The Supreme Petrostate Debate

PRESENTED BY SOUP D’ÉTAT

So Kamala Harris and Donald Trump hung out last night in Philly, it went like this:

The big debate news is, of course, that Taylor Swift endorsed Harris-Walz afterwards.

Although it may have not seemed like it, climate policy was a core issue throughout the debate. Yes, the ABC moderators waited until 10:34 pm to bring up climate change,¹ but the geopolitics of fossil fuels was a dominant theme for both candidates. In particular, the two debated who would do a better job continuing the United States as a supreme petrostate. Here’s Harris:

Trump’s professed fealty to the U.S. fossil-fuel industry (“I got the oil business going like nobody has ever done before”) was more incoherent and rooted in falsehoods.² As Politico’s Ben Lefebvre notes:

Trump’s debate word salad was textbook fascist ideology, unburying our toxic past like a Nazi warship emerging from the drought-stricken Danube, mixing fossil-fuel fealty with anti-Marxism, anti-feminism, racism, imperialism, the promotion of inequality, and accolades to violence—as well explained in White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism and in today’s essay by Terry Tempest Williams.

So: this is bad! It’s not great that the Republican Party is a deranged death cult, while the Democratic Party is joyously optimistic about the meteoric rise in global climate pollution because we’re also investing in solar panels and hydroelectric power. But hey, that’s politics in a twenty-first-century petrostate.

Amy Westervelt wonders why can’t we just tell the truth about fossil fuels?

It doesn’t pay to tell the truth. There’s an America where political reporters and pundits live, dominated by “inflation” and “immigration” and “the economy.” It’s the America formed by the multi-billion-dollar corporate lobbying infrastructure, which has an iron grip on media, academia, and our national political discourse.

Meanwhile, in the real America, Texas is running out of water, wildfires are ruining ranchers’ livelihoods in Idaho, Ohio is gripped by exceptional drought, California is burning, New Mexico is turning in desperation to frackwater, and Louisiana is hunkering down for another deadly hurricane.

I understand why our politicians can’t just tell the truth about fossil fuels, but that just means the rest of us have to. And the truth is that fossil fuels are death. As Sunrise leader Aru Shiney-Ajay told Corinne Purtill:

Cheetos attacked Carlsbad Caverns. Drought is making Sao Paulo’s river emerald green while smoke turns its skies gray. Antarctic sea ice is on the cusp of a record winter low for second year running.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee show hearing on energy policy and inflation this morning attacked the Biden administration with the claim that a “radical rush to green energy polices” has “resulted in high energy costs and crippling inflation.” Witnesses include an American Farm Bureau activist and two representatives from Koch Industries front groups—Patrice Onwuka of the Independent Women’s Forum, founded by the Kochs, and Travis Fisher of the Cato Institute, founded by the Kochs. The Democratic witness is the reliably incisive Trevor Higgins of the Center for American Progress.

Also at 10, the House Natural Resources energy subcommittee reviewed three bills attacking the National Environmental Policy Act, including a radical gutting from committee chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.). Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) noted this is all part of the Project 2025 agenda Trump unconvincingly professed to disclaim.

Meanwhile, the House Transportation water resources subcommittee held a hearing entitled “Waters of the United States Implementation Post-Sackett Decision: Experiences and Perspectives.” Last year, the Supreme Court’s Sackett v. E.P.A. decision stripped wetlands protections. environmental officials from Alaska and Colorado testified alongside American Farm Bureau lobbyist Courtney Briggs and construction-industry representative Vincent Messerly.

At 2:30 pm, the Senate Energy water and power subcommittee will review 15 bills on Western water and power infrastructure as well as legislation on American Samoa self-determination. S. 4242 would extend the Emergency Drought Relief Act of 1991 through 2028. At this point it could be renamed the Desertification Relief Act.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: House Natural Resources
  Energy and Mineral Resources
  Anti-NEPA Legislation

• 10 AM: House Energy and Commerce
  Energy, Climate, and Grid Security
  Energy Policy and Inflation

• 10 AM: Water Resources and the Environment
  House Transportation and Infrastructure
  Waters of the United States Implementation Post-Sackett Decision: Experiences and Perspectives

• 2:30 PM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources
  Water and Power
  Water and Power and American Samoa Self-Determination Legislation

Climate Action Today:

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1  In her response to the climate question, Harris noted that climate disasters are blowing up the home insurance market before pivoting to the Biden administration’s efforts to spur the domestic auto industry, which would be reasonable center-right climate policy if we lived in a healthy democracy. Trump rambled with attacks on President Joe Biden, who, despite Trump’s wishes, is not running for re-election.

2  A typical passage: “If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one. Just to finish one thing, so important in my opinion, so, I got the oil business going like nobody has ever done before. They took, when they took over, they got rid of it, started getting rid of it, and the prices were going up the roof. They immediately let these guys go to where they were. I would have been five times, four times, five times higher because you're talking about 3 1/2 years ago. They got it up to where I was because they had no choice. Because the prices of energy were quadrupling and doubling. You saw what happened to gasoline. So, they said let's go back to Trump. But if she won the election, the day after that election, they'll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead. We'll go back to windmills and we'll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out. You ever see a solar plant? By the way, I'm a big fan of solar. But they take 400, 500 acres of desert soil--”