On Monday, Donald Trump goes back to the White House. With him will come a whole group of people who, when he’s distracted by golfing, invasion plans for Greenland via Panama, or Elon Musk’s goose-stepping dance video on a Chinese social media platform he might buy tonight, will actually be running the American government.
In the US Senate, committees conduct public job interviews for these nominees before the full senate votes on whether to approve them.
If you’ve heard at all about these jokers it’s most likely been the Insane Clown Posse of Fox News personalities like Pete Hegseth or Tulsi Gabbard, sinister grifters with enemies lists like FBI director nominee Kash Patel, or straight-up anti-science brain-broke psychopaths like Robert F Kennedy Jr, who will be in charge of American public health.
As we focus on climate and energy in this parish, we spent hours this week going through the hearings for people who will be in charge of helping set and running bureaucracies that will implement policy in those areas. They’ll have a key role in determining what parts of the Inflation Reduction Act remain. They’ll set the tone about whether it’s drill baby drill all the way down or repeat Donald Trump that climate change is a Chinese hoax and windmills cause cancer and kill whales.
We were pleasantly surprised watching the hearing for oil fracking executive and Energy Secreatry nominee Chris Wright. On geothermal, on battery storage, on grid, there’s actually some things that are worth paying attention to.
If you’re listening to these episodes, it’s probably because there’s plenty of places to get the McNuggets. So we’re gonna give you a little more steak and not just sizzle. This is one of three epsiodes of about half an hour each to understand better where the debate over climate and energy might go in the US after Monday.
This one will feature the hearing from Lee Zeldin, ex-Congressman turned lobbyist who used to represent the eastern Long Island district I grew up in outside New York. But fair to say that while he’s not super impressive, hearing him get questioned by Sheldon Whitehouse and Bernie Sanders, who know what they’re talking about on climate and have some idea about how a Senate hearing is supposed to work is worth hearing.
We also sat through the hearing for Doug Burgum, who as interior secretary will have huge power over federal and tribal land use, critical minerals, things like the water from the Colorado River that 40 million people depend on in places from Utah to Arizona to Colorado.
And we’ll have a bonus episode for people with high pain thresholds who want a sample of how people like the climate-denying Heartland Institute, for which Nigel Farage and Liz Truss were delighted to help launch a London branch.
Here’s an extended excerpt from Senator Whitehouse (yes that’s really his name) speaking in his opening remarks as the ranking member:
Sheldon Whitehouse
I want to show everyone this map of my home state. The bright green parts are parts that are destined to flood permanently.
Underwater, lost to the sea in decades ahead. Congressman Zeldin will be familiar with this risk from his home, Suffolk County. Fossil fuel pollution is the cause of that. It will change the map of my state. And it will do us crippling economic damage. As I see it, we've been through three eras on climate.
First was the era of science and scientists, our headlights, did their job. Predicting accurately what was going to happen. NASA scientists, academic scientists, IPCC scientists, Exxon scientists, they did their job. Next came the era of politics where it was our job to heed the warnings of science and head off those dangers.
We failed, badly, and for the worst of all reasons. We succumb to a massive deliberate campaign of lies and corruption by the polluters themselves. That failure ushers in now an era of consequences, consequences we should have headed off but didn't. It's beginning in creeping seeping inflation as goods become harder to grow, produce, and ship in upended weather patterns.
It's upon us already in forward looking industries like insurance, Good luck with property insurance in Florida and California. The worst danger is system systemic economic crashes. One widely warned of in economic literature is the carbon bubble bursting when the international oil cartel or the massive government subsidies cease propping up fossil fuel and stranded assets lose all value and the resulting shock cascades into the global economy.
The other, upon us already, is climate risk, making property insurance unaffordable or unavailable, which in turn makes mortgages unavailable, which in turn crashes property values.
Remember this map. Before all that land went underwater, it would become uninsurable. And that's still water flooding. Throw in big storms and there's a whole coastal uninsurability crisis looming. The chief economist for Freddie Mac predicted a coastal property values crash cascading through the economy, like the 2008 great recession.
And that coastal danger is now matched by Western wildfire risk, like we're seeing right now in Los Angeles, launching the same insurance to mortgage, to property values collapse. Let's be clear. We are in this perilous place because a campaign of lies and corruption and pollution delivered deliberately and at industrial scale by the fossil fuel industry was accomplished through an armada of paid front groups.
And so we're clear. It's not just me warning of significant economic harms ahead. I will circulate to all colleagues, lucky you. This compendium of the published warnings for you and all of your staffs to review. This threat is real. If a sharp eyed cabin boy in the Titanic had happened that night to see the iceberg ahead, you'd expect him to do whatever he could to fight his way to the captain's table in the fancy dining room and warn of the impending disaster.
So, please understand that map of my state. And the sense of urgency that I feel, I am confident that the chairman would equal me in energy and determination for any similar dangers to her mountain state. And so it is through this lens of urgency that I approach this nomination hearing. President Trump has called climate change a hoax.
While running for president, he met with fossil fuel industry executives and told them they should give him a billion dollars in exchange for his reversing the rules to protect our air and water and limit the pollution that is driving climate change. And indeed fossil fuel companies and executives lavished millions and millions of dollars on the Trump campaign and affiliated organizations.
These special interests now expect a return on their political investment. They expect a reversal of the already limited Protections we have for our air and water and make no mistake. Not only would reversing these protections harm our air, water, public health and climate doing so would also cost Americans money as they would be forced to spend more to fuel their cars to buy their groceries to heat and cool their homes and businesses.
That's money that would go directly from every hardworking Americans wallet. The question then for Mr. Zeldin here before us as President Trump's nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency is simple. Will he follow the science and the economics and protect our air, water, and climate? Or, will he merely be a rubber stamp for looters and polluters who are setting the Trump agenda?
I must say that his role at polluter funded organizations such as the America First Policy Institute and America First Works, his long list of Trump affiliated consulting clients, and his anti climate op eds paid for by dark money organizations do not give me confidence that he will be an honest broker if confirmed to lead EPA.
I really want this to work. That is how high the stakes are. I am not here trying to score points. I'm here trying to steer us away from what I see as a calamity ahead. I will therefore be watching closely today to see if Congressman Zeldin is able to differentiate himself. In any substantive ways from the polluter agenda and the economic crashes likely to ensue…
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