Trump, Putin and Climate Change
Sessions and Flynn Are Just the Tip of a (Melting) Iceberg.
By Walter Nicklin
Ignore, for the moment, the question of whether there was indeed collusion between Trump’s election campaign and Putin’s Russia. What can’t be denied, however, is that the Trump Presidency gives all indications of achieving exactly what must be Putin’s wildest, happiest dreams –revenge for the internal collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago.
That a similar collapse may now be happening in the United States (together with its rules-based world order) shouldn’t be surprising, for Trump’s top strategist is Steve Bannon, who has likened himself to Lenin in “deconstructing the administrative state.” What may be surprising are the oily fingerprints of fossil fuel interests. They’re evident for all to see, and you don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist or detective to draw the necessary, frightening conclusions.
Start with the fact that Russia is in effect a “petrostate.” For its economy is dependent on the fossil fuel industry, one of the largest in the world, and has suffered the last few years because of both U.S.-led sanctions and low oil prices. Its oil reserves are the eighth largest in the world. Its coal reserves, the second largest in the world. As for natural gas: Not only does Russia have the largest reserves, but also it is the world’s largest exporter.
Alone among the world’s major carbon emitters, Russia has NOT yet ratified the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. And with Presidential candidate Trump suggesting the U.S. will withdraw from the climate pact, pressure on Putin to ratify has disappeared. Meanwhile, 125 of the other 196 Climate Accord signatories have ratified the Agreement — allowing it to enter into force last November.
While U.S. economy is too multifaceted for the country to be categorized as a petrostate, the fossil fuel industry exerts enormous power — $300 million in annual lobbying, coupled with $160 million donated in last November’s election (80% of which went to Republican candidates. And now with the Trump Administration, that power is being amplified exponentially.
The former ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, is now the U.S. Secretary of State. Ranking only behind Iran and Saudi Arabia’s national oil companies in barrels produced per day, ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are $400 billion, more than the GDP of most nations. But it suffered due to the Russian sanctions — specifically, as much as $1 billion in loses, according to a February 2015 filing with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). Included in that figure was a new $723 million joint venture between Exxon and Roseneft, Russia’s largest state-owned oil company, to drill for oil in the Kara Sea, above the Arctic Circle in northern Russia.
This joint venture had become economically attractive thanks in part to sea ice decline resulting from global warming. Exxon is also one of the largest stakeholders in the massive offshore Berkut platform on Sakhalin Island in Russia’s far eastern sub-Arctic waters.
Unlike Trump, Tillerson has divested himself of potential financial conflicts of interest and voices support for the Paris climate pact; but given his lifelong ExxonMobil career, Tillerson must inevitably continue to view the world through oil-tinted glasses. A broader worldview becomes increasingly unlikely, as the Trump Administration seems set on deconstructing the State Department’s institutional memory: key staff positions remain unfilled, morale is reportedly at an all-time low, and a 37% decrease in funding is proposed.
Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general picked by Trump to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has spent most of his career taking money from the fossil-fuel industry in order to fight and emasculate the EPA. That will now come true, as EPA’s staff is set to be slashed from its current level of 15,000 to 12,000. And grants to states, as well as its air and water programs, would be cut by 30 percent.
Trump’s pick as U.S. Energy Secretary is Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who admitted that he thought his job would be simply “to promote the oil and gas industry.” As for the Energy Department, Perry famously said, when he himself was a candidate for President, that it — though he forgot its name — should be eliminated.
Another Trump cabinet pick, Wilbur Ross — for Commerce Secretary — has been implicated in a Russian money-laundering scheme. So has Deutsche Bank, which mysteriously loaned more than a billion dollars to Donald Trump and his business partners over the past few years, at a time when most other banks viewed him as too big a risk.
Follow the money, the Russian petrodollars…leading to climate change denial, not to mention the possible destruction of the planet as we know it. Given what’s at stake, seeing Trump’s tax returns is surely not too much to demand.
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A long-time journalist and newspaper/magazine publisher in both the U.S. and Europe, Nicklin has written for The Economist, Washington Post, New York Times, among other publications, over the years.
