Trump & Climate

Trump began his administration with countless attacks: an onslaught of executive orders targeted migrants, queer and trans people, and the planet we live on. During his campaign, Donald Trump solicited $1 billion from the fossil fuel industry, and while they didn’t pony up quite that much, they contributed by the million, and he’s now ready to do their bidding for the duration of his term.

On day one Trump announced multiple executive orders and policies intended to boost oil and gas production. He also rescinded numerous environmental protections, withdrew at once from the Paris Climate Accord, and rolled back environmental justice initiatives. He opened protected waters to offshore drilling, canceled agreements to expand how much land and water the United States protects, and declared an energy emergency. It’s vital to know that this so-called “energy emergency” is fake. In 2023, the US produced more energy than it consumed, and the country has been a net exporter of energy since 2019.

What is real is the desire the fossil fuel industry has to make even more money, to raise gas prices wherever they can, and, crucially, to reject climate science and continue operating as usual while the world burns. And the fascist movement is right there with them. Fascism entails the fusion of corporate power and state power, and we’re seeing that occur with the tech industry, the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street and more.

The tech oligarchs like Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and others have fallen in line with Trump both because they agree with him on many things, and because their darling new industry, AI, is likely to fail completely without serious government intervention. We tend to think of government regulation as something that hurts companies, but the tech industry, among others, has shown repeatedly that it needs a version of regulation that allows for a handful of corporations to profit while competitors are iced out. We’re seeing that right now as the Chinese leap forward in AI and U.S. companies appear likely to fall behind unless the government intervenes dramatically.

Tech barons, like the fossil fuel bosses, want the federal government to ignore its massive and devastating environmental impact. AI uses up an ungodly amount of water, at a time when a water crisis is making itself abundantly clear from California to Colorado and beyond. In return, ordinary people are getting very little. In fact, the main result for most people appears to be less job security, while a handful of people get rich, for now— as the Trump administration has already announced a new $500 billion AI plan with several of the big tech companies, from Microsoft and OpenAI to Oracle to SoftBank.

So we know who this administration works for, and we know they’ll gladly pour fuel on the fire ravaging our planet and its ecosystems if it makes them and their cronies a few billion dollars in the short term. Our long-term future is being sacrificed, and the right knows that. But of course they can’t simply give the game away, which is why they turn to lies and scapegoating to buy time and delude as much of the population as possible.

As a whole, these lies can be best understood under the guise of ecofascism. As Alexander Menrisky says, “Ecofascism is any environmentalism that advocates or accepts violence and does so in a way that reinforces existing systems of inequality or targets certain people while leaving others untouched. It is basically environmentalism that suggests that certain people are naturally and exclusively entitled to control and enjoy environmental resources.”

We see this manifesting in numerous ways right now, even if we’re not aware that what’s coming from the fascist movement on the topic of conservation and environmentalism often fits under this umbrella.

One rendition of this is the talk around migrants. The MAGA movement often utilizes an argument that says “there’s not enough room for those people” in an effort to legitimize their deportation efforts. Of course, when you look a little closer you see JD Vance and Elon Musk and others advocating for more babies, more American babies, by which they obviously mean more white babies. Because they know there’s enough room for everyone in this country, they’re just racist. And they may invoke “this pristine land” or “our beautiful natural landscape” or similar phrases to tie the land to the need to remove people, and buying into that can mean buying into the logic of ecofascism.

Because there is enough. There’s enough land in this country to support the people who live on it. But MAGA will never take on Big AG, or the meat industry, or the car-centric transportation system that consumes so much of this land, spreads us out, and makes a lot of money doing it. They’ll never take on the for-profit housing industry that makes life so expensive, or the healthcare industry, and the list goes on. Instead they’ll pull vile, ecofascist moves like attempting to blame homeless people for the LA fires instead of climate change. That kind of dangerous and disgusting scapegoating is the biggest red flag that you’re dealing with when it comes to ecofascism, as is the obfuscation of the real problem, namely the climate crisis.

Trump’s administration has set in motion numerous moves to attack the environment, harm our climate, and hand out cash to the fossil fuel and tech industries. Oil and gas production hitting record highs, the massive environmental damage done to Gaza, and the tech industry’s vast harms to the Congo all occurred under the Biden administration, but now we also have to contend with ecofascism, total climate denial, and numerous new climate related attacks.

So know that there is enough. Know that the most vulnerable among us are never the cause of your problems. Know to assign blame to the powerful and their systems, rather than the relatively powerless. Do not get distracted by scapegoating and fascist rhetoric. The villains are clear. The fossil fuel industry has known about the impending climate crisis, and their role in it, for 50 years. They’ve just chosen profit over this planet, and the people on it. We need a movement that beats back fascism and institutes a system that prioritizes life more than the dollar. It’s our one and only way out. No other lies, distractions, no amount of throwing people under the bus will get us where we need to go. Solidarity alone will bring us to collective liberation.