In Trump, We Trust to Muck Up US Climate Policy

This article first appeared on my website Civil Notion.

What does a billion dollars buy you these days in politics? As important as the “what” is the who. As in, who’s doing the buying and the selling?

If reports are to be believed, a billion big ones was the price former President Trump put on his rolling back any of the nation’s environmental regulations that roil fossil fuel interests — contingent, of course, on his re-capturing the White House. The offer was made at a gathering of oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club.

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“You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House.”

According to the Washington Post, Mr. Trump “vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted.” The Post’s sources also said that the former president alluded to the fact that it was a steal of a deal, given what they would get in return.

The ex-president and convicted felon calculated that he would save them the avoided costs of environmental regulation and taxation and no longer need to spend the $400 million a year on lobbyists, which they do…