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    ‘Erasure of years of work’: outcry as White House moves to open Arctic reserve to oil and gas drilling

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    The Trump administration’s plan to expand oil and gas drilling in a 23m acre reserve on the Arctic Ocean is sparking an impassioned response, amid fears it threatens Arctic wildlife, undermines the subsistence rights of Alaska Natives and imperils one of the fastest-warming ecosystems on Earth.More than a quarter of a million people have responded to the 2 June proposal from the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to roll back protections on the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the largest tract of public land in the US.A man from Georgia described hearing from an oil company that an employee shot a mother polar bear after encountering her with two cubs in northern Alaska.“I beg you to reconsider … I’m just 18 years old and haven’t had a chance to see the real world yet,” said a teenager from Denmark. “This will make that impossible – if not in the whole world, then at least in the icy areas of our planet.”The staggering number of comments submitted during the two-month comment period showed the public was watching, said Andy Moderow, senior director of policy at the Alaska Wilderness League. “That’s a pretty large turnout of Americans saying this is not the direction we need in the Arctic.”The BLM rollback is part of a broad, rapid-fire regulatory push to industrialize the Alaskan Arctic, particularly the NPR-A. Weeks after proposing to strip protections from the reserve, the Department of Interior signaled it would adopt a management plan that would open 82% of the NPR-A to oil drilling. Two weeks ago, before the public comment period had ended, the BLM rescinded three other Biden-era documents protecting the reserve.The Alaska Wilderness League, an Alaska-focused conservation non-profit, said the administration’s decision to start dismantling protections for the NPR-A before the comment period concluded showed “a lack of interest in meaningfully reviewing any input before taking action to allow unfettered industrialization across this landscape”.Alaska Native groups, some of which have worked for years to secure protections for areas of the NPR-A, also expressed frustration.View image in fullscreenThe rollback is “a coordinated erasure of years of work by Alaska Native communities”, said Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic in a press statement.“To have all the work we’ve done for the last two decades, trying to create important special areas with their unique biological features demonstrated by science, disregarded to allow full-force development is crazy to consider,” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, an activist and former mayor of Nuiqsut, Alaska, a village in the NPR-A.The BLM said in a statement it was working through all comments received on the 2024 NPR-A rule rescission, and that it would respond to substantive comments in the final rule.The White House referred the Guardian to the BLM when asked for comment.‘Devastating’ changeUnder Trump, the Department of Interior has embarked on a push to promote resource extraction in the Arctic, vowing to expand oil and gas in the NPR-A, open oil leasing on the coastal plain of the Arctic national wildlife refuge, and advance a controversial mining road in the southern Brooks range.The total land in play from these proposals is nearly 25m acres (10m hectares) of Arctic ecosystem, an area larger than the state of Indiana. The NPR-A comprises the vast majority of this. The reserve supports home grounds for polar bears, calving areas for caribou, and habitat for millions of migratory birds from Africa and Europe, as well as the Americas.In 2023, the Biden administration began consultations with Alaska Native groups and other stakeholders to update existing rules on how the NPR-A should be managed.These consultations led to the 2024 rule which the BLM now aims to rescind. That rule protects key areas in the NPR-A for subsistence use and habitat, including Teshekpuk Lake, the Utukok Uplands and the Colville River.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAhtuangaruak, who participated in the 2023 consultations, said removing these protections could be “very devastating rapidly”. She described a worsening ecological situation across the reserve, partly driven by existing oil development.Caribou herds were declining, she said, and some had shifted their migration patterns away from her village because of oil and gas development to the west of her village. Permafrost was thawing, causing freshwater Arctic lakes to drain. Ice roads separated caribou calves from caribou cows; polar bears struggled to den in the melting snowpack.Tim Fullman, a senior ecologist at the Wilderness Society, a US conservation non-profit, said that already-existing roads in the Alaskan Arctic had been shown to hinder caribou movement, at times delaying migrating animals for up to a month.Then there’s the perennial health impacts on communities from gas flaring in the NPR-A, which Ahtuangaruak said she began to notice in the early 2000s when she was a healthcare worker.“The flares, when there’d be 20 or more, there would be nights where people would have trouble breathing,” she said. “Babies would start to have events. There was one point where we had 20 babies develop respiratory distress and 10 of them were put on ventilators.”Oil for decadesThirty miles east of Nuiqsut, Ahtuangaruak’s village, is the ConocoPhillips Willow project, a drilling operation approved in March 2023 under the Biden administration. Still under construction, it is projected to come online in 2029. Once it begins to produce, Willow will be operational for at least 30 years, according to its environmental impact statement.The project is an example of the timeframe involved in the Arctic oil and gas projects the Trump administration is currently encouraging, says Moderow – spanning decades.“We’re not talking about oil next year. We’re talking about oil in 2050 and 2060 and beyond, when we need to move past it,” he said. The projects “could easily be pumping oil when babies born today are retiring in a climate that’s not livable if that oil is not blocked”.“It’s investing in production that’s going to be going on for decades, well past when we need to be at essentially net zero greenhouse gas emissions if we’re going to have a livable climate,” said Jeremy Lieb, a senior attorney at Earthjustice. More

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      World awaits Trump’s next move as Russia ceasefire deadline approaches

