Tomgram: Michael Klare, Donald Trump's Energy Nostalgia and the Path to Hell
By Michael Klare
Posted on December 15, 2016, Printed on December 15, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176222/ ;
The Trump administration-in-formation is a stew of generals, billionaires,
and multimillionaires -- and as in the case of retired Marine General James
"Mad Dog" Mattis, the likely new secretary of defense, even the military men
seem to have made more than a few bucks in these last years. In retirement,
Mattis, for instance, joined the board of military-industrial giant General
Dynamics as one of 13 "independent directors," reportedly amassing at least
$900,000 in company stock and another $600,000 in cold cash.
Oh yes, and there's one other requirement for admission to the Trump
administration: your basic civilian appointee must be ready to demolish the
system he or she is to head. Betsy DeVos, the president-elect's pick for
education secretary, wants to take apart public education; Tom Price, the
future secretary of health and human services, is eager to dismantle
Obamacare and Medicare; Scott Pruitt, the proposed new head of the
Environmental Protection Agency, seems to want to tear that agency limb from
limb; and the announced new "labor" secretary (and you really do have to put
that in scare quotes), fast food CEO Andy Puzder, is against raising the
minimum wage and thinks the automation of the workplace is a total plus,
since machines can't take vacations or arrive late.
Let's face it, the most extreme government of our lifetime is going to be a
demolition derby. Think of it as the Reagan administration of the 1980s on
steroids -- and keep in mind that Donald Trump will be the president of a
far more fragile country than the one Ronald Reagan and his cronies presided
over. Things could begin to fall apart fast for ordinary Americans. For
instance, the new Republican Congress is expected to swiftly pass a promised
"repeal and delay" version of the obliteration of Obamacare, officially
wiping that program off the books and yet postponing its departure and the
arrival of whatever is to replace it until after the 2018 elections. In the
interim, however, the result is likely to be a "zombie" health care
marketplace from which insurance companies are expected to begin to jump
ship, potentially leaving significant numbers of those 20 million Americans
who got medical coverage for the first time via Obamacare with nothing. And
after EPA chief Pruitt has helped let Donald Trump's "energy revolution" of
extreme fossil fuel exploitation loose to do its damnedest and, as
TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, America's skies are
once again veritable smog-fests, there will be plenty more health needs on
whatever's left of the horizon.
Donald Trump, as Politico points out, is already at war with labor, and
prospectively with those "failing government schools," and the American
safety net, and the environment, not to mention the planet -- and that's
before we even get to actual war, which will be overseen by a crew of
Islamo- and Irano-phobes. If, as Klare points out today, Trump himself has
a serious case of nostalgia for the America of his youth (and mine), with
its untrammeled growth and its fossil-fueled wonders, don't think that
nostalgia doesn't reign in military affairs, too. In that case, however, it
wouldn't be for the oily vistas of the mid-twentieth century, but perhaps
for the age of the Crusades. Tom
Drowning the World in Oil
Trump's Carbon-Obsessed Energy Policy and the Planetary Nightmare to Come
By Michael T. Klare
Scroll through Donald Trump's campaign promises or listen to his speeches
and you could easily conclude that his energy policy consists of little more
than a wish list drawn up by the major fossil fuel companies: lift
environmental restrictions on oil and natural gas extraction, build the
Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, open more federal lands to
drilling, withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, kill Obama's Clean
Power Plan, revive the coal mining industry, and so on and so forth ad
infinitum. In fact, many of his proposals have simply been lifted straight
from the talking points of top energy industry officials and their lavishly
financed allies in Congress.
If, however, you take a closer look at this morass of pro-carbon proposals,
an obvious, if as yet unnoted, contradiction quickly becomes apparent. Were
all Trump's policies to be enacted -- and the appointment of the
climate-change denier and industry-friendly attorney general of Oklahoma,
Scott Pruitt, to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggests the
attempt will be made -- not all segments of the energy industry will
flourish. Instead, many fossil fuel companies will be annihilated, thanks
to the rock-bottom fuel prices produced by a colossal oversupply of oil,
coal, and natural gas.
Indeed, stop thinking of Trump's energy policy as primarily aimed at helping
the fossil fuel companies (although some will surely benefit). Think of it
instead as a nostalgic compulsion aimed at restoring a long-vanished America
in which coal plants, steel mills, and gas-guzzling automobiles were the
designated indicators of progress, while concern over pollution -- let alone
climate change -- was yet to be an issue.
