Former Trump EPA head hopes for a second chance to destroy the planet

Unless Cyborg Al Gore suddenly returns from the distant future with a full suite of planet-saving technology—or travels back to 2000 to tell all those nice old Jewish ladies in Florida to stop voting for Pat Buchanan—Earth is facing a reckoning, and soon.

With extreme weather events becoming more frequent and alarming (Houston’s weekend windstorm is just the latest example), we’ll be lucky if we haven’t already Wile E. Coyote’d off the climate change cliff. Yet Republicans see a planet choking on the predictable results of 50 years of bad decisions and say, “Hold my beer—it’s brewed with fossil fuels and bears distinctive notes of hazelnut, fruit, and fermented panda.”

In the latest episode of “Freddy Krueger Has Left Your Nightmares to Focus Full-Time on Donald Trump’s 2024 Transition,” Politico is reporting that Andrew Wheeler, Trump’s former Environmental Protection Agency administrator and an ex-coal company lobbyist, would be keenly interested in returning to the White House to finish the job he started. Which, again, mostly entails killing the planet.

Politico:

Former Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler told the POLITICO Energy podcast that he sees key pieces of Biden’s green policies falling quickly if former President Donald Trump wins in November: Courts will strike down Biden’s aggressive pollution limits for coal- and gas-fueled power plants, he predicted. He suspects the auto industry won’t fight to keep regulations pushing a swift transition to electric vehicles, especially in light of EVs’ disappointing sales numbers.

Yes, by all means, let’s err on the side of post-apocalyptic dystopia. Future generations won’t resent us at all. They’ll be too busy scrubbing the coal patina off the giant statue of Trump giving James Madison a wedgie outside the National Archives Museum.

Of course, Wheeler’s doom-filled predictions could very well be self-fulfilling. Politico reports that he’s “ready to take back his old job if his former boss wins the White House in November.” Needless to say, that’s left anyone who cares even a whit about the future (i.e., Democrats) more than a little fearful. Because while Trump usually hires the worst-worst people, he’s also been known to accidentally tap the best-worst people—which means they’re competent at doing horrible things. And Wheeler appears to be of this ilk, Politico reports. 

One potential reason for Democratic nervousness would be Wheeler’s persona as a capable, no-thrills technocrat. Unlike the stream of scandals that plagued Trump’s first EPA leader, former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Wheeler didn’t generate headlines by installing a $43,000 phone booth in his office, dwelling in a lobbyist’s Capitol Hill condo or ordering his staff to shop for a used mattress from Trump’s Washington hotel.

Instead, Wheeler used his longtime experience navigating EPA regulations as an industry lobbyist and top congressional aide to undo as many of the Obama administration’s climate policies as he could. Some Republicans in Congress are eager to see him succeed in doing the same for Biden’s trademark regulations.

That’s great news for the industry executives who’d love to write their own business-friendly regulations—which, according to recent reports, they’re already doing in the hopes of getting them rubber-stamped by Trump on Day One of his next administration. And it falls on the heels of Trump’s promise to help the fossil fuel industry further despoil the Earth in exchange for roughly $1 billion in campaign largesse. But it’s terrible news for anyone without significant fossil fuel investments and/or an unnatural fondness for scrubbing oil off of ducks.

Of course, saving the planet and saving American democracy seem like heavy lifts, and as concerned citizens and voters, we’re being asked to do both over the next several months. Luckily, the means to accomplish these tasks is the same: electing Democrats up and down the ballot—but especially at the top. 

While Republicans have long since abandoned the planet and done it brazenly, their anti-democracy schtick is still relatively new. But it’s gaining momentum, and if Trump returns to the White House, it will no doubt become de rigueur. 

It’s already fashionable for elected Republicans to refuse to accept the results of free and fair elections, and Trump’s own words—as well as the right’s horrifying Project 2025 government blueprint—leave no doubt that fascism is the GOP’s cool new thing.

In fact, to further highlight the holistic nature of our save-the-world-from-Trump project, it’s worth noting that the fascist, Christian nationalist Project 2025 includes a convenient plan for pushing the planet to the brink, presumably to convince Jesus to return to save the righteous and roll coal in the parking lot at the next CPAC gathering.  

The Guardian:

The guide’s chapter on the US Department of Energy proposes eliminating three agency offices that are crucial for the energy transition, and also calls to slash funding to the agency’s grid deployment office in an effort to stymie renewable energy deployment, E&E News reported this week.

The plan, which would hugely expand gas infrastructure, was authored by Bernard McNamee, a former official at the agency. McNamee was also a Trump appointee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He previously led the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, which fights environmental regulation, and served as a senior adviser to the Republican senator Ted Cruz.

So voters have a clear choice. They can support democracy, the planet, and women’s reproductive freedom—or go with the guy who’ll destroy all those things but make them feel a skosh better about their latent racism.

It’s an easy choice. Then again, we’ve been faced with nothing but easy choices for decades, and look where that’s gotten us.

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