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      After taking six months to conclude that Vladimir Putin may not be a kindred transactional authoritarian leader but an ideological nationalist seeking the return of what “belongs to Russia”, the deadline Donald Trump set for the Russian president to agree a Ukraine ceasefire or face US sanctions on oil exports arrives on Friday.What Trump – who some had claimed was a Russian asset – does next to punish Putin could define his presidency.It is a remarkable turnaround and one that seasoned Trump watchers such as Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, said they had never expected. Only months ago the debate was about what further inducements Trump would offer Putin to end the fighting. His administration has not introduced any sanctions against Russia, compared with at least 16 sets of actions in every prior six months back to February 2022, according to a report submitted to the Senate banking committee by top Democrats this week.Trump first set Putin a 50-day deadline then cut weeks off it. “Secondary sanctions and tariffs against China, India and Brazil, which buy Russian oil, are the obvious next step in an attempt to stop the conflict,” the US ambassador to Nato, Matthew Whitaker, predicted on Tuesday.But as the deadline approaches, there is lingering scepticism about how far Trump will go. He has dispatched his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Moscow for the fifth time for last-minute talks and on Friday Trump admitted he did not think sanctions would have much impact as Russians are “wily characters and pretty good at avoiding sanctions”.He has also given himself maximum room for political manoeuvre by ensuring the US Senate did not pass legislation before its summer recess that would have empowered him to slap bone-crushing 500% tariffs on exports from countries that import Russian oil, principally India, China, Brazil and Turkey.View image in fullscreenTrump had argued that the congressional legislation was unnecessary as he can act through executive orders, mentioning instead 100% tariffs on economies that import Russian oil – a whopping number, even if lower than the 500% floated by the Republican senator Lindsey Graham.It is striking that in the run-up to Witkoff’s talks in Moscow that Trump, normally keen to tout his leverage before a negotiation, has given only sketchy detail of the punishments the importers of Russian energy may face, either in terms of US sanctions on foreign refineries importing Russian oil or US tariffs on countries importing Russian oil.Some of Trump’s warnings this week to the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, that he would raise tariffs on India because its government did not care “how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian war machine” do not yet seem to fit into a wider strategy. The tensions appears as much about Trump’s previous complaints with India’s trade practices as its purchases of cheap Russian oil. They are due to start on August 27.Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Centre for a New American Century, said if India was to receive a penalty but China – the largest buyer of most Russian crude – did not, the Russian oil trade may just go further underground. Some of Trump’s advisers, notably the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warned China last week of tariff hikes related to Russia energy purchases, but it is hard to see such threats as credible given Trump’s eagerness for a trade deal with China and the risks associated with a sudden stop to trade between China and the US. In 2024 China accounted for 32% of Russian petroleum and oil exports.McFaul told Foreign Policy magazine about a possible boomerang effect if generalised increases in tariffs turn into a full trade war.Trump has wavered about the impact of economic pressure on Putin. Many academics say that sanctions on oil reshape economic relationships and change markets rather than produce changes in state behaviour.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThree years of sanctions on Russia have so far been – at best – a slow burn. Russia chalked up economic growth of 4% in 2023 and 2024, kept unemployment to an astonishing 2%, and even reduced social inequality by sustaining real wage growth that has disproportionately benefited Russians at the lower end of the economic ladder, a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based thinktank, found. The authors predicted that Russia’s economy can withstand the current level of sanctions for at least three more years.But the report also pointed to developing vulnerabilities in Russia. Interest rates are at 18%, inflation stubbornly high and growth is stalling. Russia has had to rework its 2025 budget as oil revenues slipped, largely because of a fall in prices and the discounts importers such as India could demand. As a result, government revenues from Russian oil and gas in May-June were 35% lower than the same period in 2024, the Kyiv School of Economics said in its July review. Russian oil export revenue is projected to drop 16% from $189bn (£142bn) in 2024 to $163bn in 2025 and $151bn in 2026.The federal budget deficit reached 3.7tn rubles ($40.4bn) in the first half of 2025 – 97% of the full-year target of 3.8tn rubles. This is more than five times larger than the deficit in the first half of 2024 and 57% higher than the largest first six-month deficit in recent years (2023). Oil prices are unlikely to recover significantly, meaning Russia will miss its budget target by a wide margin, increasing reliance on its national welfare fund (NWF) and domestic debt issuance.View image in fullscreenThe NWF’s liquid assets are also under pressure, with Russia expected to draw heavily on these reserves by year end. In a report this week, Oxford Economics predicted that Russia “may tip into recession”.The overall reason is simple: the level of military spending, including the cost of voluntary recruitment is distorting the economy. The economist Janis Kluge, who conducts research on Russia at the Berlin thinktank SWP, thinks overall Russian military spending is 8 to 10% of GDP once all expenditure including regional recruitment is included.The pressure could grow. The EU’s most recent sanctions package included a ban from next January on buying oil products made from Russian crude. The package for the first time put sanctions on a big Indian refinery, Nayara Energy, causing Microsoft this week to suspend software services. Other refineries could be placed under sanction – with the UK likely following suit – but the question then arises as to how the supply gap created by the loss of Russian oil can be filled.Moreover, if Trump is joining sanctions, the US and Europe will have to come to a joint decision on the continuing value of the elaborate oil price cap, a Biden-era device designed to squeeze Russian oil profits while keeping the global price of oil low.The cap was introduced across the G7 in December 2022 and operates by withdrawing insurance from any shipping company that has not obtained a certificate that it is selling Russian oil below $60 a barrel, but a multitude of problems have arisen.In recent months, as the price of oil has fallen, it’s become evident the $60 cap was set too high. The cap has also led to the birth of a shadow fleet of oil tankers operating without formal insurance that are now being sanctioned by the EU, the US and the UK. The UK and the EU have agreed to lower the price cap from 2 September to $47.60 a barrel, but Trump is keeping the US cap at $60 a barrel, a recipe for circumvention.The one prerequisite is that Trump must not back off, McFaul said. “Making threats and not carrying through with them is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in diplomacy.” The former ambassador recalled George Shultz, the great Reagan-era US secretary of state, saying “never point a gun at anyone unless you are prepared to shoot”. More