If you want confirmation that such a devastating version of nostalgia makes
up the heart and soul of Trump's energy agenda, don't focus on his specific
proposals or any particular combination of them. Look instead at his choice
of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state and former
Governor Rick Perry from oil-soaked Texas as his secretary of energy, not to
mention the carbon-embracing fervor that ran through his campaign statements
and positions. According to his election campaign website, his top priority
will be to "unleash America's $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and
natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves." In
doing so, it affirmed, Trump would "open onshore and offshore leasing on
federal lands, eliminate [the] moratorium on coal leasing, and open shale
energy deposits." In the process, any rule or regulation that stands in the
way of exploiting these reserves will be obliterated.
If all of Trump's proposals are enacted, U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
will soar, wiping out the declines of recent years and significantly
increasing the pace of global warming. Given that other major GHG emitters,
especially India and China, will feel less obliged to abide by their Paris
commitments if the U.S. heads down that path, it's almost certain that
atmospheric warming will soar beyond the 2 degree Celsius rise over
pre-industrial levels that scientists consider the maximum the planet can
absorb without suffering catastrophic repercussions. And if, as promised,
Trump also repeals a whole raft of environmental regulations and essentially
dismantles the Environmental Protection Agency, much of the progress made
over recent years in improving our air and water quality will simply be
wiped away, and the skies over our cities and suburbs will once again turn
gray with smog and toxic pollutants of all sorts.
Eliminating All Constraints on Carbon Extraction
To fully appreciate the dark, essentially delusional nature of Trump's
energy nostalgia, let's start by reviewing his proposals. Aside from
assorted tweets and one-liners, two speeches before energy groups represent
the most elaborate expression of his views: the first was given on May 26th
at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, North Dakota, to
groups largely focused on extracting oil from shale through hydraulic
fracturing ("fracking") in the Bakken shale oil formation; the second on
September 22nd addressed the Marcellus Shale Coalition in Pittsburgh, a
group of Pennsylvania gas frackers.
At both events, Trump's comments were designed to curry favor with this
segment of the industry by promising the repeal of any regulations that
stood in the way of accelerated drilling. But that was just a start for the
then-candidate. He went on to lay out an "America-first energy plan"
designed to eliminate virtually every impediment to the exploitation of oil,
gas, and coal anywhere in the country or in its surrounding waters, ensuring
America's abiding status as the world's leading producer of fossil fuels.
Much of this, Trump promised in Bismarck, would be set in motion in the
first 100 days of his presidency. Among other steps, he pledged to:
* Cancel America's commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all
payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs
* Lift any existing moratoriums on energy production in federal areas
* Ask TransCanada to renew its permit application to build the Keystone
Pipeline
* Revoke policies that impose unwarranted restrictions on new drilling
technologies
* Save the coal industry
The specifics of how all this might happen were not provided either by the
candidate or, later, by his transition team. Nevertheless, the main thrust
of his approach couldn't be clearer: abolish all regulations and
presidential directives that stand in the way of unrestrained fossil fuel
extraction, including commitments made by President Obama in December 2015
under the Paris Climate Agreement. These would include, in particular, the
EPA's Clean Power Plan, with its promise to substantially reduce greenhouse
gas emissions from coal-fired plants, along with mandated improvements in
automotive fuel efficiency standards, requiring major manufacturers to
achieve an average of 54.5 miles per gallon in all new cars by 2025. As
these constitute the heart of America's "intended nationally determined
contributions" to the 2015 accord, they will undoubtedly be early targets
for a Trump presidency and will represent a functional withdrawal from the
Paris Agreement, even if an actual withdrawal isn't instantly possible.
Just how quickly Trump will move on such promises, and with what degree of
success, cannot be foreseen. However, because so many of the measures
adopted by the Obama administration to address climate change were enacted
as presidential directives or rules promulgated by the EPA -- a strategy
adopted to circumvent opposition from climate skeptics in the
Republican-controlled House and Senate -- Trump will be in a position to
impose a number of his own priorities simply by issuing new executive orders
nullifying Obama's. Some of his goals will, however, be far harder to
achieve. In particular, it will prove difficult indeed to "save" the coal
industry if America's electrical utilities retain their preference for cheap
natural gas.
