This editorial was originally published by The Washington Post and was distributed by The Associated Press.
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Oil and gas production in the United States is hitting record highs, easily outpacing consumption growth and fueling an export boom that in 2020 achieved the country’s first trade surplus in energy since at least the 1950s. Renewable energy generation has also expanded at a healthy clip, more than four times as fast during Joe Biden’s presidency as during Donald Trump’s first term. Also, the price of gasoline has been falling steadily since mid-2022, following an upsurge at the tail end of the pandemic.
This is what Trump describes as an “energy emergency.â€
One executive order among the swarm he issued last week claims that “insufficient energy production, transportation, refining, and generation constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to our Nation’s economy, national security, and foreign policy.†It warned that “hostile state and non-state foreign actors have targeted our domestic energy infrastructure, weaponized our reliance on foreign energy, and abused their ability to cause dramatic swings within international commodity markets.â€
It is tempting to dismiss this warning as political signaling — a battle cry in the culture war. The term “emergency†stands in for Trump’s accusation that his predecessor’s push for more clean energy to combat climate change was a plot to bring America to its knees.
The president also seems to believe that using the word might help him achieve various goals, whether it’s opening Alaska’s wilderness to oil drilling, halting the deployment of offshore windmills or safeguarding “the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads.†By calling America’s energy situation an emergency, the same term he used to describe immigration across the southern border, Trump hopes to create legal room to override any congressional or judicial checks on his power.
Performances aside, however, Trump’s conjuring of an emergency will do next to nothing to help meet America’s, and the world’s, future energy needs. Climate change is real. The world must find ways to produce a lot more energy that does not emit greenhouse gases. Trump’s barrage of orders stands in the way of this objective.
The “drill, baby, drill†push might be of less immediate importance. The prices of oil and gas have been falling, largely thanks to booming U.S. production. Oil and gas companies will not want to start pumping more if it will cause prices to drop further.
What will hurt are Trump’s efforts to curtail renewable energy. Halting the disbursement of hundreds of billions in grants and loans under the Inflation Reduction Act is likely to slow the deployment of renewable resources. Moreover, stopping further development of offshore wind generation subverts the objective of ensuring America’s energy supply. During the Biden administration, wind power increased by about one-third, and today it accounts for about one-tenth of U.S. electricity generation.
Most alarming is how Trump’s distaste for clean energy might undermine the ongoing multinational effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Lately, this effort has been losing steam. Thirty years after the first United Nations climate summit in Berlin and a decade after the celebrated Paris agreement, fossil fuels still account for some 80% of the energy humanity consumes. It appears that no country is decarbonizing at the rate it promised under the Paris deal.
Pulling out of the agreement, as Trump has done again, further discourages the multinational cooperation to address the climate emergency, which has been flagging after an initial burst of enthusiasm 10 years ago. Trump is hostile not only to climate change but also to foreign aid. By curtailing assistance for climate mitigation, America would abandon the affluent nations’ still unfulfilled responsibility to assist less developed countries in decarbonizing.
Given that countries outside the well-off Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development account for 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the wealthier countries urgently need to help finance their transition to clean energy. To the extent that Trump ignores this challenge, he will increase the chance that a true emergency will occur.