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      Trump promised to lower energy costs – his tax bill will raise them for people in red states the most

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      The cost of electricity is poised to surge across the US in the wake of Republican legislation that takes an axe to cheap renewable energy, with people in states who voted for Donald Trump last year to be hardest hit by the increase in bills.As air conditioners crank up across the US during another sweltering summer amid an unfolding climate crisis, rising energy costs will become even more severe for households due to the reconciliation spending bill passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by Trump, who called it the “big, beautiful bill”, on 4 July.By stripping away support for cheap solar and wind energy production, the legislation is set to cause electricity rates paid by families and businesses, many already struggling to pay their bills, to rise by much as 18% by 2035, according to an analysis by Energy Innovation, an energy and climate policy thinktank.Household energy costs, which span electricity and gas use, will rise by $170 on average every year by 2035, the report finds, with Republican-leaning states bearing the brunt of the increases. Bills in Missouri will spike the most, by $640 a year, with the next largest increases – in Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Texas – all also hitting states that voted for Trump in last year’s presidential election.Trump won the election, in part, by promising to lower inflation and cut US energy costs in half within a year. In office, he has sought to boost fossil fuel consumption while slashing incentives for clean energy projects and barring them from federal lands.“I don’t want windmills destroying our place,” the president said last month. “I don’t want these solar things where they go for miles and they cover up a half a mountain that are ugly as hell.”But the Republican bill’s wiping out of tax credits for renewables will stymie wind and solar projects that are typically now cheaper than gas or coal, forcing utilities to rely more heavily on existing, inefficient gas generators, Energy Innovation said. This will push up energy costs across the US, particularly in states that have not enacted their own policies to boost renewables.“Demand for electricity is increasing and without renewables we aren’t able to meet that new demand,” said Dan O’Brien, senior analyst at Energy Innovation and author of the new study.“We’ve seen US power prices generally fall over the past 75 years, but with this bill for the first time we will see sustained increases in power costs. Lower-income folks in rural areas in red states will have compounding impacts from this bill – their states voted to pass this but it will really harm them in the long term.”Environmental groups were scathing of the Republicans who voted for the reconciliation bill. “After an election where cost-of-living was the driving issue that pushed millions of working-class Americans to check the box for Donald Trump, it’s mind-boggling that Republicans just passed a bill that will raise costs across the board,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, a climate change advocacy organization, who called the legislation “one of the most catastrophic bills in a generation”.Electricity prices for American households have already increased above the rate of inflation since 2022, with a slew of new data centers for artificial intelligence helping push up overall demand for power. This trend has placed further strain upon “energy insecure” people who struggle to meet the cost of heating, cooling and lighting their homes. Around 34m households, more than a quarter of all dwellings in the US, reported difficulties in paying energy bills in 2020.“A lot of people are struggling and it’s a hardship that’s often not highlighted,” said Michelle Graff, an energy policy expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Lower-income people, as well as those who are Black, Hispanic, elderly, have young children or live in poorly constructed and badly insulated homes, are most at risk of this sort of energy insecurity.“For a lot of these folks, even $10 extra on their bill each month will result in difficult trade-offs, such as forgoing medicines or food for their families,” Graff said. “Increasing those bills month after month will have a big impact upon households on the margins.”Electricity price rises are regulated by the states and some jurisdictions offer help to residents struggling to pay their bills, as Maryland did last month.But such assistance is now being stripped away at the federal level, with the Trump administration seeking to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (or Liheap), which aids around 6m US households with their bills. The reconciliation bill also deletes subsidies for the construction of energy-efficient homes and upgrades to home cooling, heating and insulation systems.“That is a lifeline for many, many Americans,” Graff said of the Liheap program. “There is this mismatch where the hardships are getting worse while we are cutting assistance for people to address that hardship.”Across the US, utilities have pushed for $29bn in higher rates so far this year, which is 142% more than the same period in 2024, a recent report found. At least 16 states, meanwhile, allow utilities to cut off power to people during extreme heatwaves if they have not paid their bills. Such cutoffs can prove deadly – last month, Shauna Thomas, a 55-year-old woman, was found dead in her stiflingly hot St Louis, Missouri, apartment after her electricity was halted for non-payment.“Air conditioning and access to electricity is life-saving, but in most states there are very limited protections for these shut-offs,” said Diana Hernandez, a researcher of energy and health inequities at Columbia University. “People are reluctant to put on their AC because of the fear of a high bill. It’s easy for them to get into a debt spiral and hard for them to get out of it. This can end up as a life-or-death matter.”Extreme heat is the leading weather-related cause of deaths in the US, with advancing global temperatures due to the burning of fossil fuels causing longer and fiercer heatwaves. This summer in the US is expected to be hotter than the long-term norm for the season, with explosive demand for cooling causing a strain upon the grid in some places – in June, 110,000 people in New York City lost power due to a surge of electricity use during a hot spell.In the hottest parts of the US, lengthy power blackouts could prove catastrophic. If a prolonged heatwave and a blackout hit Phoenix, Arizona, at the same time, half of the city’s 1.6 million residents would require urgent medical help and 1% of the population would die, a 2023 study warned.“Climate change is upon us and as it gets hotter and hotter, there will be more hardship that people face in trying to keep themselves cool,” said Hernandez.“It used to be that people thought about energy access in the winter months, to help keep them warm, but that has changed now. As we keep getting hotter years, this problem isn’t going away.”The White House was contacted for comment. More

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      What’s in Trump’s major tax bill? Extended cuts, deportations and more