Ignoring Market Realities
This last point speaks to a major contradiction in the Trump energy plan.
Seeking to boost the extraction of every carbon-based energy source
inevitably spells doom for segments of the industry incapable of competing
in the low-price environment of a supply-dominated Trumpian energy
marketplace.
Take the competition between coal and natural gas in powering America's
electrical plants. As a result of the widespread deployment of fracking
technology in the nation's prolific shale fields, the U.S. gas output has
skyrocketed in recent years, jumping from 18.1 trillion cubic feet in 2005
to 27.1 trillion in 2015. With so much additional gas on the market, prices
have naturally declined -- a boon for the electrical utility companies,
which have converted many of their plants from coal to gas-combustion in
order to benefit from the low prices. More than anything else, this is
responsible for the decline of coal use, with total consumption dropping by
10% in 2015 alone.
In his speech to the Marcellus Coalition, Trump promised to facilitate the
expanded output of both fuels. In particular, he pledged to eliminate
federal regulations that, he claimed, "remain a major restriction to shale
production." (Presumably, this was a reference to Obama administration
measures aimed at reducing the excessive leakage of methane, a major
greenhouse gas, from fracking operations on federal lands.) At the same
time, he vowed to "end the war on coal and the war on miners."
As Trump imagines the situation, that "war on coal" is a White
House-orchestrated drive to suppress its production and consumption through
excessive regulation, especially the Clean Power Plan. But while that plan,
if ever fully put into operation, would result in the accelerated
decommissioning of existing coal plants, the real war against coal is being
conducted by the very frackers Trump seeks to unleash. By encouraging the
unrestrained production of natural gas, he will ensure continued low gas
prices and so a depressed market for coal.
A similar contradiction lies at the heart of Trump's approach to oil: rather
than seeking to bolster core segments of the industry, he favors a
supersaturated market approach that will end up hurting many domestic
producers. Right now, in fact, the single biggest impediment to oil company
growth and profitability is the low price environment brought on by a global
glut of crude -- itself largely a consequence of the explosion of shale oil
production in the United States. With more petroleum entering the market
all the time and insufficient world demand to soak it up, prices have
remained at depressed levels for more than two years, severely affecting
fracking operations as well. Many U.S. frackers, including some in the
Bakken formation, have found themselves forced to suspend operations or
declare bankruptcy because each new barrel of fracked oil costs more to
produce than it can be sold for.
Trump's approach to this predicament -- pump out as much oil as possible
here and in Canada -- is potentially disastrous, even in energy industry
terms. He has, for instance, threatened to open up yet more federal lands,
onshore and off, for yet more oil drilling, including presumably areas
previously protected on environmental grounds like the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge and the seabeds off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In
addition, the construction of pipelines like the embattled one in North
Dakota and other infrastructure needed to bring these added resources to
market will clearly be approved and facilitated.
In theory, this drown-us-in-oil approach should help achieve a
much-trumpeted energy "independence" for the United States, but under the
circumstances, it will surely prove a calamity of the first order. And such
a fantasy version of a future energy market will only grow yet more
tumultuous thanks to Trump's urge to help ensure the survival of that
particularly carbon-dirty form of oil production, Canada's tar sands
industry.
Not surprisingly, that industry, too, is under enormous pressure from low
oil prices, as tar sands are far more costly to produce than conventional
oil. At the moment, adequate pipeline capacity is also lacking for the
delivery of their thick, carbon-heavy crude to refineries on the American
Gulf Coast where they can be processed into gasoline and other commercial
products. So here's yet one more Trumpian irony to come: by favoring
construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, Trump would throw yet another
monkey wrench into his own planning. Sending such a life preserver to the
Canadian industry -- allowing it to better compete with American crude --
would be another strike against his own "America-first energy plan."
Seeking the Underlying Rationale
In other words, Trump's plan will undoubtedly prove to be an enigma wrapped
in a conundrum inside a roiling set of contradictions. Although it appears
to offer boom times for every segment of the fossil fuel industry, only
carbon as a whole will benefit, while many individual companies and sectors
of the market will suffer. What could possibly be the motivation for such a
bizarre and planet-enflaming outcome?
