Donald Trump Is Creating His Own Energy Emergency | Opinion

On Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order declaring America to be in a national energy emergency. Like so many of his other public statements, however, it was full of falsehoods. And the entire order reads like a gift list for his friends in the oil and gas industry.

None of this should be surprising. Trump famously announced to oil and gas executives during the campaign that he would give them a blank check to do whatever they pleased once he was in office, so long as they donated the money to help make that happen.

The executive order begins with a whopper of a falsehood: that the United States has an inadequate supply of energy. Let’s face facts. The United States produces more crude oil than any other nation ever has since the dawn of the industrial age. That doesn’t even account for alternative energy sources we cultivate every day. Since the fracking boom began about a decade ago, America has also gone from being a net importer of gas to the leading exporter.

Down here on the Gulf Coast, fracked gas is being piped down to the coastal wetlands every day to be refrigerated and sold abroad. Despite what accusations may be contained in the Jan. 20 order, these gas exports continued throughout the past administration.

That brings us to the next falsehood: that the United States could, under the new order, produce enough energy to share with our friends and allies. With all the domestic energy being produced, the U.S. is already selling to allies—and to our geopolitical competitors. You see, these sales come out of contracts between private companies. The U.S. federal government is not “cutting deals” with other nations. Oil and gas companies sell to the highest bidder, no matter how that helps or harms our national interests and security.

The one thing that is true in this executive order is that as a nation, our energy policy is moving the country in an unsustainable and tenuous direction, but not because of renewables or the actions of the last administration. Facts are tricky things, but they are all important to sound decision making. So, let’s consider them.

The administration claims that our nation’s grid is inadequate for the demands of the future, but it doesn’t answer the question of why. That’s because the people closest to the president are creating this problem in the first place. Tech barons are moving forward with artificial intelligence programs at full speed, without regard for ethics, intellectual property rights, risks to our society, or energy demands. Artificial intelligence—and data centers like the ones used by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos—guzzle electricity and water at unsustainable rates. It’s their responsibility to rein the excesses of their own industry, not our responsibility as taxpayers and ratepayers.

They also claim that our country’s energy policy, in addition to being inadequate, puts our national security at risk. Here again, they are correct, but not for the reasons they name in this document. New investments in renewable energy on the West Coast and New England mentioned in the order do not pose a threat to our economy or security—but other policies do.

Our current policies allow companies to extract American energy and sell it overseas with minimal restrictions. Who does that help? The energy goes to fuel industry in other countries, not here, so it doesn’t create American jobs. And there are virtually no restrictions on who can purchase this gas. Selling American fuel for China to stockpile does not benefit American national security.

Then there’s the damage to our national security caused by allowing the extraction and refining of fossil fuels without regard for the science. On the Gulf Coast alone, we are watching as salt-water marshes and coastal wetlands, key to absorbing storm surges from incoming storms, are washing away. Our cities now sit exposed, taking direct hits from stronger hurricanes with increasing frequency.

If a foreign actor were eroding our coastline or attacking our cities, we would be at war. When industry does it through increased warming of our oceans and atmosphere, our government issues them new permits to continue the chaos.

America has more than enough energy. What we need is sane policy that reflects the law, recognizes the science, and addresses the climate crisis. This executive order does the opposite.

LTG. Russel L. Honoré (Ret.) is a former commanding officer of the U.S. First Army. He led Joint Task Force Katrina in New Orleans following the devastating Category 5 hurricane. He is currently head of The Green Army, an organization dedicated to finding solutions to pollution.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.