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      Senate Republicans on Tuesday passed Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill after spending all night voting on amendments. The bill, which the GOP has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now returns to the House of Representatives, which passed their version last month, before a Friday deadline the president has imposed for the legislation to be on his desk.Here’s what’s in the Senate’s version of the bill:Extending big tax cutsAfter taking office in 2017, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which lowered taxes and increased the standard deduction for all taxpayers, but generally benefited high earners more than most. Those provisions are set to expire after this year, but the “big, beautiful bill” makes them permanent, while increasing the standard deduction by $1,000 for individuals, $1,500 for heads of households and $2,000 for married couples, albeit only through 2028.Cutting tax on tips or overtimeThe bill has an array of new tax write-offs – but only while Trump is president. Several of the new exemptions stem from promises Trump made while campaigning last year. Taxpayers will be able to write off income from tips and overtime, and interest made on loans to purchase cars assembled in the United States. People aged 65 and over are eligible for an additional deduction of $6,000, provided their adjusted gross income does not exceed $75,000 for single filers or $150,000 for couples. But all of these incentives expire at the end of 2028, right before Trump’s term as president ends.Money for mass deportations and a border wallAs part of Trump’s plan to remove undocumented immigrants from the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) will receive $45bn for detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029. More than $50bn is allocated for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.Slashing Medicaid and food stampsRepublicans have attempted to cut down on the bill’s cost by slashing two major federal safety-net programs: Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps people afford groceries. Both are in for funding cuts, as well as new work requirements. The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the Medicaid changes could cost as many as 10.6 million people their healthcare, and about eight million people, or one in five recipients, their Snap benefits.Cuts to green energyThe bill will phase out many tax incentives created by Congress during Joe Biden’s presidency meant to encourage consumers and businesses to use electric vehicles and other clean-energy technology. Credits for cleaner cars will end this year, as will subsidies for Americans seeking to upgrade their homes to cleaner or more energy-efficient appliances. While a draft of the bill targeted wind- and solar-energy projects with a new excise tax, senators voted to remove that at the last minute.State and local tax relief (Salt)One of the thorniest issues the bill addresses is how much relief to provide from state and local taxes (Salt), which many Americans must also pay in addition to their federal tax. Several House Republicans representing districts in Democratic-led states withheld their support from the bill until the Salt deductibility cap was raised from $10,000 to $40,000, but Senate Republicans made clear they would change that. The Senate’s version keeps the $40,000 cap, but only through 2028.Raising the debt ceilingThe bill will increase the US government’s authority to borrow, known as the debt limit, by $5tn. The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has predicted the government will hit the limit by August, at which point it could default on its debt and spark a financial crisis.More benefits for the rich than the poorWealthier taxpayers appear set to receive more benefits from this bill than poorer ones, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. Taxpayers in the lowest-income quintile will see a 2.5% decrease in their incomes, largely due to the Snap and Medicaid cuts, while the highest earners will see their incomes grow by 2.4%, the Budget Lab estimated. The impact could change based on which amendments the Senate adopts.A huge price tagDespite the GOP’s attempts to use the bill as a vehicle to rein in government spending, the bill would increase the deficit by $3.3tn through 2034, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Most of that price tag is the extension of the 2017 tax cuts. The heavy budgetary impact could complicate the bill’s chances of passing the House, where fiscal hardliners have demanded budget-deficit reductions. More

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      Trump promised riches from ‘liquid gold’ in the US. Now fossil fuel donors are benefiting