To some degree, no doubt, it comes, at least in part, from the
president-elect's deep and abiding nostalgia for the fast-growing (and
largely regulation-free) America of the 1950s. When Trump was growing up,
the United States was on an extraordinary expansionist drive and its output
of basic goods, including oil, coal, and steel, was swelling by the day.
The country's major industries were heavily unionized; the suburbs were
booming; apartment buildings were going up all over the borough of Queens in
New York City where Trump got his start; cars were rolling off the assembly
lines in what was then anything but the "Rust Belt"; and refineries and coal
plants were pouring out the massive amounts of energy needed to make it all
happen.
Having grown up in the Bronx, just across Long Island Sound from Trump's
home borough, I can still remember the New York of that era: giant
smokestacks belching out thick smoke on every horizon and highways jammed
with cars adding to the miasma, but also to that sense of explosive growth.
Builders and automobile manufacturers didn't have to seriously worry about
regulations back then, and certainly not about environmental ones, which
made life -- for them -- so much simpler.
It's that carbon-drenched era to which Trump dreams of returning, even if
it's already clear enough that the only conceivable kind of dream that can
ever come from his set of policies will be a nightmare of the first order,
with temperatures exceeding all records, coastal cities regularly under
water, our forests in flame and our farmlands turned to dust.
And don't forget one other factor: Trump's vindictiveness -- in this case,
not just toward his Democratic opponent in the recent election campaign but
toward those who voted against him. The Donald is well aware that most
Americans who care about climate change and are in favor of a rapid
transformation to a green energy America did not vote for him, including
prominent figures in Hollywood and Silicon Valley who contributed lavishly
to Hillary Clinton's coffers on the promise that the country would be
transformed into a "clean energy superpower."
Given his well-known penchant for attacking anyone who frustrates his
ambitions or speaks negatively of him, and his urge to punish greens by,
among other things, obliterating every measure adopted by President Obama to
speed the utilization of renewable energy, expect him to rip the EPA apart
and do his best to shred any obstacles to fossil fuel exploitation. If that
means hastening the incineration of the planet, so be it. He either doesn't
care (since at 70 he won't live to see it happen), truly doesn't believe in
the science, or doesn't think it will hurt his company's business interests
over the next few decades.
One other factor has to be added into this witch's brew: magical thinking.
Like so many leaders of recent times, he seems to equate mastery over oil in
particular, and fossil fuels in general, with mastery over the world. In
this, he shares a common outlook with President Vladimir Putin of Russia,
who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on harnessing Russia's oil and gas reserves
in order to restore the country's global power, and with ExxonMobil CEO Rex
Tillerson, said to be Trump's top choice for Secretary of State and a
long-term business partner of the Putin regime. For these and other
politicians and tycoons -- and, of course, we're talking almost exclusively
about men here -- the possession of giant oil reserves is thought to bestow
a kind of manly vigor. Think of it as the national equivalent of Viagra.
Back in 2002, Robert Ebel of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies put the matter succinctly: "Oil fuels more than automobiles and
airplanes. Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and international
politics... [It is] a determinant of well being, national security, and
international power for those who possess [it] and the converse for those
who do not."
Trump seems to have fully absorbed this line of thinking. "American energy
dominance will be declared a strategic economic and foreign policy goal of
the United States," he declared at the Williston forum in May. "We will
become, and stay, totally independent of any need to import energy from the
OPEC cartel or any nations hostile to our interests." He seems firmly
convinced that the accelerated extraction of oil and other carbon-based
fuels will "make America great again."
This is delusional, but as president he will undoubtedly be able to make
enough of his energy program happen to achieve both short term and long term
energy mayhem. He won't actually be able to reverse the global shift to
renewable energy now under way or leverage increased American fossil fuel
production to achieve significant foreign policy advantages. What his
efforts are, however, likely to ensure is the surrender of American
technological leadership in green energy to countries like China and
Germany, already racing ahead in the development of renewable systems. And
in the process, he will also guarantee that all of us are going to
experience yet more extreme climate events. He will never recreate the
dreamy America of his memory or return us to the steamy economic cauldron of
the post-World War II period, but he may succeed in restoring the smoggy
skies and poisoned rivers that so characterized that era and, as an added
bonus, bring planetary climate disaster in his wake. His slogan should be:
Make America Smoggy Again.
Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world
security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The
Race for What's Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil
is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at
@mklare1.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Michael T. Klare
C 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176222
Tomgram: Michael Klare, Donald Trump's Energy Nostalgia and the Path to Hell
By Michael Klare
Posted on December 15, 2016, Printed on December 15, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176222/ ;
The Trump administration-in-formation is a stew of generals, billionaires,
and multimillionaires -- and as in the case of retired Marine General James
"Mad Dog" Mattis, the likely new secretary of defense, even the military men
seem to have made more than a few bucks in these last years. In retirement,
Mattis, for instance, joined the board of military-industrial giant General
Dynamics as one of 13 "independent directors," reportedly amassing at least
$900,000 in company stock and another $600,000 in cold cash.
Oh yes, and there's one other requirement for admission to the Trump
administration: your basic civilian appointee must be ready to demolish the
system he or she is to head. Betsy DeVos, the president-elect's pick for
education secretary, wants to take apart public education; Tom Price, the
future secretary of health and human services, is eager to dismantle
Obamacare and Medicare; Scott Pruitt, the proposed new head of the
Environmental Protection Agency, seems to want to tear that agency limb from
limb; and the announced new "labor" secretary (and you really do have to put
that in scare quotes), fast food CEO Andy Puzder, is against raising the
minimum wage and thinks the automation of the workplace is a total plus,
since machines can't take vacations or arrive late.
Let's face it, the most extreme government of our lifetime is going to be a
demolition derby. Think of it as the Reagan administration of the 1980s on
steroids -- and keep in mind that Donald Trump will be the president of a
far more fragile country than the one Ronald Reagan and his cronies presided
over. Things could begin to fall apart fast for ordinary Americans. For
instance, the new Republican Congress is expected to swiftly pass a promised
"repeal and delay" version of the obliteration of Obamacare, officially
wiping that program off the books and yet postponing its departure and the
arrival of whatever is to replace it until after the 2018 elections. In the
interim, however, the result is likely to be a "zombie" health care
marketplace from which insurance companies are expected to begin to jump
ship, potentially leaving significant numbers of those 20 million Americans
who got medical coverage for the first time via Obamacare with nothing. And
after EPA chief Pruitt has helped let Donald Trump's "energy revolution" of
extreme fossil fuel exploitation loose to do its damnedest and, as
TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, America's skies are
once again veritable smog-fests, there will be plenty more health needs on
whatever's left of the horizon.
Donald Trump, as Politico points out, is already at war with labor, and
prospectively with those "failing government schools," and the American
safety net, and the environment, not to mention the planet -- and that's
before we even get to actual war, which will be overseen by a crew of
Islamo- and Irano-phobes. If, as Klare points out today, Trump himself has a
serious case of nostalgia for the America of his youth (and mine), with its
untrammeled growth and its fossil-fueled wonders, don't think that nostalgia
doesn't reign in military affairs, too. In that case, however, it wouldn't
be for the oily vistas of the mid-twentieth century, but perhaps for the age
of the Crusades. Tom
Drowning the World in Oil
Trump's Carbon-Obsessed Energy Policy and the Planetary Nightmare to Come
By Michael T. Klare
Scroll through Donald Trump's campaign promises or listen to his speeches
and you could easily conclude that his energy policy consists of little more
than a wish list drawn up by the major fossil fuel companies: lift
environmental restrictions on oil and natural gas extraction, build the
Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, open more federal lands to
drilling, withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, kill Obama's Clean
Power Plan, revive the coal mining industry, and so on and so forth ad
infinitum. In fact, many of his proposals have simply been lifted straight
from the talking points of top energy industry officials and their lavishly
financed allies in Congress.
If, however, you take a closer look at this morass of pro-carbon proposals,
an obvious, if as yet unnoted, contradiction quickly becomes apparent. Were
all Trump's policies to be enacted -- and the appointment of the
climate-change denier and industry-friendly attorney general of Oklahoma,
Scott Pruitt, to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggests the
attempt will be made -- not all segments of the energy industry will
flourish. Instead, many fossil fuel companies will be annihilated, thanks to
the rock-bottom fuel prices produced by a colossal oversupply of oil, coal,
and natural gas.
Indeed, stop thinking of Trump's energy policy as primarily aimed at helping
the fossil fuel companies (although some will surely benefit). Think of it
instead as a nostalgic compulsion aimed at restoring a long-vanished America
in which coal plants, steel mills, and gas-guzzling automobiles were the
designated indicators of progress, while concern over pollution -- let alone
climate change -- was yet to be an issue.
