win the Nobel Prize.”
Burgam, a billionaire former two-term governor of North Dakota and a software developer, has extensive ties to the oil and gas industry, including hundreds of thousands in investments. After a brief run for President in 2024, Burgam endorsed Trump.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum aims to exploit public lands to “sell to our friends and allies.” Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Burgam will also chair the newly founded National Energy Dominance Council with Energy Secretary Chris Wright as vice chair. The council “will advise President Trump on strategies to achieve energy dominance by improving the processes for permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, and transportation across all forms of American energy.” It will also cut “red tape” through axing regulations.
CFACT Was the Lone Climate Group in Hall
Down in the exhibit hall, the tables that many years ago mainly saw small government groups were filled with culture warriors – groups opposed to abortion, trans rights, and other historically underrepresented communities. This year, the lone group in the hall focusing on climate was CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a “conservative libertarian think tank.”
Nate Meyers, CFACT’s national field coordinator was clear on the group’s approach to the “science” of climate change –“It’s not settled at all,” he said. Meyers verbally added, “™”[trade mark]] as he said the words “climate change” when speaking to DeSmog.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/QKjLqdrm3N0?feature=oembedCFACT’s Nate Myers speaks with DeSmog. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow is CFACT’s college campus organization, which, according to Myers, has 32 campus groups. Like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, CFACT aims to capture the minds of young people, according to Myers., “College campuses are so totally captured by the left. Statistically, you’re more likely to be instructed by a Marxist than you are a Republican,” he said.
“That demonstrates a huge need for alternative viewpoints on college campuses,” he added. “And it’s kind of a cliche thing to say, but the children and young people are our future.”
When asked who funds CFACT, Myers mentioned small donations and occasional larger direct donations, emphasizing the grassroots nature of the organization. When DeSmogasked if they received backing from Koch Inc., like many similar climate-denying groups, Myers demurred, saying he wasn’t a fan of Koch.) In the past, CFACT has received large sums from Koch’s Donors Trust, along with all the other usual suspects of right-wing climate denying donors.