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      Kelcy Warren was among the top donors for Donald Trump’s 2024 White House bid, personally pouring at least $5m into the campaign and co-hosting a fundraiser for the then presidential hopeful in Houston.Trump’s win appears to already be benefiting Warren and Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline and energy firm of which he is co-founder, executive chair and primary shareholder.“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Trump said in his inaugural address.Though domestic fossil fuel production reached record levels under Joe Biden, his policies to boost renewable energy still sparked fear among oil and gas companies, said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston, Texas. “There was a threat of moving toward a net zero world … maybe not now, but there was an idea that would happen if Democrats stayed in the White House,” said Jones.For Warren and other oil billionaires, Trump removed that fear, Jones said.Energy Transfer Partners reported a year-over-year increase in profits in the first quarter of this year. In an earnings call last month, company top brass praised the new administration and more supportive regulatory environment.Among Trump’s moves that have benefited the company: a day-one move to end Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas exports, which enables Energy Transfer to proceed with a long-sought-after LNG project in Lake Charles. On 13 May, Trump’s Federal Energy Commission (Ferc) also granted a three-year extension for the LNG project, which the company said was necessary for the project to succeed.In the week after the Ferc decision, Warren’s wealth rose by nearly 10%, noted Sarah Cohen, who directs the climate and wealth inequality-focused non-profit Climate Accountability Research Project (Carp).“That decision wouldn’t have been possible under Biden’s LNG pause,” said Cohen, who calculated the change using the Bloomberg billionaires index.Since that Ferc decision, Energy Transfer Partners has also secured a 20-year deal to supply a Japanese company with up to 1m metric tons of LNG a year.Other Trump orders to “unleash American energy” and declare an energy emergency to promote fossil fuels despite already booming production, for instance, are set to benefit Energy Transfer Partners by making it easier to expand the use all kinds of fossil fuels, thereby boosting the demand for pipelines.Also fueling that demand: the projected boom in datacenters. Energy Transfer Partners has received requests to power 70 new ones, the Guardian reported in April, marking a 75% rise since Trump took office.View image in fullscreenBy appointing fossil fuel-friendly officials to top positions, such as the former energy CEO Chris Wright to head the energy department and the pro-oil and -gas Doug Burgum to the interior department, Trump has also “showed his allegiance to companies like Energy Transfer Partners”, said Cohen.“They’re really creating this environment that’s great for oil and gas,” she said. “The message is ‘We’ll give you what you want.’”Energy Transfer did not respond to requests from the Guardian to comment.Ties to TrumpWarren ranks among the richest 500 people in the world, with Forbes placing his net worth at $7.2bn. He has long deployed his wealth to support the GOP, including by becoming the 13th-largest corporate funder to Trump’s Make America Great Again Super Pac last year with a $5m donation.He has also spent his fortune in more eccentric ways. His $30m, 23,000 sq ft Dallas mansion includes a movie theater and bowling alley, and among his other assets are a 8,000-acre ranch near Cherokee, Texas, which is home to zebras, javelinas and giraffes; a 20,000-acre golf resort in Lajitas, Texas; a private island near Roatán, Honduras; and numerous private aircraft, including a Dassault Falcon 900 jet.A lover of folk music, Warren also started a record label in 2007 alongside the singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave, with whom he has also written songs. “If you hear me now,” goes one song for which Warren penned the lyrics, “maybe you could pull some strings.”The pipeline mogul accumulated most of his wealth from Energy Transfer Partners, which owns and operates about 130,000 miles of energy infrastructure in the US. In recent months, the firm has been criticized by advocates for its successful lawsuit against the environmental non-profit Greenpeace, which in March yielded a verdict that threatens to bankrupt the organization.Warren has long enjoyed a relationship with the president, donating generously to his first campaign and attending closed-door meetings during his first term. Though Warren is not known to have attended the infamous May 2024 meeting during which Trump asked oil bosses for $1bn and pledged to overturn environmental rules, he did co-host a fundraiser for the president in Houston weeks later.He is one of a handful of the most powerful oil billionaires from Texas, where there are no limits on contributions to candidates and political committees.“Texas has always been kind of a testing ground for the most extreme politics and issues that the Republicans pursue,” said Matt Angle, founder of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic Pac in the state. “In Texas, people like him are used to being able to donate to get their way.”Unlike some other Texas energy barons, such as the Christian nationalist Tim Dunn, Warren is not driven by dogma, said Jones.“Kelcy Warren is not necessarily ideological,” he said. “He may be in sync with Trump on some other issues, but his support for Donald Trump is largely because of what Trump proposed to do [for] the energy sector.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne big, beautiful billThe reconciliation bill, which the House passed last month and the Senate is now debating, is also expected to be a boon to Energy Transfer Partners and Warren. Known as the “one big beautiful bill”, it is expected to slash Biden-era incentives for renewable energy, tamping down competition in the energy market.A number of more esoteric provisions in the bill will also prove beneficial for the company, according to a review by Carp shared with the Guardian. One provision in the House-approved version, for instance, would allow the Department of Energy to determine that a proposed LNG export facility is in the “public interest” if the applicant pays $1m – something Energy Transfer Partners could afford to do. It’s a “pay to play” scenario, said Carp co-founder Chuck Collins.View image in fullscreenOther provisions would expedite the build-out of LNG export infrastructure, force the government to hold lease sales for fossil fuels even when demand is low and reverse protections to allow drilling in some areas without any judicial review. Still others would stymy federal agencies’ ability to implement new climate rules by requiring that major changes obtain congressional approval, allow gas developers to pay a $10m fee to bypass permitting processes, limit who can bring lawsuits over gas infrastructure and allow firms to pay taxpayers less to use public land, Carp found.The bill is also set to hand fossil fuel companies huge tax breaks – including by extending tax cuts in the Trump-backed 2017 reconciliation bill, from which Energy Transfer Partners reported a tax benefit of $1.81bn.In one example, the House’s version of the bill would reinstate 100% “bonus depreciation” for qualified properties, allowing companies such as Energy Transfer Partners to completely write off new infrastructure such as pipelines on their taxes, and see the benefits immediately. It’s also expected to apply to private jets, Collins noted.Other tax breaks in the proposal are expected to personally benefit ultra-wealthy Americans such as Warren.“The most wealth I’ve ever made is during the dark times,” Warren told Bloomberg a decade ago.PipelinesUnder Trump, Energy Transfer Partners will also probably save money on pipeline safety compliance. Since the president re-entered the White House in January, enforcement from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has dropped. Across the pipeline industry, the PHMSA opened only four enforcement actions in April, and zero in March – marking the first month since the subagency’s 2004 launch when no cases were initiated, E&E News reported.“That fits right in with the philosophy or paradigm of the Trump 2.0 deregulation agenda,” said Carp’s Cohen.A lack of action from the body could lead to savings for Energy Transfer Partners, which has paid millions in fines to the PHMSA.In March, Energy Transfer Partners also sued the PHMSA, claiming that its enforcement system is “unconstitutional”. Success in the suit could mean the company is forced to pay fewer penalties.Shielded from tariffsAnother Trump policy from which Energy Transfer Partners will benefit: an exemption for oil and gas from his new tariffs. The president provided the industry wide shield after a meeting with the American Petroleum Institute lobby group, of which Warren’s company is a member.The firm’s profits may still be blunted by other tariffs, such as those on aluminum and other products needed for pipeline construction, but the energy sector expects those losses to be offset by the soon-to-be-passed reconciliation bill, Politico reported in April.“The energy companies would prefer not to have the tariffs, sure,” said Jones. “But those are not a negative that outweighs what they view as the existential threat that Democrats represent … the existential threat of net zero.” More

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      Justice department sues Michigan and Hawaii over climate suits against big oil

