Well Monday’s the day. The last few days we’ve been tracking some of the nominees for Donald Trump’s Insane Clown Posse Cabinet. Starting with Chris Wright at Energy (better than expected!) and then Lee Zeldin at EPA (and NGL was fun to watch him get stuffed into a locker by Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, and Sheldon Whitehouse). But after 9 hours of hearings watched for you, here’s the final Trump energy boss - Interior Sec nominee and potential head of the National Energy Council, North Dakota governor and billionaire Doug Burgum.
Burgum is a fan of “clean coal”, “methane capture”, and “energy dominance” - and while he says he acknowledges climate change doesn’t think it matters next to using more coal to build more AI data centres to beat China. But like the LA fires, whether or not you believe in climate change, climate change believes in you.
And if Doug Burgum becomes Interior Sec he will be responsible for brokering a deal next year to replace the expiring 100-year-old agreement between the Western US states including 40 million people to divide up the flow of the Colorado River. But in 2026, the Colorado will be in the middle of a 10,000-year-drought and a long-term decline - all due to climate change. Meaning there is a lot less to go around.
Burgum did seem, under questioning from Sen. Angus King of Maine, to depart from Donald Trump’s commitment to end offshore wind. We’ll see. But as King pointed out, more than a third of North Dakota’s electricity is generated from wind, and Burgum signed into a law committing to net zero power generation by 2030 for his state. As a guy who made a billion dollars in 2001 by selling the software company he mortgaged his family farm to capitalise a few years earlier to Microsoft, presumably Burgum can read a spreadsheet.
Time will tell.
For tonight, eat drink and be merry. It may be the last time for a while.
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