If you want confirmation that such a devastating version of nostalgia makes
up the heart and soul of Trump's energy agenda, don't focus on his specific
proposals or any particular combination of them. Look instead at his choice
of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state and former
Governor Rick Perry from oil-soaked Texas as his secretary of energy, not to
mention the carbon-embracing fervor that ran through his campaign statements
and positions. According to his election campaign website, his top priority
will be to "unleash America's $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and
natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves." In
doing so, it affirmed, Trump would "open onshore and offshore leasing on
federal lands, eliminate [the] moratorium on coal leasing, and open shale
energy deposits." In the process, any rule or regulation that stands in the
way of exploiting these reserves will be obliterated.
If all of Trump's proposals are enacted, U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
will soar, wiping out the declines of recent years and significantly
increasing the pace of global warming. Given that other major GHG emitters,
especially India and China, will feel less obliged to abide by their Paris
commitments if the U.S. heads down that path, it's almost certain that
atmospheric warming will soar beyond the 2 degree Celsius rise over
pre-industrial levels that scientists consider the maximum the planet can
absorb without suffering catastrophic repercussions. And if, as promised,
Trump also repeals a whole raft of environmental regulations and essentially
dismantles the Environmental Protection Agency, much of the progress made
over recent years in improving our air and water quality will simply be
wiped away, and the skies over our cities and suburbs will once again turn
gray with smog and toxic pollutants of all sorts.
Eliminating All Constraints on Carbon Extraction
To fully appreciate the dark, essentially delusional nature of Trump's
energy nostalgia, let's start by reviewing his proposals. Aside from
assorted tweets and one-liners, two speeches before energy groups represent
the most elaborate expression of his views: the first was given on May 26th
at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, North Dakota, to
groups largely focused on extracting oil from shale through hydraulic
fracturing ("fracking") in the Bakken shale oil formation; the second on
September 22nd addressed the Marcellus Shale Coalition in Pittsburgh, a
group of Pennsylvania gas frackers.
At both events, Trump's comments were designed to curry favor with this
segment of the industry by promising the repeal of any regulations that
stood in the way of accelerated drilling. But that was just a start for the
then-candidate. He went on to lay out an "America-first energy plan"
designed to eliminate virtually every impediment to the exploitation of oil,
gas, and coal anywhere in the country or in its surrounding waters, ensuring
America's abiding status as the world's leading producer of fossil fuels.
Much of this, Trump promised in Bismarck, would be set in motion in the
first 100 days of his presidency. Among other steps, he pledged to:
* Cancel America's commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all
payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs
* Lift any existing moratoriums on energy production in federal areas
* Ask TransCanada to renew its permit application to build the Keystone
Pipeline
* Revoke policies that impose unwarranted restrictions on new drilling
technologies
* Save the coal industry
The specifics of how all this might happen were not provided either by the
candidate or, later, by his transition team. Nevertheless, the main thrust
of his approach couldn't be clearer: abolish all regulations and
presidential directives that stand in the way of unrestrained fossil fuel
extraction, including commitments made by President Obama in December 2015
under the Paris Climate Agreement. These would include, in particular, the
EPA's Clean Power Plan, with its promise to substantially reduce greenhouse
gas emissions from coal-fired plants, along with mandated improvements in
automotive fuel efficiency standards, requiring major manufacturers to
achieve an average of 54.5 miles per gallon in all new cars by 2025. As
these constitute the heart of America's "intended nationally determined
contributions" to the 2015 accord, they will undoubtedly be early targets
for a Trump presidency and will represent a functional withdrawal from the
Paris Agreement, even if an actual withdrawal isn't instantly possible.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250023971/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250023971/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20Just how
quickly Trump will move on such promises, and with what degree of success,
cannot be foreseen. However, because so many of the measures adopted by the
Obama administration to address climate change were enacted as presidential
directives or rules promulgated by the EPA -- a strategy adopted to
circumvent opposition from climate skeptics in the Republican-controlled
House and Senate -- Trump will be in a position to impose a number of his
own priorities simply by issuing new executive orders nullifying Obama's.
Some of his goals will, however, be far harder to achieve. In particular, it
will prove difficult indeed to "save" the coal industry if America's
electrical utilities retain their preference for cheap natural gas.