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      The US justice department on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan over their planned legal action against fossil fuel companies for harms caused by the climate crisis, claiming the state actions conflict with federal government authority and Donald Trump’s energy dominance agenda.The suits, which legal experts say are unprecedented, mark the latest of the Trump administration’s attacks on environmental work and raise concern over states’ abilities to retain the power to take climate action without federal opposition.In court filings, the justice department said the Clean Air Act – a federal law authorizing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate air emissions – “creates a comprehensive program for regulating air pollution in the United States and ‘displaces’ the ability of states to regulate greenhouse gas emissions beyond their borders”.The justice department argues that Hawaii and Michigan are violating the intent of the act that enables the EPA authority to set nationwide standards for greenhouse gases, citing the states’ pending litigation against oil and gas companies for alleged climate damage.Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, last year tapped private law firms to go after the fossil fuel industry for negatively affecting the state’s climate and environment.Meanwhile, Hawaii’s governor, Josh Green, another Democrat, plans to target fossil fuel companies that he said should take responsibility for their role in the state’s climate consequences, including 2023’s deadly Lahaina wildfire.When burned, fossil fuels release emissions such as carbon dioxide that warm the planet.Both states’ laws “impermissibly regulate out-of-state greenhouse gas emissions and obstruct the Clean Air Act’s comprehensive federal-state framework and EPA’s regulatory discretion”, the justice department’s court filings said.The justice department also repeated the Republican president’s claims of a US energy emergency and crisis. “At a time when states should be contributing to a national effort to secure reliable sources of domestic energy”, Hawaii and Michigan are “choosing to stand in the way”, the filings said.A spokesperson for the office of the Democratic Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, deferred to Nessel when asked for comment.“This lawsuit is at best frivolous and arguably sanctionable,” Nessel said in a statement, which noted that Michigan had not filed a lawsuit. “If the White House or big oil wish to challenge our claims, they can do so when our lawsuit is filed; they will not succeed in any attempt to pre-emptively bar our access to make our claims in the courts. I remain undeterred in my intention to file this lawsuit the president and his big oil donors so fear.”Green’s office and the Hawaii attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.But legal experts raised concern over the government’s arguments.Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Columbia University Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said usual procedure was for the justice department to ask for a court to intervene in pending environmental litigation – as is the case in some instances across the country.While this week’s suits are consistent with Trump’s plans to oppose state actions that interfere with energy dominance, “it’s highly unusual”, Gerrard told the Associated Press. “What we expected is they would intervene in the pending lawsuits, not to try to pre-empt or prevent a lawsuit from being filed. It’s an aggressive move in support of the fossil fuel industry.“It raises all kinds of eyebrows,” he added. “It’s an intimidation tactic, and it’s telling the fossil fuel companies how much Trump loves them.”Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has previously consulted on climate litigation, said this week’s lawsuits look “like DoJ grasping at straws”, noting that the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, said his agency was seeking to overturn a finding under the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.“So on the one hand the US is saying Michigan, and other states, can’t regulate greenhouse gases because the Clean Air Act does so and therefore pre-empts states from regulating,” Carlson said. “On the other hand the US is trying to say that the Clean Air Act should not be used to regulate. The hypocrisy is pretty stunning.”The Trump administration has aggressively targeted climate policy in the name of fossil fuel investment. Federal agencies have announced plans to bolster coal power, roll back landmark water and air regulations, block renewable energy sources, and double down on oil and gas expansion. More

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      Fifteen years after Deepwater Horizon, Trump is setting the stage for disaster | Terry Garcia

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      Last month, I joined nearly 500 former and current employees of National Geographic, where I was executive vice-president and chief science and exploration officer for 17 years, urging the institution to take a public stance against the Trump administration’s reckless attacks on science. Our letter pointed out that the programs being dismantled are “imperative for the success of our country’s economy and are the foundation of our progress and wellbeing. They make us safer, stronger and more prosperous.” We warned that gutting them is a recipe for disaster.In the face of this danger, none of us can remain silent.I say this from the unique perspective of having been closely involved in the two most significant environmental disasters in US history: the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills. Fifteen years ago this Sunday, an enormous explosion tore through the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and unleashed an environmental catastrophe that devastated the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion triggered the release of more than 3m barrels of oil that polluted 1,300 miles of coastline from Louisiana to Florida. Eleven lives were lost, ecosystems were ravaged and the economic toll soared into the billions.I served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, which investigated the root causes of the disaster, and before that I led the federal government’s implementation of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Restoration Plan. I have witnessed first-hand the human and economic toll exacted by these events. Men and women who, for generations, had made a living from the sea were suddenly confronted with the possibility that an entire way of life would be lost.Despite such painful lessons of the past, we find ourselves once again hurtling toward disaster. The Trump administration’s personnel and programmatic cuts at science, environmental and safety agencies, and the wholesale rollback of environmental regulations, threaten to unravel decades of progress in safeguarding our country. These actions aren’t just misguided – they’re a dangerous rejection of the hard-won knowledge gained from former crises and a gamble we cannot afford to take.Among the many alarming moves by the Trump administration are plans to weaken offshore drilling safety measures implemented in response to the Deepwater Horizon calamity, such as the reversal of the Biden administration’s ban on drilling in sensitive coastal areas, including the Arctic, and the closure of regional offices responsible for oil spill response. Eliminating these measures demonstrates a callous disregard for lessons learned at a staggering human and economic cost.Disturbingly, these actions are but a small part of a larger effort to weaken environmental regulation and oversight under the guise of restoring government efficiency. Take the recent rollback of dozens of Environmental Protection Agency health and safety regulations and the reported plan to eliminate the agency’s scientific research office. The administration claims these moves will unleash US energy and lower the cost of living, when in fact the only thing they’re guaranteed to achieve is undermining fundamental protections that keep our air and water clean. The mass layoffs and plans to dismember the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), where I was deputy administrator from 1997 to the end of 1999 and prior to that its general counsel, have nothing to do with cost savings – they’re an outright assault on science. Targeting programs that monitor ocean health, track ecosystem changes and study climate impacts – essential to understanding and mitigating looming threats – will leave us blind to and defenseless against the dangers ahead.Cuts to science funding amplify the harms, jeopardizing our ability to innovate solutions, assess risks and respond effectively to crises. In 2010, we lacked even basic data about ocean conditions in areas around the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well. This absence of critical knowledge hindered response and recovery efforts, including understanding the impacts of using oil dispersants in the deep ocean. After the spill, robust government support for science enabled researchers to develop new response and cleanup technologies, better understand long-term ecological impacts, and provide critical insights that helped shape environmental and safety policy. Without government support, these advances would have been impossible – and they will be impossible in the future as funding is slashed.The Trump administration’s insistence that its actions will reduce bureaucratic burdens or spur economic growth is false and deliberately misleading. It’s gaslighting on a national scale. The only sure result is that the burden of risk will be shifted on to communities, small businesses and ordinary Americans. The destruction of habitats and livelihoods is not an abstract consequence of environmental disasters. They devastate families, cripple economies, poison food supplies and leave communities struggling for decades. Businesses are boarded up, and community members suffer life-altering health consequences. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, losses in commercial and recreational fishing, tourism and property values amounted to tens of billions of dollars; cleanup and restoration costs exceeded $60bn – far surpassing what preventive measures would have required.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump and his industry allies will paint such an event as an unforeseeable tragedy, a terrible mishap, a sad accident. Don’t buy it.As we mark this somber anniversary, we cannot allow the cautionary tales of Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon to fade into history, only to be repeated when the next horror strikes. Science and environmental protections are our first line of defense against catastrophe. Now is the time to demand that our government stop the madness and commit to strong environmental and safety regulations, rigorous scientific research, and adequate funding for the agencies tasked with protecting our health and shared resources. The price of ignoring science and dismantling regulations is far too high.

