FTA:

It's rarely even mentioned that Trump's 2024 grind toward a second term included his should-have-been-shocking pledge to roll back climate regulations if Big Oil would raise $1 billion to fund his campaign. The target was overly ambitious, but many energy millionaires did open their wallets. And the president-elect has now made clear that more fossil fuels and less clean energy will be his legacy, with or without Greenland.

Lost in the hoopla over Trump's worst and most bat-guano crazy cabinet picks, like weekend TV host Pete Hegseth to run the Pentagon, is that the president-elect's less-controversial choices for key energy posts will speed the fiery destruction of our planet.

These include Russell Vought, the Christian nationalist Project 2025 author tapped to head Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who's vowed to weaken and undermine the next mandated National Climate Assessment; the oil field executive Chris Wright, who last year posted to his LinkedIn that "there is no climate crisis," as his energy secretary; and politico Lee Zeldin, who wants a "radical rollback" of regulations, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

We don't yet know if Trump's Marines will be storming Panama, but it's a done deal that his bureaucrats will withdraw from the Paris climate accords, again. Although it's true that market forces have been and may continue to boost clean energy, don't discount the religious fervor among the right that sees fossil-fuel extraction as God's greatest handiwork. With little fanfare, the Republicans who run Oklahoma are actually striving to ban clean energy, in what could be a template for Beltway zealots.