Donald Trump has placed dozens of people with ties to the fossil fuel sector in his administration, including more than 40 who have directly worked for oil, gas or coal companies, according to a new analysis.
The report from Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy and ethics non-profit that has been critical of the Trump administration, alongside the Revolving Door Project, a corporate watchdog, analyzed the backgrounds of nominees and appointees within the White House and eight agencies dictating energy, environmental and climate policy. That includes the Environmental Protection Agency, the interior and energy departments and others.
The analysis comes as Trump wages broad attacks on climate and energy policies and on renewable energy. The president’s so-called one big beautiful act, for instance, opened swaths of federal land to drilling and mining and sped the phaseout of renewable energy incentives. The administration has also launched an unprecedented assault on climate science, including with an energy department report on climate change that experts derided as full of misinformation. The report was created to justify the planned overturning of a key legal finding that forms the basis of virtually all US climate regulations.
“It is often specific actors coming from specific moneyed interests that are carrying out this disastrous deregulatory agenda,” said Toni Aguilar Rosenthal, report author and senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project.
The authors identified 111 employees deemed “fossil fuel insiders and renewable energy opponents”. That includes 43 people who were directly employed by coal, oil or gas companies. Among them are well-known senior officials such as energy secretary Chris Wright, the former CEO of the fracking company Liberty Energy.
The list also includes lesser-known administration members. The energy department’s efficiency and renewable energy office – which recently told workers to avoid using terms such as “climate change” and “emissions” – for instance, is led by a former fracking executive. And in the White House, one senior policy adviser has held high-ranking positions at big oil firms including Shell.
Another 12 Trump officials, the authors found, have ties to fossil fuel-funded rightwing thinktanks. Among them: former employees and fellows of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative group that has fought renewable energy and made what it calls “the moral case for fossil fuels”, as well as the anti-environmentalist group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which is backed by the fossil fuel moguls the Koch brothers.
Corinne Clark, crisis communications director at Koch-funded umbrella group Stand Together, called the Guardian’s characterization of AFP as anti-environment “inaccurate and misleading” because it “supports policies that often lead to significant advancements in low-emission technologies” and backs permitting reform for all kinds of energy. The organization…
Read More: More than 40 Trump administration picks tied directly to oil, gas and coal,