      Terry Garcia was National Geographic’s executive vice-president and chief science and exploration officer for 17 years. He also served as the assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and deputy administrator of Noaa, as well as its general counsel More

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      Will global climate action be a casualty of Trump’s tariffs?

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      Donald Trump’s upending of the global economy has raised fears that climate action could emerge as a casualty of the trade war.In the week that has followed “liberation day”, economic experts have warned that the swathe of tariffs could trigger a global economic recession, with far-reaching consequences for investors – including those behind the green energy projects needed to meet climate goals.Fears of a prolonged global recession have also tanked oil and gas prices, making it cheaper to pollute and more difficult to justify investment in clean alternatives such as electric vehicles and low-carbon heating to financially hard-hit households.But chief among the concerns is Trump’s decision to level his most aggressive trade tariffs against China – the world’s largest manufacturer of clean energy technologies – which threatens to throttle green investment in the US, the world’s second-largest carbon-emitter.‘A tragedy for the US’The US is expected to lag farther behind the rest of the world in developing clean power technologies by cutting off its access to cheap, clean energy tech developed in China. This is a fresh blow to green energy developers in the US, still reeling from the Trump administration’s vow to roll back the Biden era’s green incentives.Leslie Abrahams, a deputy director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC, said the tariffs would probably hinder the rollout of clean energy in the US and push the country to the margins of the global market.Specifically, they are expected to drive up the price of developing clean power, because to date the US has been heavily reliant on importing clean power technologies. “And not just imports of the final goods. Even the manufacturing that we do in the United States relies on imported components,” she said.The US government’s goal to develop its manufacturing base by opening new factories could make these components available domestically, but it is likely to take time. It will also come at considerable cost, because the materials typically imported to build these factories – cement, steel, aluminium – will be subject to tariffs too, Abrahams said.“At the same time there are broader, global economic implications that might make it difficult to access inexpensive capital to build,” she added. Investors who had previously shown an interest in the US under the green-friendly Biden administration are likely to balk at the aggressively anti-green messages from the White House.Abrahams said this would mean a weaker appetite for investment in rolling out green projects across the US, and in the research and development of early-stage clean technologies of the future. This is likely to have long-term implications for the US position in the global green energy market, meaning it will “cede some of our potential market share abroad”, Abrahams added.Instead, countries like China are likely to divert sales of their clean energy tech away from the US to other countries eager to develop green energy, Abrahams said. “So on the one hand, that should help to accelerate adoption of clean energy in those countries, which is good for emissions, but for the US, that is future market share that we’re ceding,” she said.‘Clean energy is unstoppable, with or without Trump’It’s important to distinguish between the US and the rest of the world, according to Kingsmill Bond, a strategist for the energy thinktank Ember.“The more the US cuts itself off from the rest of the world, the more the rest of the world will get on with things and the US will be left behind. This is a tragedy for the clean energy industry in the US, but for everyone else there are opportunities,” he said.Analysis by the climate campaign group 350.org has found that despite rising costs and falling green investment in the US, Trump’s trade war will not affect the energy transition and renewables trade globally.It said the US was already “merely a footnote, not a global player” in the race to end the use of fossil fuels. Only 4% of China’s clean tech exports go to the US, it said, in a trade sector where sales volume grew by about 30% last year.“Trump’s tariffs won’t slow the global energy transition – they’ll only hurt ordinary people, particularly Americans,” said Andreas Sieber, an associate director at 350.org. “The transition to renewables is unstoppable, with or without him. His latest move does little to impact the booming clean energy market but will isolate the US and drive up costs for American consumers.”View image in fullscreenOne senior executive at a big European renewable energy company said developers were likely to press on with existing US projects but in future would probablyinvest in other markets.“So we won’t be doing less, we’ll just be going somewhere else,” said the executive, who asked not to be named. “There is no shortage of demand for clean energy projects globally, so we’re not scaling back our ambitions. And excluding the US could make stretched supply chains easier to manage.”Countries likely to benefit from the fresh attention of renewable energy investors include burgeoning markets in south-east Asia, where fossil fuel reliance remains high and demand for energy is rocketing. Australia and Brazil have also emerged as countries that stand to gain.“In times like these, countries will be increasingly on the hunt for domestic solutions,” Bond said. “And that means clean energy and local supply chains. There are always climate reasons to go green, but there are national security reasons now too.”The challenge for governments hoping to seize the opportunity provided by the US green retreat will be to assure rattled investors that they offer a safe place to invest in the climate agenda.Dhara Vyas, the chief executive of Energy UK, the UK industry’s trade body, said: “Certainty has always been the thing that investors say they need. The UK is seen as a stable country with a stable government, but now more than ever we need to double down on giving certainty to investors.”“Investors do like certainty,” Bond agreed. “But they also like growth and opportunity, so that’s why there is some confidence that they will continue to deploy capital in the sector.”‘The US still matters’Although the green investment slowdown may be largely limited to the US, this still poses concerns for global climate progress, according to Marina Domingues, the head of new energies for the consultancy Rystad Energy.“The US is a huge emitter country. So everything the US does still really matters to the global energy transition and how we account for CO2,” she said. The US is the second most polluting country in the world, behind China, which produces almost three times its carbon emissions. But the US’s green retreat comes at a time when the country was planning to substantially increase its domestic energy demand.After years of relatively steady energy demand, Rystad predicts a 10% growth in US electricity consumption from a boom in AI datacentres alone. The economy is also likely to require more energy to power an increase in domestic manufacturing as imports from China dwindle.In the absence of a growing energy industry, this is likely to come from fossil fuels, meaning growing climate emissions. The US is expected to make use of its abundance of shale gas, but it is planning to use more coal in the future too.In the same week that Trump set out his tariffs, he signed four executive orders aimed at preventing the US from phasing out coal, in what climate campaigners at 350.org described as an “abuse of power”.Anne Jellema, the group’s executive director, said: “President Trump’s latest attempt to force-feed coal to the US is a dangerous fantasy that endangers our health, our economy and our future.” More