Ignoring Market Realities
This last point speaks to a major contradiction in the Trump energy plan.
Seeking to boost the extraction of every carbon-based energy source
inevitably spells doom for segments of the industry incapable of competing
in the low-price environment of a supply-dominated Trumpian energy
marketplace.
Take the competition between coal and natural gas in powering America's
electrical plants. As a result of the widespread deployment of fracking
technology in the nation's prolific shale fields, the U.S. gas output has
skyrocketed in recent years, jumping from 18.1 trillion cubic feet in 2005
to 27.1 trillion in 2015. With so much additional gas on the market, prices
have naturally declined -- a boon for the electrical utility companies,
which have converted many of their plants from coal to gas-combustion in
order to benefit from the low prices. More than anything else, this is
responsible for the decline of coal use, with total consumption dropping by
10% in 2015 alone.
In his speech to the Marcellus Coalition, Trump promised to facilitate the
expanded output of both fuels. In particular, he pledged to eliminate
federal regulations that, he claimed, "remain a major restriction to shale
production." (Presumably, this was a reference to Obama administration
measures aimed at reducing the excessive leakage of methane, a major
greenhouse gas, from fracking operations on federal lands.) At the same
time, he vowed to "end the war on coal and the war on miners."
As Trump imagines the situation, that "war on coal" is a White
House-orchestrated drive to suppress its production and consumption through
excessive regulation, especially the Clean Power Plan. But while that plan,
if ever fully put into operation, would result in the accelerated
decommissioning of existing coal plants, the real war against coal is being
conducted by the very frackers Trump seeks to unleash. By encouraging the
unrestrained production of natural gas, he will ensure continued low gas
prices and so a depressed market for coal.
A similar contradiction lies at the heart of Trump's approach to oil: rather
than seeking to bolster core segments of the industry, he favors a
supersaturated market approach that will end up hurting many domestic
producers. Right now, in fact, the single biggest impediment to oil company
growth and profitability is the low price environment brought on by a global
glut of crude -- itself largely a consequence of the explosion of shale oil
production in the United States. With more petroleum entering the market all
the time and insufficient world demand to soak it up, prices have remained
at depressed levels for more than two years, severely affecting fracking
operations as well. Many U.S. frackers, including some in the Bakken
formation, have found themselves forced to suspend operations or declare
bankruptcy because each new barrel of fracked oil costs more to produce than
it can be sold for.
Trump's approach to this predicament -- pump out as much oil as possible
here and in Canada -- is potentially disastrous, even in energy industry
terms. He has, for instance, threatened to open up yet more federal lands,
onshore and off, for yet more oil drilling, including presumably areas
previously protected on environmental grounds like the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge and the seabeds off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In
addition, the construction of pipelines like the embattled one in North
Dakota and other infrastructure needed to bring these added resources to
market will clearly be approved and facilitated.
In theory, this drown-us-in-oil approach should help achieve a
much-trumpeted energy "independence" for the United States, but under the
circumstances, it will surely prove a calamity of the first order. And such
a fantasy version of a future energy market will only grow yet more
tumultuous thanks to Trump's urge to help ensure the survival of that
particularly carbon-dirty form of oil production, Canada's tar sands
industry.
Not surprisingly, that industry, too, is under enormous pressure from low
oil prices, as tar sands are far more costly to produce than conventional
oil. At the moment, adequate pipeline capacity is also lacking for the
delivery of their thick, carbon-heavy crude to refineries on the American
Gulf Coast where they can be processed into gasoline and other commercial
products. So here's yet one more Trumpian irony to come: by favoring
construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, Trump would throw yet another
monkey wrench into his own planning. Sending such a life preserver to the
Canadian industry -- allowing it to better compete with American crude --
would be another strike against his own "America-first energy plan."
Seeking the Underlying Rationale
In other words, Trump's plan will undoubtedly prove to be an enigma wrapped
in a conundrum inside a roiling set of contradictions. Although it appears
to offer boom times for every segment of the fossil fuel industry, only
carbon as a whole will benefit, while many individual companies and sectors
of the market will suffer. What could possibly be the motivation for such a
bizarre and planet-enflaming outcome?