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      Trump signs orders to allow coal-fired power plants to remain open

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      Donald Trump signed four executive orders on Tuesday aimed at reviving coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel that has long been in decline, and which substantially contributes to planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.Environmentalists expressed dismay at the news, saying that Trump was stuck in the past and wanted to make utility customers “pay more for yesterday’s energy”.The US president is using emergency authority to allow some older coal-fired power plants scheduled for retirement to keep producing electricity.The move, announced at a White House event on Tuesday afternoon, was described by White House officials as being in response to increased US power demand from growth in datacenters, artificial intelligence and electric cars.Trump, standing in front of a group of miners in hard hats, said he would sign an executive order “that slashes unnecessary regulations that targeted the beautiful, clean coal”.He added that “we will rapidly expedite leases for coal mining on federal lands”, “streamline permitting”, “end the government bias against coal” and use the Defense Production Act “to turbocharge coal mining in America”.The first order directed all departments and agencies to “end all discriminatory policies against the coal industry” including by ending the leasing moratorium on coal on federal land and accelerate all permitted funding for coal projects.The second imposes a moratorium on the “unscientific and unrealistic policies enacted by the Biden administration” to protect coal power plants currently operating.The third promotes “grid security and reliability” by ensuring that grid policies are focused on “secure and effective energy production” as opposed to “woke” policies that “discriminate against secure sources of power like coal and other fossil fuels”.The fourth instructs the justice department to “vigorously pursue and investigate” the “unconstitutional” policies of “radically leftist states” that “discriminate against coal”.Trump’s approach is in contrast to that of his predecessor Joe Biden, who in May last year brought in new climate rules requiring huge cuts in carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants that some experts said were “probably terminal” for an industry that until recently provided most of the US’s power, but is being driven out of the sector by cheaper renewables and gas.Trump, a Republican, has long promised to boost what he calls “beautiful” coal to fire power plants and for other uses, but the industry has been in decline for decades.The EPA under Trump last month announced a barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits, including seeking to overturn the Biden-era plan to reduce the number of coal plants.The orders direct the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium that paused coal leasing on federal lands and to require federal agencies to rescind policies transitioning the nation away from coal production.The orders also seek to promote coal and coal technology exports and to accelerate development of coal technologies.Trump has long suggested that coal can help meet surging electricity demand from manufacturing and the massive datacenters needed for artificial intelligence.“Nothing can destroy coal. Not the weather, not a bomb – nothing,” Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by video link in January. “And we have more coal than anybody.”Energy experts say any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary because natural gas is cheaper and there is a durable market for renewable energy such as wind and solar power no matter who holds the White House.Environmental groups were scathing about the orders, pointing out that coal is in steep decline in the US compared with the increasingly cheap option of renewable energy. This year, 93% of the power added to the US grid will be from solar, wind and batteries, according to forecasts from Trump’s own administration.“What’s next, a mandate that Americans must commute by horse and buggy?” said Kit Kennedy, managing director of power at the Natural Resources Defense Council.“Coal plants are old and dirty, uncompetitive and unreliable. The Trump administration is stuck in the past, trying to make utility customers pay more for yesterday’s energy. Instead, it should be doing all it can to build the electricity grid of the future.”Clean energy, such as solar and wind, is now so affordable that 99% of the existing US coal fleet costs more just to keep running than to retire a coal plant and replace it with renewables, a 2023 Energy Innovation report found. More