To some degree, no doubt, it comes, at least in part, from the
president-elect's deep and abiding nostalgia for the fast-growing (and
largely regulation-free) America of the 1950s. When Trump was growing up,
the United States was on an extraordinary expansionist drive and its output
of basic goods, including oil, coal, and steel, was swelling by the day. The
country's major industries were heavily unionized; the suburbs were booming;
apartment buildings were going up all over the borough of Queens in New York
City where Trump got his start; cars were rolling off the assembly lines in
what was then anything but the "Rust Belt"; and refineries and coal plants
were pouring out the massive amounts of energy needed to make it all happen.
Having grown up in the Bronx, just across Long Island Sound from Trump's
home borough, I can still remember the New York of that era: giant
smokestacks belching out thick smoke on every horizon and highways jammed
with cars adding to the miasma, but also to that sense of explosive growth.
Builders and automobile manufacturers didn't have to seriously worry about
regulations back then, and certainly not about environmental ones, which
made life -- for them -- so much simpler.
It's that carbon-drenched era to which Trump dreams of returning, even if
it's already clear enough that the only conceivable kind of dream that can
ever come from his set of policies will be a nightmare of the first order,
with temperatures exceeding all records, coastal cities regularly under
water, our forests in flame and our farmlands turned to dust.
And don't forget one other factor: Trump's vindictiveness -- in this case,
not just toward his Democratic opponent in the recent election campaign but
toward those who voted against him. The Donald is well aware that most
Americans who care about climate change and are in favor of a rapid
transformation to a green energy America did not vote for him, including
prominent figures in Hollywood and Silicon Valley who contributed lavishly
to Hillary Clinton's coffers on the promise that the country would be
transformed into a "clean energy superpower."
Given his well-known penchant for attacking anyone who frustrates his
ambitions or speaks negatively of him, and his urge to punish greens by,
among other things, obliterating every measure adopted by President Obama to
speed the utilization of renewable energy, expect him to rip the EPA apart
and do his best to shred any obstacles to fossil fuel exploitation. If that
means hastening the incineration of the planet, so be it. He either doesn't
care (since at 70 he won't live to see it happen), truly doesn't believe in
the science, or doesn't think it will hurt his company's business interests
over the next few decades.
One other factor has to be added into this witch's brew: magical thinking.
Like so many leaders of recent times, he seems to equate mastery over oil in
particular, and fossil fuels in general, with mastery over the world. In
this, he shares a common outlook with President Vladimir Putin of Russia,
who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on harnessing Russia's oil and gas reserves
in order to restore the country's global power, and with ExxonMobil CEO Rex
Tillerson, said to be Trump's top choice for Secretary of State and a
long-term business partner of the Putin regime. For these and other
politicians and tycoons -- and, of course, we're talking almost exclusively
about men here -- the possession of giant oil reserves is thought to bestow
a kind of manly vigor. Think of it as the national equivalent of Viagra.
Back in 2002, Robert Ebel of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies put the matter succinctly: "Oil fuels more than automobiles and
airplanes. Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and international
politics... [It is] a determinant of well being, national security, and
international power for those who possess [it] and the converse for those
who do not."
Trump seems to have fully absorbed this line of thinking. "American energy
dominance will be declared a strategic economic and foreign policy goal of
the United States," he declared at the Williston forum in May. "We will
become, and stay, totally independent of any need to import energy from the
OPEC cartel or any nations hostile to our interests." He seems firmly
convinced that the accelerated extraction of oil and other carbon-based
fuels will "make America great again."
This is delusional, but as president he will undoubtedly be able to make
enough of his energy program happen to achieve both short term and long term
energy mayhem. He won't actually be able to reverse the global shift to
renewable energy now under way or leverage increased American fossil fuel
production to achieve significant foreign policy advantages. What his
efforts are, however, likely to ensure is the surrender of American
technological leadership in green energy to countries like China and
Germany, already racing ahead in the development of renewable systems. And
in the process, he will also guarantee that all of us are going to
experience yet more extreme climate events. He will never recreate the
dreamy America of his memory or return us to the steamy economic cauldron of
the post-World War II period, but he may succeed in restoring the smoggy
skies and poisoned rivers that so characterized that era and, as an added
bonus, bring planetary climate disaster in his wake. His slogan should be:
Make America Smoggy Again.
Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world
security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The
Race for What's Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil
is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at
@mklare1.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Michael T. Klare
C 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176222
